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☆ Solana's slide accelerates — $50 billion in value wiped from the cryptocurrency in 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

The token's market cap collapsed from over $55 billion in January to barely above $3 billion at year-end. Bankman-Fried's companies held nearly $1.2 billion worth of the token and associated assets in June, according to documents reviewed by CoinDesk. But the recent slides came after that news had already broken, making Solana's recent slide something of a mystery. During the crypto market's heyday in 2021, Bankman-Fried was hardly alone in his bullishness. Solana's token fell from $141 to a low of a little over $94.

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailSolana soars, and Bahamian regulator says it seized $3.5 billion of FTX assets: CNBC Crypto WorldCNBC Crypto World features the latest news and daily trading updates from the digital currency markets and provides viewers with a look at what's ahead with high-profile interviews, explainers, and unique stories from the ever-changing crypto industry. On today's show, Konstantin Richter, the founder and CEO of Blockdaemon, breaks down whether crypto's adoption rate will slow down following the collapse of FTX.

☆ Stocks have taken a beating this year and investors feel worse than during 2008's Great Financial Crisis. Here's what that means for 2023.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Now, unlike this newsletter and all you readers, the stock market is rounding out a year to forget. It's worth noting, too, that alongside slumping stocks, investor sentiment is worse than it was during the 2008 Financial Crisis. But in Fundstrat's view, that suggests a stock market bottom is near, if it hasn't happened already. In other words, overly bearish sentiment suggests stocks could be set up for a big rally in 2023. What's your stock market outlook for the new year?

☆ Crumbling tech stocks and recession fears have cratered the fortunes of the wealthiest Americans including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images; Arif Hudaverdi Yaman/Getty Images; KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/Getty Images; Mike Cohen/Getty Images; Yuqing Liu/Business Insider1. Besides the fallen crypto king, many of these shrinking fortunes can be chalked up to this year's bloodbath in the tech stocks. How has Elon Musk's involvement with Twitter impacted your outlook for Tesla stock? Tesla stock price on December, 29, 2022 Markets Insider10. Tesla stock climbed Wednesday as dip-buyers poured into the EV maker.

☆ Inside the relationship between Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and Solana, the blockchain he championed whose token is down 96% from its highs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sam Bankman-Fried was a big supporter of Solana, the layer-1 blockchain that bills itself as a faster alternative to Ethereum's network. He backed projects on its ecosystem, and his firms amassed huge sums of the blockchain's native token, also called Solana (SOL). The disgraced former crypto mogul backed projects in its ecosystem, and his firms amassed huge sums of the blockchain's native token, also called Solana (SOL). Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried's hedge fund Alameda Research and crypto exchange FTX purchased large sums of SOL tokens from the Solana Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the blockchain, and Solana Labs, the blockchain's developer. That's despite the fact that around 80% of projects on Solana's blockchain had zero exposure to FTX, Yakovenko told Bloomberg.

☆ Solana crypto token loses most of its value in 2022, FTX collapse weighs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, Dec 28 (Reuters) - The price of Solana, a cryptocurrency token that had been lauded by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, fell 10.36% on Wednesday, and is down 94.2% so far in 2022. The collapse of FTX has rippled across the industry, hobbling liquidity at firms with exposure to what was once one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges. Solana , or SOL, is the token behind the upstart Solana blockchain, which supports smart contracts, including non-fungible tokens, and has emerged as a rival to the ethereum blockchain. FTX and Alameda, Bankman-Fried's trading firm, held Solana tokens on their balance sheets. While Solana has no direct relation to FTX, and had limited exposure to the failed exchange, its association with Bankman-Fried has been a drag.

☆ The Sam Bankman-Fried-backed crypto Solana has lost nearly all its value this year and is still crashing as key projects bail
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Solana, once praised as a viable rival for Ethereum, has tumbled almost 70% since the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's empire, and is down 94% in 2022. The disgraced crypto founder said over the summer that Solana was the most underrated cryptocurrency. The latest decline comes as more crypto projects bail on the Solana ecosystem. FTX and Alameda had purchased over 50.5 million Solana tokens — now worth about $500 million — that would remain "locked" until 2028. Meanwhile, Solana Compass data cited by Forbes showed that Alameda's liquidators now hold over half a billion dollars worth of the crypto.

☆ China adds billions to its 2021 GDP estimate, but its economy is facing a big test this year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Laura He | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

Hong Kong CNN —China’s gross domestic product (GDP) for 2021 was over half a trillion yuan more than initially calculated, official data revealed Tuesday. The update comes at a time the world’s second-largest economy faces severe strain from an unprecedented wave of Covid infections sweeping the country. The new data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows the nation’s economy grew 8.4% in 2021 from a year earlier, higher than the 8.1% initially reported. Per the revised figures, China’s GDP reached 114.92 trillion yuan ($16.52 trillion) last year, up 556.7 billion yuan ($80 billion) from the previous estimate. Revisions to initial estimates of GDP are common in many economies, mainly because of the large amount of information used in data construction.

☆ Beijing roars to life a month after zero-Covid lockdowns fade, but China is not out of the woods yet
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Evelyn Cheng | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Crowds gather to watch a band perform at the Solana mall in Beijing on Christmas Eve 2022, as the city recovers from a Covid wave. BEIJING — People are returning to the streets in China's capital city as it emerges from a wave of Covid infections. Anecdotally, foot traffic at malls and Universal Beijing Resort's CityWalk over the weekend was up significantly to modestly crowded levels. In contrast to the surge in Beijing city traffic, Shanghai and Shenzhen still saw very low levels of congestion Monday morning, the Baidu data showed. The two cities started to see a wave of Covid infections after Beijing did.

☆ Bitcoin lost over 60% of its value in 2022—here’s how much 6 other popular cryptocurrencies lost
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Cheyenne Devon | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

In the latest blow to the crypto space, Core Scientific, one of the largest publicly traded crypto mining companies in the U.S, which primarily mints bitcoin, filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 21, citing falling crypto prices and rising energy costs. Just 8% of Americans have a positive view of cryptocurrency as of Nov. 2022, according to the CNBC All-America Economic Survey. Overall, the crypto market has lost a little over $2 trillion in 2022 and popular digital coins such as bitcoin have fallen far below their 2021 highs. Here's how much the value of seven popular cryptocurrencies changed in 2022 as of Dec. 22, per CNBC's calculations. For this reason, financial experts typically advise against investing more into crypto than you're willing to potentially lose.

A California interior designer was convicted of first-degree murder Wednesday after prosecutors said she killed her butterfly conservationist stepfather when she found nude photos of herself on his computer. Merriman was killed on Dec. 31, 2020, not long after Janks found the compromising photos on Merriman's computer. Janks drugged Merriman and then suffocated him with a plastic bag and choked him to death, prosecutors said. A text message Janks sent to an acquaintance the day of Merriman's death, and shown to jurors, read: "I just dosed the hell out of him." Janks' defense insisted Merriman died from poor health and his own chronic drug abuse.

The firm's "years-long" fraud didn't just extend to playing with customer money, according to the SEC. Unlike those other market makers or power users, Alameda had a set of powerful tools at its disposal. The kind of high-frequency trading that FTX users engaged in made that invaluable. Alameda secured its loans from Voyager and BlockFi with FTT tokens, which FTX minted itself. Major Alameda lenders, like Voyager, declared bankruptcy.

☆ Shaq — who starred in an FTX commercial in June — says he 'was just a paid spokesperson' for the exchange and doesn't believe in crypto
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Shaquille O'Neal said he was paid to appear in an FTX ad and was never involved in the firm. "A lot of people think I'm involved, but I was just a paid spokesperson for a commercial," O'Neal told the outlet. The former basketball star, who's now an angel investor and businessman, starred in an FTX commercial released on June 2. In the ad, O'Neal said he was excited to partner with the exchange to "make crypto accessible to everyone." The NBA hall of fame member did not disclose how much money he received for appearing in the June FTX commercial.

☆ SZA Revels in Mixed Emotions on ‘SOS’
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Jon Pareles | More About Jon Pareles | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“I just want what’s mine,” SZA announces in “SOS,” the title song and opener of her second studio album. SZA’s music melts down styles — singing, rapping, rock, R&B, pop, folk, indie-rock, electronica — to ponder and interrogate her conflicting impulses. Solána Rowe, who records as SZA, has only two official studio albums in a decade-long career. “SOS” was preceded by “Ctrl,” which she originally released in 2017 but expanded by seven new songs in June 2022. Along the way, SZA, 33, has moved from the left-field electronic experiments of her early EPs to savvy but still probing pop, as the mainstream bends toward her ideas.

Persons: “, ” SZA, Solána Rowe, ”, Kendrick Lamar, Summer Walker, Lorde, Megan Thee, SZA’s, Lamar, Doja

☆ FTX t-shirts and swag were stashed away in trash bags during Miami's Art Basel, and some crypto diehards took them home as souvenirs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Solana Embassy, once backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, gave away free FTX t-shirts at Art Basel. Among the stash were close to 1,000 FTX Miami t-shirts, FTX bean bags, a framed Miami Heat jersey that featured an FTX logo, and a signed poster of chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen who took part in an FTX-sponsored tournament. Solana tweeted about its events in Miami and said it had "about 1,000 FTX Miami shirts to get rid of." The t-shirts were originally only supposed to be free for those who opened FTX accounts at the Solana Embassy. The Solana Embassy previously housed an FTX Lounge, and the exchange was its biggest financial sponsor, according to Norby.

☆ Crypto winners and losers from the FTX fallout, according to Bernstein
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Bernstein has sifted through the various sectors of the crypto industry and identified winners and losers for 2022. Crypto suffered the added handicap of the financial contagion from the collapse of Terra in the first half of the year and FTX currently. Binance, which operates in a regulatory gray zone, will eventually become the "global consolidator" of smaller off-shore exchanges, Bernstein said. While FTX taught investors about the risks of storing crypto holdings with centralized entities, revelations in the stablecoin sector went the other way around. Solana, on the other hand, took a hit, stained by the fallout of FTX, a big and early backer of Solana.

☆ iPod creator Tony Fadell designed a $279 credit card-sized device for storing your crypto
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

watch nowThe creator of the iPod, Tony Fadell, designed a new hardware wallet for people to store their cryptocurrency. The Ledger Stax sports a black-and-white E-ink display, similar to that of Amazon's Kindle e-readers. The Ledger Stax is the latest hardware crypto wallet from French startup Ledger. The Ledger Stax, which retails at $279, is available for preorder starting Tuesday and will start shipping in the first quarter of 2023, Ledger said. In 2018, during the last so-called "crypto winter," HTC launched the Exodus 1, a mid-range phone with a crypto wallet included.

☆ Venture capitalists flock to blockchain firms in third quarter - Pitchbook
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Medha Singh | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 29 (Reuters) - Decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 were the primary targets of early-stage startup funding from some of the top private investors in the third quarter, research firm Pitchbook said on Tuesday, even as overall venture capital investments declined. Outlook for funding in the current quarter has darkened as cryptocurrencies reel from the impact of the stunning collapse of FTX earlier this month. Overall, venture capital (VC) activity softened for the third consecutive quarter, totaling $4.7 billion across 153 deals, a 32% decline from second quarter's $6.9 billion across 244 deals, Pitchbook said. Other hot sectors for VC investments included financial technology, accounting for $737.4 million across 24 deals during the quarter, and biotechnology, that lured in $725.8 million across 11 deals, Pitchbook said. Pitchbook's Emerging Tech Indicator report tracked 153 early and seed-stage deals that involved the top 15 VC firms out of 5,997 total deals in the third quarter of 2022.

☆ Investors flock to short crypto funds, products as negative sentiment deepens -CoinShares
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Crypto products and funds saw inflows of $44 million, as of the week ended Nov. 18, but 75% of those flows represented investments in short crypto products, data showed. The total assets under management have plunged to $22 billion, the lowest in two years, CoinShares said. FTX filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States more than a week ago in the highest-profile crypto implosion to date. CoinShares data also showed that bitcoin posted inflows of $14 million, but when offset by inflows into short investment products, the net flows were a negative $4.3 million. Investors poured in record inflows to short-Ethereum products of $14 million.

☆ Ether falls as the FTX hacker dumps $74 million worth of the token and swaps it for bitcoin
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Ether fell as much as 7% Monday as the hacker who looted FTX began dumping tokens. Over the last week, the hacker gradually converted the stolen FTX funds to ether, CoinDesk reported. About $74 million of ether has been laundered into bitcoin using RenBridge, CNBC reports. Elliptic's cofounder, Tom Robinson, told CNBC Monday that hackers were converting the ether into bitcoin using a blockchain bridge product called RenBTC. Per the report, roughly $74 million has been moved to bitcoin from RenBTC so far.

Hackers who stole around $477 million worth of cryptocurrency from collapsed exchange FTX have started to launder the funds into bitcoin . Blockchain analytics company Elliptic estimates that around $477 million worth of cryptocurrency had been stolen from FTX. The theft adds insult to injury to FTX, a once $32 billion crypto empire who collapse has sent shockwaves across the industry. Crypto compliance software company Chainalysis in a tweet on Sunday also confirmed that hackers are moving funds. The implosion of FTX has left Bankman-Fried a paper pauper and investors left unable to access their crypto assets.

Proof of work and proof of stake are the two main ways cryptocurrency transactions are verified. Proof of stake requires participants to put cryptocurrency as collateral for the opportunity to successfully approve transactions. Proof of work is more secure than proof of stake, but it's slower and consumes more energy. Proof of stake requires network participants to stake cryptocurrency as collateral in favor of the new block they believe should be added to the chain. While proof of stake avoids the massive energy consumption of proof of work, it hasn't been proven to be as secure and stable as proof of work at scale.

☆ Coinbase shares tumble as bitcoin slide continues, investors fear contagion from FTX collapse
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Brian Armstrong, CEO and Co-Founder, Coinbase, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference on May 2, 2022. in Beverly Hills, California. Coinbase shares fell more than 8% Monday, extending a slide that's pushed the crypto exchange to its lowest point since its market debut in April 2021. The drop comes as bitcoin's slump continues and investors worry about contagion from FTX's spectacular collapse earlier this month. In June, the crypto exchange slashed 18% of its workforce. WATCH: CNBC's full interview with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

☆ FTX's collapse could be crypto's dot-com crash moment – with the industry struggling to ever regain investors' trust
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-19 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The collapse of FTX could weigh on cryptocurrencies for years, experts told Insider. And the dot-com crash shows that there could be further pain ahead. "In a very crude way, this isn't that different to the dot-com crash," Morningstar Investment Management CIO Dan Kemp told Insider. Just 48% of internet companies even survived the dot-com crash, and it took Amazon a decade to regain its peak share price of $113. Whether cryptocurrencies can bounce back as some tech stocks did 20 years ago remains to be seen.

☆ FTX: Inside the crypto giant's downfall
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Crypto contagionThe crypto industry is on edge, waiting for the next dominoes to fall. Soon after FTX went down, crypto firms were inundated requests from customers seeking to claw their money back — the crypto equivalent of a run on the bank. The pain isn’t confined to crypto companies. SBF had become a fixture in Washington, too, where he regularly traveled to lobby lawmakers for greater regulatory clarity for the crypto industry. “It’s about fraud and the power of virtue signaling.”He added: “This scandal, far from destroying crypto, practically ensures that crypto will be around for a long, long time.”

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