Crypto news
U.S. Prosecutors Scrutinise Political Donations by Sam Bankman-Fried and Allies
According to a report by the New York Times, U.S. federal prosecutors have reached out to top members of the Democratic Party seeking more information about political donations made by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the two executives he worked with.
A prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York sent an email to a law firm representing prominent Democratic political groups, asking for details on donations made by SBF and colleagues. Similar emails were sent over to other members of the Democratic and Republican parties, including Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
OKX Cites Intermittent Outage Amid Alibaba Cloud Equipment Anomaly
Crypto exchange OKX has reportedly not processed any withdrawals for almost seven hours due to a hardware failure in the Hong Kong data centre of its primary infrastructure provider Alibaba Cloud.
OKX announced that it was working together with Alibaba Cloud to resolve the issues. In the meantime, users have listed complaints that state that they are unable to withdraw and deposit funds, and account balances have glitched to show $0 in their funds. Some investors also confirmed that their trades got stuck midway and have shown concerns about possible losses.
Sam Bankman-Fried to Reverse Decision on Contesting Extradition
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former CEO of FTX, has reportedly reversed his decision to contest extradition and is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on December 19 to seek a reversal. This means that SBF has consented to be extradited to the US.
Before the U.S. courts, SBF currently faces charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and lenders, securities fraud, commodities fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate campaign finance law. If convicted on all counts, he could potentially face 115 years in jail.
According to defence lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, SBF will likely be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn upon his arrival in the United States. He could also be held at jails just outside New York City due to overcrowding at the facility.
Dutch Bitcoin Exchange Bitvavo Alleges Digital Currency Group Is Having ‘Liquidity Problems’
In a recently published blog post, Dutch crypto exchange Bitvavo stated that the Digital Currency Group (DCG) “has suspended repayments” after “experiencing liquidity problems due to the current turbulence in the crypto market.”
Bitvavo also revealed that it has 280 million Euros ($297 million in USD) or 17.5% of the $1.6 billion Euros it currently manages stuck with DCG. However, Bitvavo assured customers that the situation “does not have any impact on the Bitvavo platform.” It has also guaranteed no service disruption to its users and has announced that it will prefund the locked assets.
Stock Market
The holiday season is underway, but a few key earnings and economic reports will deck the halls on Wall Street before markets shut down for a long Christmas weekend.
Consumer Confidence
Coming out Thursday a half hour after the market opens, is the consumer confidence number. Just like last month, this has the potential to be a real market mover, especially given that it is the Holiday season and it is usually a time of higher-than-usual spending on goods and services.
If this comes out this weak it could cause some significant volatility and could also signal the beginning of a recession. With interest rates on the rise, job number revisions, and wage growth slowing this has the potential to be a very important report going into Christmas.
In the days ahead, the economic calendar will bring investors the latest personal consumption expenditures price index — or PCE — which is the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, as well as another reading on GDP, a batch of housing data, and the Conference Board’s gauge of consumer confidence.
On the corporate side, earnings from Nike (NKE), FedEx (FDX), Micron Technology (MU), Carnival (CCL) will keep traders busy.
