Our weekly roundup of East Asia news selects the most important developments in the industry.
Mining a Singapore crypto hedge fund worth an estimated $10 billion at its peak was, of course, a life-changing event for its co-founders Kyle Davies and Zhu Su. It appears that the trauma of the incident had been so severe that the two executives embarked on a series of spiritual journeys beginning in mid-2022 to transcend the effects of the Three Arrow Capital (3AC) bankruptcy.
The trip appears to have been fruitful. to escape from look for of creditors, to make philosophical observations after witnessing the deceased of German tourists, until discovering the funny of Allah through Islam, to rekindle his passion for life through the culinary arts, until finding fellowship In Japanese NFT twists and turns, Davies and Su may have finally found the answer to overcoming life's difficulties: if you don't get it right the first time, keep trying until you do.
After reportedly requesting $25 million from investors in January, the former co-founders of 3AC launched the OPNX exchange on April 5. The exchange is designed to trade bankruptcy claims from downed crypto entities, such as its own bankrupt hedge fund. It is unclear how the highly personalized and private nature of bankruptcy claims can allow them to be traded on a public exchange without prior approval from bankruptcy trustees or the courts.
However, Davies and Su decided to go ahead with the idea anyway. On the first day of trading, the total trading volume on OPNX in the previous 24 hours was $1.26. The report drew swift condemnation from OPNX, which clarified that the exchange's 24-hour trading volume was actually $13.64, or 982% more than claimed.
On the second day, Zhu Su reclaimed that the exchange facilitated $373 in trading volume after a media blitz drew much attention to the lackluster results. However, with great power comes great responsibility. Despite improving the exchange's trading volume by 2,634% in one day, OPNX's traction was derailed in part due to Twitter suspending its official account due to terms of use violations.
your sincerely created a Chinese Telegram channel for official OPNX communications. Meanwhile, the two of them were kindly remembered by critics once again that despite his continued entrepreneurial spirit, creditors are still claiming an estimated $3.5 billion from his defunct hedge fund.
Huobi liquidation controversy
in a letter sent To Chinese news aggregator Odaily.news, cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global appears to have come forward with its side of the story regarding a sudden crash that affected its native Huobi Token (HT) on March 10.
On the date of the incident, HT fell to a low of $0.31 each from a high of $4.85 before later recouping most of its losses. It is currently trading at $3.58 at press time.
According to Huobi, the incident was caused by "industry-wide macro events" related to the recent bankruptcy of US tech banks. “Under such downward price pressures, repeated selling by large investors and illiquidity with the HT token led to margin sell-offs and, in turn, led to losses for many leveraged investors,” Huobi wrote.
The event caused heavy losses among users who pledged HT as collateral for loans or simply held the token with leverage. Amid guidance from Huobi's self-proclaimed "advisor" and de facto owner, Justin Sun, Huobi implemented a compensation program for users affected by the HT flash block, stating that "over 98% of affected users have negotiated a satisfactory solution." with the platform and received compensation.”
However, one user, @lantian666, who claims to have lost nearly $4 million during the incident, claims that Huobi has yet to fully compensate his losses. In the Odaily letter, Huobi acknowledged that one user lost approximately $2.9 million after the flash crash led to liquidations. Lantian posted a series of screenshots and claims that Huobi customer support had only agreed to waive a portion of the settlement fees, which are nowhere near losing him on trading positions.
the sun has fixed that Huobi "will bear all leverage position losses on the platform as a result of this HT market volatility event." Huobi has stated that it seeks to "reach a consensus as soon as possible with the rest of the users who still have doubts about the current solution and negotiate a more satisfactory solution." However, the exchange also wrote that it did not want such compensation in order to “encourage users to engage in high-risk leveraged trading.”
The troubled acquisition of Justin Sun
According to supposedly filtered out Employee screenshots on April 4, Huobi Global plans to cut its staff by 200 more and apparently the exchange is still unprofitable. Last November, blockchain personality and Tron founder Justin Sun acquired 100% of the co-founders' stake in the exchange through his About Capital entity.
There have been problems ever since, but the exchange had problems before as well. Earlier this year, Huobi reportedly chopped up its employee benefits and laid off up to 20% of its staff. The stock market share had fallen from an estimated 5.4% in the first quarter of 2022 to 2.2% in the last quarter. On April 5, Sun. denied that it was in talks to sell its stake in Huobi to Binance.
Huobi was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, with a 19% market share in 2020 before China's cryptocurrency exchange ban went into effect and had to say goodbye to much of its user base. Apparently Sun has a plan to circumvent the ban as part of his change. The proposed scheme involves leverage Huobi's digital identity partnership with the Caribbean island of Dominica. Mainland Chinese users can sign up for Dominica digital citizenship and then reportedly use their new “citizenship papers” to create a Huobi account.
Sun is currently facing a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission over accusations of market manipulation related to Tron and BitTorrent tokens. Recent reports also suggest that Sun was stripped of his status as Grenada's ambassador to the World Trade Organization in June 2022, depriving him of the fancy title "Your Excellency" and access to a diplomatic passport that grants him notional immunity from prosecution.
Microsoft's new blockchain partnerships
According to a recent announcement, Singaporean game studio Metagame Industries has joined the Microsoft for Startups Founder Center through the ID@Azure program. The partnership with Microsoft will explore the use of AI and cloud computing in Web 3.0 game development.
Metagame Industries will receive Azure credits, OpenAI services, technical support, and business development resources as part of the agreement. “We are excited to work with Microsoft tools and technology to create innovative and immersive gaming experiences,” said Joe Zu, CEO of Metagame Industries.
The firm is the developer behind Abyss World, a third-person dark fantasy action RPG scheduled to launch on Mysten Labs' Sui blockchain in Q4 2023. Abyss World will feature an NFT factory in the game that allows the minting of weapons and heroes through monsters.
Token rewards will also be available for players who complete special tasks in the PvE section, climb the in-game leaderboard, and win PVP arena seasons. The developers also plan implement a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) of Abyss World to regulate in-game tasks such as new systems and the introduction of new sets of characters.
asia express previously reported Microsoft has partnered with decentralized blockchain infrastructure provider Ankr on Microsoft Azure. Rashmi Misra, Microsoft's general manager of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, said her partnership with Ankr will allow projects to access "blockchain data in a reliable, scalable, and secure way." The tech conglomerate is also reportedly testing a Web 3.0 wallet integration for your native Microsoft Edge Internet browser.
