By Tim Hakki
5 min read
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
Prices may be in the green for the week, but Crypto Twitter remained focused on the sector’s ongoing liquidity crisis.
This week, Singaporean exchange Zipmex froze withdrawals, and Legion Strategies, a hedge fund affiliated with Anthony Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital, halted redemptions. Meanwhile, Blockchain.com joined the ranks of Gemini, Coinbase, and OpenSea by announcing mass layoffs, and electric car manufacturer Tesla cashed out 75% of its Bitcoin for $936 million.
MicroStrategy CEO and billionaire Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor quickly pointed out the hard truths of Tesla’s sale.
In the thick of bankruptcies, one firm is stacking that cash: U.S. law firm Kirkland & Ellis, previously hired by bankrupt crypto lenders Voyager and Celsius to help them restructure, was this week hired by Babel Finance. Last Sunday, Babel paused withdrawals, citing “liquidity pressures.”
An affidavit from Kyle Davies, a co-founder of the newly bankrupt Three Arrows Capital, claims that the former crypto hedge fund owes $65 million to his wife and $5 million to co-founder Su Zhu. Davies and Zhu, effectively radio silent for five weeks, told Bloomberg what they were doing with investors’ funds before it all collapsed.
DeFi news outlet The Defiant compiled some of the most affecting letters written to the judge by those affected by the Celsius bankruptcy. They really hammer home the human cost of the liquidity crisis.
On a more optimistic note, blockchain-based file-sharing network LBRY beat the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in court. Guess not every non-Bitcoin token on the blockchain is a security after all, huh Gary Gensler?
On Wednesday, the Microsoft-published hit sandbox game Minecraft announced it will block the use of NFTs and blockchain technology on its servers and prohibit the creation of NFTs based on its assets. Axie Infinity co-founder Jiho was bullish on the news.
The Minecraft-based project NFT Worlds tweeted a lengthy protest.
Others saw it coming a long time ago, including Decrypt’s own Kate Irwin, who called it five months ago.
On Monday, there was some speculation as to who owned a wallet that purchased a certain domain on the Ethereum Name Service.
Popular NFT marketplace OpenSea got into a sassy war of words with a Solana-based rival.
Twitter user @8892OS, who claims to be a “fine art dealer” and a purveyor of “emergency liquidity assistance,” allegedly ripped someone off for a lot of Ethereum, and that person ... sent more?
Russian-born Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin was thanked for his humanitarian efforts to help Ukraine repel Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion.
And finally, GameStop’s new NFT platform drew criticism for listing an NFT clearly inspired by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew’s world-famous image of a 9/11 victim, known as “The Falling Man.”
The NFT appears to have since been delisted.
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