Zhiyuan Sun
On Nov. 9, less than 48 hours after Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao announced his intention to bail out troubled competitor FTX, Binance stated that it would not be pursuing the deal.
A series of tweets by Binance confirmed that it would “not pursue the potential acquisition” of crypto exchange FTX citing “reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations.”
The agency investigations may be in reference to a Nov. 9 Bloomberg report which suggests that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are investigating whether the FTX exchange may have mishandled funds, as well as its relation to FTX US and Alameda Research.
In its reasoning for not pursuing the purchase, Binance explained initially it wanted to support the ailing crypto exchange by providing its customers with liquidity but said the issues were “beyond our control or ability to help.”
Binance also said that retail consumers will suffer with every instance of a major industry player failing but said the ecosystem is “becoming more resilient” and believes industry “outliers that misuse user funds will be weeded out by the free market.”
Shortly following the announcement by Binance, FTX’s website went offline returning around two hours later with a banner that warned the exchange is unable to process withdrawals and strongly advised against depositing funds.
Reports also surfaced that FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried called investors saying the exchange needed $8 billion in emergency funding to help cover the withdrawal requests and looked to raise $3 billion to $4 billion.
Update (Nov. 10, 5:00 AM UTC): The article has been updated to include the recent developments of FTX halting withdrawals and Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly seeking emergency funding from investors along with background Binance’s possible reference to a Bloomberg report.
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Brayden Lindrea
Financially-troubled crypto exchange FTX has brought its website back online following a period of intermittent downtime — with the trading platform now sporting a banner confirming withdrawals are halted and advising users against depositing.
The FTX website returned online at approximately 9:00 pm UTC on Nov. 9, after encountering five separate periods of network downtime spanning over two hours, according to the “IS IT DOWN OR JUST ME” website.
The crypto community on Twitter has also noticed a new bright red banner that can be seen throughout the website that reads:
“FTX is currently unable to process withdrawals. We strongly advise against depositing.”
A pinned message on the official FTX Telegram Group on Nov. 8 also confirmed the halting of withdrawals, without any estimates about when they would return.
“We are waiting for confirmation from our team to ramp it up. Right now we dont have an ETA but surely will communicate it as soon as we have it,” a member of FTX support staff wrote in the message.
Attempting to sign up for a new account on the website also comes with an alert that “signups are paused” at this current time, Cointelegraph has discovered.
This suggests that deposits, while “strongly advised against,” are only accessible to those who have existing accounts on the trading platform.
Meanwhile, two websites linked to the crypto exchange including Alameda Research and FTX Ventures remain down at the time of writing.
It comes amid an ongoing liquidity crisis being faced by the crypto exchange.
A Nov. 9 report from the Wall Street Journal claims that the exchange is facing a shortfall of $8 billion and is unable to meet withdrawal demands without emergency funding.
Binance initially signed a non-binding letter of intent to buy out the embattled exchange but pulled out less than 48 hours later, citing the mishandling of customer funds and alleged United States agency investigations as the reasons for its change in decision.
Google search results for “FTX website” also saw a large spike over the last few hours following the reports that the FTX website was intermittently going down, according to Google Trends.
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Savannah Fortis
The Facebook parent company Meta announced that about 13% of its current workforce has been cut in the first mass layoff in the company’s history.
In a letter to his employees, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the layoffs and also reiterated that the hiring freeze, which began earlier this year, will be extended into the first fiscal quarter of next year.
According to the statement published through Meta’s newsroom, the layoffs terminated 11,000 jobs. The initial rumors of layoffs emerged over the weekend on Nov. 6 via Wall Street Journal report from inside sources.
Zuckerberg says he takes full responsibility for the layoffs, which were caused by soaring costs and a recent collapse of its share price:
“I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”
The CEO also said his over-investment in certain areas, along with “the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss,” led to lower-than-expected revenue.
This news comes after startling reports released by Meta on Oct. 26, which revealed billions in losses in its metaverse development branch. Reality Labs, the metaverse R&D department, posted a $3.67 billion loss for Q3.
During the same quarter, the business only made a revenue of $285 million, which is its lowest on record within the given timeframe. The news startled company shareholders and raised concerns over Meta’s metaverse prospects.
Meta is not the only big-tech company going through mass layoffs.
After Elon Musk acquired Twitter for over $44 billion, the social media company underwent a series of layoffs itself. Allegedly the layoffs began on Nov. 4, with speculations that Musk will lay off nearly 50% of the company’s 7,500-person workforce.
As a response, employees launched a class-action lawsuit against Musk, which says he ignored a law that restricts mass layoffs from big companies without at least 60 days of prior warning.
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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
