64 – What did I miss? Crypto Market Recovery! Plus ALL the news you need this week

Tracey: [00:00:20] Welcome to the Crypto Curious podcast proudly brought to you by the Bamboo App. Crypto Curious is your go to source for all things crypto currency. Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the world of crypto, we've got you covered. Each week we'll break down the top news stories over the past seven days, giving you the information that you need to stay on top of the latest trends and developments. Plus, we'll share quick bites of news and insights that you won't want to miss. If you're new to crypto, we recommend starting with our early episodes where we break down the basics and give you a solid foundation to understand the crypto world. Join us as we explore the ever evolving world of cryptocurrency and educate ourselves along the way. Let's dive in together and discover this exciting potential of crypto. In this week's episode, we have a lot to cover as we are recording our first show back in 2023. After a short break, we'll look first at what's happened in the crypto market before touching on the big stories over the last few weeks. My name's Tracey and I'm joined by my mates as always, Blake and Craig. Hey guys, welcome back. First episode How are we feeling? 

Blake: [00:01:29] Great to be back. 2023. New Year, new us. Excited. 

Craig: [00:01:34] Feeling good. Trace. It seems when we had a break the market bounce and maybe we will be the curse that brings us back down. 

Tracey: [00:01:41] But don't say that it was meant to be starting positive. But yeah. Look, look, It is great to all be back together chatting about crypto on the podcast and let's dive straight back into the market because we are enjoying a market high right now. And January is, you know, looking really good. The charts are green and at time of recording right now on the 31st, Bitcoin is up around 37% for the month and if not far behind at 30% and this is one of the best January's in crypto history at the moment. But is this boys I'm putting it to you what they call a bull trap. You know, I don't want to be negative, but what are your thoughts? Because this has been a great start to the year after a pretty dismal ending to last year. Where are we at, boys? What do you think? 

Blake: [00:02:33] Well, we had a pretty big pullback. I think 2022 was the whole year was a pullback. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We retracted close to 80% there, Bitcoin and Ethereum. And as a result we've had some relief in the market. It's a much needed relief. And as we've seen historically, cryptocurrency follows these four year market cycles generally consisting of one year down, one year sideways in two years of up. Now, of course, you know the history, the historical data may not be an indication of your future results, but certainly it looks like it may be playing out that way again. So it's you know, it's great to see I. 

Craig: [00:03:14] Actually forgot what the colour green look like for a bit, but we know we're not the only asset class that's bounced. Like all the tech stocks have bounced. Tesla's finally bounce measure. Amazon like all announced layoffs which like the Volt bounce on the back of so we're not the only ones and we are obviously still very correlated to the US market but like if you actually look back at last year like could it get any worse? Like. 

Tracey: [00:03:39] Like it was nine, I think we had nine talking of bad, bad months, it was nine, ten red months. Yeah. 

Craig: [00:03:47] So ten red months. Yeah, yeah. 

Tracey: [00:03:49] Yeah. 

Craig: [00:03:50] So everyone thinks that it could be a bull chop. But, you know, I've been saying the whole time and I actually look today before this episode I said, Oh, I wonder if I ever actually got three digit eth. And I actually did because I haven't even been looking at it. So just stay out in the news. It's I've been, I've been travelling, I've been doing some new hobbies, just getting out the weeds and just waiting for the green and finally it's here. So yeah, we'll see what happens. 

Tracey: [00:04:18] Oh you did, you did call the bottom numerous too many times to count, to be honest, Craig.

Craig: [00:04:23] You did ten times in a row, wasn't it? Ten more. 

Tracey: [00:04:25] Likely. And look, and we're here to give you guys the news, but also to give our opinions. And we we, we listen to a lot of different podcasts and news places ourselves. And I think most of them are calling the bottom of some description. But just because it's a bottom doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to go straight back up. I mean, I personally think that this year is going to be, you know, a bit of a sideways year, a bit of what that would be called a rounded bottom, I guess, which is why it is important to dollar cost average into the. Market. What do they say? Zoom out. 

Blake: [00:05:02] If in doubt. Zoom out.

Tracey: [00:05:04] That's it. If in doubt, zoom out. So, you know, a reminder there, that dollar cost average, as Craig mentioned, is the best strategy. And that's why, you know, Osprey bamboo again here, the app, because that's one of your best options. There's no need to time the market. You can simply, you know, put the app on and forget. You know, that why you're picking it up at different increments and there's no need to to worry and to have a look. 

Craig: [00:05:27] But isn't it funny how like we're not near all time high and like, and including all assets and everyone's still a little bit nervous, whereas when we're at all time high, everyone's like.

Blake: [00:05:38] Steaming in?

Craig: [00:05:39] Yeah, it's, it's funny psychology. Like I says, classes will reach all time highs potentially once again. So, like, you know. 

Blake: [00:05:47] People love momentum. You know, people are happy to buy into momentum because it feels less risky. And hopefully we're posting the start of that at the moment, guys. 

Tracey: [00:05:57] But remember, it is crypto and we're going to see some swings. So hold on tight and ride it out. Let's see how it goes. So they go a bit of a market update and we will give you market updates each week as we go. Let's move on now. Wouldn't be a crypto news podcast without us mentioning ETFs and Sam Bankman-fried. So last year we did keep you up to date with what was going on there and we do need to bring you up to date again. So we will cover off where we're at with this story and what's going on. I think when we finished up he had just been arrested. So let's give you an update on where we've got to now. 

Craig: [00:06:34] Well, he is now back in the US where he is. He's pleaded not guilty in a manhattan court. Now, among the charges are was wire fraud, rather conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering. Now, we've spoken about it on the podcast. His parents are extremely influential. They have their own law firm, I believe. So his parents and another undisclosed group put up bail, which was 250 million. 

Tracey: [00:07:06] One of the largest bail amounts ever set in history, by the way. 

Craig: [00:07:09] That's crazy. So now he's a bit like Maitrise. He's back at his parents, which happens to the best of us. 

Tracey: [00:07:20] Yeah, look, and I think we were all kind of just starting to forget about this and get on with our lives, and then, boom, something happens and he's back in the spotlight again. And on the 12th of January, my little sister's birthday, he did a tell all Substack blog. And for those who don't understand Substack, that's it. 

Craig: [00:07:39] Like a blog, like a blog site. And you just write. 

Tracey: [00:07:42] Yeah, you write. But then if you want to read more, you have to pay for a subscription so you can read the first one, then you have to pay for more. So basically this is the first time he's he's gone on record speaking in depth since he's arrested, talking about the key points in what's happened. Did you read through that? 

Craig: [00:07:59] Craig Yeah, I did. And there's a lot to it. One of the things I laughed at, so he said, if FTX could repay its customers, if they rebuild today so they could pay its customers, they've also said that FTX US is solvent. Now he's literally just copy and paste at a Google doc of like numbers just saying, See, he's proof we're solvent. Like what is that? It's like, no, like proof that that's even that you like anyone could do that. Anyway, he's repaid for about the 6,000,000th time that he had nothing to do, and he had no idea what happened with Alameda, which is very important with money laundering cases, because if he pleads ignorance, that means there's no intent. So he stayed very consistent with that. He's also said that he didn't steal funds or stash money away. So I guess you remember when the FTX's got hacked in the back end of all of this? He said he had nothing to do with that. He also said that he didn't co-mingle, funds the real estate purchases with his 11 bedroom mansion. His billion dollar loans that he learned to himself was all not shady. And he also doesn't like the new CEO. He said it's ridiculous that the new CEO hasn't pay back the US users and they haven't made haven't been made whole yet. 

Tracey: [00:09:23] So easy for him to say that. 

Craig: [00:09:25] He's been rich, but he's been very consistent the whole time with this, to be fair. 

Tracey: [00:09:30] Yes, interesting. I thought that was really interesting what he said around not having any idea what's going on with Alameda because he was saying that he owned 90% of the company in late August last year when he when he was sharing the the firm's financial with Forbes, he actually gave the documentation to Forbes to prove that he was a billionaire. So that's not going look very good in court regardless. Yeah, you just can't stay away from the public. But look, there's been some other news from the FTX's exchange itself. In the last fortnight as well. 

Blake: [00:10:01] Blight Yeah. John Ray, the new appointed CEO of FTX, said on the 20th of January that he was open to restarting FTX in order to give customers funds back and off the back of this. The FTT token jumped about 33 per. So interesting to see if they go down that pathway and you have the structure of the different entities of FTX globally tied together. 

Tracey: [00:10:28] Yeah. Interesting. I don't know how many people would be really happy to see that. 

Craig: [00:10:32] Would you go back to a trace?

Tracey: [00:10:34] No way. But look, some more FTX news again as we round this out. This has happened in the last couple of days. They've released 115 page document which contains the names of creditors owed money by FTX. In this list of list of creditors, it reveals a wide range of companies, including airlines, hotels, charities, banks, venture capital firms, media outlets. So all the all the regulars who were obviously owed money by FDX. 

Craig: [00:11:02] Yeah. And the names of almost 10 million customers were not included in the document. So that's good. But yeah, as you said, trace the creditors like Apple, Netflix, Amazon, like how does that work? Are they just not paying their bill from them? 

Tracey: [00:11:16] Yep. Well, that's it. I mean, they owed a lot of people money and some of these big names were in there. 

Blake: [00:11:21] How many Netflix accounts did they have? 

Tracey: [00:11:24] And they all, you know, sharing what I was hearing. But I mean, look, when this all hit, the fan wasn't there like some bar in Bahamas, just around the corner where they were all going every night. And like they'd racked up something like $300,000 in Mai Tais over the last three months or something. And they were like, Bam, we're not getting that back. 

Blake: [00:11:45] No way. Yeah. 

Tracey: [00:11:46] Look to rent it out though, for everybody. And you know, the same bankman-fried this news has definitely left, you know, a bad taste in everyone's mouth at the end of last year. But obviously it's a new year and the markets have recovered pretty well. But this story will continue to continue to kind of linger and play out over the over the next few months, because a lot of people have been embroiled in this and, you know, as damaging as it was to the industry, we can take away some positives around, you know, tightening security and people's risk appetite. I mean, I myself have made sure that I've, you know, have money on you know, like I said, I had someone that obviously moved it off in time, but just a bit more careful. And where you're holding your money in, I think there's a bigger, broader discussion around Self-custody. It's become a big discussion at the moment. A lot of people are talking about decentralised exchanges and there's a lot more of an onus now on you, the individual, to become wiser and more educated with how you store and where you invest your money. So any other takeaways from this boys.

Craig: [00:12:47] Even though SBF was a media darling, was portrayed so positively by the big outlets, he still was ultimately responsible for 10 million customers losing their funds. 

Blake: [00:13:01] Potentially, potentially, potentially.

Tracey: [00:13:03] Potentially. 

Craig: [00:13:04] Financially losing potentially. So I guess it shows that we've spoken highly of Caesar before, but like. I'm not trusting him, you know. Well, and that's why. And that's why crypto is made. Because it's a trustless asset class where you can be your own bank. And that's the whole premise of it. 

Tracey: [00:13:24] So actually, what we haven't mentioned here, Blake, how much how much have they recovered? Isn't it something how many billion have actually been recovered recently on FDX? 

Blake: [00:13:32] I've seen different reports. I think they have about a $5 billion venture book. I've also had they found about $5 billion in customer assets. So, you know, it could be the case that customers get most of their funds back. So just be really interesting to get a full picture on that once the administration process is over and see what the net difference is, how much, you know, that core management team did siphoned off to themselves and what the deficit is. 

Tracey: [00:14:02] Yeah, well, I'll say I'm sure we'll be talking about it again in future episodes. Moving on to another story that we need to mention from early this month that made waves in the crypto space. Did you guys hear the name these Latortue bids? Lotto BS lotto. Let's go back a step. So this has been a bumper month of crypto charts, but there was a sharp little dip and that was due to what we thought was going to be a major announcement from the US federal prosecutors that many thought would be targeting a big player in crypto. Tell us a bit more about this one, correct? Yes. 

Craig: [00:14:34] So on the 18th of June, the market started to panic around speculation of another FTX's exchange style implosion of a critical market player. And then the DOJ announced that it was Bitz Lotto and everyone was like, wait, who is bid slot? I believe there. Were they a Russian exchange? 

Blake: [00:14:55] Blake I think they were Hong Kong based. 

Tracey: [00:14:58] I think, yeah. Russian owners. Hong Kong based, yeah. 

Blake: [00:15:02] But they also had a presence in Europe as well in France. So apparently they, you know, this exchange was being used for money laundering around the world. But and of course they ran into trouble and were shut down. So yeah, just another one bites the dust here, guys. 

Craig: [00:15:20] And ever since this is sort of hot off the press, Binance is being obviously cooperating with officials have said that a lot of their users were have been blocked off Binance because of the bits lato investigation. 

Tracey: [00:15:34] Yeah I, I read somewhere yesterday that Binance may have been instrumental in bringing them down, so apparently they may have helped more.

Craig: [00:15:44] According to Reuters, it says that crypto giant Binance processed almost 350 million in Bitcoin for the bits lot of digital currency exchange. But that could be users. 

Tracey: [00:15:56] Wow, they go bits. 

Blake: [00:15:58] Lado Yeah, many of these exchanges are interconnected. Many other exchanges tap in to Binance for liquidity and just have their own brand in their front end to the app. So, you know, when we see these headlines Binance was processing Bitcoin transactions. I think we need to dig a little bit deeper to see what's actually happening. 

Tracey: [00:16:19] There are two things to take away there is that obviously you're not going to go signing up to an exchange you've never heard of. That's based out of Russia or Hong Kong called bits. Lado Do your research there. But also the fact that you can drop 5% in a few minutes, which is what happened the other day because the DOJ is going to make an announcement to me shows the crypto market still pretty scared. You know, it's running a bit spooked at the moment because of everything that's happened in, you know, in 2022. So we're going to have a pretty big hangover this year because we're going to see more like that. So, yeah, more headaches brewing. I feel. Okay, We'll look I think we'll take a break here. And when we come back, some more crypto flavoured news from home here in Australia, and then we'll go on to our short, sharp news bites. We'll be back. There's been some big crypto news here on the sun soaked Australian shores over the last few weeks. So let's get into a few of those stories. The first one certainly worth noting was on January the 19th when ANZ Bank announced it was launching a stablecoin. This is big news, Blake. Tell us about this development.

Blake: [00:17:32] Yeah, the NAB, the National Australia Bank, which is the second Australian bank to launch a stablecoin on a cerium and they were looking at Algorand as well to to launch their token, yet they've minted a stablecoin in order to international settlements. You know, it's great to see that you're transitioning across to blockchain technology as a settlement layer more deeply into our financial system. But I think it's also important to note that many of these banks are conducting, you know, what can be seen as anti-competitive behaviour with your banking crypto businesses every day, while on the other hand promoting their own projects. So, you know, yeah, it's definitely good. It's definitely a positive to see the adoption of the technology, but a positive a negative in regards to, you know, maybe being a little bit anti competitive there.

Tracey: [00:18:26] Very good point. Very good point. So moving on to our next Aussie story. Those who've watched any of the Australian Open tennis over the last month may have caught wind of their NFT project. Now, this isn't the first move into the space. You may recall us reporting on this last year on the podcast as they did something similar in Nfts. Well, they're back bigger and better for 2023. Craig, can you tell us about this story? 

Craig: [00:18:50] Yes. Last year, Tennis Australia launched a tennis inspired NFT collection. It was around 6700 ball artworks. Now this year they added on top of that with another two and a half thousand. And the whole premise of that was pretty much you get access to the grand passes for the week, selected United Cup matches and exclusive access to a site with behind the scenes footage. So cool to see how brands are utilising the technology to bring more of a real life experience.

Blake: [00:19:23] Mm hmm. Yeah. And another really exciting development with this story is the announcement and partnership between Tennis Australia, a long term crypto educator, the collective shift who have a great program that anybody may be wanting to learn a little bit more about the fundamentals of cryptocurrency. And they've partnered with Tennis Australia to provide the NFT holders with education around what NFT is, what crypto is, so people can can learn a bit more about the technology and utilise it to its full potential. So great job from the guys over a collective shift.

Tracey: [00:19:57] Yeah, very cool. And I think both of the collections sold out, like they sold out really quickly last year and it sold out even quicker again this year. So it was really well publicised by Tennis Australia and everyone else involved. So well done. But the biggest news in Australia over the last month and the one that we are the most proud of, bamboo has a new brand ambassador and he he's the man of the hour right now. Our winner of this week's coveted Allan Border Medal for the best male cricketer in Australia, Mr. Steve Smith. So if you can see in our socials, if you don't follow bamboo, if you don't keep up with it, if you haven't worked out by now, sir, listen to the podcast that you know we are bamboo then. Yes. Steve Smith Aussie Cricket, as much as he is commonly referred to, is our new brand ambassador. And yeah, so he came on the podcast with us. Was it middle of last year to talk about his NFT collection, his passion for crypto? And we'll link that episode actually in the show notes below. Go back and give it to give it a listen. Bit of a friendship was formed and an ambassadorship was the result. 

Blake: [00:21:09] Here at Bamboo, we believe that, you know, building an innings and investing into cryptocurrencies are very similar. You have to be patient and manage risk and it's important to spend time in the middle. And that's really why we thought that Smithy would be a great brand ambassador for Bamboo. And yeah, it's great to see him, you know, perform so well this season and be an advocate for our business. 

Tracey: [00:21:32] Craig, you and Elliot from our marketing team who are lucky enough to go to the ACG and watch a match a couple of weeks ago it was a binary hit his second tan. So how special was that? 

Craig: [00:21:42] Yeah, it was pretty insane. He hit like 120 something and he was just hitting the ball all over the park and it was just good to hang out with was who's he's Asian and just have a couple of beers and just watch Steve do his thing from. 

Tracey: [00:21:56] Watch the magic. [

Craig: [00:21:57] Watch the magic. It was great. So thank you very much. 

Tracey: [00:22:01] Chase He's a bit of a legend, old Steve and Phillip, for those cricket fans out there who are not yet users of that, you can enter the code. Smith When you download the app for 15 point of free Etherium when you sign up, but that's enough cricket talk for now aside to say that we are looking forward to watching Smithy in India and the UK over the next few months and go the Scorchers this Saturday in the bubble finals. Okay, let's move on now to the short, sharp news bites which seem to be everyone's favourites, so I will pass over to Blake. You can do the honours this week. First off you. 

Blake: [00:22:37] Go. Yeah. And the world's largest retailer is launching a digital asset enterprise with an NFT initiative expected in the spring. So Amazon has been exploring partnerships with the power players in the industry, including Layer One, Blockchains, Gaming, Start-ups and developers in digital asset exchanges. So yeah, everyone wants a piece of the pie here. Another retailer getting into selling, selling, end of tiers. So we'll see how this one goes. Everyone's going to try and give it a crack, so maybe an Amazon can can get some volume. But overall it's great promotion for the sector and I'm sure we'll make some headwinds in one direction or another. 

Craig: [00:23:21] Cool. And from me, I'm quite happy about this. The Premier League, which is Football League in England, has inked a deal with digital trading card NFT platform so rare. So they've been considering bringing NFT on for a while and to finally come to the party, as you know, NBA and a bunch of American sports are already offering it. So, so rare is pretty much a free to play competition that allows its users to compete by collecting soccer players in the form of nonfungible tokens. So I'm assuming if you collect like a player from this year who's a rookie who turns out to win the Premier League player of the year, they could then sell them for for money. So really keen to see how this goes. I might even jump in and have a play around with it. 

Tracey: [00:24:07] I thought you might. Does that mean that it's like so it's similar to top shops in home? 

Craig: [00:24:11] Yeah, so similar. But I think this is going to be key because all of the clubs in the Premier League like it's a, it's a deal with the actual league so every year will be a part of a big whereas with some of the other ones that we saw it was just at the club level. So this one's going to have the whole league, which is pretty exciting. 

Tracey: [00:24:29] Big news. Alright, cool. Moving on, this is quite interesting. So California's Department of Motor Vehicle Licensing will test out Tesla's blockchain to issue its car titles as Nfts. So this has really been talked about. It's it's a great use case for the blockchain and is tech to verify the credentials on chain. So this is going to be really interesting one to watch out for. And I dare say, you know, it's if it works well, something that, you know, other other areas would pick up quite easily. So you just have your, your license, you know, as part of as part of the blockchain. So we'll see how that one goes. Watching all eyes on California. 

Blake: [00:25:04] Next up, consensus, who is a major player in the ecosystem? The fact I don't know if. I've spoken about this on the show about the founder of consensus, Joe Lubin. He was one of the founders of this Ethereum. He is part of a group that earns consensus. And one of their products is metamask that many of us use day to day or week to week, and they are launching ETH Staking. They announced that they've partnered with Lider and Rocket Poole, who provide liquid staking options for a theme, which basically means that you can stake your theory. I mean, you don't need 30 to a theory, which is the threshold. They basically pool your Etherium with other people's Ethereum and allow you to stake in and stake at your own leisure. So this is a massive win for people in the sector because it makes it very easy. You don't have to go through the burden of using metamask and then another platform in order to stake your theory. You can do it at a one stop shop integrated into the into the web app. So, yeah, I think that they're going to see millions, if not tens of millions of users utilising the service.

Craig: [00:26:09] This could be bad faith, this coming. So not really though. My favourite, The Pudgy Penguins and Doodles are now seeking alternatives to Etherium. Now, what this means is that they're going to start listing that nfts for sale on different layer ones. Stuff like Arbitrage, Polygon and Binance. Now, the reason would be just breaking down the barriers for people. So, as you know, a high gas time of Etherium costs like $200 to get a transaction through. So the pages are preparing for this and launching, you know, their collection across the Cheaper blockchains was going to cost you a cent rather than $15. So really good.

Blake: [00:26:51] Yeah. And I think this is a great thing for the sector because it gives new communities access to assets that you know, they wouldn't have free when a mature say they wouldn't be as easy to acquire but also creates competition, you know. And this is important in a sector. 

Tracey: [00:27:10] Yeah agree absolutely. Next up we've got well-known tech entrepreneur and Web3 Start-Up hero Kevin Rose. He's just lost a thousand eth to an invisible guest list Drainer attacks. This one happened yesterday, or at least was out public yesterday. So I guess this Drainer attack is a type of phishing scam in which attackers use fake websites to trick victims into providing their signatures. And these signatures are used to purchase a victim's nfts for zero eth. So, you know, even the best who have been in the industry for a long, long time, who I'm sure had all the precautions taken. You know, there's still every day a new scam out there that's that's trying a different angle to get at you. And unfortunately, he's fallen victim. And I looked into this a little bit further and it looks like the best way to stay protected from these guys. This Drainer tax is you can use revoked cash after selling your NFT and always avoid saying anything you're unsure about, which is how I lost a few of my really good ones last year, which was gut wrenching. And watch out for keywords offers keywords like offer an item taught in signatures which may trigger a sale. So there you go. Stay safe, everybody. 

Blake: [00:28:24] Hmm. Yeah. And I final news bite here. Is that Sushiswap, one of the world's largest decentralised exchanges, is expanding into non-Syrian ecosystems, and they're launching, you know, derivatives products for perpetual futures on the Sea Network, inside Network, SCIRI. Yeah. So I understand we saw. So I. 

Tracey: [00:28:46] See these. 

Blake: [00:28:46] Folks. I see. And they're their derivatives decentralised trading platform. So, yeah, this just makes sense. You know, sushi swap, creating new products. It wouldn't even surprise me if they go into other chains as well. So, yeah, it's great to see them pushing, pushing out and expanding into new areas and.

Tracey: [00:29:07] They go, folks, that is our short, sharp news bite, which ends our first episode back for 2023. Well done. And a shout out to all of our pals in the Crypto Curious Facebook group who stayed active over the break. Feel free to join us in there for a chat and reach out to us via email at podcast@getbamboo.io And follow us on social media. But before we go, we've got a little bit of housekeeping from our mate at Equity Mates and they are wanting everyone to know that FinFest, which we spoke about very highly that happened last year, late last year, is back and locked in this year for November the 11th. Okay, so November 11th this year in Sydney, ticketing information and speaker information will be announced later in the year. But sign ups and registration lists and early bird tickets will all be out soon. So keep an eye out for that. But please put in your diary FinFest later this year, November the 11th. There's. Also a survey out at the moment by Equity Mates. So jump on to wherever you're looking at your Equity Mates details, social media or the website and check out their survey, which was B, which I think is around till the end of February. They go, Guys, we're really happy to be back for 2023, bringing you the news and updates, signing off from us. Boys.

Blake: [00:30:32] Bye for now. Thanks, everyone.

Craig: [00:30:34] See you guys. 

Tracey: [00:30:34] See you later. See you next week. Bye.