Margin Call

FTX on the verge of purchasing BlockFi in $25M fire sale: Report

The cryptocurrency derivatives exchange could potentially buy out the troubled lender for pennies on the dollar.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is close to purchasing digital asset lender BlockFi’s remaining assets for $25 million, according to CNBC.

According to sources close to the matter, BlockFi’s equity investors were wiped out and are now writing their positions off at a loss. In addition, the FTX deal could take multiple months to close, opening up the possibility that the price tag could shift over that period. In June 2021, BlockFi had a reported valuation of $5 billion.

BlockFi CEO Zac Prince has since denied these rumors, taking to Twitter on June 30 to refute speculation that the company is being sold for $25 million.

Earlier this year, BlockFi had over 1 million clients, over $10 billion in assets and deposits, and had distributed more than $700 million in crypto rewards and interest. However, BlockFi’s fortunes quickly soured after it reportedly became a major creditor of the now troubled hedge fund Three Arrow Capital, also known as 3AC. As a result, it was forced to liquidate 3AC’s positions amounting to $1.33 billion, likely at a severe loss as the bear market intensified in June. 

The situation was exacerbated by 3AC posting collateral for the loan in $400 million worth of Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) shares, which often trade at a discount or premium to spot Bitcoin (BTC) prices. At the time of liquidation, GBTC shares were trading at a 34% discount to the net asset value of its Bitcoin holdings, which plunged further as BlockFi began closing the position.

Related: FTX may be planning to purchase a stake in BlockFi

Earlier this month, BlockFi said it would fire 20% of its 850-strong staff due to profitability woes in the short term. Just last week, FTX had extended a $250 million line of credit to BlockFi and denied rumors that it was acquiring the ill-fortuned firm. 

Update: Added Zac Prince’s latest Twitter update denying the company is being sold for $25 million. 

Chain.com tokens lose 96% of value in 24 hours due to flash crash before recovery

Prices quickly recovered after developers determined that a technical API issue, not a security breach, catalyzed the heavy sell-off.

On Tuesday, tokens of cloud blockchain infrastructure provider Chain.com (XCN) suddenly lost over 90% of their value before recovering most of their losses later in the day. In a post-mortem analysis published by Chain.com, the firm said that a market maker and API error at 1:00 pm SGT (5:00 am UCT) began to cause XCN to drop in large percentiles. As the event took place, corresponding bids became stuck via API orders, causing further downward selling pressure due to low liquidity and margin calls. 

But by approximately 3:00 pm SGT (7:00 am UCT), developers at Chain.com conferred with exchanges and market participants that the issue was not due to a breach or exploit, and prices began to recover. According to Deepak.eth, CEO of Crypto.com, a single large margin call appears to have exacerbated the flash crash. As much as 500 million XCN worth of tokens purchased ($42.24 million at time of publication) through leveraged was liquidated within a short period.

A token’s price does not always correlate on a proportional basis with changes in supply and demand. Contrary to popular belief, one single large trade or a series of substantial buy/sell orders in a short period can cause disproportional impacts on a token’s price, especially when there is little liquidity.

For example, as first pointed out by crypto enthusiast dev.eth last month, crypto project Cope witnessed a 77% drop in its token price after develops said that they needed to sell coins “to keep dev going through this tough time.” However, due to a lack of liquidity, all it took was for the developers to sell just 10% of outstanding COPE tokens to cause the massive drop.