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[tek]

Off Topic

As opposed to an Edelbrock manifold

d-1.jpg (254.34 KiB) Viewed 15495 times

[Gregg]

Bistromath

Bistromathics is the most powerful computational force known to parascience. A major step up from the Infinite Improbability Drive, Bistromathics is a way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement through space, so it was realised that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.

Nonabsoluteness
The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.

The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexclusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive. Recipriversexclusions now play a vital part in many branches of maths, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else's Problem field.

The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the bill, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for. (The number of people who have actually brought any money is only a subphenomenon in this field.)

Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the universe.

[Suranis]

Heeeeeeeeerrree goes Binance!

As is typical for coindesk is a very obtusly written article laden with buzz words, but if you read through it and chug through the long words, its fairly clear. basically, Binance has been sending off "loans" to various shell companies in what looks kind of like moving funds around in a way that could be trying to make people think they have more money than what they actually have. Which is kind of what FTX was doing.

The CEO of Binance has been responding to questions about this with Insults and shouting about FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. "You can only fail if you don't believe enough and anything else is FUD talk" is a cryptocult mantra.

https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-maga ... d-18b-usdc

Opinion
Binance Can’t Keep Its Story Straight on Misplaced $1.8B USDC
The FUD is coming from inside the building, says David Z. Morris, CoinDesk's chief insights columnist.
By David Z. Morris

A new and detailed investigation by Forbes has raised significant questions about the management and custody of customer assets and stablecoin collateral by Binance. There are many possible explanations for the nature and intent of certain on-chain transactions highlighted by Forbes, and they could be entirely innocuous. But Binance’s so far confused and sometimes contradictory responses to the findings do not inspire confidence, particularly in a post-FTX era of rightfully widespread suspicion of centralized custodians with off-chain balance sheets.

This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here.

Forbes reported this week that on a single day, Aug. 17, 2022, $1.78 billion worth of collateral moved out of Binance wallets intended to back stablecoins, particularly b-USDC, a wrapped version of Circle’s USDC. According to Forbes’ on-chain analysis, the facts of which Binance has not disputed, $1.2 billion of this was sent to trading firm Cumberland DRW, with other amounts going to now-collapsed hedge fund Alameda Research, Tron founder Justin Sun and crypto infrastructure and services firm Amber Group.

Crucially, according to Forbes, this outflow was not accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the circulating supply of b-USDC tokens.

Binance’s various attempts to offer an innocent explanation of Forbes’ findings have not provided a unified and consistent – much less entirely compelling – justification for what could, in the worst case, indicate the misuse of customer funds. Before publishing a more focused and detailed account Wednesday morning, Binance officials offered a number of differing, even contradictory explanations. Equally galling, Binance’s responses have continued the petulant and defensive tone of many of its previous dismissals of close investigative attention.

► Show Spoiler

The worst-case scenario

Forbes’ investigation was motivated by mounting evidence of past problems with Binance’s asset management practices. Binance has admitted to Bloomberg that, for certain periods of time, it failed to maintain clear 1:1 backing of its wrapped b-assets in a segregated and transparent manner. In this context, the exchange’s attempt to paint an act of journalistic analysis as “conspiracy theories,” while suggesting the investigation was motivated by nothing but “collecting a lot of views and clicks,” is beneath the dignity of an organization hoping to maintain a leadership position in a high-risk, fraud-riddled industry.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao even retreated to the oldest refuge of scrutinized crypto organizations, declaring the Forbes reporting nothing more than “FUD,” or fear, uncertainty and doubt. But this lazy, knee-jerk dismissal, now as ever, ignores a simple reality: Unclear or incomplete answers from the people most obligated to have them are far more serious sources of confusion and anxiety than accepted facts and reasonable questions surfaced by journalists.

The least charitable interpretation of the Forbes findings, articulated as a hypothetical by Lumida CEO and co-founder Ram Ahluwalia on CoinDesk’s “First Mover” program Tuesday, is that Binance was engaged in some form of rehypothecation. That is, that the funds backing b-USDC were loaned to counterparties or otherwise put at risk. Based on this possibility, Forbes has compared its findings to the bad practices that led to the collapse of FTX.

This was broadly the claim made by research firm ChainArgos in a Jan. 2 report that first drew attention to the unusual activity. “Someone received a loan of something like $1 billion for about 100 days,” ChainArgos claimed. “It is not clear exactly what happened … but this is very large, very obviously manual and very recent.”

Another theory, hinted at in Forbes’ reporting, is that rather than high-risk rehypothecation, the transactions’ net effect was to swap USDC for BUSD issued by Paxos (these events predate a recent New York Department of Financial Services order halting that issuance). This would have allowed Binance instead of Circle to collect the rising interest on instruments including U.S. Treasury bonds that back the stablecoins. This would be a perfectly rational business move, but could mean b-USDC was at points effectively backed by BUSD instead of USDC.

An uncoordinated defense

Binance has firmly denied that anything like rehypothecation has occurred. However, the exchange at first offered misaligned explanations of what actually did happen.

In the course of its investigation, Forbes interviewed Patrick Hillmann, Binance’s chief strategy officer. Hillmann’s explanation, included in the original story, seemed to be simply that the on-chain wallets understood to contain backing for Binance’s stablecoins are effectively meaningless. “There was no commingling” of customer funds, Hillman told Forbes, because “there’s wallets and then there is a ledger.” According to Hillman, this off-chain, internal ledger is what really tracks assets owned, or custodied, by Binance, with on-chain wallets acting as, in his words, mere “containers.”

As Forbes points out, this would seem to undermine Binance’s claims of transparency, instead compelling customers to simply trust the exchange to responsibly handle their money. While its various responses repeatedly cite a new proof-of-reserves system as a rebuttal to suspicions, the transactions in question predate that system, undermining that argument. While Binance has a long track record as a trustworthy custodian, this seems like turning a willful blind eye to the new environment of paranoia and distrust following the collapse of FTX.

Further complicating the picture, a Binance spokesperson on Tuesday wrote the following in a statement to CoinDesk, arguably contradicting elements of Hillmann’s claims to Forbes.

"Binance does not, and has never, invested or otherwise deployed user assets without consent under the terms of specific products. Binance holds all of its clients’ assets in segregated accounts which are identified separately from any accounts used to hold assets belonging to Binance.”

Note here the spokesperson refers to “holding” customer assets “in segregated accounts,” not to tracking them on an internal ledger. Contra Hillman’s earlier claims to Forbes, Binance is strongly implying here that customer funds are custodied in segregated on-chain wallets. This implication will itself be contradicted before all is said and done.

"The on-chain transactions identified” by Forbes, the spokesperson continued, “relate to internal wallet management. While Binance has previously acknowledged that wallet management processes for Binance-pegged token collateral have not always been flawless, at no time was the collateralization of user assets affected. Processes for managing our collateral wallets have been fixed on a longer-term basis and this is verifiable on-chain."

Next, on the morning of Feb. 28, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao took to Twitter to push back against Forbes’ findings. His explanation differed from those previously offered by a C-suite executive and his communications team. Hillman claimed the on-chain transactions highlighted by Forbes meant nothing, with all the real accounting under the hood. A Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk that they were part of “internal rebalancing.” But Zhao characterized them as “some old blockchain transactions that our clients have done.”



“Our users are free to withdraw their assets any time they want,” he continued. “Their withdrawals are turned into ‘received hundreds of millions of shifted collateral.’”

This explanation doesn’t entirely pass the smell test even on its own terms. First, describing these as “blockchain transactions” reads like an attempt to suggest they were not mediated by Binance at all. This would directly contradict characterization of the transactions as “internal rebalancing.” Further, Zhao’s characterization implies that Cumberland DSW alone owned or managed $1.2 billion worth of USDC mirrored as b-USDC on Binance, then cashed it all out on the same day – a decidedly unusual circumstance.

A more reasonable inference would be that the big transaction to Cumberland represents the on-chain reconciliation of a large number of customer moves over time, which would make it both a “rebalancing” and a “customer withdrawal.” But none of Binance’s responses explicitly make that claim.

The remainder of the CEO’s thread reiterates Binance’s track record and cites Binance’s recent implementation of a proof-of-reserves system – even though that process has had its share of missteps.

He also writes that “my Chinese ethnicity is brought up again” in the Forbes article, “as if that mattered.” Zhao has arguably been unfairly targeted because of his ethnicity in the past, particularly in attempts to draw connections between him and the Chinese government. But the Forbes article properly refers to him as “Chinese Canadian,” and only does so one time, when introducing him. The words “China” or “Chinese” do not otherwise appear in the piece. At least in this case, Zhao’s complaint looks like a fairly baseless attempt to distract from and discredit the report’s actual findings.

Vagaries and name-calling

After offering three divergent characterizations of Forbes’ findings (the facts of which, it must be emphasized, they did not dispute), Binance finally released what would seem to be its definitive statement on March 1, a blog post titled “How and Why Assets Move Between Binance Wallets.”

The post still includes its share of confusion, but at least lands on a single explanation of Forbes’ findings: The moves were “simply a case of institutional clients withdrawing their own assets from our platform.” This claim comes with very little detail, inviting further scrutiny that it may or may not withstand.

The post does not rebut the core finding, by Forbes and others, that the “peg wallet” meant to back various wrapped assets has been repeatedly off its proper collateralization level. It does not explicitly state, for instance, that backing assets for b-USDC were simply held elsewhere in Binance’s on-chain custody system. Instead, the post settles for the vaguer claim that "at no time was the collateralization of user assets affected" by peg wallet mismanagement.

The statement essentially reiterates Hillman’s initial point that on-chain accounts managed by Binance do not necessarily correspond to real customer balances. This is common practice among crypto exchanges, but amounts to hand-waving in this context. The post refers broadly to “a vast network of hot, cold and deposit wallets” and to “the fact that the movement of funds between wallets could serve a variety of purposes.” The gist sometimes seems to be “you wouldn’t really understand even if we explained it to you.”

Binance also strikes an incoherent stance towards journalism and oversight. On the one hand, the exchange touts its transparency and says it welcomes scrutiny. It also again admits it has in the (relatively recent) past failed to properly manage pegged assets. This would seem to justify increased scrutiny – yet the post also repeatedly denigrates journalists as little more than clickbait-hungry, conspiracy-theorizing ambulance chasers.

After the collapse of FTX, Celsius Network and a half-dozen other apparent frauds, this perspective is deeply out of touch with the anxieties of crypto investors and users. Those anxieties have manifested in meaningful outflows from Binance custody and assets over the past month.

It’s unclear whether Binance’s vague, defensive, sometimes confusing responses to the latest round of scrutiny is sufficient to quiet those concerns.

Gee. I'm so shocked that SBF's biggest rival could have been playing the same shell games as the FTX fraud.

Rule of thumb for me, until the fraud explodes it generates more on paper income than a legitimate company. No-one can match a fraud, that's what makes a fraud attractive. Its when people look under the paper that they realize they were all being shown the same Dollar bill.

So, if Binance was beating FTX, then its pretty much a given that they were just as fraudulent. Anyone with any sense has had 6 months to pull their money out based on that alone. Of course, if they had any sense they wouldn't be in Crypto, so...

[Suranis]

Didn't read this next article but I assume its related to the above. And the headline is pretty much all you need to know anyway. In simpler English, they are worried that Binance's does not have enough cash to handle paying their investors if they decide to cash out.

A "Stablecoin" is a token that supposed to be the same value as Dollars, so people know what their investments are worth. They are functionally equivalent to Casino Tokens. In theory, they should be able to cash in their stash of Stable coins at any time, so its vital that Binance has enough money in stock to handle that. Or the system crunches to a halt and Binance files those Chapter 11 papers.

The CEO of Coinbase said on Wednesday the crypto exchange decided to suspend trading of stablecoin Binance USD (BUSD) because it had concerns about BUSD’s liquidity.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/ ... -concerns/

[John Thomas8]

FTX determines around $9 billion in customer funds are missing
Hope is dimming for FTX's allegedly ripped-off customers.

........

"It has taken a huge effort to get this far," said John J. Ray III, FTX's current CEO who took over amidst the bankruptcy, in a statement. "The exchanges' assets were highly commingled, and their books and records are incomplete and, in many cases, totally absent. For these reasons, it is important to emphasize that this information is still preliminary and subject to change. We believe it is more important to provide transparency to stakeholders by making this information public now than to wait until we can achieve certainty."

https://mashable.com/article/ftx-missing-customer-funds

[Gregg]

There is a very good argument that FTX, although it was always a fraud, was pushed off the cliff by the head of Binance tweeting that he was pulling out of a previously announced deal because of "things I found doing my due diligence".

But you all know me, I think all crypto is a ponzi scheme.

[Suranis]

The "Crypto bank" has imploded. Price of Tulips going down again

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/8/23631 ... nouncement

Silvergate Bank, which had been a cornerstone in the crypto world, announced it’s closing and returning deposits. In a press release, the bank’s holding company, Silvergate Capital Corporation, said it made the decision to shut down “in light of recent industry and regulatory developments.”

It’s been clear for a while that the company was struggling along with some of its most high-profile clients like FTX and Genesis. In January, its earnings report revealed that it lost a billion dollars in one quarter after its customers withdrew $8.1 billion. Then, on March 1st, it filed a document saying its financials were even worse than the quarterly report had shown.

There are several concerns about what the crypto landscape will look like without Silvergate, especially when it comes to where companies will turn to get cash. My colleague Elizabeth Lopatto has done an excellent job summarizing a lot of them in this explainer. One of the major concerns is that crypto companies may turn to less regulated institutions for their banking needs, potentially making the space even riskier for everyone involved. In other words, if there isn’t a bank playing by the rules willing to do business with them, they may have to find a bank that doesn’t.

As for the next steps for the bank, it’s liquidating “in an orderly manner and in accordance with applicable regulatory processes” and is “considering how best to resolve claims and preserve the residual value of its assets, including its proprietary technology and tax assets.”

It also shut down its Silvergate Exchange Network, which let crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken move money between themselves and other institutions earlier this month.

As all of this has been going down, companies like Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Paxos have started moving away from the bank. Even the Tether stablecoin took the opportunity to distance itself from the institution. Its list of allies was thin, and the government was scrutinizing it for its role in the FTX meltdown.

Silvergate’s collapse will almost surely draw scrutiny from lawmakers, especially those who are concerned about the crypto contagion reaching the traditional financial sector.

“Today we are seeing what can happen when a bank is overreliant on a risky, volatile sector like cryptocurrencies,” said Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is the chair of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. “I’ve been concerned that when banks get involved with crypto, it spreads risk across the financial system and it will be taxpayers and consumers who pay the price.”

[Sam the Centipede]

But you all know me, I think all crypto is a ponzi scheme.

That's quite a charitable view!

I'd say a Ponzi scheme … or worse! I think some is theft, some is simple fraud, some is purposed only towards money laundering.

[Fiascoist]

to both of you and to Suranis, also.

[neeneko]

There is a very good argument that FTX, although it was always a fraud, was pushed off the cliff by the head of Binance tweeting that he was pulling out of a previously announced deal because of "things I found doing my due diligence".

A lot of crypto survived due to making lots of money and people not wanting to look too closely at it. But once the profits start scaling back, all the shady ways they got those numbers start getting attention.

[neeneko]

I'd say a Ponzi scheme … or worse! I think some is theft, some is simple fraud, some is purposed only towards money laundering.

I think it is a lot closer to an MLM. You have to buy their product in order to keep the price up so that your purchase is worth something.

This really plays out in the web3/nft/games space, where the entire purpose of all of them is to prop up demand for the underlying crypto network. Manufacturing a demand fueled by 'investors' that hope all these things they buy that they don't actually want will be worth more later.

[keith]

to both of you and to Suranis, also.

Not so amazingly I find myself in violent agreement with you all.

[Gregg]

I read a little blurb that Silvergate was going to miss their already extended deadline to file their quarterly numbers and I sold credit call spreads @ $5.50 - $6.50 last week for .35 a contract, they'll expire at zero later today.

Look at me, making money in crypto!

[Sam the Centipede]

I'd say a Ponzi scheme … or worse! I think some is theft, some is simple fraud, some is purposed only towards money laundering.

I think it is a lot closer to an MLM. You have to buy their product in order to keep the price up so that your purchase is worth something.

Not really: the point of a fraudulent MLM (pyramid) scheme is that the product is largely irrelevant, that members of the scheme do NOT (and cannot) make significant income by selling product, they make money by recruiting more lower level members who pay an upfront fee. The scheme collapses when there are too few fresh recruits in the population so bottom level members cannot recoup their entry fees. Key point: recruitment of new members provides income to early investors.

I know there are a few MLM schemes that don't emphasize recruitment, but that's not the point; it's the fraudulent ones that relevant.

A classic Ponzi scheme is one that attracts investments by offering eye-wateringly high returns, but provides those returns to investors by siphoning off capital. Investors who withdraw their capital relatively early might get their money back, but eventually it becomes apparent (either through regulatory audit or other reasons) that the capital has gone and the scheme collapses. Key point: high returns are provided by using the investors' capital until the capital runs out.

In terms of the bubble effect, Crypto is more akin, I think, to other fads where investors have thought "hmm, people are making money, I ought to get in on this". Perhaps like Dutch tulips in the 1650s, the UK's South Sea Bubble in 1720, Scotland's Darien scheme around 1700, over-priced tech stocks around 2000.

Or perhaps like a "pump and dump" stock scheme? Except it's not one organization pumping, it's a whole community pumping, and the cleverer ones know when to dump.

[Slarti the White]

I'd say a Ponzi scheme … or worse! I think some is theft, some is simple fraud, some is purposed only towards money laundering.

I think it is a lot closer to an MLM. You have to buy their product in order to keep the price up so that your purchase is worth something.

This really plays out in the web3/nft/games space, where the entire purpose of all of them is to prop up demand for the underlying crypto network. Manufacturing a demand fueled by 'investors' that hope all these things they buy that they don't actually want will be worth more later.

A multi-level marketing scheme has a product while crypto is supposedly a medium of exchange (NFTs are a product, true, but I don't think there is multi-level marketing of NFTs). Too, also, it's not the purchaser who needs to buy more product to keep the value of their purchase up, it's the next wave of purchasers -- who pay of the previous purchasers (at least the ones that are smart enough to cash out when their investment goes up)... which is a classic Ponzi scheme. In any case, I agree with Sam, the choices are pretty much theft, fraud, and/or money laundering. Although some of the people involved might be true believers that don't understand that it's all a scam.

I hope that the government can send a clear message to banks to stay the fuck away from crypto or be expelled from FDIC or some such -- we've had enough of privatizing profit and socializing loss with the mortgage based security crap. Any bank that needs to be bailed out when crypto collapses should be nationalized to protect their depositors and give their shareholders a Telly Savalas haircut.

[Gregg]

Or perhaps like a "pump and dump" stock scheme? Except it's not one organization pumping, it's a whole community pumping, and the cleverer ones know when to dump.

I could be convinced that the so-called stable coins are creating artificial demand and largely driving most of the growth. Read just a little about how Tether grows its own backing by buying enough BTC to cause its own holdings to grow to buy more BTC ad infinitum...

Pull a thread anywhere and all of crypto unravels.

[neeneko]

Not really: the point of a fraudulent MLM (pyramid) scheme is that the product is largely irrelevant, that members of the scheme do NOT (and cannot) make significant income by selling product, they make money by recruiting more lower level members who pay an upfront fee. The scheme collapses when there are too few fresh recruits in the population so bottom level members cannot recoup their entry fees. Key point: recruitment of new members provides income to early investors.

Which is exactly how crytpo tends to work. You get recruited by evangelists of some type, you buy a bunch of crypto, then you try to convince your family and friends to buy crypto too. At least that is how the 'influencer' end of crypto works and is the core mechanic behind the alt coins.

In crypto, people generally don't want the crypto itself to use, it is their stake which, if they get more people to join, they can cash out. Youtube and tiktok are full of influencers trying to recruit others and once they are onboard they are told to go get more people to invest in crypto (or nfts, or some shitty game, etc)

Though yeah, it isn't exactly like any of the historical schemes. It is its own thing, that has borrowed from a bunch of existing shady practices... and differnt segments of the crypto space work on differnt social mechanics.

[humblescribe]

I read a little blurb that Silvergate was going to miss their already extended deadline to file their quarterly numbers and I sold credit call spreads @ $5.50 - $6.50 last week for .35 a contract, they'll expire at zero later today.

Look at me, making money in crypto!

Atta boy, Gregg!

Contracts were only 35¢?

[Gregg]

-100 SI $6.5 Call 3/10 Sell
Type
Limit Sell
Open
Filled
Mar 3, 2023, 2:05 PM EST
Filled Quantity
100 Contract at $1.06
+100 SI $7.5 Call 3/10 Buy
Type
Limit Buy
Open
Filled
Mar 3, 2023, 2:05 PM EST
Filled Quantity
100 Contract at $0.71

A quick $3500 for the Chili Dog Memorial Pupperoni Fund.

[RTH10260]

Crypto bank Silvergate announces liquidation amid sector turmoil
Wind-down and liquidation plan follows mass withdrawal of deposits after collapse of FTX exchange

Dan Milmo and agency
Thu 9 Mar 2023 14.45 GMT

The cryptocurrency-focused US lender Silvergate is to wind down its operations after it was hit by customer withdrawals following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.

The California-based bank had warned last week it was “less than well capitalised” after depositors demanding their money back, adding that it was evaluating its ability to operate as a going concern.

Silvergate said a voluntary liquidation of the bank was “the best path forward” in light of “recent industry and regulatory developments”. The failure of FTX sparked renewed volatility in the crypto markets. Silvergate also revealed it was being investigated by the US Department of Justice.

Its wind-down and liquidation plan includes full repayment of deposits, the bank added. Silvergate reported a $1bn (£840m) loss for the fourth quarter of 2022 after investors raced to withdraw more than $8bn in deposits, forcing it to incur losses as it sold assets to cover the cost of the withdrawals.

Multiple partners of the bank, including Coinbase, a crypto exchange, and Galaxy Digital, a crypto-focused financial services company, cut their links with Silvergate last week. FTX and its affiliated trading arm, Alameda Research, had Silvergate accounts.

After Silvergate’s statement, Coinbase said it had no client or corporate cash at the lender. Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, said his company did not have any asset losses at Silvergate.

Founded in 1988, Silvergate ventured into crypto in 2013. The bank had also operated a mortgage warehouse business, but announced in December it would be winding down that division, citing the rising interest rate environment and reduction in mortgage volumes.

Last week, the bank discontinued the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), its crypto payments platform and one of its most popular offerings. That network enabled round-the-clock transfers between investors and crypto exchanges, unlike traditional bank wires, which can often take days to settle.

While risks of contagion are minimal, given that Silvergate has said it will repay depositors and has performing loans, the loss of SEN is disappointing, said Ram Ahluwalia, the chief executive of Lumida Wealth, an investment adviser that specialises in digital assets.

“It’s more of a strategic loss of critical infrastructure for crypto,” he told Reuters.




https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... x-exchange

[Foggy]

“It’s more of a strategic loss of critical infrastructure for crypto,” he told Reuters.

He only said that because he's not allowed to say "Imaginary money is imaginary."

[RTH10260]

crossposting

Meta gives up on NFTs for Facebook and Instagram
/ Meta is moving on from more crypto projects, even though NFTs / digital collectibles were once pitched as part of its ‘metaverse’ future.

By JAY PETERS
Mar 13, 2023, 11:03 PM GMT+1

Meta is “winding down” its work with NFTs on Facebook and Instagram, Meta commerce and fintech lead Stephane Kasriel said in a Twitter thread on Monday. The decision means Meta will end its tests of minting and selling NFTs on Instagram as well as the ability to share NFTs on Instagram and Facebook in the coming weeks, Meta spokesperson Joshua Gunter confirmed in an email to The Verge.

“Across the company, we’re looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus,” Kasriel said. “We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses.” Instead, the company is focusing on “areas where we can make impact at scale,” like messaging and monetization on Reels and on improving Meta Pay.

Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. [1/5]

— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023
The NFT integrations seem to be one casualty of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s drive to make 2023 the “year of efficiency,” along with the Reels Play bonus program. But their end also follows the shutdowns of the Meta-backed cryptocurrency Diem and Meta’s Novi digital wallet last year.

Still, even as Meta exits NFTs, other companies are rushing into a market that collapsed in 2022 and shed billions in value after stratospheric levels of hype in early 2021. Reddit continues to promote its “digital collectible” avatars that are NFTs, Starbucks recently sold out a selection of 2,000 $100 NFTs in its Odyssey customer loyalty program, and Sesame Street just announced an NFT collaboration.



https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/2363 ... llectibles

[neonzx]

Neon approved move.

Visa/Mastercard paused their roll-out of crypto a couple weeks ago. It seems everyone is waking up to the fact that it is garbage currency.

[Gregg]

Neon approved move.

Visa/Mastercard paused their roll-out of crypto a couple weeks ago. It seems everyone is waking up to the fact that it is garbage currency.

FIFY

[Phoenix520]

Did crypto play any role at all in the current SVB debacle?