Kalam Crypto #54: SBF released on $250m bail & Polygon ends the year on a high

"A sailor who sets the same sails all the time, without making changes when the wind changes, will never reach his harbor." Leo Tolstoy

Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the last newsletter of 2022 and the 54th edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. This week, SBF is extradited to the US and released on $250m bail, SBF associates turn on him and are cooperating with the authorities, and Polygon continues its impressive 2022. All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto:

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Global News 🌍

SBF Out On Bail: Former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman Fried (SBF), was extradited to the United States. He appeared in court and was released on a $250 million bond. He will be under house arrest in his parents' house in California. This was a surprise to many because SBF claimed to have only $100 thousand left to his name, but reports suggest SBF’s bail came from a mixture of his parent's house ($4M) + one relative + one outside person. It appears SBF still has some friends willing to trust him with deposits! He is due in court on January 3rd.

SBF accomplices plead guilty: Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang plead guilty to criminal charges of fraud and are “cooperating” with the U.S. government. The court documents are quite damming to SBF as they show that he has been lying about pretty much everything all the way until his arrest last week. According to Caroline and Wang’s testimony, SBF knew about the back door that Wang built to funnel user's funds from FTX to Alameda, he directed Caroline to take user funds in exchange for FTT tokens, and was entirely in charge of Alameda and had access to all their books all the way up until filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Caroline and Wang turning on SBF does not bode well for SBF’s chances. However, it doesnt mean that they will escape justice as a statement from SEC Chair Gary Gensler said that “We further allege that Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang played an active role in a scheme to misuse FTX customer assets to prop up Alameda and to post collateral for margin trading,".

Signal beyond the noise 🔊

In the midst of crypto winter, depressed asset prices, and high-profile collapses, one project stands out in contrast as having made excellent progress in onboarding mainstream users. Polygon. In 2022, they inked deals with Meta, Starbucks, Reddit, and Nike. Meta is rolling out NFT minting through Instagram, allowing over a billion users to mint their photos and images on Polygon. Reddit rolled out “Collectible Avatar” NFTs this summer, creating over 4 million unique wallets on Polygon. Starbucks is launching an NFT rewards program, and Nike is releasing a line of digital apparel on Polygon in early 2023. Even Donald Trump's NFTs are minted on Polygon.

Last week, Polygon’s zkEVM launched its second public testnet, moving the platform to its final stage before the mainnet launch.zkEVMs are a new form of blockchain scaling technology that uses zero-knowledge proofs (verifying specific information is true without revealing more data) and is compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)

Keep an eye on 👀

Polygon flips BNB in daily transactions per week.

CoinMENA News 🗞

⏳Last week for End of the Year Giveaway: Only 4 days left to trade and qualify! 1 ETH for 2 users: To qualify, trade (buy/sell) for $500 or more. Zero Trading Fees + Zero Money Withdrawal Fees for life (2 users): Trade for $250 or more to qualify, and CoinMENA Merch (10 users): Trade for $50 or more to qualify. The giveaway ends on 31/12/2022. 

Tweet of the week 🐥

Quiz Corner ✅ 

Last week’s question: What's the percentage of people owning crypto in Argentina?

Answer: 5.18%

This week’s question: What does the block in blockchain consist of?

1. Transaction data

2. A hashpoint 

3. A timestamp 

4. All of these

See the answer in next week’s newsletter.