Major institutional exploration of crypto – it’s still a thing. New York-based multinational financial services giant Citibank revealed on Wednesday that it’s hired Switzerland-headquartered crypto-custody firm Metaco to establish a digital-asset custody platform.Fingers and toes are crossed, although perhaps some crypto Darwinism needs to play out, as the SEC’s Hester Peirce alluded yesterday. Yeahhh, good luck with that… In the meantime, the Sam Bankman-Fried-led Alameda Research has provided a US$200m and 15,000 BTC “revolving loan” plan to help out the struggling Voyager brokerage.
Voyager has given 3AC until June 27 to pay full the amount before the loan will be considered in default. The brokerage firm has disclosed that the potentially insolvent 3AC owes it 15,250 Bitcoin (BTC) and 350 million USD Coin (USDC) – worth about US$660 million. It's telling that the crypto lenders that have malfunctioned are the big centralized ones (Celsius, Blockfi, Voyager) while the transparent non-custodial lenders (Compound, Aave, Maker) are still working. And that’s a sh*tstorm that’s so far spread to CeFi lending protocol Celsius, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC)… and a few others, if rumours are true. Is another domino falling? Perhaps not quite yet, but crypto-brokerage firm Voyager Digital seems to be the latest large entity caught in the crypto contagion effect brought about by the Terra LUNA implosion.
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