FTX Miniseries on Prime Video, Hodlnaut Under Police Investigation, Cardano-Based Ardana Stops Development

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

Entertainment news

• An eight-episode limited series about the FTX implosion from Joe and Anthony Russo’s production company, AGBO, has been set up at Amazon, Variety reported. Amazon is hoping to put the show into production in spring 2023. 

Legal news

• Crypto lending platform Hodlnaut is under police investigation in Singapore for alleged fraud and cheating offenses. Hodlnaut and its directors are suspected of making “false representations relating to the company’s exposure to a certain digital token,” according to a police statement.
• The company contracted to recover FTX assets said it has managed to recover more than $740 million, per the November 16 figures, Fox Business reported. The digital asset financial services company BitGo, which was hired when FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, estimated that the amount of recovered and secured assets has likely risen above $1 billion since then.

DeFi news

• Ardana, a decentralized ecosystem that had been working on a Cardano (ADA) stablecoin, has halted development because of funding and project timeline uncertainty. “Our code will remain open source for builders to continue our work going forward as they wish,” its tweet said and added that the “remaining funds and treasury balances etc will be held by Ardana Labs until another competent dev team in the community comes forward to continue our work.”

Exchange news

• Bybit has established a $100 million fund to support institutional clients, it confirmed on Twitter. The exchange will offer up to $10 million to existing and new market makers on its platform, as well as dedicated account managers.
• CrossTower, which is currently bidding for the assets of Voyager Digital, is looking to acquire firms with a “good set of customers” and a “good balance sheet”. Per Bloomberg, CEO Kapil Rathi said that the exchange is “openly looking at different types of companies from an organic growth perspective.”

NFT news

• The first non-fungible token (NFT) album to be nominated for a Grammy is with DAORecords on the NEAR blockchain, said an announcement by the Near Foundation. ‘Rhythm and Soul’ is a Jazz album produced by Arturo Sandoval in collaboration with MetaJAX, and it has been nominated for best Latin Jazz Album Grammy 2023.
• The prize pool for crypto exchange OKX’s NFT Football Cup has more than doubled since the event’s launch on November 8, said a press release. This brings the total prize pool for the NFT Football Cup above $2 million, and the total prize pool for the broader OKX Football Festival to more than $4 million.

Investment news

• Overnight Finance, the asset management protocol offering passive yield products primarily for conservative stablecoin investors, has been awarded a 300,000 Optimism token grant (the approximate equivalent value of $300,000). An announcement said that the grant allocation will be utilized to develop a financial primitive that covers broad applications, from treasury management to liquidity mining. The Optimism Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to growing the Optimism Collective, which scales Ethereum (ETH) technology.
• India’s wellness platform Growfitter has partnered with NEAR India, NEAR Foundation’s regional hub, to expand its operations globally. According to the press release, Growfitter’s integration into the NEAR blockchain is a significant step forward in the company’s commitment to expanding its presence in Vietnam, the Philippines, Dubai, and Singapore.