Značka: Media

Crypto Twitter unhappy with SBF 'puff piece' pushed by mainstream media

When the world realized the fraud Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) committed to building his FTX empire, fellow entrepreneurs, investors and long-time believers unanimously acknowledged the damage caused to the credibility of the crypto ecosystem. On the other hand, mainstream media — that predominantly attacked crypto via negative speculations — has seemingly taken sides with SBF while paying no heed to the losses exceeding billions of dollars incurred by the general public.While SBF refuses to interact with Crypto Twitter, the same community he once called home, he featured in a New York Times (NYT) article on Nov. 14, trying to explain the sequence of events that led to the fall of the crypto exchange FTX. Surprisingly, the article’s tone did not resonate with the community, as many suspected a bias given SBF’s strong ties with U.S. politics.As rightfully pointed out by Bloomberg journalist Trung Phan, the “puff piece on SBF” fails to mention the various frauds and crimes committed by the entrepreneur. Instead, the NYT chose to report an angle no one expected.Word count NYT’s puff piece on SBF: “Fraud”: 0″Enron”: 0″Crime”: 0″Illiquid”: 0″Stolen”: 0″Hidden”: 0″Criminal”: 0″Back door”: 0″He’s getting sleep”: 1 pic.twitter.com/htbte8IyPI— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) November 15, 2022Crypto entrepreneurs, including Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt, angel investor Balaji Srinivasan and billionaire Elon Musk, openly criticized NYT for trying to change the narrative. Pointing out the obvious, Wyatt explained to the NYT author how SBF committed significant financial crimes, adding:“It’s just a disservice to all of those impacted, and it’s disheartening to see all of this just skimmed over like he made a simple mistake.”Srinivasan accused the New York Times of covering up the crimes committed by Sam Bankman-Fried. “Nothing SBF says can be trusted. Nothing NYT says can be trusted either,” said Srinivasan while asking Crypto Twitter to mass block the media outlet for spreading disinformation. The talk of the town, Elon Musk, cemented the above accusations by asking a simple question on his recently-purchased social media platform:“Why the puff piece @nytimes?”At a time when entrepreneurs are trying to remediate the destruction caused to the crypto ecosystem, the community keeps a close on mainstream media’s attempt to change the narrative. It is important to note that other mainstream media outlets, such as CNBC, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, have accurately reported on the wrongdoings of SBF.Related: FTX collapse could see crypto sector layoffs accelerateIn a recent ask-me-anything (AMA) session conducted on Nov. 14, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao asked investors to take responsibility for their investment decisions instead of purely blaming bad actors like FTX.“As a user, you also have responsibility — you can’t just blame all of the responsibility to other people. When bad things happen, if you blame all of the responsibility, if it’s always to other people, you will never be successful,” CZ explained.

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CZ hits back at claims Binance is a Chinese company

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has hit back at critics and conspiracy theorists who claim Binance to be a Chinese-based “criminal entity” that “secretly [belongs] in the pocket of the Chinese government.”CZ’s response to critics came from a Sept. 1 blog post via Binance, and stems from a Twitter spat with a former Washington Post journalist who asked him; “While I have you here, who’s Guangying Chen?” He explained that the question is in reference to a conspiracy theory alleging that his personal friend and Chinese national Guangying Chen is the secret owner of Bijie Tech (a company he founded in 2015) and possibly also Binance. However, CZ explains that Chen is a colleague of his that he met through a friend, which he hired to “manage the back office” at Bijie Tech before re-hiring her again at Binance, adding that conspiracy theorists then linked her as a secret owner of the firms given that she was one of the few to have initially remained in China.Websites such as Scam Binance allege that Chen at one stage owned 93% of the shares in both Bijie Tech and Binance, among other things. CZ stated that such rumors originated from an “old campaign that a competitor launched via an anonymous microsite.”“As a result, both she and her family have been targeted and harassed by the media and online trolls. Had I known how much of a negative impact this would have on her life, I never would have asked her to do what seemed like such an innocuous step at the time,” he said. Links to ChinaCZ also strongly denied the claims that his company has close links to China and its government, and even went as far as discussing some of his troubling personal and business-related experiences with Chinese authorities. “The greatest challenge that Binance faces today is that we (and every other offshore exchange) have been designated a criminal entity in China. At the same time, our opposition in the west bends over backward to paint us as a ‘Chinese company.'” CZ is of the view that the ill-intended inferences come from the fact that he, along with a few other Binance employees are of Chinese ethnicity, making Binance “an easy target for special interests, media, and even policymakers that hate our industry.””The inference is that because we have ethnically Chinese employees, and perhaps because I am ethnically Chinese, we are secretly in the pocket of the Chinese government,” he said. Views to that effect have been expressed by the media as recently as Aug. 30, with a Fortune India article describing Binance as a “Chinese-origin[ed] crypto exchange”, which claimed Binance and other Chinese-linked centralized crypto exchanges were “invading” India by freely operating their services within India through illegal means.Chinese-infiltrated narratives continue to spread despite Binance never being legally incorporated in China and never operating like a Chinese company culturally, said CZ. CZ added that Binance has subsidiaries in a number of countries, such as France, Spain, Italy, UAE, and Bahrain, and has grown a team around the globe, adding that “we are active in pursuing top talent, no matter where they hail from.”“Over the past two years, as we expanded into Europe and the Middle East and recruited a more senior leadership team, Binance’s executive team is now more heavily dominated by Europeans and Americans. “Our broader employee base is even more globally distributed. Despite these facts, some people insist on calling us a ‘Chinese company,’” he added. Having fled from China to Canada at 12, CZ later returned to start a company in 2015, but was later shut down by the Chinese government:“Two years before Binance, I started a company called Bijie Tech, providing exchange-as-a-service platforms to other exchanges. We got 30 clients on board, and business was good […] Unfortunately, in March 2017, the Chinese government shut down all such exchanges. All of our clients went out of business.”CZ said that he brought a few past Bijie Tech employees in to launch Binance in Jul. 2017, however the Chinese government again effectively shut it down six weeks later by issuing a memorandum stating that crypto exchanges were not allowed to operate in China, adding:“They then blocked our platform behind the Great Firewall. At this point, most of our employees left China. Only a small number of customer service agents remained by late 2018.”Related: Binance CEO sues Bloomberg subsidiary alleging defamationBinance was legally incorporated in Cayman Islands in 2017, but currently has no formalized headquarters. As of Oct. 2021, Binance had accumulated an estimated 28.6 million crypto users, making it the world’s largest centralized crypto exchange. In Nov. 2021, a former Binance executive said the company is worth over $300 million.

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Tether responds to Wall Street Journal ‘disinformation’

Tether Holdings Limited has clapped back at The Wall Street Journal over an article it claims spread “false information” about the stablecoin issuer’s profitability, solvency and accounting standards. In a Monday article, the Journal claimed that Tether could be deemed “technically insolvent” if its assets fell just 0.3%. That conclusion was drawn from Tether’s reported assets and liabilities as of Thursday. One week prior, Tether published its latest attestation showing $67.7 billion of reported assets against $67.5 billion of liabilities. The August attestation was conducted by BDO Italia, the Italian arm of international accounting firm BDO Global. As Cointelegraph reported, Tether hired BDO Italia to increase the legitimacy and transparency of its attestations. In the process, the stablecoin issuer upped the frequency of its reporting from quarterly to monthly. [embedded content]“The article seeks to discredit the work that Tether has put into transparent and honest communication to the public,” Tether said in a Tuesday blog post. “BDO, a very reputable and independent Top 5 audit firm, is not a “Tether accounting firm,” as erroneously written by the WSJ.”Lots of milking pic.twitter.com/ZBJnmvai9f— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) August 29, 2022In the blog post, Tether refuted the Journal’s claims that its exposure to short-term U.S. Treasury bills is an unsafe strategy. Tether also clapped back at assumptions that its business is unprofitable:“According to our Consolidated Reserves Report, Tether has never disclosed any equity despite being profitable for several years. This same report has been deemed appropriate by important stakeholders and it has been accepted by the NYAG. Perhaps the WSJ has confused Tether with some of its competitors.”Related: Tether fortifies its reserves: Will it silence critics, mollify investors?As the crypto market’s oldest and largest stablecoin issuer, Tether is no stranger to criticism. Detractors hav long claimed that Tether’s USDT stablecoin is not adequately backed by reserves. Others have criticized the company’s use of commercial paper as backing. On June 27, The Wall Street Journal reported that short sellers have been “ramping up their bets against Tether” after the collapse of the Terra (Luna) — now renamed Terra Classic (LUNC) — ecosystem.

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Crypto ‘en français’: ‘Cointelegraph France’ is now live

Cointelegraph is delighted to announce the launch of its French edition, Cointelegraph France, providing the latest cryptocurrency and blockchain news en français and marking another historic milestone in the publication’s global presence.Founded in 2013, Cointelegraph is the leading independent cryptocurrency and blockchain-focused publication covering news about blockchain, cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens (NFT), metaverse, decentralized finance and other emerging fintech trends.Apart from the main edition in English, Cointelegraph maintains 10 local versions, operating editions in multiple languages, including Arabic, Spanish, German, Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese, managed by Cointelegraph VP of Global Operations Elijah Leyb. The new French edition is a joint venture with publishing agency CoinGroup SA and is managed by cryptocurrency journalist and industry enthusiast Frédéric Bonelli.Cointelegraph is celebrating the official launch of Cointelegraph France on April 12 at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit (PBWS), a flagship European blockchain conference hosted at Palais Brongniart in Paris. The event kicked off on Tuesday with the Paris NFT Day and will continue until Thursday.Cointelegraph CEO Jay Cassano, Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr and Cointelegraph France managing editor Frédéric Bonelli will attend the event as speakers.Cointelegraph CEO Jay Cassano speaking at the Emerging NFT Solutions panel“We are extremely proud and excited to launch Cointelegraph France and continue to expand crypto literacy and awareness in a market with a great history of culture, ingenuity and innovation,” Cassano said, adding:“We look forward to continuing to expand to more regions and servicing our communities as a reliable source of crypto news while creating a more diverse and inclusive future together.”“Crypto and blockchain communities worldwide deserve top-notch journalism in their native language,” Cornèr said. She added: “Providing a platform where everyone can get informed on the latest developments in the industry with unique insights from experts is the primary goal of Cointelegraph’s global expansion. We are happy to make this a reality for French-speaking communities with a great local team.”“We are very proud to collaborate with Cointelegraph partners who entrusted us with the French version of the world’s leading crypto media,” Bonelli said, adding: “It’s time for the ‘voice of crypto’ to finally speak the language of Molière.”“Cointelegraph now in France” banner at Palais Brongniart in Paris during the PBWS 2022Cointelegraph has also launched an exclusive merch series to commemorate the PBWS event on the Cointelegraph Store.Follow Cointelegraph France on social profiles and channels to stay updated and share opinions and ideas in French:

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Binance invests $200M in Forbes to boost consumer knowledge on Bitcoin

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volumes, is making a strategic investment in the 104-year old magazine Forbes to improve consumer understanding of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.Forbes and Magnum Opus Acquisition Limited, a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), officially announced Thursday securing a $200 million strategic investment from Binance.Forbes previously announced plans to go public through a business combination with Magnum Opus in August 2021, with the deal expected to close in Q1 of 2022.Binance’s strategic investment will be through Binance’s assumption of subscription agreements representing $200 million of commitments in the $400 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) that was announced along with Forbes’ intention to go public.“With Binance assuming existing PIPE commitments, the overall size of the PIPE will remain at $400 million, and Binance’s investment will be according to substantially the same terms as the existing PIPE investors,” the announcement reads.According to Forbes CEO Mike Federle, the investment from Binance will help the firm get “experience, network and resources of the world’s leading crypto exchange and one of the world’s most successful blockchain innovators.”Related: Meet the top 5 busiest crypto funders of 2021, according to PwC“Forbes is committed to demystifying the complexities and providing helpful information about blockchain technologies and all emerging digital assets,” he noted.This article is developing and will be updated.

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