These weeks keep getting bigger in the lead up to year-end and we’re excited to be able to get out news of our partnership with Stone & Chalk to create Australia’s first Web3 Innovation Centre - here’s the media release https://www.stoneandchalk.com.au/media-centre/australia-first-web3-innovation-centre/
And some posts about the news
Aus DeFi Twitter
Capt DeFi LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7006758827299659776/
Aus DeFi LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7006758538228232192
YouTube
And in the media
More news on this will be out soon but it’s an exciting way to end the year knowing that we’ll be starting strong in 2023. For those who know us, you’ll know we’re all about actions and this was the biggest action we could do to take us beyond the meetups.
Also, earlier in the week, it was great to get to add some comments to this Chainsaw article about the FTX collapse not being a blockchain tech issue https://thechainsaw.com/defi/crypto/ftx-failed-centralisation-not-crypto/
News
First up we saw Natasha Blycha from Stirling & Rose (who we had at our last Meetup in Melbourne) in this AFR piece https://www.afr.com/technology/why-aussie-crypto-stars-are-certain-larry-fink-is-wrong-20221202-p5c3ai
We also saw CBDCs on the agenda for the RBA with the publishing of this report (https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2022/dec/stablecoins-market-developments-risks-and-regulation.html). This is ahead of their public pilot project on CBDCs that we’ve entered into with NotCentralised (see https://medium.com/notcentralised/rba-cbdc-submissions-d3f8563ad6c4).
These RBA documents are great as they're quite evidence-driven with charts
and tables
A worthwhile read!
It wasn't all good news as local exchange Swyftx cut 90 staff. They recently went through a merger with traditional exchange Superhero. Founder, Alex Harper shared this post on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7005374577748979712?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali eeep%3Aactivity%3A7005374577748979712%29
Great piece from Laurence Wintermeyer in Forbes last week too looking at how the failure of FTX has more to do with the natural human tendency towards idolatry (and much more) than it has to do with crypto. Worth a read or listen https://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencewintermeyer/2022/12/03/polyamory-denial-and-recriminations-rebuilding-trust-in-crypto-after-ftx/?sh=cf098fd73f6d
I also mention more about it here in this LinkedIn post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7005670175584776192-LNsZ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
And more on SBF, this time looking like he’s implicated himself (perhaps unsurprising given all the media appearances) on this Coffeezilla podcast
Yet we didn’t see subpoenas coming https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/ftx-maxine-waters-doesnt-plan-to-subpoena-sam-bankman-fried-to-testify-at-hearing-on-crypto-exchanges-collapse.html
Local firm Maple Finance was also affected, indirectly by FTX, as their trading pool Orthoganal made this announcement over the last week -
Subsequently, Maple and Orthogonal parted ways.
Looks like firms formerly belonging to FTX are up for sale with clearinghouse LedgerX courting potential suitors https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/ftxs-ledgerx-attracts-interest-blockchaincom-gemini-bloomberg-3119646
2 week’s ago The Defiant mapped out the contagion risk for FTX and they updated it on Friday which you can see here
And in other news there's Digital Surge (affected by the FTX fallout) seeing Korda Mentha appointed as administrator https://www.afr.com/technology/digital-surge-bailout-plan-includes-1m-from-founders-20221208-p5c4sv
In rug pull news we see Vanessa Sierra pulling one and likely having her OnlyFans as her only fans after this
Moving to more positive news, here are the use cases that Vitalik (Ethereum founder) sees as use cases for Crypto
And back to not-so-good news from home about this local project getting red flags from a number of crypto auditors
For those looking at a good read check out this Harvard paper on hedging sanctions risk with BTC https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HBbv5GWIOzzhHdmqAW2MNKHzfFmsLzrX/view and a video review here from Coin Bureau
We'll leave you with this edited clip from South Park. Not too far off what’s happened at FTX.