FTX trial stirs up extra chaos as ex Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison testifies on defective stability sheets, bribes and extra

Welcome again to Chain Response.

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It’s week two of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial and I’m penning this dwell from exterior the Southern District of New York courthouse the place the case is going down. (Tip: If you wish to get into the primary courtroom to take a seat behind SBF and hear in, it’s a must to line up earlier than 6 am otherwise you’ll be despatched to the overflow room.) 

Tuesday was a slower day stuffed with technical particulars, however that modified on Wednesday and Thursday when Caroline Ellison, ex-CEO of Alameda Analysis, took the stand to testify.

Right here’s a refresher on what you might have missed final week. (TC+)

Alameda is a giant participant within the trial because it’s the crypto hedge fund sister firm of FTX. Bankman-Fried began Alameda again in 2017, two years earlier than launching FTX. And in 2021, Ellison took over as co-CEO with Sam Trabucco as Bankman-Fried wished to step away for optics, however nonetheless managed the agency internally, she testified.

Ellison was the fifth witness for the prosecution and claimed that Bankman-Fried directed her to commit fraud and cash laundering crimes. Ellison added that whereas she ran Alameda, she took a number of billion {dollars} from prospects to put money into different initiatives and repay money owed to lenders by an “primarily limitless line of credit score.” Extra particulars under.

For the most recent updates examine right here.

The SBF Trial

1. Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison explains how FTX hid losses, sandbagged lenders (TC+)
2. Alameda Analysis allegedly paid Chinese language officers round $150M to regain $1B value of trade accounts
3. SBF began a $2 billion enterprise fund utilizing Alameda loans
4. Crypto is about much more than a former golden boy turned villain (TC+)
5. ‘Marked to zero’: Paradigm testimony at SBF trial factors to investor fraud
6. Alameda had a $65B line of credit score and ‘limitless withdrawals’

The most recent pod

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Grace Torrellas, Polygon Labs’ VP of product and zkEVM product lead and co-founder and government director of Blockchain for Humanity, at starcrypto’s Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco.

Blockchain for Humanity goals to make use of Bitcoin and blockchain expertise to assist social influence initiatives.

Individually, Polygon Labs is concentrated on the Ethereum blockchain by its personal scaling protocols to make the web3 ecosystem extra “inexpensive, safe and sustainable.” The chain additionally goals to develop the zero-knowledge Ethereum digital machine (zkEVM) house.

Breaking it down for you: zkEVM is simply fancy jargon for scalable sensible contracts which might be suitable with Ethereum and helps a sort of computation often called “zero-knowledge proofs,” which confirm every transaction.

Polygon Labs has greater than 2.9 billion complete transactions since inception in 2017. The Polygon community works with web3 organizations like Aave, Uniswap and OpenSea, in addition to massive title manufacturers like Disney and Starbucks.

We talked about her work at each Polygon and Blockchain for Humanity and the way humanitarian work will be superior within the web3 house.

We additionally mentioned:

• Scaling companies with blockchain tech
• “Aha” moments in web3
• Alternatives in social influence
• Polygon’s ecosystem development

Subscribe to Chain Response on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite pod platform to maintain up with the most recent episodes, and please go away us a evaluation in the event you like what you hear!

Comply with the cash

1. Blockchain gaming platform Sport of Silks raises $5 million
2. Crypto-focused buying and selling and lending platform Membrane Labs raises $20 million
3. On-chain knowledge analytics agency Parsec raised $4 million
4. Creator economy-focused RepubliK raised $6 million at a $75 million valuation
5. Untangled Finance, a tokenized real-world asset platform, raised $13.5 million

This checklist was compiled with data from Messari in addition to starcrypto’s personal reporting.

What else we’re writing

Wish to department out from the world of web3? Listed below are some articles on starcrypto that caught our consideration this week.

1. Yepic fail: This startup promised to not make deepfakes with out consent, however did anyway
2. Fearing AI, fan fiction writers lock their accounts
3. More cash received’t repair your failing startup — right here’s find out how to get traders to again a pivot (TC+)
4. Traders recommend funds put together for the fallout of the Fearless Fund lawsuit, not fear about it (TC+)
5. Indian startups weren’t spared within the international enterprise slowdown of Q3 (TC+)

Comply with me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto information, memes and extra.