Decentral Block Post

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has announced it will be “resuming ordinary” cash payments, salaries and benefits to its remaining employees around the world.

The announcement came from new FTX CEO John Ray III on Nov. 28, as the insolvency professional looks to help FTX and its approximated 101 affiliated companies (FTX Debtors) navigate their way through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

"With the Court's approval of our First Day motions and the work being done on global cash management, I am pleased that the FTX group is resuming ordinary course cash payments of salaries and benefits to our remaining employees around the world.”

“FTX also is making cash payments to selected non-U.S. vendors and service providers where necessary to preserve business operations, subject to the limits approved by the Bankruptcy Court,” he added.

The announcement comes around 10 days after FTX debtors filed a motion to pay prepetition compensation and benefits to employees and contractors in the Delaware bankruptcy court on Nov. 19, which excludes payments to former FTX CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried, along with Gary Wang, Nishad Singh, and Caroline Ellison.

Being three weeks removed from the FTX collapse, Bitcoin (BTC) analysts are combing through data to decipher whether more selling will continue or if a bear market floor has been reached. 

One thing miners, short-term and long-term holders have in common is they are losing in the Bitcoin market right now.

According to on-chain analysis from Glassnode, the scale of both realized and unrealized losses amongst Bitcoin holders is one of the heaviest capitulation events in BTC’s history. Capitulation is hindering all groups from the increasing number of bankruptcies and dwindling miner revenue.

Bitcoin’s realized losses fourth largest on record while unrealized losses increase

November recorded $10.8 billion in 7-day realized losses for Bitcoin. The largest recorded realized loss in Bitcoin’s history is June 2022 when $19.8 billion was recorded. Such losses show that a large volume of Bitcoin has changed hands at discounted prices.

A popular crypto investing saying is “you cannot lose if you do not sell.” Unrealized losses track the entire Bitcoin market versus total market capitalization. The November 2022 56% unrealized loss is the largest in the current bear market. In 2014-2015, unrealized losses hit an all-time high for Bitcoin holders at 86%. The current unrealized losses are the fourth largest in Bitcoin’s history.

Bitcoin (BTC) bears have been in control since Nov. 11, subduing BTC price below $17,000 on every 12-hour candle. On Nov. 28, a drop to $16,000 shattered bulls' hope that the 7% gains between Nov. 21 and Nov. 24 were enough to mark a cycle low at $15,500.

The most likely culprit was an unexpected transfer of 127,000 BTC from a Binance cold wallet on Nov. 28. The huge Bitcoin transaction immediately triggered fear, uncertainty and doubt, but the Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, subsequently announced it was part of an auditing process.

Regulatory pressure has also been limiting BTC’s upside after reports on Nov. 25 showed that cryptocurrency lending firm Genesis Global Capital and other crypto firms were under investigation by securities regulators in the United States. Joseph Borg, director of the Alabama Securities Commission, confirmed that its state and several other states are investigating Genesis' alleged ties to securities laws violation.

On Nov. 16, Genesis announced it had temporarily suspended withdrawals, citing "unprecedented market turmoil." Genesis also hired restructuring advisers to explore all possible options, including but not limited to a potential bankruptcy, as reported by Cointelegraph on Nov. 23.

Let's look at derivatives metrics to better understand how professional traders are positioned in the current market conditions.

On Nov. 28, users of decentralized finance, or DeFi, lending platform Compound Finance passed a proposal to impose restrictions on the maximum borrowing of 10 tokens on the protocol. The proposal was put forth by financial modeling firm Gauntlet and passed with a majority "Yes," although total turnout amounted to less than 7% of the COMP tokens in circulation. 

Most notably, tokens such as Uniswap (UNI) and COMP had their borrow limits slashed from 11,250,000 and 150,000 to 550,000 and 18,000, respectively. Other less liquid altcoins on Compound, such as year.finance (YFI), had its borrow cap reduced from 1,500 to just 20. Coins such as wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), which previously had no borrow limit on Compound, have been slapped with a ceiling of 1,250 on maximum borrow.

According to Gauntlet, the proposal would prevent "insolvency risk from liquidation cascades," "price manipulation Mango squeeze exploits," "risk of high utilization," and "risk from shorting assets from a short position on Compound of significant size relative to the circulating supply of the asset." Although the related incident was not directly referenced, Gauntlet also conducted modeling and risk assessment for DeFi lending protocol Aave. 

On Nov. 22, it was uncovered that Mango Markets hacker Avraham Eisenberg attempted to exploit the protocol by shorting high amounts of Curve (CRV), which was an illiquid token on Aave at the time, and forcing the protocol to liquidate the position at a loss due to significant slippage. However, it turned out that the slippage was far less than expected, resulting in an estimated $10 million loss after a CRV short squeeze.

Gauntlet then proposed to freeze a series of tokens on Aave V2 that may be at risk of an exploit due to lack of liquidity. Currently, the Compound Finance protocol has $654.7 million in total borrowings collateralized by $2.146 billion worth of assets.