Today in Crypto: Sam Bankman-Fried to Testify Next Week, Regulators Postpone FTX Japan’s Suspension, Amber Group Ends $25M Deal with Chelsea FC

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Regulation news

• Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said that he is willing to testify in front of the US House Committee on Financial Services in Washington next Wednesday. He tweeted that “I still do not have access to much of my data — professional or personal.  So there is a limit to what I will be able to say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like. But as the committee still thinks it would be useful, I am willing to testify on the 13th.”
• Germany’s financial regulator BaFin said that crypto exchange Rtcoin is not authorized to operate in the country. Per the statement, the exchange “does not have authorisation under the KWG [Bank Act] to conduct banking business or provide financial services. The company is not supervised by BaFin.”
• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unveiled new guidelines for companies making financial disclosures in a sample letter, urging them to provide a detailed record of their exposure to the crypto industry. It also lists guidelines on the ability to obtain financing, exposure to third-party crypto market participants, and risks related to liquidity and to “legal proceedings, investigations, or regulatory impacts” within the crypto markets.

Exchange news

• FTX Japan received approval from the Ministry of Finance to postpone the deadline for its business suspension by three months, until March 9, 2023, the FTX’s Japanese subsidiary announced. The reason is its inability to return assets from custody to creditors.

Sport news

• Singapore-based crypto trading firm Amber Group is terminating a $25 million sponsorship deal with football club Chelsea FC, according to Bloomberg. It will also wind down its retail operations and lay off 40% of its workforce amid the market downturn.

Mining news

• The Canadian province of Quebec wants to stop selling cheap power to crypto miners amid the global energy crunch, and direct the energy elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal reported. The government-owned utility Hydro-Quebec asked a provincial regulator last month to reallocate the 270 megawatts of energy, equivalent to the energy consumed by roughly 97,000 households, that it had set aside for crypto mining.

DeFi news

• ZPrize announced the winners of the first ZPrize competition, launched in March by ZKP protocol Aleo, to promote ZK hardware development and deployment of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). zkSync and Yrrid Software are tied for first place, while other winners include: Gregor Mitscha-Baude, Manta Network & Jump Crypto, ConsenSys, Snarkify, Euler’s Smile, and ZPrize (Baseline). There were 32 participants, and the grand total prize was $4,415,000, said a press release.

Investment news

• Digital ecosystem and self-custody platform Bitcoin.com announced the completion of the pre-sale of its rewards and utility token VERSE, where 16% of the total supply was purchased for $50 million. It also announced the launch of VERSE trading on its decentralized exchange (DEX), the Verse DEX, starting on December 8, with the initial listing price of $0.0015 per VERSE.