Last week, the criminal trial of FTX founder and CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried continued in New York, with the man himself giving testimony as part of his defense. According to the SBF, he didn’t know any details about the creation of North Dimension, an alleged “shadowy entity” used to launder customer funds from the crypto exchange through Alameda Research. It was former chief regulatory officer Dan Friedberg who provided him with the papers setting up the firm, which he signed without question, SBF claimed. 

Bankman-Fried denied knowing why crypto exchange FTX began moving user funds from a bank account with Alameda to North Dimension. He suggested that banks may have been…

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Andreessen Horowitz reportedly expects to raise $3.4 billion for its next early and seed-stage venture funds.

Axios reported Monday that a16z, the largest venture capital firm by assets under management, will launch its fundraising efforts by the end of this year with an aim of closing them during the first half of 2024.

Blockworks reached out to a16z but didn’t receive an immediate response.

While a16z is chiefly known for focusing on tech, the burgeoning AI sector, and social media platforms for investment, the firm’s portfolio also includes buying in crypto projects and businesses. 

A16z’s notable crypto investments include Coinbase, Aptos, Avalanche, Dapper Labs, Layer Zero,…

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In a bid to put some of its treasury’s $1.7 billion nest egg to use, Uniswap’s DAO may soon send $12 million to a little-known protocol for a 20% share in its future governance token supply.

Uniswap passed a temperature check over the weekend to invest some of its native token stash (UNI) in the recently-founded Ekubo Protocol. This kind of poll is a measure of sentiment, positive or negative, ahead of an official decision-making vote. 

One industry member said the pending investment could present a new paradigm for DAO treasury management as such groups struggle to put their capital to use.

Ekubo Protocol is an automated market maker (AMM) built on the layer-2 protocol Starknet….

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Bitcoin’s reluctance to give up ground has attracted strong buying in select altcoins.

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A little more than an hour into his cross examination, Sam Bankman-Fried — potentially the last witness in his own criminal trial — appears to be having a hard time recalling some key details. 

“Would you agree you know how to tell a good story,” lead prosecutor Danielle Sassoon asked early on during the cross examination. 

“It depends on what metric you use,” Bankman-Fried replied. 

Sassoon went on to produce document after document in an effort to prove the former crypto mogul made misleading statements to investors and customers, both before and after his exchange collapsed. 

“Isn’t it true that you said,” Sassoon started a myriad of her questions, going on to…

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Following October’s tragic events in Israel, a narrative linking Hamas funding to cryptocurrencies emerged from The Wall Street Journal in an Oct. 10 story authored by the paper’s Angus Berwick and Ian Talley. It fueled Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s crusade against the crypto sector. Subsequent insights from Chainalysis and Elliptic cast serious doubt on the claims, demanding a more judicious examination of the accusations levied against the crypto industry.

At the heart of this discourse is an underlying issue — the United States’ precarious position on crypto regulations. The narrative surrounding Hamas’s crypto funding is emblematic of the U.S. government’s broader inability to…

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Hong Kong wrapped up the first phase of its CBDC pilot according to a report on Monday.

However, it’s still unclear if Hong Kong will seek to introduce e-HKD, the retail version of its CBDC.

Despite the uncertainty, the project highlighted potentially “unique” areas including atomic settlement, tokenization and programmability.   

The project found that the programmability of the CBDC may be able to “improve customer protections and promote trust” between businesses and consumers through smart contracts.

A “retail escrow product” was floated and tested by the China Construction Bank Asia and Hong Kong’s Bank of China. Essentially, consumers could put a prepayment in…

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