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FTX US — the crypto exchange affiliated with Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX — is plotting a move into equity options trading following the rollout of stock trading across all 50 American states. 

As per an interview with Bloomberg News, FTX US president Brett Harrison said that the company will add options without providing a specific timeline. 

Harrison said that expanding the product during a slowdown in trading across assets could allow the firm during a future bull cycle to “capitalize that opportunity.”

An FTX representative said the launch of options is subject to regulatory review

Options, financial contracts that give a buyer the opportunity to purchase an asset at a specific price in the future, are used as a tool to speculate on a given asset or hedge an underlying position. 

Such offerings are big business for Robinhood, which is known for making profits from the controversial practice of payment for order flow whereby institutional trading firms pay Robinhood for offloading customer orders. 

At the peak of the market, Robinhood brought in nearly $70 million in options payment for order flow compared to $49 million in PFOF for trading in non-S&P 500 stocks, as per data compiled by The Block.

FTX, on the other hand, is not accepting payments for customer order flow. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

a16z’s Chris Dixon has joined the board of non-fungible token trading platform OpenSea, according to a blog post published Saturday. 

“I’m excited to formally welcome Chris Dixon to the OpenSea Board of Directors,” co-founder Devin Finzer wrote in a blog. “Chris has been extremely influential in shaping my views on web3.”

Dixon is taking former a16z venture investor Katie Haun’s seat. Haun joined the board of the NFT firm in July 2021 after the venture firm led a $100 million Series B financing round. She left a16z’s crypto investment practice to launch Haun Ventures, which reportedly raised $1.5 billion in fresh funding. 

“Katie has been another invaluable source of wisdom for OpenSea over the years,” Finzer wrote. “And thanks to her long standing relationship with Chris, she was able to execute a smooth handoff and remains close to us in her capacity as an investor through Haun Ventures.”

OpenSea, which touted a $13.3 billion valuation in a January funding round, is among the several firms navigating a tough market for NFT trading and a broader slide in crypto prices. The firm—which has seen volumes drop precipitously since the beginning of the year—laid off about 20% of its staff in July. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The UK Foreign Office has come under criticism for its lack of action in getting North Korea cryptocurrency conference organizer Christopher Emms out of Saudi Arabia, where he has been stuck since February at the behest of US authorities.

His local member of parliament, Crispin Blunt, told Sky News in an interview on Wednesday that previous foreign secretaries had been “more up to the mark in defending the interests of British citizens.” The comment is a reference to UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who is currently in the running to replace disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party. Blunt is backing Truss’s rival but said “at the front of my consideration… is my constituent Christopher Emms.”

Emms was detained at the airport of Saudi capital Riyadh in February and has spent the last five months out on bail in Jeddah. The Saudi government is awaiting documents from US authorities on the basis of which they will decide whether to extradite him.

The crypto businessman is accused of conspiring to violate US sanctions on North Korea by working with US citizen Virgil Griffith to illegally provide cryptocurrency and blockchain technology services to North Korea, including helping them learn to evade banking embargoes imposed due to its nuclear weapons program.

The accusations stem from 2019, when Emms and Griffith organised the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference. Held in the North Korean capital and open to all international visitors but South Koreans, Japanese and Israelis, tickets cost more than $3,000 for an all-inclusive stay in the closed-off country and included activities such as shooting and a trip to a local brewery.

Griffith was arrested in late 2019 and is currently serving a 63-month sentence imposed alongside a $100,000 fine.

Also named in the charges is bombastic North Korean fanboy Alejandro Car de Benos, the head of the Korean Friendship Association and a promoter of the regime on the international stage. The Spanish aristocrat, who has also been linked to facilitating international arms deals for the country, operates as a middleman for foreigners wishing to do business with the state.

The case against Emms and Car de Benos is controversial, however, and human rights groups have accused the US of overstepping itself. The particular sanctions they allegedly violated are not international ones, but US ones. As the conference did not take place on US soil and, unlike Griffith, neither are US citizens, it is not clear what jurisdiction the US actually has in this case.

“If they want him to come to the United States to face American justice for breaking American law, then they need to explain to British courts why that is the case,” Blunt said in the interview.

North Korea remains a major culprit of crypto hacks, and the funds they rake in are substantial. According to blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, from 2018 onward North Korea has stolen and laundered more than $200 million in cryptocurrencies each year. In 2021, this number hit almost $400 million. More recently, the country has been linked to the $540 million attack on Ethereum sidechain Ronin in March.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Students at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology will soon be able to take classes and interact with classmates in the metaverse after the university announced it is building digital copies of its two campuses.

The campuses will be part of MetaHKUST, a project spearheaded by two of the university’s professors, MetaHKUST project lead Wang Yang and the director of the Center for Metaverse and Computational Creativity Pan Hui. 

Laying out the roadmap at a news conference on Thursday, the university explained that the project aims to ultimately consolidate all physical and virtual experiences at the university under one roof — think students wearing VR headsets in lectures showing them data and information superimposed on real objects, or being able to join classroom lectures in different campuses. 

To start with, the first stage will see the installation of physical infrastructure including XR classrooms, sensors, cameras and visualization tools. The university will then scan the physical campuses — HKUST has one in Hong Kong and another in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou about 100 miles away — to collect the images and build metaverse replicas.

Students and faculty will later be able to generate their own avatars, NFTs, tokens and art works for use in the metaverse. They will also be able to receive their diplomas and transcripts as NFTs.

The university will also be leaning into AR technology, which Hui described as being currently mostly single-user and as presenting significant constraints in terms of time and location.

“What we are striving to achieve here is the scaling up of technology to handle large-sized environments and massive multi-user experiences, which not only represents a primary challenge of our physical-digital vision, but also a key factor that differentiates MetaHKUST from other campuses’ metaverse initiatives,” he said.

Still, there is a second aspect to the project, that of bringing the two campuses closer together. Traveling between China and Hong Kong is still heavily restricted due to Covid. Through MetaHKUST’s initiatives, students will be able to join lectures and events happening at both campuses. The Chinese government is pushing for institutions such as universities to establish greater ties between Hong Kong and the mainland, particularly following the widespread protests in Hong Kong over Chinese rule.

With much of MetaHKUST’s work playing out on the new Guangzhou campus, it’s also part of growing interest in China around blockchain and metaverse technology. Despite a ban on cryptocurrencies, the metaverse has garnered interest and support at both the provincial and national level.

Even China’s beleaguered tech giants —which have been under fire from regulators for the last couple years — are cautiously getting involved in metaverse projects. Pony Ma, the CEO of Tencent, China’s social media and gaming giant, said in a November earnings call that he considered the metaverse to be an opportunity. TikTok owners ByteDance, Alibaba, NetEase and Baidu have also signaled interest in the metaverse. The latter already launched an early version of its own metaverse app, XiRang, in December.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Elon Musk countersued Twitter amid his legal battle to abandon a $44 billion takeover of the company, Reuters reported, adding that the lawsuit had been filed confidentially. 

While the document was sealed, a redacted version may be made public soon. 

The lawsuit was filed on Friday, just hours after a five-day trial was ordered to begin on Oct. 17 to decide whether Musk can walk away from the deal, the report said. 

Musk filed on July 8 to withdraw from the deal to acquire Twitter after a disagreement with the company about its percentage of fake accounts. In a filing in May, Twitter had estimated that 5% of its accounts were fake. 

Twitter then sued Musk on July 12 to compel him to buy the platform for about $44 billion, after having accepted his takeover offer in late April. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Voyager’s former Chief Innovation Officer Shingo Lavine and his father and business partner Adam Lavine are pushing back on the embattled lender’s restructuring plan and calling for the bankruptcy proceedings to explore his alternative.

The Lavines objected in a Thursday filing to Voyager’s motion for an order approving logistics related to approving its restructuring plan. They offered a plan that would have the firm cease all lending activity, integrate live trading and issue a recovery token to keep users on the platform.

Both Shingo and Adam are equity holders in Voyager. Together they built Ethos, which hosted a wallet application in addition to blockchain architecture that allowed developers to build a variety of applications. Voyager purchased Ethos in 2018, and Shingo took a seat on the board and as CIO before disagreements on the company’s direction led the two to part ways in 2021. Now, the father and son want their firm, Emerald, to become a key partner in Voyager’s restructuring and install themselves as the leaders of a new management team. 

“Specifically, Emerald has been exploring submitting an alternative restructuring plan that, while similar to the debtors’ plan in structure, would immediately re-build trust by changing management, re-implementing a robust self-custody solution, and focusing the business around trading: Eliminating the lending and debit card platforms, paring back costs, and restructuring around a mission of building a best in class self-custody and integrated trading solution.”

Voyager already has filed a restructuring plan and is seeking bids for the company. Voyager has not deemed Emerald an “acceptable bidder” thus far. Emerald and the Lavines are seeking to block Voyager’s plan from moving forward until alternative restructuring plans, like their proposal, are considered. 

To formally submit a proposal, they need additional access to information that Voyager so far has declined to give them as they have yet to be considered acceptable bidders. The Thursday document highlights repeated attempts by Emerald to be involved in the process, which Voyager allegedly continues to brush off. 

Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month after halting withdrawals. The collapse occurred during a wider market downturn that has claimed several firms. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto exchange FTX has received the green light to operate an exchange and clearing house services in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the firm announced today.

FTX Exchange FZE, a subsidiary of FTX Europe, won approval to enter Dubai’s Minimum Viable Product (MVP) program for virtual assets. The license comes from the jurisdiction’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), which Dubai created in March of this year to handle virtual asset regulation as it seeks to become a hub for the digital economy. It’s an affiliated agency of the Dubai World Trade Center regulating crypto activity from custodians to asset managers. 

“The MVP Phase, exclusive to select, responsible international players like FTX, will allow VARA to prudently structure guidelines and risk mitigation levers for secure commercial operations,” said H.E. Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General of Dubai World Trade Centre Authority.

FTX is the first virtual asset service provider to receive a license, according to the announcement. It enables FTX to operate its exchange and clearing house services, offering crypto derivatives products and trading services to qualified institutional investors across the region.

It also includes licensure to operate its non-fungible token marketplace and custody services. 

FTX received partial approval in March, at which time it said it planned to anchor a regional headquarters in Dubai once it received full licensure. Exchange Binance has also been winding its way through the regulatory process, nabbing a limited license from VARA in April of this year. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protection does not apply to crypto company failures, according to a new fact sheet released by the agency on Friday.

“Some crypto companies have misrepresented to consumers that crypto products are eligible for FDIC deposit insurance coverage,” the FDIC said in a press release. “These sorts of statements are inaccurate and can cause consumer confusion about deposit insurance and harm consumers.

The two-page fact sheet comes a day after the FDIC and the US Federal Reserve issued a joint cease-and-desist letter to crypto firm Voyager Digital over its depository insurance claims. Voyager  suggested to consumers that it is FDIC insured and that customers who invested with Voyager would get FDIC insurance coverage, the letter said. “These representations are false and misleading,” the FIDC and the Federal Reserve wrote. 

FDIC deposit insurance “protects bank depositors in the unlikely event that an FDIC–insured bank fails” and backs depositors up to $250,000. No depositor has “lost a penny” of insured funds since the FDIC began insuring deposits in 1934. 

Deposit insurance does not apply to a non-bank failure, such as by a crypto company, and deposit insurance does not protect consumers with non-deposit products, including stocks, bonds, securities, commodities or crypto assets, among other things. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• SudoSwap encompasses an OTC arm and a unique AMM, both geared towards trading NFTs in an efficient manner
• SudoAMM abstracts away the inherent pricing function typically native to traditional AMMs by allowing users to customize their own bonding curves
• SudoAMM drastically reduces the total trading fee burden to 0.5% by bypassing creator fees

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Crypto exchange CoinFLEX has let go of a “significant” portion of its team in an attempt to cut operating costs as it seeks a full recovery since halting withdrawals last month. 

The firm announced the decision in a weekly update today, saying it’s cutting costs to give it “every chance to be a successful business.” For the time being, that means a leaner one.

To put itself in a position to succeed in its recovery plans, the firm said it had to let go of team members across all departments and geographies. That cut cost base by 50-60%, according to CoinFLEX, and those that remain are focused on product and technology.

“We will monitor costs to ensure we operate as efficiently as possible and scale as volumes come back,” said the firm in a blog post. “The intention is to remain right-sized for any entity considering a potential acquisition of or partnership opportunity with CoinFLEX.”

CoinFLEX halted withdrawals last month due to extreme market conditions and uncertainty with a counterparty, though it assured users that the counterparty was not any of the headline-grabbing lending firms or embattled hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

At that time, the exchange provided an estimated timeline forward that included having withdrawals operating by June 30th. To restart the platform, CoinFLEX planned to raise funds by issuing a new token, Recovery Value USD (rvUSD), with promises of 20% annual return. The June 30th deadline passed, the rvUSD plan was halted, and the firm began arbitrage proceedings in Hong Kong to recover $84 million from a client. Meanwhile, the firm said it’s looking to raise capital from new investors to eventually resume withdrawals. By July 15, it announced it had resumed withdrawal services in a limited capacity.

In this week’s update, CoinFLEX said it’s still looking to distribute rvUSD tokens and FLEX Coin as part of its recovery. The firm said it’s still working with lawyers and the significant creditor group on details and expects to have numbers next week to enable a vote from depositors. The exchange also plans to offer trading of locked balances versus unlocked balances next week. 

The remaining team members are exploring new offerings to differentiate it from other exchanges, and the firm is soliciting suggestions from its community. It’s considering different ways to list and launch perpetual swaps that make the product “more DeFi style in nature,” in addition to “increasing transparency through decentralization of custody and margining data.” CoinFLEX is also examining forms of custody decentralization and ways to publicly broadcast anonymized margin and collateral data.

CEO Mark Lamb will join a live AMA with crypto influencer Hayden Otto at 2 a.m. EST tomorrow. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.