Welcome to another edition of The Scoop. The Scoop is a safe space that is all pump and no dump. We enrich your mind so that you can enrich your Web3 journey!

The Big Scoop

There are a whole lot of major news events all involving some of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges. Most notably Binance and FTX (worst kept secret in the world…we know), but also Coinbase.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first🐘

Binance has announced potentially buying out FTX following a liquidity scare.

It started with some trouble brewing at FTX, a company on such a big shopping spree during this recession that we talk about it in almost every edition of The Scoop. A report from CoinDesk last week suggested that there might be some shady stuff going on with its sister company, Alamada Research.

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED…

CZ and the powers that be at Binance signed a letter of intent to buy FTX on Tuesday. The crazy part is that as a result of Coindesk’s report (linked above), Binance announced it would be liquidating more than $500 million worth of FTX tokens.

The announcement started a BANK RUN, as holders of the exchange’s FTT token headed for the exits and triggered a 75% dump of FTX’s FTT token in the days leading up to Binance’s letter of intent.

In less than six hours, the value of the token plummeted from around $19 to just over four dollars USD wiping out around $2 billion… Yikes!!!😱😨😩

IN OTHER NEWS (NOT NEARLY AS SIGNIFICANT BUT ALSO DISAPPOINTING)...

Coinbase is making a killing on USDC interest the company collects BUT the company’s most recent earnings report shows a 44% DROP IN REVENUE.

Outside of the above news surrounding centralized exchanges, Polygon has been making big moves announcing two massive partnerships that will continue to accelerate both the adoption of cryptocurrencies and Web3 as a whole (which is why the $MATIC token keeps on rising)

The News

Binance Potentially Buying Out FTX Following Liquidity Scare at Crypto Exchange

FTX and Binance have signed a non-binding letter of intent, saying Binance will buy out FTX.

This news came after a week of ups and down for FTX following a major sell-off of FTX's FTT due to some information coming out about sister company Alameda Research.

The announcement was made on Twitter, with FTX's CEO Sam Bankman-Fried tweeting: "Things have come full circle, and FTX.com's first, and last, investors are the same: we have come to an agreement on a strategic transaction with Binance for FTX.com (pending DD etc.)."

The news was also confirmed by Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao in a tweet: "This afternoon, FTX asked for our help. There is a significant liquidity crunch. To protect users, we signed a non-binding LOI (letter of intent), intending to fully acquire http://FTX.com and help cover the liquidity crunch."

It all started last week after CoinDesk reported that a significant portion of Alameda's balance sheet was made up of FTT. Following this information surfacing, the market became concerned about FTX's liquidity.

According to Nansen data, the exchange also saw $451 million sent off its main platform and $15 million pulled from its U.S. subsidiary last week. Binance's CEO, Changpeng Zhao, also announced that the company would be liquidating all of its FTT as a precautionary measure.

FTX's situation worsened on Tuesday FTX when customers struggled to withdraw money from FTX.

At the time of this writing, FTX’s FTT token is now worth around $5 USD, which means around $2 billion is no longer in the company’s coffers as users rush to the exits.

The play is a smart move by CZ. He essentially leverages an early $2 billion investment in FTX (given to Binance in the form of FTT tokens) to help build the company, realizes it’s becoming a strong direct competitor, and then promptly take that money out to knowing that investors would follow his lead, and sticks it to Sam Bankman-Freid.

SBF’s net worth just went from an estimated $16 billion to $991 million in a single day.

The magnitude of what’s happening with this story can’t be overstated.U.S regulators are monitoring the situation closely already, watching for any deal that might be on the horizon in lieu of the letter of intent. Now other centralized exchanges everywhere are going to have to reassure their customers of their ability to maintain solvency. One exchange in Canada has already issued such a statement.

This story is causing such fear among retail investors that both Bitcoin and Ethereum are plummeting. In fact, Bitcoin temporarily reached a two-year low on Tuesday.

The story is quickly evolving, so it’s unclear where it will go next. But we’ll be here next week to give you a full rundown!

Polygon Spearheading Crypto and Web3 Adoption with Two Major Partnership Announcements

Polygon announces two major moves that facilitate crypto and Web3 adoption.

Instagram and JPMorgan have partnered with the blockchain platform.

Thanks to the Instagram partnership announced last week, users will now be able to mint digital tokens on the social network. Instagram will also implement an NFT marketplace, allowing users to sell their own NFTs.

Instagram will also release a toolkit to help users navigate its marketplace, simplifying the minting and selling process.

Once implemented, creators can sell digital items to fans on and off Instagram, providing fans a new way to support creators directly. Several tools will support the platform, like creating, displaying, and selling, all running on the Polygon blockchain.

The other major partnership with JPMorgan saw the banking giant make its first-ever cross-border transaction using DeFi on a public blockchain.

The MAS’s Project Guardian pilot program saw JPMorgan, among other collaborators, successfully trial cross-border transactions with tokenized assets.

This is massive news as it shows the traditional space taking a step forward into blockchain technology.

The transaction consisted of JPMorgan issuing and exchanging 100,000 tokenized Singapore dollars for tokenized Japanese yen with SBI Digital Asset Holdings on the Polygon Layer-2 blockchain using the Aave DeFi protocol.

Though the transaction was not technically crypto-based, consisting of virtual representations of fiat currencies, it shows that major financial institutions are getting serious about blockchain technology.

Polygon’s native MATIC token jumped 17% in 24 hours following the announcement of these partnerships and big moves.

Both partnerships represent significant steps for Web3 and crypto adoption, as JPMorgan and Instagram are massive in their respective fields.

Chart.

Here’s what crushing one of the most popular centralized exchanges in the United States looks like in chart form.👀😈

$2 billion gone just like that on a regular Tuesday!!!

The Chart section of The Scoop is for everyone who prefers to listen to audiobooks or fill-in colouring books over text-based reading. Feast your eyes🍗👀

Fundraising In Web3.

$85 million~ in venture capital funding flew directly into the pockets of nerdy programmers with big Web3 ideas this week. Let’s see which companies seeking global decentralized domination got funded this time around 💲💸💰🧀:

• NFT lending protocol NiftyApes got $4.2 million in a fundraising round led by Coinbase Ventures.

• Token Flow raised $12 million in its Series A round. It’s building a tool that allows you to look up any event, or transaction ever registered on a given blockchain.

• Centrifuge raised $4 million to help bring real-world assets to the blockchain.

• ZebraLabs raised $5 million to help make celebrity Metaverse avatars a reality.

Education.

Learning is like Jell-O! There’s always room for more! That educational Jell-O is exactly what we bring you in the Study Space.

The Metaverse and virtual reality are all about social immersion. There you have it, a Cole’s Notes explanation. Just kidding. The term encapsulates both physical and virtual realities using various technologies, including technologies that work hand-in-hand with blockchain and Web3.

• Web2 vs. Web3: What’s the Difference? Incase you missed it!

Feel free to dive right in, the water’s warm.🌊

Scoop Meme

The Final Scoop

People will ALWAYS try to centralize wealth no matter how decentralized the technology supporting it is. That’s what we can all learn from Binance and FTX duking it out right now.

Never put all of your eggs in one basket and never trust a big giant basket older to not end up leaving you with the bag in the end.

By all means, use centralized exchanges if you wish and feel free to follow all of the great influencers our community has, just remember to keep the majority of your money, data, and intellectual property to yourself, Web3-style.

There is no doubt the fallout from all of this will continue to play out over the coming days and many crypto projects will likely nosedive in value, especially those directly connected to the above exchanges (as well as the crypto market at large).

🚨⚠HODL ON TO YOUR SATOSHIS, AND KEEP YOUR GWEI AWAY FROM GREEDY BILLIONAIRES WHEN YOU’RE NOT ACTIVELY TRADING…⚠🚨

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Keep it Web3 friend, because every Web3 avatar should stand on its own legs🦵