The US Department of the Treasury and the IRS have filed 45 claims against the defunct crypto exchange FTX and its affiliates, totaling $44 billion. Alameda Research LLC was hit with a $20.4 billion tax bill from the IRS for payroll and partnership taxes. They also sued Alameda Research Holdings for over $17 billion.

Tether made a net profit of $1.5 billion in the first quarter of 2023, more than double that of the fourth quarter of 2022. USDT’s stablecoin issuer, Tether, also disclosed record-breaking surplus reserves of $2.4 billion.

Binance announced plans to introduce withdrawals through the Bitcoin Lightning Network. This is to prevent situations where the exchange has to stop withdrawals due to unusually high volumes and withdrawal fees.

Binance showed support for memecoins by listing Pepe (PEPE) and Floki (FLOKI). PEPE surged around 70%, and FLOKI jumped 55% after the listing announcement.

A former employee of the NFT marketplace, OpenSea, was convicted of NFT insider trading. Moreover, WallStreetBets (WSB) cryptocurrency dropped 90% after an insider dumped a large amount of WSB tokens.

Sui (SUI), one of the most anticipated crypto projects of 2023, just went live. Its price skyrocketed to $2 but quickly fell to $1.25. SUI’s market cap is $282 million, but its fully diluted market cap is $12.6 billion.

The New Zealand dollar (NZD) fell on all fronts on Friday. NZD/USD is down 1.4% and NZD/JPY dropped 1.2%, while GBP/NZD is up 1.3%.

The annual inflation rate in India dropped from 5.6% in March to 4.7% in April. Brazil’s inflation fell from 4.6% to 4.1%. However, inflation in Spain accelerated from 3.3% to 4.1%, and France’s inflation jumped from 5.7% to 5.9%.

The potential of AI, according to Mark Cuban, is “beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” and he compared ChatGPT to the early days of the internet. Cuban has a straightforward piece of advice for businesses: join the AI race or perish. Cuban stated, “There are two types of companies in the world: those who are great at AI and everyone else.”

The Bank of England followed market forecasts and increased the interest rates by 25 bps from 4.25% to 4.5%. This pushed borrowing costs to new heights not seen since 2008, as inflation still sits at double digits.

While the rest of the world still experiences relatively high inflation, China is close to deflation. China’s annual inflation rate dropped from 0.7% in March to 0.1% in April. The Netherlands’ inflation accelerated from 4.4% to 5.2%. Inflation in the Czech Republic fell from 15% to 12.7%. Inflation in Australia jumped from 4.6% in April to 5% in May. 

The US Department of the Treasury and the IRS have filed 45 claims against the defunct crypto exchange FTX and its affiliates, totaling $44 billion. Alameda Research LLC was hit with a $20.4 billion tax bill from the IRS for payroll and partnership taxes. They also sued Alameda Research Holdings for over $17 billion.