Decentral Block Post

Kei Oda is the head of Japan and the Asia-Pacific region for Quantstamp, a Web3 security firm that audits smart contracts and develops blockchain security solutions.

Kei spent 16 years trading bonds at Goldman Sachs before stumbling into cryptocurrencies out of boredom. He tells Magazine he was induced by the ability to trade Bitcoin and other assets around the clock.

He has since fallen down the rabbit hole, even finding a job in the industry.

So, I was actually a bond trader for 16 years before joining crypto. 

You know, we used to talk about Bitcoin when I was still trading bonds. I didn’t really understand it or believe in it, to be honest, but when I left my job in 2016 and tried to get into the startup space, what dawned on me once I left was that, having been a trader, you do have a long-term focus, but you also are very, very short-term in terms of how you trade, what you do day to day, minute to minute, and what ended up happening was, I would get bored very easily.

A key talking point in the crypto community has been the ongoing exodus of executives from Binance amid growing regulatory troubles. Binance has seen the departure of 10 key executives from various departments in the first nine months of 2023. The latest to join the list is Helen Hai, executive vice president of Binance, who announced her resignation from her post on Sept. 6. On the same day, Gleb Kostarev, vice president of Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Australia and New Zealand at Binance, also announced his resignation, as did CIS general manager Vladimir Smerkis. Four top executives from Binance reportedly all left on the same day after Binance’s response to the United States Department of Justice investigation. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has hosed down recent rumors against his firm, assuring its balance sheet and employee retention remain robust despite the recent market uncertainty.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has approved Nasdaq’s request to operate its first AI-driven order type on Sept. 8. Called the dynamic midpoint extended life order (M-ELO), the new system expands on the M-ELO automated order type by making it “dynamic,” meaning it will use artificial intelligence to update and, essentially, recalibrate itself in real-time. The follow-on effect should be a significant acceleration of orders placed with the system. Nasdaq says the dynamic M-ELO demonstrated a “20.3% increase in fill rates and an 11.4% reduction in mark-outs” during its research and testing.

Former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried lost an initial appeal to be released again on bail prior to his criminal trial. His lawyers had petitioned the court for temporary release, claiming the current measures to allow SBF to prepare for his trial were inadequate due to limited internet access. An appeals court denied the motion on Sept. 6, maintaining SBF’s detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The former FTX CEO had his bail revoked on Aug. 11, following allegations of witness intimidation for leaking, to The New York Times, personal notes and diary entries from former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. SBF has roughly four weeks to prepare for his Oct. 3 trial.

ARK Invest and 21Shares requested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to approve the listing of shares of a spot Ether ETF on the Cboe BZX Exchange. The investment vehicle, called the ARK 21Shares Ethereum ETF, will have crypto exchange Coinbase act as a custodian and will measure the performance of Ether based on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange CF Ether-Dollar Reference Rate. The proposal from ARK Invest and 21Shares is one of many spot crypto ETFs that will be reviewed by the SEC in the coming months. The U.S. regulator has been delaying decisions on crypto investments products lately, especially concerning Bitcoin spot ETF proposals.

Grayscale has told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it has no legal reasoning left to block the conversion of its flagship Bitcoin fund to a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). The company’s lawyers sent a letter to the SEC requesting the pair meet to discuss the next steps following the regulator’s court loss regarding the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) on Aug. 29. Grayscale added that it believes the SEC should conclude there are “no grounds” for treating the GBTC differently from Bitcoin futures ETFs whose filings “the Commission has previously approved.” According to Grayscale, its fund conversion application has been pending for nearly three times longer than the length of time stipulated by the SEC’s rules.

Last month, Bulgarian plumbers were called to clear a blocked drain at an apartment block in the capital of Sofia.

The blockage turned out to be the decomposing remains of 41-year-old United States crypto mogul Christian Peev — suspected to have been battered to death with a dumbbell by a friend out of jealousy.

Weeks earlier, a group of children stumbled across the body of missing cryptocurrency millionaire Fernando Pérez Algaba in a river in the Buenos Aries province. Police say he was shot three times before being stuffed into a suitcase, pointing the finger at organized crime.

It’s only the two most recent cases in a 10-month-long stretch of crypto-related deaths — including a helicopter crash in France, a fatal stabbing in the U.S., and a suspected suicide in South Korea, to name a few.

So, what’s connecting all of these grizzly deaths around the world?