The Breakdown First Five - Friday, March 29, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. Cheating Doesn’t Pay

Malware has impacted hundreds of thousands of Call of Duty gamers, stealing their Bitcoin in some cases. The malware targets gamers who use cheating software, with victims reporting unauthorized transactions. Some victims are reporting that their Electrum wallets were drained, although the total amount of crypto stolen is unknown. Blizzard is coordinating with cheat providers to mitigate damage, which is presumed to be much more broad.

4. Binance Exec Sues Nigeria

Tigran Gambaryan, the decorated former US official who was detained in Nigeria is suing the government. Gambaryan noted that the Nigerian constitution guarantees the right to personal liberty, which he claims was violated when he was detained without charge. The last update in the broader saga is that Binance has been charged with tax evasion. The other detained executive escaped earlier in the week, with Interpol tasked with his capture. 

3. Cleanspark Raising $800M

Bitcoin miner Cleanspark saw its stock plunge by 10% in after-hours trading following the announcement of an additional $300M in equity sales. Combined with January’s $500M, the fundraising dilutes shares by around 19%. In the leadup to the halving Cleanspark has been viewed as one of the best positioned miners given their extremely low production cost. The operation is still small, so this fundraising seems to be about scaling rather than distress. 

2. Massive Options Expiry

Today features one of the largest options expiries in crypto history, with $15.2B in Bitcoin and Ethereum contracts maturing. This represents around 40% of total notional open interest. Ahead of large options expiries, price will be pushed towards the max pain point, where the most of options expire worthless. Bitcoin has run up so much that max pain is at $50,000 for quarterly contracts, making a drawdown difficult to execute. 

1. SBF Sentenced

Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was also ordered to pay up to $11B in restitution. The judge said that Sam had an “apparent lack of remorse” and “flexibility with the truth.” Sam’s comments in court made little impact, choosing to focus on the issues with the FTX bankruptcy and letting down employees rather than genuine introspection at the broader harm. The lengthy sentence was explicitly to ensure that Sam is unable to reoffend.