Gm. Here’s all of the latest news from the world of crypto and Web3.
- Yahoo and GitHub have joined the ever-growing ranks of major tech companies to cutback on staff.
- The US has been accused of trying to ban Bitcoin, Ethereum and crypto more broadly.
- Disgraced Three Arrows Capital founder Zhu Su unveils new OPNX exchange despite being pursued by authorities.
- Today’s top crypto performers.
Yahoo and GitHub join the ranks of tech layoffs
The tech layoffs just keep on coming. Yahoo is set to fire 20% of its staff, with 1,000 employees (12% of the company) being notified of the changes on Thursday. Another 600 staff (8% of the workforce) will be let go over the course of the next six months.
Speaking to news outlet Axios, Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone said that the layoffs weren’t a symptom of a struggling company. Instead, Lanzone claims that the layoffs were intentional changes made to whip the ‘Yahoo for Business’ — the advertising tech sector of the company — into shape.
According to recent figures, Yahoo is still turning a healthy profit, racking up around US$8 billion in annual revenue.
Joining Yahoo was Microsoft-owned internet hosting service GitHub, which today announced that it would be laying of 10% of its staff by the end its financial year. It’s estimated that the 10% figure will amount to approximately 300 employees being laid off, with reporting from Fortune suggesting that the company had around 3,000 employees before the announcement.
GitHub seems to be cutting costs across the board, choosing to close down all of their physical office locations as pandemic-induced remote working culture prevails.
Web3 news: US accused of trying to sneakily ban Bitcoin, Ethereum and crypto
In bad news for Web3, Bitcoin-focused venture capitalist Nic Carter has accused the Biden administration of trying to “quietly” ban Bitcoin, Ethereum and many other cryptocurrencies, in a new Substack post published on Thursday
Carter’s post, dubbed “Operation Choke Point 2.0” — which is a reference to a 2013 government program that looked to remove undesirable industries from banking services — slammed the US for orchestrating a “sophisticated, widespread crackdown” against the crypto industry.
“And the administration’s efforts are no secret: they’re expressed plainly in memos, regulatory guidance, and blog posts. However, the breadth of this plan—spanning virtually every financial regulator—as well as its highly coordinated nature, has even the most steely-eyed crypto veterans nervous that crypto businesses might end up completely unbanked, stablecoins may be stranded and unable to manage flows in and out of crypto, and exchanges might be shut off from the banking system entirely,” Carter explained.
“Some in the crypto space believe that the recent attempts to ringfence the crypto industry and cut off its connectivity to the banking system are reminiscent of this little-known Obama-era program.”
Nic Carter, General Partner at Castle Island Ventures
Carter’s allegations came just hours after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong surfaced troubling rumours that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were looking to come down hard on the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum (ETH).
“We’re hearing rumours that the SEC would like to get rid of crypto staking in the U.S. for retail customers,” Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong claimed in a Wednesday Tweet. “I hope that’s not the case as I believe it would be a terrible path for the U.S. if that was allowed to happen.”
Web3 news: Fugitive Zhu Su unveils new OPNX exchange
Zhu Su, the disgraced founder of Three Arrows Capital (3AC) has announced the launch of a new crypto exchange called OPNX, which will reportedly specialise in trading claims and derivatives related to funds stuck on failed exchanges.
“Our vision is unlocking trapped claims, radical transparency,” Su wrote in a long thread on Twitter this morning, explaining how the OPNX platform would soon launch fully decentralized custody and clearing services before heading into the trading of stocks, forex and other products.
Su and and his business partner Kyle Davies are currently on the run from Singaporean financial regulators for losing more than US$3 billion of their former-investors’ money during the Terra Collapse in May.To this day Su’s and Davies’ whereabouts remain unknown to authorities, and as such, Teneo, the liquidation firm handling the 3AC case was forced to serve them with subpoenas via Twitter.
The strangest part of the Twitter announcement is how Su seems to be trying to pull on readers’ heart strings with talk of how difficult things were for him, despite still failing to own up to the billions of dollars in financial damage he caused to investors. As such, prominent figures from the crypto and Web3 community were having none of it.
Blockchain detective ZachXBT didn’t mince words, saying “I hope the rest of 2023 is even worse for you,” in a comment on Su’s thread.
Crypto: today’s top performers
Web3 news: Biggest gainers
- Rocket Pool (RPL), a popular Ethereum liquid staking service up 12%.
- LIDO DAO (LDO), another major liquid staking service is is up 5%.
- Chainlink (LINK), crypto’s largest ‘oracle’ service — the technology that provides blockchains with updated data — is up 1%.
Web3 news: Biggest losers
- GRT, the native token of the Web3 platform The Graph is down 15%.
- FTM, the token of the layer one blockchain Fantom is down 12%.
- SAND, the native token of the popular Web3 metaverse The Sandbox is down 11%.
Following the revelations that the US government may be looking to crack down on Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and cryptocurrency more broadly in the coming months, the price of Bitcoin plunged roughly 5% over the course of the last 24 hours.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is changing hands for $21,900 and commands a total market capitalisation of US$447 billion.
And that’s all the Web3 news you need to know to start your day.
