FTX Creditors List Revealed 📓

GM folks 👋🏻 - Happy Friday. Hang in there, the weekend is almost here. Aptos rallied by more than 125% in the past week. At one point its market cap = its 24h trading volume. Both at ~$2.5 billion 😮‍💨. In other news, SEC rejects another Bitcoin ETF, Amazon plans NFT initiative, and Moody plans a stablecoin scoring system.

To the new subscribers, welcome! — we saw a massive influx in the past week and we're very happy to welcome all of you 🤗

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: FTX creditor list 📓

• Founders Highlight: Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews of Aztec Network 👨‍💻

• Deal Flows: Injective $150M Ecosystem Fund 📈

WHAT MATTERS

FTX Creditor List 📓

State of play: The list of FTX creditors was published late on Wednesday. It’s a 116-page document that shows an extensive overview of the entities that FTX owes money to. The list includes major crypto industry players, banks, law firms, athletes, and even state governments. The list doesn’t name individual creditors.

• To note, the list doesn’t necessarily means that the listed entities has a creditor relationship with FTX, or owed money. They might’ve been vendors or interested parties that have second degree connection.

• A Goldman representative stated: “This type of creditor matrix is prepared by the debtors for the purpose of providing notice to interested parties in a bankruptcy proceeding and is not necessarily evidence of a creditor relationship,”

Major entities include:

• Prime Minister of the Bahamas

• US state tax and attorney general offices

• Tom Brady, Yuga Labs

• Coinbase, Binance Capital Management

• Silvergate Bank, The WSJ, CoinDesk

Additionally, the US Trustee overseeing the FTX bankruptcy case stated that it’s interested in appointing an examiner to the case, which could cost ~$100M. The FTX debtors argued that the move would provide no benefit to creditors. FTX debtors and creditors are also seeking to subpoena the following individuals as they’re not cooperating.

Why it matters: The list provides us with additional clarity on which entities will be affected by the bankruptcy proceedings. Sure, smaller institutional creditors won’t be impacted as much, but the document shines light on which top creditors might cause ripple effects on the open market.

For builders: One lesson that we can’t forget post all of the crypto bankruptcy is that greed kills. Trying to become a day trader or parking your treasury capital in shady earn products without understanding the risk or conducting proper counterparty diligence is what killed most projects. The money you raised should only be parked in regulated entities or on a cold wallet, nothing in between.

For investors: We might sound like a broken record, but controls controls controls. During the peak euphoria, investors were handing out money to founders with ludicrous controls around money management, private key, and organizational structure in general. The market has shifted. Investors need to enact proper governance and control over their portfolio companies.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews, Founders of Aztec Network

Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews are the founders of Aztec Network. They're building a privacy layer for web3. The company last raised a $100M Series B in a round led by a16z. Both founders are a part of Entrepreneur First, a startup incubator, cohort member EF9.

Previous backgrounds:

• Zac Williamson has a Ph.D. in Neutrino Physics from Oxford and was formerly a Software Developer at Carallon Ltd 👨‍💻

• Joe Andrews was formerly a Product Lead at CreditMint and founders of Chefler and Radish 👷‍♂️

The big idea: Aztec is building privacy and scalability solutions to Ethereum while maintaining a cheap gas fee. Aztec currently have two products, Aztec Connect and zk.money.

• Aztec connect works like a VPN for the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem, enabling other protocols to integrate with it by using Aztec SDK to unlock instantaneous privacy and cost-savings upgrade.

• Zk.money offers three features, shield, trade, and earn. Like the name suggests, these feature enable users to transact, trade, or earn DeFi yield in a fully private way.

Thus far, Aztec has accumulated 117,000 users with over 80,000 ETH (~$120M) deposited 📈

DEAL FLOWS

Injective $150M Ecosystem Fund

January 2023 is ending with deal flows picking back up. We saw over $490M in deals announced in the past week. Although $325M of those are in the form of ecosystem funds and convertible notes. Still pretty good nonetheless 💪

Injective $150M Ecosystem Fund: Seems like investors’ appetite for layer 1 is back. DeFi protocol turned Cosmos-based layer 1 blockchain Injective announced its $150M ecosystem fund backed by notable names listed above. Injective is a layer 1 chain that brings both Cosmos and Ethereum interoperability to power DeFi applications.

• The fund will be focusing on backing ideas in Cosmos ecosystem, ranging from DeFi, interoperability, blockchain infrastructure, rollups, and scalability solutions.

• Injective was previously incubated by Binance.

• You can apply for fundings here 👨‍💻

Deal flows in the past week:

• Tholos, $1.5M Pre-Seed Round

• Hyper Oracle, $3M Pre-Seed Round

• Tribes, $3.3M Pre-Seed Round

• Ethos Wallet, $4.2M Seed Round

• Gateway, $4.2M Seed round

• Asset Reality, $4.91M Seed Round

• StoryCo, $6M Seed Round

• Spatial Labs, $10M Seed Round

• Plai Labs, $32M Seed Round

• Voldex, Undisclosed $ Series A

• Gemba, $18M Series A

• QuickNode, $60M Series B

• Sphere One, $2.5M Unknown Round

• Nightshift, Undisclosed $ Acquisition by MoonPay

• Gifto, $2.5m Strategic Round

• Escape Velocity, $25M Crypto Fund

• Blockstream, $125M Convertible Note

• SSV, $50M Ecosystem Fund

• Injective, $150M Ecosystem Fund

QUICK BITES

• FTX seeks to subpoena SBF, family, and insiders.

• FTX creditors list revealed.

• Amazon plans its NFT initiative.

• SEC rejects ArkInvest-21Shares Bitcoin ETF.

• SEC probes investment advisers over crypto custody.

• Moody is developing a stablecoin scoring system.

• DYDX postpones $282M token unlocks.

• Brevan Howard hires Dragonfly Capital veteran.

• Injective launches a $150M ecosystem fund.

• Deribit looks to relocate to Dubai.

• Warren rallies crypto critics.

• Kevin Rose hacked for more than $1M.

• Luno cuts 35% of staff.

MEME & NOTEWORTHY READS

• a16z crypto’s report on the cryptoeconomics of slashing.

• Jeff Dorman’s thread on DYDX tokenomics issue.

• @jconorgrogan’s thread on Robinhood crypto wallet breakdown.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.