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The Huobi crypto exchange logo displayed on a smartphone.

Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurphoto via Getty Images

Digital currency exchange Huobi said Friday it plans to cut its global headcount by about 20% in the latest round of layoffs to hit the ailing cryptocurrency industry.

The Seychelles-based company is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, processing approximately $370 million in trading volume in a single day, according to data from CoinGecko.

“The planned layoff rate is about 20%,” Justin Sun, a member of Huobi’s advisory board, told CNBC, adding that the cuts have not yet been implemented.

“In the current bear market, a very lean team will be maintained in the future. The workforce optimization aims to implement the brand strategy, optimize the structure, increase efficiency and get back into the top 3.”

According to a Financial Times report, Huobi had about 1,600 employees worldwide as of October.

According to CoinMarketCap data, Huobi’s native HT token fell as low as $4.3355 on Friday, down more than 7% from the previous 24-hour period.

Following the collapse of FTX, crypto traders are looking for clues as to which company will be the next victim of the digital asset downturn.

Floods of investors have poured out of centralized exchanges, with almost 300,000 bitcoins being moved from Nov. 6 to Dec. 7, according to the latest available data from CryptoQuant.

Last month, Binance briefly suspended USDC stablecoin withdrawals, raising concerns about its own ability to cover customer redemptions. It has since resumed USDC withdrawals.

Up to $6 billion in digital tokens were pulled from the exchange between December 12th and 14th.

In a so-called “Proof of Reserves” statement on Nov. 25, the world’s largest crypto exchange announced that it had a reserve ratio of 101%, indicating that it had more assets than liabilities.

Doubts have been raised about the effectiveness of reserve statement reports, which only provide a snapshot of the assets an exchange is holding at any given point in time.

Consulting firm Mazars, which prepared a separate proof of reserve report for Binance, stopped preparing such documents for crypto firms entirely on Dec. 16, citing “concerns about the way these reports are understood by the public.”

Recently, crypto investors have expressed doubts about Huobi’s financial health.

Read more about technology and crypto from CNBC Pro

Sun dismissed concerns about the company’s solvency as “pure FUD,” meaning “fear, uncertainty, doubt,” a phrase crypto investors use to describe what they perceive as negative or incorrect information.

“User assets are secure,” he said. “As a virtual asset trading platform that has been operating for 10 years, Huobi’s business philosophy is to protect the security of its users’ assets.”

Huobi has conducted a reserve review showing its total assets are now $2.9 billion, consistent with the number of funds deposited by users, the Sun said.

Huobi was acquired by About Capital Management, a Hong Kong-based wealth management firm, on Oct. 7. Sun, who founded the Tron blockchain project, is an advisor to Huobi.

Huobi was originally founded in China, but was forced out of the country after Beijing cracked down on the crypto industry.

Today, Huobi only conducts consulting and research from China, while its trading operations are conducted outside of mainland China. The company has offices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and the United States

Are we about to make the leap from medical euthanasia to assisted suicide as if it were normal?

The question is valid.

Because in 2023, Ottawa will open the door to MAID for people who only suffer from mental illness. On the Quebec side, we are working on the right to pre-program our death in the event of a diagnosis of dementia such as Alzheimer’s, which in a grand euphemism is called prior consent.

Carter verdict

There was a time when death was sacred, to be treated with the delicacy of a priceless gem.

Do we need to remember all the delicacy with which Quebec paved the way even before the Supreme Court decided the issue?

Then came the Carter judgment. The clear, sharp and precise judgment of the country’s highest court. Medical assistance in dying is a right for every adult in Canada to obtain informed consent and “to be afflicted with a serious and irremediable medical condition (including disease, affliction or disability) which is causing him or her persistent suffering that is unbearable for him or her, given his or her condition.

Almost 8 years later, now that medical euthanasia is a right, things are moving much faster.

A court has shaken the notion that a patient must be at the end of his life. The rest was only a matter of time.

Trojan horse

The idea of ​​prior consent for people suffering from Alzheimer’s or other degenerative cognitive disorders quickly found consensus in Quebec.

The horror of seeing our loved ones suffer a hike that distorts their life purpose haunts too many families. At most, if we can protect ourselves and our loved ones.

But what reflection on the value of life, the value of old age, have we engaged ourselves in in this race for a dignified death? Would Alzheimer’s be so terrible if we took good care of our frail seniors?

I have no answer to this question that haunts me. All I know is that it has hardly been discussed outside the exclusive circle of expert committees and parliamentarians.

The ultimate taboo

In particular, the BGH does not distinguish between physical and mental illness.

The gear is engaged. People with mental health problems will have access to medical assistance when dying in Canada in the near future.

At best, Attorney General David Lametti granted an additional delay to ensure the necessary guidelines are in place.

The medical associations promise us that they can set up practical guidelines that avoid abuse.

So much better. But still…

Does the cult of progressivism in Canada necessitate that we have one of the most permissive regimes in the world regarding medical access to death?

Ottawa and Quebec will certainly take different paths, but the result remains the same: in 2023 we will now be living in the land of euthanasia.

Dear readers of this new edition of Saturdaymanche, the paper edition of protocol the Lord’s Day, as Sunday was called in Quebec at the time of triumphant Catholicism.

I belong to the 20th century intellectually, sociologically, politically and spiritually. The 21st century with galloping and rigid ideologies, right and left, is not my thing, as my dear Englishman would say.

I can hardly find my roots and my precious few beliefs in my deconstructed society, founded on a cartoonish individualism that inhabits the new citizens who, each in their own way, think of themselves as the hub of the world.

No wonder, then, that the formal address in French is now discarded in the attic of old things in favor of the familiar form. The “you” corresponds to the individual and the “you” to the community, a reality in decline.

Danger

I do not wish you a better 2023 than 2022, because I hardly believe in it. Dictatorships are conquering more and more. The greatest power in the world, the United States, has nearly 40% of its citizens vomiting democracy. And Putin’s war on Ukraine, its sovereignty and democratic system puts the whole West in jeopardy as it is an enlightened admirer of Stalin who has his finger on the nuclear button.

Our countries are democratically weakened. Because the idea of ​​equality and individual rights crushes everything. This explains, among other things, the reduction in requirements for obtaining diplomas, hence a reduction in written French and a 50% rate of people who cannot decipher a text of medium difficulty.

Let us look no further for the lack of collective pride in our common and official language, French. I come from a background of intelligent women but am almost illiterate, humiliated by their ignorance? The only one who was educated was my mother, who would be 110 today, and who taught her father to read and write as a young teenager.

gender

The 21st century confronts us with the multiplication of genres, a theory with no scientific basis. Any reference to a third gender unsettles and confuses incredulous citizens who, under pressure from the lobby, do not dare to ask these questions, which shake our image of humanity.

This chronicle is not a farewell chronicle, quite the opposite. Although some readers might be happy. It’s a cry of alarm. Western culture is being attacked from all sides. First because of all the extremists left and right. Because fashions of the moment and personal excesses cannot have civilizing virtues.

In the West, Christianity has not been able to adapt to the changes of the 21st century. The lack of respect for gender equality and sexual abuse in different religions has caused millions of people to abandon the faith. But the spiritual dimension, with or without religious institutions, will undoubtedly continue.

If every human being continues to think of himself as a god, as we increasingly see in our societies where we only hear “I, I, I”, decadence awaits us.

It was a “don’t make me go back there” moment from the Federal Reserve.

A line from minutes of the central bank’s December monetary policy meeting, released Wednesday afternoon, was taken by analysts and economists as a warning to financial market participants that bets on a policy shift in 2023 are unwelcome. And to the extent that stock rallies and other financial market developments ease overall financial conditions, these bets will only force the Fed’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee to prolong the pain necessary to bring inflation down.

Read: No Fed official expects a rate cut this year to be appropriate, meeting minutes show

Here is the line: “Participants noted that since monetary policy functioned to a large extent through financial markets, unwarranted easing of financial conditions would complicate the Committee’s efforts to restore price stability, particularly if justified by a misperception of the responsiveness function of the Committee would be caused by the public. ”

In plain English? “Translated from Fedspeak, FOMC members do not like stock market rallies, fearing it could lead to potentially inflationary consumer spending,” Louis Navellier, president and founder of Navellier & Associates, said in a statement Thursday.

And what can the Fed do about it?

“In other words, if stocks continue to rise on bad economic news, the Fed needs to push for an even higher terminal rate and unofficially expand the mandate to include ‘weaker stocks,'” wrote Ian Lyngen and Benjamin Jeffery, rates strategists at BMO Capital Markets, in a statement dated Wednesday.

“The minutes revealed another deliberate attempt to deter the market from the notion that the Fed’s put will be triggered in 2023,” they wrote.

Archive: The Fed needs to “inflict more losses” on stock market investors to tame inflation, says former central banker

Investors have been talking about a notional Fed put option since at least the October 1987 stock market crash prompted the Alan Greenspan-led central bank to cut interest rates. An actual put option is a financial derivative that gives the holder the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying asset at a specified price, called the strike price, which serves as an insurance policy against a market downturn.

“Embedded in this discussion is how much downside do US stocks have [Federal Open Market Committee] Stands ready to defy, in its bid to restore the assumption of future price stability – [Wednesday’s] The official communiqué has lowered the stock level at which investors will look for a Fed pivot,” BMO strategists wrote.

The minutes made it clear that the “proverbial Fed put is officially dead and over,” said Kent Engelke, chief economic strategist at Capitol Securities Management, in a Thursday note.

Stocks had recovered from the 2022 lows set in October before heading into the Fed’s Dec. 13-14 monetary policy meeting, but soon lost traction, losing ground by the end of the month as major indices lost their worst annual performance since 2008. Shares closed higher after Wednesday’s minutes release, then collapsed the next session.

Stocks were higher on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +2.13%, was up around 700 points, or 2.1%, while the S&P 500 SPX, +2.28%, was up 2.3% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +2.56%, up 2.6%. The gains led all three major indices to turn positive for the holiday-shortened week, with the Dow and S&P 500 posting weekly gains of 1.5% and the Nasdaq rising 1%.

The rally came after the December jobs report showed an unexpected slowdown in wage growth and the Institute for Supply Management’s services indicator slumped into contraction territory.

Market Watch Live: Stocks stage first major rally of 2023 as investors cheer slowing wage growth

Some market observers wondered how the market reaction, which saw Treasury yields fall and markets increasing odds of a 25 basis point, or a quarter-point rate hike, on Feb. 1 versus a half-point hike, was resonating with Fed policymakers would .

The side jobs report eases pressure on the Fed to hike rates by 50 basis points on Feb 1, but policymakers appear to be growing impatient with market prices at odds with the Fed. Funds rate and the timing of its first rate cut, BNP Paribas economists Carl Riccadonna, Yelena Shulyatyeva and Andrew Schneider said in a statement on Friday.

“This may steer their bias toward a more vigorous response at the next meeting,” they wrote.

See: Financial markets ignore elephants in the room: 223k job gains in December

The minutes showed that no Fed officials expected rates to fall in 2023, underscoring the divide between the central bank and market participants over the likelihood of a move away from tighter monetary policy later this year.

“The minutes clearly underscore the Fed’s focus on inflation, but also its resentment at easing financial market conditions, which it says is hampering its efforts to maintain price stability,” said Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, in a note on Wednesday . “Reading the tea leaves, the minutes emphasize that the Fed will reduce inflation at the risk of damaging the job market and the economy at large.”

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said on Wednesday that mention of financial conditions should convey that investors should not expect policymakers to “soften their inflation line until it becomes apparent that a serious shift in data is underway.” .”

See: Goldilocks Scenario? Slower wage increases could help the US economy stave off a recession.

FOX Business host Larry Kudlow reacts to the omnibus bill, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s photo op with Biden, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s fight to win his bid for House Speaker on the topic of making money.

Persistently high consumer prices, a spate of government spending and a tightening Federal Reserve determined to bring inflation under control, even if it means jeopardizing the US economy, have pundits worried about the possibility of US-style “stagflation”. 1970s this year.

An overwhelming majority of Wall Street investors believe stagflation will be the biggest risk to the global economy in 2023 and will continue to cause volatility in stock markets, according to a recent Bank of America Pulse survey.

Around 92% of fund managers expect a period of high inflation and low economic growth over the next year, while 0% forecast a Goldilocks scenario in which the economy avoids a recession and inflation eases.

“Investor sentiment remained hyper-bearish,” the survey reads. “Investors kept cash holdings up at 6.2%, just below last month’s 21-year high of 6.3%. Also, a net 77% call for a global recession.”

THE US ECONOMY FACES A TURBULENT 2023 WHILE RECESSION FEARS GROW

President Biden appears Wednesday in Covington, Kentucky to highlight his economic plan to rebuild infrastructure and create high-paying jobs that don’t require a four-year degree and revitalize the communities left behind. (Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images/Getty Images)

The responses suggest the stock market could be in for another tough year after central bank tightening, stubbornly high inflation and the Russian war in Ukraine have already unleashed a multi-trillion dollar carnage.

The price surge is being fueled by multiple issues related to government stimulus, the pandemic and the rousing economic recovery after the worst downturn in nearly a century. In the wake of lockdown orders that shut down much of the country, the economy staged a stunning comeback, fueled by unprecedented government spending, emergency Fed measures and widespread vaccine distribution.

Since the pandemic began in February 2020, lawmakers have approved a staggering $6 trillion in pandemic-related stimulus funds. That includes about $4 trillion under former President Donald Trump and about $2 trillion under President Biden, according to a COVID money tracker published by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, DC. has been published

About $5.5 trillion of that has been spent or earmarked for future use.

Additionally, a bipartisan group of lawmakers approved another $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in late 2021, while Democrats passed another $400 billion spending package on healthcare and climate change in the fall. Congress passed the $1.7 trillion budget bill in December.

The tide of government spending threatens to keep inflation high for some time and undermine the Federal Reserve’s price-cutting measures.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference on interest rates, the economy and monetary policy action at the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, DC June 15, 2022. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)

Fed policymakers have already approved seven straight rate hikes in 2022, taking the benchmark interest rate to its highest level since 2007. With inflation persistently high, policymakers have shown no signs of slowing down and indicated that they intend to keep interest rates high for longer.

“Participants generally noted that a tight monetary policy stance would need to be maintained until incoming data gave confidence that inflation was on a sustained downward path to 2 percent, which would likely take some time,” the am December Fed Minutes released Wednesday. said. “With inflation persistent and unacceptably high, several participants noted that historical experience warns against easing monetary policy prematurely.”

In a worrying development, the Fed’s rate hikes have so far failed to curb inflation: the government reported last month that the consumer price index rose 7.1% year-on-year in November. While that’s a slight decline from a peak of 9.1% in June, it’s still about three times higher than the Fed’s preferred target of 2%.

This suggests that the Fed must continue its aggressive stance, increasing the likelihood that it will rein in consumer demand and increase unemployment. High unemployment, slow economic growth, and hot inflation are all hallmarks of stagflation, a phenomenon that devastated the US economy in the 1970s and early 1980s.

A customer shops at a supermarket in Millbrae, California on August 10, 2022. (Li Jianguo/Xinhua via Getty Images/Getty Images)

Back then, rising oil prices, rising unemployment and loose monetary policy pushed inflation up to 14.8% in 1980 and forced Fed policymakers to hike interest rates to almost 20% that year.

Expectations are growing on Wall Street that the Fed will trigger an economic downturn as it hikes interest rates at its fastest pace in three decades to catch runaway inflation.

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Rising interest rates tend to result in higher interest rates on consumer and business loans, which slows the economy by forcing employers to cut spending.

Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are among Wall Street banks forecasting a downturn this year, but the severity of it remains uncertain.

Hollywood’s hottest ceremony returns after a year-long hiatus. And while we don’t yet know if the evening will be as irreverent as before, we have no doubts about the ferocity of the fights in the categories reserved for acting. Test…

After a year of scandalous absence, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has a new face… and a solid reputation. In addition, the 80th Golden Globes Gala will take place on the evening of Tuesday, January 10th, so as not to overshadow the sporting events on Sunday. Finally, the member selection process is now transparent and multi-ethnic. NBC has therefore agreed to broadcast the ceremony, which was hosted by Jerrod Carmichael, again this year. Eddie Murphy receives the Cecil B. DeMille Award and Ryan Murphy the Carol Burnett Award.

The actresses

In the Best Actress in a Drama category, Cate Blanchett for “Tár” and Michelle Williams for “The Fabelmans” are the two favorites, leaving Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) and Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) far behind. and Olivia Colman (“The Realm of Light”). In fact, with her portrayal of a conductor whose life is being shattered by her reprehensible actions, the Australian has every chance of repeating her feat from Jasmine French, released in 2013 and for which she won the Golden Globe, SAG. BAFTA and Oscars. But her rival remains Michelle Williams, who plays a fictionalized version of Steven Spielberg’s mother in The Fabelmans. She has already won two Golden Globes, the first in cinema for A Week With Marilyn (2012) and most recently for the 2019 mini-series Fosse/Verdon.

Alongside Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, Michelle Yeoh has a huge head start for her performance in the excellent Everything, Everywhere, Everything at Once, and members of the HFPA are particularly careful not to neglect the awards ceremony members of visible minorities. But in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, about Hollywood’s golden age and its excesses, Margot Robbie is a strong contender, having never won a Golden Globe despite four nominations. And this year, as the HFPA searches for seriousness, Emma Thompson stands a slim chance of winning the statuette for her portrayal of a widow who enlists the services of a prostitute in the excellent Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”. Unfortunately, those contenders miss out on Lesley Manville in A Dress for Mrs. Harris and Anya Taylor-Joy in The Menu.

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The five nominees in the Best Actor in a Drama category all delivered memorable performances. Austin Butler shines in Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” and deserves his interpretation to be rewarded. Brendan Fraser in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is the favorite in this category but HPFA members may be tempted not to let him win as the actor has said he will boycott the ceremony as he is the former director of the Association of the World Accused of sexual assault. It is unlikely that Bill Nighy in “Living”, Hugh Jackman in “The Son” and Jeremy Pope in “The Inspection” will step onto the Beverly Hilton stage to receive a statuette.

For comedy or musical nominees, Colin Farrell is the top pick for The Banshees of Inisherin. This atypical comedy puts him in the role of a simple man with a golden heart who is rejected by his best friend for no reason. Daniel Craig, as the unlikely detective in Glass Onion: A Tale of Controversy, was able to get the statuette as he didn’t win it for the first part of this fun detective film. Adam Driver, perfect in Noah Baumbach’s “Background Noise”, could also surprise, while Diego Calva for “Babylone” and Ralph Fiennes for “The Menu” have to be content with applause.

_______________________________________

In the race for the best film statuette, all bets are on and it’s impossible to predict a winner as members of the HPFA have made sure to cast the net as wide as possible this year.

Best Picture – Drama

• “Avatar: The Way of Water”
• “Elvis”
• “The Fable Men”
• “Tar”
• “Top Gun: Maverick”

Best Film – Comedy or Musical

• “Babylon”
• “The Banshees of Inisherin”
• “Everything, everywhere, all at once”
• “Glass Onion: A Tale of Drawn Daggers”
• “Without filter”

They were snubbed

A few “omissions” in the Golden Globes challenge nominations…

Presumably to avoid causing a stir, the HPFA disregarded Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Honey,” starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, due to unsubstantiated tabloid gossip at the time of the feature film’s release. It’s probably the same over-cautiousness that kept Will Smith from getting nominated for his role as a runaway slave in Emancipation.

The absence of “Ticket to Heaven,” a goofy romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney, is surprising since the HPFA is known for its cookie cutter nominations regardless of quality, like that for “The Tourist” (2010), starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. And one can only wonder at the absence of women in the directing category, not naming Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”), Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”) and Maria Schrader (“She Said”).

No mention of Tom Cruise in the Best Actor category despite Top Gun: Maverick making Best Picture? That’s probably because the actor, known for his outspokenness, returned his statuettes at the time of the scandal.

The Golden Globes in numbers

• The nominees were selected by 199 journalists and industry experts. These people come from 62 countries and 52% are women and 51.8% belong to racial or ethnic minorities
• “The Banshees of Inisherin” leads the nominations with eight citations. It follows “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once,” which got six
• This year statuettes will be awarded in 27 categories
• The 80th Golden Globes ceremony lasts three hours

01/06/2023Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Cyber ​​​​Threat

Cloud service provider Rackspace confirmed on Thursday that the ransomware gang known as Game was responsible for the breach last month.

The security incident, which occurred on December 2, 2022, used a previously unknown vulnerability to gain initial access to the Rackspace Hosted Exchange email environment.

“This zero-day exploit is associated with CVE-2022-41080,” the Texas-based company said. “Microsoft has disclosed CVE-2022-41080 as a privilege escalation vulnerability and has not provided any indication that it is part of an exploitable remote code execution chain.”

Rackspace’s forensic investigation revealed that the attacker accessed the Personal Storage Table (.PST) of 27 customers out of nearly 30,000 customers in the Hosted Exchange email environment.

However, the company said there was no evidence the attacker viewed, misused or distributed the customer’s emails or data from those personal storage folders. It also intends to retire its Hosted Exchange platform as part of a planned migration to Microsoft 365.

It is currently unknown if Rackspace paid any ransom to the cybercriminals, but the disclosure follows a report by CrowdStrike last month that sheds light on a new technique called OWASSRF employed by the Play ransomware actors will.

The mechanism targets Exchange servers that are not patched against the ProxyNotShell vulnerabilities (CVE-2022-41040 and CVE-2022-41082) but have URL rewrite mitigations for the autodiscover endpoint.

This is an exploit chain that includes CVE-2022-41080 and CVE-2022-41082 to achieve remote code execution in a way that bypasses Outlook Web Access (OWA) blocking rules. The bugs were fixed by Microsoft in November 2022.

The Windows maker, in a statement shared with The Hacker News, urged customers to prioritize installing its November 2022 Exchange Server updates, noting that the reported method targets vulnerable systems that have not applied the latest fixes .

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CNN —

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma will no longer control Ant Group after the fintech giant’s shareholders agreed to transform its shareholder structure, the company said in a statement on Saturday.

After the adjustment, Ma’s voting rights will drop to 6.2%, according to the announcement and CNN calculations.

Before the restructuring, Ma held 50.52% voting rights in Ant through Hangzhou Yunbo and two other companies, according to the IPO prospectus filed with the stock exchanges in 2020.

Ant added in the statement that the voting rights adjustment, a move to make the company’s shareholder structure “more transparent and diversified,” will not result in any change in shareholders’ economic interests.

Ant said its 10 major shareholders, including Ma, had agreed to no longer act collectively in exercising their voting rights and would only vote independently, and thus no shareholder would have “sole or joint control of the Ant Group.”

The voting rights overhaul came after Chinese regulators halted Ant’s $37 billion IPO in November 2020 and ordered the company to restructure its business.

As part of the company’s restructuring, Ant’s consumer finance unit requested a registered capital increase from $1.2 billion to $2.7 billion. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission recently approved the application, according to a government notice issued late last week.

After the fundraiser, Ant will control half of its main consumer finance entity, while an entity controlled by the Hangzhou Municipality will own a 10% stake. Alibaba and Ant have been headquartered in Hangzhou since their establishment.

Ant Group is a fintech subsidiary of Alibaba, both founded by Ma.