A New York-based law firm says it has begun an investigation into whether Bitcoin miner Core Scientific and its leadership potentially engaged in “securities fraud and other unlawful business practices" which led to its stock price falling on several occasions. According to securities class action firm Pomerantz LLP, the investigation was prompted by a report from Culper Research in 2022, which alleged that Core Scientific had "wildly oversold" its mining and hosting businesses in 2021 and also waived a 180-day lockup period of over 282 million shares, making them "free to be dumped" in Mar. 2022. This report suggested that …

Investment firm Fidelity has written down the value of its initial stake in Twitter following its funding of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform. According to a filing of the Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund in November 2022, the firm has written down the carrying value of its Twitter investment by more than 50 percent. The filing was first reported by Axios. A write-down is a reduction in the value of an asset on a company’s balance sheet. This typically occurs when the asset's market value falls below its book value, which is the value at which the …

Digital assets funds saw inflows totaling $433 million during 2022, the lowest level since 2018, when inflows in the crypto industry reached $233 million, according to the cryptocurrency investment firm Coinshares. Investors' appetite for digital assets seems not to have been fully affected by the crypto winter, but otherwise encouraged investments in crypto assets in a year marked by a price decline and the collapse of many industry players. James Butterfill, researcher at CoinShares, noted in the weekly report that: "In a year where bitcoin prices fell by 63%, a clear bear market precipitated by irrational exuberance and an overly …

Play-to-earn gaming enabled by blockchain technology has grown exponentially over the few years. Gamers have embraced the opportunity to collect cryptocurrencies or nonfungible tokens ( NFTs ) that have been produced in blockchain-based games. Through the advent of this new technology, players have been able to generate income by selling in-game NFTs or earning cryptocurrency rewards, both of which can be exchanged for fiat cash. Because of this , according to data from Absolute Reports , the estimated value of the GameFi industry will grow to $2.8 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.4% over the …

As a millennial, it’s hard to say this, but boomers are doing crypto better. They are taking research methods used in the traditional markets and applying them to crypto projects, according to a new report from Bybit and consumer research company Toluna. The report says that 34% of boomers spend “a few days” doing due diligence on a project before investing — 50% more than other generations. More concerning still, “64% of North American investors spend less than two hours or don’t DYOR at all.” Boomers are also more likely to focus their research on technical factors such as tokenomics, …

Does the crypto industry’s funding space need an overhaul? This is one of many questions swirling in the wake of FTX’s downfall: When the prominent exchange collapsed, it left behind a long line of helpless creditors and lenders — including many promising projects dependent on funds promised by Sam Bankman-Fried and company. But there is a bigger problem at the heart of the current funding picture, wherein deep-pocketed venture capital firms throw their weight around in the low-liquidity Web3 market, heavily backing early-stage projects before cashing out at a profit once retail has FOMO'd into the market. For all the …

The economy is facing an outlook bleaker than a Welsh weather forecast, and few are rushing to buy risk assets. Here are a few tips for weathering unfavorable market conditions. Option #1: Save cash There’s no shame in sitting on the sidelines and saving cash or stablecoins. When bullish momentum returns, you will have plenty of dry powder to make big allocations. In the meantime, there are still lots of opportunities to earn yield across crypto markets as long as you trust the protocol you’re using. But isn’t this timing the market, which is impossible? Possibly. But this is more …

In May 2022, Terraform Labs’ LUNA cryptocurrency and TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin collapsed, triggering a massive shock in the crypto industry. Six months later, the bruised industry took another hammering as one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX, filed for bankruptcy protection and billions of dollars of user assets went missing. The FTX empire, once valued at more than $30 billion, fell to zero in fewer than 10 days. FTX reportedly has more than 1 million creditors, most of whom are retail investors who were convinced that FTX would not collapse and had been keeping their assets on the exchange. Taking …

Gaming retailer GameStop says it will no longer focus any efforts on cryptocurrencies, after amounting $94.7 million in net losses in the third quarter and laying off staff from its digital assets department. On a Dec. 7 earnings call GameStop CEO, Matt Furlong, said it “proactively minimized exposure to cryptocurrency” over the year and “does not currently hold a material balance of any token,” adding: “Although we continue to believe there is long-term potential for digital assets in the gaming world, we have not and will not risk meaningful stockholder capital in this space.” Earlier this year the company said …

News involving crypto and fraud is ubiquitous in the white-collar crime sphere and, perhaps more worryingly, these fraudulent activities in the crypto sector are not limited to a single type of crime. Diverse and distinct yet with one common thread, these crimes involve real money and crypto investors are the victims. Many people have placed their life savings into crypto and, on a larger scale, private equities, pension schemes and even nation-states are principal investors and losers. There are con artists who will try and entice their targets to invest in a get-rich scheme that turns out to be a …

As crypto company valuations are affected by the recent FTX debacle, financial services firm Goldman Sachs is looking to swoop in and invest millions to purchase or invest in crypto firms while the prices are low. In an interview with mainstream media outlet Reuters, Mathew McDermott, an executive at Goldman Sachs, reportedly said that big banks are seeing opportunities in the space as the FTX collapse highlighted a need for more regulation within the industry. The executive added that the firm is currently seeing opportunities that are "priced more sensibly" and are already doing its due diligence on some crypto …

The FTX collapse marks more than just the failure of another crypto exchange. It signals the time has come for the industry to grow up and embrace value. The value schism is here. FTX was the world’s second-largest crypto exchange. Now, it is a meme for the death rattle of absurd amounts of money being poured into refurbished centralized business models whitewashed in faux decentralization. As legendary investor Warren Buffet famously said, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” It seems there were more than a few nude bathers in this last cycle. But …