Weekly Crypto News Recap – Dec 23, 2022

Visa Teases Ethereum Collab, Aims to ‘Actively Contribute’ to Crypto Development

Global payments giant Visa released a paper outlining how the firm could one day collaborate with the Ethereum network on non-custodial automatic payments. The paper, sparked by an internal hackathon, details how Ethereum users could—with support from Visa—schedule auto-payments sent from self-custodial crypto wallets. Such capability is not yet possible on the Ethereum mainnet, but would be enabled by a future Ethereum upgrade called “Account Abstraction” (AA), which would allow Ethereum user accounts to function like smart contracts and feature pre-scheduled execution functions. Given AA is not currently deployed, the paper leveraged Ethereum layer-2 network StarkNet that offers account abstraction. Overall, the report signaled Visa’s stronger, sustained interest in directly participating in crypto ecosystem development.

Avalanche upgrades to ‘Banff 5’ to introduce direct communication between subnets: Exclusive

The Block

Avalanche developers upgraded AvalancheGo — the software implementation of the Avalanche blockchain in the Go programming language — to “Banff 5.” The upgrade is critical for the Avalanche network as it introduces a communication protocol for Avalanche-based blockchains (called subnets) known as Avalanche Warp Messaging. The feature will allow subnets to share data and crypto assets with each other in an effort to make the Avalanche blockchain ecosystem more useful for developers. Prior to the upgrade, subnets couldn’t natively communicate and required complex bridges between them.

Ellison and Wang guilty pleas unsealed as Bankman-Fried granted bail

The Block

U.S. prosecutors released more details on the criminal charges that former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder and former CTO Gary Wang pled guilty to earlier this week. The amount of fraud both admitted to technically comes with the possibility of spending decades in prison, but neither is likely to serve close to the maximum sentencing after pleading guilty and cooperating with investigators. Conversely, Bankman-Fried (SBF) was extradited to the U.S. on Wednesday, and currently faces up to 115 years in prison. He appeared at federal court in New York on Thursday, where he was released on a $250m bond package — secured in part by his parents’ Palo Alto house — while he awaits trial, Reuters reported. He’ll have to surrender his passport and is required to be treated and evaluated for mental illness. He is next due in court on January 3rd.

Bitcoin miner Core Scientific files for bankruptcy, has over $1B in liabilities

CryptoSlate

Publicly traded crypto miner Core Scientific filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Dec. 21 at the Southern District of Texas bankruptcy court. According to court documents, the miner has liabilities between $1 billion- $10 billion, it has over 1,000 creditors, with the largest unsecured claim ($42.4m) owed to B. Riley Financial. Core Scientific is the largest Bitcoin miner by hashrate, going public during the 2021 SPAC boom and reaching a peak valuation of ~$4.3b before falling to a low of ~$20m. The stock has gained more than 100% from its lows, however, as it received an interim approval for a loan that would keep its mining and hosting operations afloat amidst the restructuring.