No week passes without many crypto headlines; hundreds of them come by each week. This week was included, as the crypto industry had many ups and downs. Many positives and negatives were recorded within the week.
The former CEO of the failed crypto exchange FTX faces new charges at the law court. Bank fraud and wire fraud are the major charges the FTX conman recently received in a court hearing. On the other hand, Coinbase has good news for its users, as they announced the creation of a new blockchain within their exchange.
Continue reading as we share some of the top crypto stories investors and enthusiasts need to keep up with this week.
Sam Bankman-Fried Faces New Charges
The man who is solely behind the collapse of the FTX exchange faces new charges in a court hearing. The FTX collapse brought significant changes in the crypto industry and even decreased the value of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin prices. It has also affected the price of other cryptocurrencies and firms. Many firms closed down due to the effects of the collapse.
However, in a new court hearing, Sam Bankman-Fried was hit with new charges; thus subsequently increasing the tally of the charges the conman will be facing. Some of the new charges that Sam Bankman-Fried received were conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud.
According to the prosecutors of these charges, Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly collaborated with others to run an illegal and unregistered business to defraud people. The unlawful political contributions and defrauding of the Federal Election Commission were also part of the allegations against Sam Bankman-Fried from the law court. Sam Bankman-Fried has said he is not guilty of all the allegations, but his trial will occur in October later this year.
Jump Recovers Stolen Funds
Jump Crypto, a crypto trading and investment firm, has recovered some of the funds stolen from the company. With the help of another crypto firm, they achieved this feat. Jump Crypto used DeFi project Oasis to recover about $140 million of stolen funds. Apparently, hackers had stolen about $323 million from the Jump-operated Wormhole bridge in February 2022.
This raised a lot of concern as the crypto company tried to make efforts to recover the stolen cryptocurrencies. But with the help of the DeFi project Oasis, they have recovered some of the stolen funds and are still trying to locate more of them. The hacker was trying to move some of the money into an Oasis-run smart contract to earn yield before it was intercepted. DeFi project Oasis had to upgrade the contract to redirect the funds to their wallets. This is a big step for Jump crypto, as they have struggled to locate the stolen funds.
More Layoff for Blockchain Founders
Because of the increasing economic decline, more layoff is experienced within the crypto industry. Blockchain founders especially have been announcing increasing company layoffs to suit their current structure. Dapper Labs, the company behind the NFT-focused blockchain Flow, recently announced they would lay off about 20% of their workers. They are taking that step, which suits their current financial stature in the industry.
Previously, this company announced laying off about 22% of its workers last year. Laying off another 20% means that they have laid off approximately 42% of workers within a year. Also, Polygon Labs, the developer of the Polygon blockchain, announced that they would be laying off 20% of their workers in the coming weeks. Despite the huge layoff from Polygon Labs, they still claim their finances are in shape. According to Polygon Labs, they have about $250 million and about 1.9 billion MATIC tokens still left in their reserves.
Solana Under Heavy Criticism
Solana has fallen under heavy criticism on Twitter for their latest network failure. Recently, one of the crypto stories the crypto community has been keeping up with is the negative news about Solana. The company has been in the news for the wrong reasons lately.
The latest incident was their network issues which halted a lot of transactions. After several failed transactions, the Solana community has lashed back at the developers for the delay. Currently, the developers behind the project are working to resolve the issues.
Coinbase Announces a new Blockchain
One of the crypto stories that traders and enthusiasts should remember this week is Coinbase launching their new blockchain. It might even affect Bitcoin price after the launch of this new blockchain. In recent months, Coinbase has been in the news for the wrong reasons, from receiving penalties to getting into legal battles. But recently, they announced that they would be launching their new blockchain on their exchange.
The new blockchain that Coinbase has announced is known as Base, and it will be a testnet version developed using a software stack called "OP Stack." Optimism, a popular Layer 2 blockchain, made the software stack, which is said to bring many benefits to the platform. Coinbase users are already expecting many changes on the platform due to the launch of the new blockchain.
Coinbase says the new blockchain will allow developers to build decentralized apps (dApps) on the platform cheaply. They also promised that the new blockchain would allow users to sell and buy cryptocurrencies better. With the introduction of the new blockchain, Coinbase also announces that it will release a Base Ecosystem Fund to support projects building on the blockchain.