• Specs ⌐◪-◪
  • Posts
  • 10/12/23: Chinese Bribery > Thai Prostitutes 🧧📄🗳️

10/12/23: Chinese Bribery > Thai Prostitutes 🧧📄🗳️

Top News

  • 🧧 FTX bribed Chinese officials $150M to recover $1B in frozen funds

  • 📄 ARK Invest & 21Shares amend spot BTC ETF filing - a good sign

  • 🗳️ Gauntlet can’t vote in $40M grant due to incompatible wallet

⌐◪-◪ → When Chinese crypto exchanges OKX and Huobi froze $1B of FTX funds, the FTX team resorted to Thai prostitutes. Yes, that’s right, the team tried to funnel money through wallets owned by Thai prostitutes. When that plan failed, FTX simply bribed Chinese officials $150M. Sometimes its better to do things the old-fashioned way I guess.

⌐◪-◪ → ARK’s updated prospectus comes in response to an SEC email full of questions about accounting methods, risk valuation techniques, and surveillance-sharing arrangements. Meanwhile, the SEC’s decision deadline for Grayscale is Friday, and if they don’t appeal, we may see all Spot ETFs approved.

⌐◪-◪ → This is a perfect example of how far crypto still has to go on the UI/UX front. If one of the most technically-savvy organizations in crypto made a mistake like this, how can we expect “normies” to participate or even feel comfortable trying? This issue is especially impactful considering Gauntlet is the 7th largest delegate on Arbitrum, Ethereum’s largest Layer 2 network.

Peripheral Vision

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

🌎 Rest of the World

  • $400M stolen from FTX may be linked to Russian cybercriminals

  • Taurus, Swiss crypto firm, makes new hires for European expansion

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

  • Farcaster goes live on iOS with seamless onboarding

  • Magic Eden drops tokenized Pokémon Cards - I’m telling Gary 🤣

  • Cristiano Ronaldo drops exclusive NFT collection on Binance

  • Acumen Research predicts $4T metaverse market by 2032

  • Star Arena, Friend Tech competitor, recovers 90% of $3M hack

  • Yat now offering Yat Fantasy, a free-to-play fantasy collecting game

  • World of Women, NFT project, drops their own Monopoly game

  • NFT Now releases exclusive coverage on MoMA postcard project

  • THNDR, online gambling company, integrates with BTC Lightning

  • LayeZero’s “Gas Station” helps users purchase cross-chain NFTs

Spectacular Shoutouts

Specs just got a shoutout from a four-letter Twitter account @tara.

👉 If you’re digging Specs as much as Tara → give us a shoutout!

We feature our best shoutouts here, at the bottom of every issue.