GM (Gigantic Monday), everyone. Hope your weekend was a success. This is BitDegree Insider, and we're to save you time because another crypto tornado might be causing trouble soon.

Today we've got:

• FTX vs Binance: The Battle of the Mighty
• Venture Monday
• Selected Meme of The Day
• Bite-Sized News

FTX vs BINANCE

Let's start this story a bit back. Remember Celsius Network? It was a massive flywheel scheme run by one crypto lender. 

A flywheel goes like this: create a token, pump its price, mark "gains" to the balance sheet, show those "gains" to investors, and raise REAL cash through equity sales or loans. 

Keep doing that infinitely by gathering new players into your flywheel to live in a fairytale that keeps writing itself!

But the Celsius story showed how wealth on paper can never ever turn into something tangible and real. 

Celsius back in summer has been accused of artificially inflating its balance sheet by manipulating its own native token, CEL. 

And guess what? We could see a rhyming piece of crypto history with the FTX's $FTT token.

So what happened? First, Alameda research balance sheet leaked and got reported on CoinDesk. It stated that the FTX subsidiary Alameda Research is heavily dependent on $FTT - it stores almost all of its balances in them. 

And this means that Alameda could become insolvent if the $FTT token price ever goes down. 

In other words - there are no real assets backing Alameda. And Alameda has been known to be super-closely related to FTX.

So, CZ took a little action and had a little public "chat" with Alameda's CEO.

CZ made a tweet about the coins that the crypto exchange owns after leaving Alameda FTX in 2021. 

And Alameda's CEO tried to make the quickly worsening situation better:

Caroline Ellison announced the readiness to redeem all $FTT tokens at the price of $22.

Moreover, she claimed that the financial condition of the company is stronger than it might seem from the allegedly incomplete balance sheet. 

How is it really? We don't know yet. 

In our view, Caroline's suggestion can be tempting to CZ, and we may all wonder how CZ will react to this.

CZ promised to do a SLOW sell-off. Just not to impact the market negatively too much.

And yet, the fire that is now starting to flare up could affect the entire market. Because, well, Alameda is BIG ($14.6 billion in assets and $8 billion in liabilities, including $7.4 billion in unidentified loans).

The Sam Bankman-Fried says things are going well.

However, there's an ongoing FUD everywhere else. Retail investors are nervously trying to withdraw their funds from the exchange, so it's really unclear how this will turn out next.

TL;DR: If Binance sells off its $FTT, Alameda could probably be triggered to become insolvent as more and more retailers start selling off their $FTT. FTX CEO claims that everything's fine.

Venture Monday

Let's take a breath from the strengthening winds in the market. Despite all the drama, there are companies that continue investing in innovative projects.

Connector of Cosmos and Ethereum Evmos raised $27M in a token sale led by Polychain Capital, including well-known investors like Coinbase Ventures, Huobi and others.

Simply explaining, they bring Ethereum-based applications to the Cosmos network

Web3 communications protocol WalletConnect raised $12.5M in the Ecosystem round. Shopify, Coinbase Ventures, Metamask creators and more are among the investors.

The tool helps us to connect our wallet just by scanning the QR code.

NFT startup Courtyard raised $7M in a funding round with participation from Y Combinator, OpenSea, Gary Vaynerchuk and others.

Their solutions will help you convert your real collectible (like a Pokemon card from 1998) to an NFT

Selected Meme of The Day

Bite-Sized News

• Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin Shares Detailed Six-Part ETH Upgrade Roadmap 
• Santander Plans to Block UK Customers from Making Crypto Payments
• In 2023, Circle Anticipates to Expand Euro Coin Support to Solana Blockchain
• US Reserve Bank's Report Reveals That Crypto is No Longer Among The Top 10 Risks
• After Gaining License in Singapore, Paxos Plans to Hire 130 Employees