Although we have experienced moments of uncertainty and high volatility so far in 2022, there is no doubt that what has happened with FTX is worrying, and has significantly alarmed investors, and some have even baptized it as the Lehman Brothers of cryptocurrencies. But what has happened? Below we tell you the most relevant news of the week, including the most scandalous event without a doubt since the fall of Terra (LUNA).

It all started last Sunday, November 6, when Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the Binance exchange, revealed that his company will liquidate its FTX token holdings due to unspecified “recent revelations”.

Last Tuesday Zhao published on his Twitter account that FTX itself requested help from Binance in the face of a liquidity problem, and seeking to protect users had signed a letter of intent to acquire, so everything indicated that Binance was going to acquire the platform founded by Sam Bankman Fried. However, the negotiation had to go through various stages, and a clause was generated in which Binance could withdraw from the agreement at any time, and this is where everything began to fall apart.

It turns out that just a day later, Binance changed its mind, even though Zhao intended to help platform users, as they are said to have found reports of mishandled customer funds and alleged investigations by various American agencies. Redflag!

In this way, Changpeng Zhao completely withdrew his plans to buy FTX, despite having previously reached a non-binding agreement for the purchase, that is, the negotiation process was quite advanced, so he left Sam Bankman’s exchange -Fried on the verge of collapse, in the face of an imminent and severe liquidity crisis.

The market did not take long to react, and as the aforementioned events unfolded, crypto assets were shaken significantly, with Bitcoin falling to $15,600 (almost -25%) for the first time since November 2020, and Ethereum reaching $1,073 (close to of -30%), not being its lowest level in the year, but without a doubt an alarming figure in terms of volatility and uncertainty. As expected, the rest of the crypto assets acted similarly, and the week ended in the red for each and every one of the most important cryptocurrencies in the world (let’s not talk about shitcoins).

It was until Friday when the exchange, which became one of the largest and most important in the world, declared bankruptcy in the United States, seeking judicial protection while looking for a way to return the money to users.

The company’s former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, also resigned from him that same day, the company said in a statement. A sudden and critical change for the 30-year-old, who had headed the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange.

In just over a week, his empire collapsed, and along with the crypto market, will it have bottomed out? We do not know, but we can expect difficult days, which add to the macroeconomic uncertainty and the global recession, giving a serious blow to the value of this asset class.

Changpeng Zhao to the rescue? The crypto asset market is facing a crisis similar to the 2008 financial crisis, according to the CEO of Binance, who warned last Thursday that more companies could go bankrupt in the coming weeks following the FTX problems.

However, it seems that Binance has seen a great opportunity to practically take over the crypto asset market, which is why Changpeng Zhao has declared today at the B20 Summit in Indonesia that he plans to help establish a global cryptocurrency association, seeking to set very strong standards for the industry.

Also, via Twitter, Zhao has mentioned that he plans to set up an industry recovery fund to help projects that are short of cash, but have a solid business model. Additionally, he encouraged projects to contact Binance Labs, the exchange’s investment and incubator unit. Hope? What are your thoughts on this?

In other relevant news from the previous week, Google’s cloud computing division Google Cloud announced that it is now running a validator on the Solana blockchain, and will soon add features aimed at welcoming developers and Solana node brokers.

To top it off, in a Twitter thread, Google Cloud revealed that in addition to running a Solana validator, it plans to bring its Blockchain Node Engine to the Solana chain in 2023. Node Engine is a managed node hosting service run by the provider, which today already supports the Ethereum blockchain.

Finally, Google Cloud also announced that it is now indexing Solana data and adding it to its BigQuery data warehouse, a move that will make it easier for the Solana developer ecosystem to access historical data starting in 2023.

To close with another very important piece of news, we could not let go of the fact that the Department of the Treasury updated the sanctions imposed against Tornado Cash, in part due to his role in the North Korean nuclear weapons program, since it is argued that he was used to the operation of illicit funds. One such case was that of the North Korean country’s Lazarus Group, in which more than $455 million was covered up.

This update was carried out after the original sanction was first introduced in August, being classified as a cybercrime. This new stage also includes an additional basis for the designation of Tornado Cash with respect to his support of North Korean activities. It is worth mentioning that Tornado Cash’s user base has dropped dramatically since then. No one can save them! Binance? I don’t think so.

Bitcoin is currently trading above $16,600, recovering somewhat from that dramatic crash to $15,600. However, it is now below a quite interesting resistance zone at $17,110, so if the bad news continues, we could see the world’s largest digital asset drop even as low as $12,500.

BTC/USDT 1D (TradingView Chart).

For its part, Ethereum has fallen in a greater proportion than Bitcoin in the last week, more however, it did not reach the minimum that it generated just a couple of months ago. It is currently trading above $1,240, and is also just below a rather interesting zone at $1,280. If it continues to fall, we can find a level not so far between $900-$1,000, exactly where it generated that low last June.

ETH/USDT 1D (TradingView Chart).

The fall of FTX is without a doubt one of the most dramatic events in the history of crypto assets, I would even say that it is stronger than that of Terra, since we are talking about one of the largest and “safer” exchanges in the world. the world. There is no doubt that difficult days are ahead for the cryptocurrency market, losses for some, opportunities for others. Without further ado, we wish you an amazing week.