Weekly Outlook: FTX’s Statement: “The Company Didn’t Actually Go Bankrupt, It Just Had a Liquidity Problem”

SBF’s lawyers claimed that SBF was convicted in an unfair trial due to media pressure and the current conjuncture, and requested a retrial with a different judge.

When we look at the concrete arguments, it is mentioned that SBF did not squander customer money as claimed in the lawsuit process, but made sensible investments, but since these investments were not liquid, the company entered a liquidity crisis and had payment problems. In other words, there is no new argument, we all saw that the money was spent through Alameda Research and that it was not exactly like that.

The media pressure argument is reasonable. No matter how professional the judges are, the direction of the case may have changed due to both social and political pressure. Also, when the case was filed, there was a much more comprehensive and complex process such as the parent company in the Bahamas being connected to a separate process, Alameda and the managers in the Bahamas. If there is a retrial, perhaps an update on SBF’s sentence could be expected, but finding him innocent seems like an absurd expectation at this stage.

The UK has been a country that has been going back and forth on cryptocurrencies. In recent years, the regulator has turned it into an almost anti-cryptocurrency country, but this is not the case. The regulator’s strictness has caused most of the companies that apply to be rejected, but there are a few that have managed to get approval. It is not hard to understand the tightening of these rules, as the criminal proceeds from cryptocurrencies have reached serious amounts in the UK.

Last week, the government proposed in a proposal presented to parliament that cryptocurrencies should be redefined because they do not fully fit the current personal asset classification. With additional definitions, cryptocurrencies will be included in the personal asset category. This will allow the courts to make clearer decisions, especially in cases such as fraud. In short, a legal infrastructure will be provided for cryptocurrencies. Therefore, the fact that the UK has acted quickly in providing a legal infrastructure that we have not seen in many countries shows that the country is not actually against cryptocurrencies, but wants to do things well and is not in a hurry.

While election betting on Polymarket has reached the $1 billion volume threshold, this betting pool has caused many discussions. Another betting platform, Kalshi, has won the lawsuit it filed against the CFTC. Kalshi, like Polymarket, wanted to open election-focused bets, but the CFTC did not allow it by defining this bet in the ‘game’ category and saying that it fell under its jurisdiction. In the lawsuit filed, the judge said that election bets could not be included in the game category and allowed the bets to be opened. Unlike Polymarket, KYC is mandatory here. It is said that the CFTC will appeal the decision.

The fact that the US has an extremely innovative and entrepreneurial structure, yet has not prepared a legal basis for cryptocurrencies, causes new problems to arise every day. While the pools created by Polymarket for election betting have now started a new jurisdictional debate on betting categories, we all already know the question marks created by the SEC on securities. The continuous growth, acceptance and spread of cryptocurrencies are creating structures that suggest the redesign or complete abandonment of existing habits and orders. Unless the ground for discussion and regulation on this subject is provided, it seems inevitable that social and political problems will arise. Of course, when we look at the general picture, all these discussions and problems can actually be seen as natural processes that we need to go through in order to fully understand the required infrastructure.

Wormhole announced the World ID integration. For those who don’t know; Worldcoin’s product, World ID, creates a code based on this data via a device that scans people’s eye retinas. The code becomes your digital passport and you can navigate the platforms by proving that you are a real person.

It is said that thanks to Wormhole, World ID will come to many blockchains, especially Solana, and developers will be able to minimize the bot problem by making applications that prioritize real users.

Although World ID has scanned the eyes of more than 2 million people, it is highly likely that the group of people who are both interested in cryptocurrency and willing to have their eyes scanned is quite small within the 2 million. Considering that World ID still receives a lot of data protection and privacy criticism and is banned in many countries, it is unlikely to have the expected impact in the short term. In the long term, it is a fact that we need an identity verification system where data remains anonymous.

WBTC will increase the number of blockchains it operates using the Layerzero infrastructure. CUDOS can join the ASI merger. If the vote between September 19-24 is accepted, a fourth participant will join the merger. The conversion will be 118.3 CUDOS = 1 FET. Coinbase’s synthetic Bitcoin product cbBTC has started operating. MicroStrategy spent $ 1.11 billion, increasing its total Bitcoin holdings to 244,800. Starknet approved the staking proposal. It is certain that the STRK staking service will start. TAPCO, Japan’s largest electricity distribution company, has started Bitcoin mining. Polygon announced a partnership with Fabric Cryptography to develop a special chip to maximize the effectiveness of the Agglayer infrastructure.