First Mover Americas: Binance Increases Recovery Fund, wBTC Loses Its Peg

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Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ " Zhao (Binance)

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This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

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CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) 839.05 +2.6 ▲ 0.3% Bitcoin (BTC) $16,514 −31.5 ▼ 0.2% Ethereum (ETH) $1,192 −1.1 ▼ 0.1% S&P 500 futures 4,037.25 +NaN ▲ NaN% FTSE 100 7,488.65 +22.0 ▲ 0.3% Treasury Yield 10 Years 3.71% ▼ 0.1 BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk Indices, as of 7 a.m. ET (11 a.m. UTC)

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Crypto exchange Binance has allocated another $1 billion for its crypto recovery fund, increasing the size of the fund to over $2 billion. Aptos Labs, Jump Crypto and other prominent crypto companies joined the exchange’s initiative and will contribute $50 million to it. The increase comes a day after Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao announced the fund.

Crypto lending firm Matrixport is looking to raise $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. The Singapore-based firm led by Jihan Wu already has commitments for $50 million from lead investors at the sky-high valuation, but is still looking for investors for the rest. The firm has $5 billion in trading volume every month, along with $10 billion in assets under management and custody.

Ethereum developers have agreed on what could be included in the network’s next upgrade. The developers have decided to consider eight Ethereum Improvement Proposals for its upcoming hard fork, called “Shanghai.” The upgrade will unlock Beacon Chain staked ether (ETH) withdrawals. However, there is no consensus on when the upgrade will happen.

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• Wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), an ERC-20 token meant to trade in line with bitcoin’s price, has lost its BTC peg since Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11.
• The prolonged de-pegging has raised alarm bells in the investor community, with some associating the spread with a substantial lag on redemptions at BitGo, a custodian for the Wrapped Bitcoin protocol.
• “Maybe the smart move really is to just nuke all wBTC exposure for the time being unless it is paramount to your operations on chain, better safe than sorry with all the recent shenanigans,” pseudonymous market expert @0xMerp said in a Twitter thread.

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Source coindesk.com