Top Democrat Faces Backlash over Tweet to SBF

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Sam Bankman-Fried has said he will testify in front of Congress about FTX’s collapse. Rep. Maxine Waters, who chairs the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, has invited him to appear on Dec. 13. But the embattled crypto entrepreneur says this date may be too early as he wants to finish “learning and reviewing what happened.” None of this has stopped him from giving multiple media interviews about his exchange’s demise. Some have accused Rep. Waters of being overly friendly with SBF — with others wondering why she hasn’t just issued a subpoena. Meanwhile, Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong has said SBF’s claim an “accounting error” was to blame for $8 billion going missing should not be believed. “It’s stolen customer money used in his hedge fund, plain and simple,” he tweeted.

The shockwaves from FTX’s collapse are still being felt. There’s good news for FTX Japan customers, as withdrawals are going to begin in “short order.” This is achievable because this business was already heavily regulated — and there was no commingling of funds with Alameda Research. Not everyone is so lucky. Elsewhere, the Financial Times has reported that Genesis owes $900 million to customers of Gemini, the exchange run by the Winklevoss twins, after it was “wrongfooted” by FTX’s collapse. Genesis had been serving as the main partner of Gemini’s Earn program that enables retail investors to receive interest on their crypto savings. CoinDesk says the financial black hole at Genesis could be at least $1.8 billion.

Retrieving the $3 billion owed to creditors following the collapse of Three Arrows Capital is much easier said than done, new court documents show. A presentation reveals that liquidators have only made modest progress since the doomed hedge fund collapsed earlier this year. About $35 million in fiat has been retrieved that was being held in Singaporean banks, alongside $2.8 million following the “forced redemptions of investments.” What’s more, about 60 different types of cryptocurrencies have been identified and seized — but their exact value is unclear. An interesting development concerns efforts to recover $30 million from selling a superyacht called “Much Wow” — clearly named in tribute to Doge.

Bitcoin is on “the road to irrelevance,” a blog post from the European Central Bank has warned. In an opinion piece, authors pointed to how the world’s biggest cryptocurrency has plunged from $69,000 to $17,000 over the past year — writing: “For Bitcoin proponents, the seeming stabilization signals a breather on the way to new heights. More likely, however, it is an artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance — and this was already foreseeable before FTX went bust and sent the Bitcoin price to well below $16,000.” Ulrich Bindseil and Jürgen Schaaf said that a flurry of technological shortcomings mean Bitcoin transactions are “cumbersome, slow and expensive” — and the digital asset isn’t even suitable as an investment.

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