FTX sues former executives; Bitmain launches Filecoin mining devices; Market cap of stablecoins at 2-year low
The bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has been chasing recently spent assets. In addition, the exchange also resorts to various ways to get certain funds back. FTX has sued its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, and other top executives of the exchange to recover more than $1 billion in funds for alleged embezzlement.
The lawsuit, filed in the US Bankruptcy Court yesterday, includes former CEO of Alameda Research Caroline Ellison, FTX co-founder Zixiao Gary Wang, former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh and Bankman-Fried as defendants.
In its lawsuit against the aforementioned defendants, FTX claimed that former executives repeatedly embezzled client funds to finance luxury condos, political and charitable donations, speculative investments, and other pet projects.
Defending that they carried out one of the biggest financial frauds in history by abusing the power they received from their authority, FTX stated that they also assumed the authority to recruit and fire personnel unattended.
FTX, which filed a lawsuit with a case full of allegations, also reported that former executives issued more than $725 million in equity for themselves.
Additionally, FTX has revealed that Bankman-Fried and Wang embezzled another $546 million to buy shares in Robinhood.
Embezzled money comes to light!
FTX spilled all the dirty laundry from the former executives of the bankrupt stock market. In the court filing, FTX claimed that Ellison paid him a $28.8 million bonus and used $10 million of the funds to buy stock in an artificial intelligence company.
FTX also recorded that on January 24, 2022, Bankman-Fried transferred $10 million from his FTX USA account to his father’s account on the same exchange as a gift.
Finally, on November 11, 2022, with the restructuring process of the stock market, John Ray, who took on the new CEO position, has been trying to collect the debris left behind by the stock market for a while.
The other day, the FTX exchange also followed the coins distributed for charity. Taking action to recover the $71 million donated to charity and science, the company plans to pay the funds raised to creditors.
Bitmain launches Filecoin mining devices
Bitmain that produces crypto mining devices, has entered Filecoin mining. According to The Block, the company offers Filecoin mining equipment with a tag of $ 38,888.
According to the announcement, mining devices will have a hash rate of 4,300T. After purchasing devices, users can take advantage of the Antpool mining pool platform associated with Bitmain to start earning mining rewards.
The sale of the devices begins on July 21
Filecoin is known for offering a unique combination of both staking and mining to support the decentralized storage network. Storage providers are eligible for mining rewards in line with their storage capacity by contributing computing resources to store and retrieve data. Token holders also have a chance to earn staking rewards by staking FIL tokens to support network consensus and governance.
Along with mining devices, Bitmain is also introducing a new staking service that allows users to entrust their tokens to a third party like Antpool for a 0.5% monthly fee for the FIL.
According to the statement made on Bitmain’s Twitter account, the company will launch the sale of Filecoin mining devices on July 21.
Market cap of stablecoins at 2-year low
The fate of stablecoins in recent times does not point to very encouraging tables. The market cap of stablecoins has hit the lowest levels after 16 consecutive months of declines.
In a report published by cryptocurrency analytics platform CCData, stablecoin market cap dropped 0.82% from the start of the month to July 17, pulling the industry’s market cap to $127 billion.
Stablecoin market dominance has dropped slightly and is now down to 10.3 percent from 10.5 percent in June.
The stablecoin market is bleeding
Among the top ten stablecoins, the Pax Dollar (USDP) was the hardest hit. USDP fell 43.1 percent to $563 million in July and remains the lowest since December 2020.
CCData believes the decline is largely due to MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization behind the Maker protocol, choosing to remove 500 million USDP from its reserves because it was unable to generate additional revenue.
Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin by market cap, managed to record an all-time high of $83.8 billion as of July 17. With that, USDT increased its market cap dominance to 65.9 percent.
The market cap of USD Coin (USDC) and Binance USD (BUSD) fell 3.01 percent and 4.57 percent, respectively, to $26.9 billion and $3.96 billion. For USDC, this was the seventh consecutive month of market value decline and the lowest since June 2021.
Despite the consecutive declines, stablecoin transaction volumes rose 16.6 percent in June to nearly $483 billion.
