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04 Nov 2022

The Friday Focus: Issue 58

Another busy week in the crypto industry is almost over, with earnings, layoffs, new services, and hacks on the menu. Let’s dive into it! Here’s our weekly recap, so you can save time and be more effective.
The Friday Focus SVG
Weekly happenings
(Oct 28 - Nov 4)
Another busy week in the crypto industry is almost over, with earnings, layoffs, new services, and hacks on the menu. Here’s our weekly recap, so you can save time and be more effective.Let’s dive into it!Top storiesEarnings season is here. Coinbase reported lower trading volume than expected, and Block, the owner of CashApp, reported $1.76 billion in bitcoin sales. No surprises from MicroStrategy in terms of bitcoin holdings, but it narrowly missed the Q3 revenue estimates.Bear market layoffs continue this week. Bitmex is cutting parts of its workforce as it’s moving back to focusing on derivatives, and Galaxy is looking at job cuts of about 20%. This is not an isolated trend for the crypto industry, with Stripe cutting 14% of its workforce this week.A bear market is also a time to build, and several companies are continuing their push into crypto. The investment giant Fidelity is launching crypto trading for its retail clients. Nice timing with its latest crypto survey just being released. MoneyGram is also expanding its crypto services, now introducing trading through its mobile app. In South Africa, the supermarket chain Pick n Pay will reportedly accept bitcoin payments, and Meta is not giving up on crypto initiatives (despite huge metaverse losses this year) and is looking to use decentralized data storage protocol Arweave to store NFTs from Instagram.On the crypto exchange front, Bakkt is acquiring Apex Crypto for up to $200m, and Coincheck plans to list on Nasdaq in July next year. Talking about exchanges, Coinbase is backing Ripple in the battle against the SEC, with the Blockchain Association also supporting.In other regulatory news, the EU’s MiCA regulation vote looks to happen in February, Canada announced crypto consultation in a new budget statement, Hong Kong will conduct public consultation on retail crypto trading, and Singapore approved stablecoin issuers Circle and Paxos. Singapore’s Monetary Authority also reported on a successful cross-currency transaction leveraging DeFi applications, together with DBS Bank, JPMorgan, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings.Mining companies are going through a challenging period. Iris Energy is the latest company to warn about default on debt payments, Argo Blockchain fears negative cash flows as a $27m raise fails, and Bitdeer is again delaying its $4B SPAC deal. On a positive note, CleanSpark is continuing its buying spree, and Marathon revealed a record October and increased hashrate of 84%.Last but not least, no weeks without hacks in the crypto industry. Deribit lost almost $30 million in a hot wallet hack this week. With 99% of its assets in cold storage, all customer funds are safe, and Deribit will cover the losses.That’s all folks - until next time!
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