Failed 2022 Predictions

GM Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and here's your web3 express delivery.

⭐️Today's selection:

• 👹Kraken Leaves Japan
• 🥭️Mango Markets Exploiter Arrested
• 🔮Failed 2022 Predictions
• 💭Wednesday's Bubbles
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

KRAKEN LEAVES JAPAN. AGAIN.

As the year approaches its culmination, Kraken, the crypto exchange, announced some serious news. Kraken will leave the Japanese market at the end of January 2023.

Kraken is also planning to cut its staff by 30%. That means about 1,100 employees will be laid off.

Among the main reasons for the decision is the global downturn in the crypto industry caused by the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange.

Japanese customers can withdraw their deposits from the Kraken platform until January 31.

If customers don't manage to convert their deposits by February 1, Kraken will automatically exchange them into Japanese Yen and transfer the funds to a guarantee account at the Law Office.

Kraken operated in Japan through a subsidiary of Payward Asia from 2014 to 2018.

The company then left the market to "focus on growing in other regions." In 2020, the crypto exchange decided to return and even established its headquarters in Tokyo.

You see, they made a prediction. A prediction about Japan's crypto market just waiting for them to come in and conquer. A prediction that didn't come true. 

Kraken leaving Japan redraws the map of what regions fall under what influence. Because Binance just entered the Japanese market. 

And Binance is definitely not ignoring the market share that Kraken will leave behind.

Especially at times when Japanese crypto market grows, as the country is about to lift the ban on foreign stablecoins.

TL;DR: Crypto exchange Kraken is to leave Japan by the end of January 2023.

MANGO MARKETS EXPLOITER ARRESTED

The news sound juicy because it is.

Puerto Rican police arrested crypto trader Abraham Eisenberg, who became "famous" for an exploit on Mango Markets.

The FBI accuses him of fraudulent commodities and commodity manipulation in the mentioned project.

Mango Markets is a DeFi trading platform powered by Solana. And Abraham Eisenberg decided to take advantage of it.

On October 11 Eisenberg conducted a series of trades at Mango Markets, which brought him $114 million.

The man was helped by the manipulation of price oracles and features of the platform's smart contracts. 

The trader first made a large deposit ($5 million) and then opened perpetual futures in MNGO-PERP.

This increased the price of the MNGO native token and therefore increased the collateral value of his deposit.

Through such trickery, Eisenberg obtained a large loan on the platform and withdrew the assets (without repaying the loan).

The man is confident that he did not break the law, but merely "used a high-yield strategy." One can say it again, Eisenberg acted upon the prediction that he's not going to get in trouble.

A prediction that did not come true. Again. A recurring motive in today's newsletter. He truly thought that he didn't break the law.

However, the police do not think so. This included deliberately artificially manipulating the MNGO token. The man's actions also resulted in the loss of funds to other Mango Markets customers.

The trader was outspoken on Twitter, where he voiced his opinion about the incident. He said that he did nothing wrong, but also, his actions will prevent potential future exploits.

The police added that Eisenberg left U.S. territory immediately after the incident. That means he was aware of the illegality of his actions.

So the coming year could become the era of high-profile trials. But... that's only a forecast. And sometimes forecasts don't work. So that leads us to...

TL;DR: High-profile crypto trader Abraham Eisenberg arrested for exploiting the Mango Markets DeFi trading platform.

FAILED PREDICTIONS FOR 2022

The year's almost over. Q4 is about to be closed and put on the shelf. This allows us to see what had been forecasted vs what actually happened.

Here are some of the more interesting (and interestingly inaccurate) takes.

Forecast #1

Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone predicted that... The price of Bitcoin will rise to $100k, and an ounce of gold will rise to 2000 dollars.

and he wasn't the only one who foresaw Bitcoin skyrocketing to $100k. 'PlanB', Another prominent crypto analyst, has shared similar predictions:

Well, we all know things turned out. At the time of writing, 1 BTC sells for $16,6k, while an ounce of the precious metal is around $1,800. 

Forecast #2

Raoul Pal, the former Goldman Sachs hedge fund manager and founder of Real Vision, got into the spotlight for his optimism about ETH after the merge. 

He believed that ETH price will increase drastically after Ethereum's transition into PoS. Well... We know what happened.

Here's how ETH has been doing since the merge:

Forecast #3

An analyst from JPMorgan had voiced the company's position about what does the future holds for Ethereum after their transition into Proof of Stake. 

It was communicated that Ethereum will lose dominance in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and their NFTs market share.

In reality... Ethereum's dominance only increased throughout this chaotic year:

So here you go. High profiles, prominent names, big brains, loud words. Yet incorrect predictions.

No one's perfect, and the future is a slimy, unpredictable thing. Not that easy to grasp. 

WEDNESDAY'S BUBBLES

Here's how the prices of various coins fluctuated this week. You asked us to include more of them, and so we did. We hear you!

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• Former FTX CEO Borrowed $546M from Alameda Research to Purchase Robinhood Shares. The list continues to expand.
• Crypto Masterminds Lost around $116 Billion in 2022. They're probably aware of the irony as well.
• DeFi Aggregator 1inch Network Rolls Out a Major Upgrade, Dubbed Fusion. Better, stronger, faster.