Flora Growth secures $401 million in funding, with FTX launching its third round of repayments.

Headline

▌Flora Growth secured $401 million in funding, including $366 million in 0G tokens and $35 million in cash

Flora Growth secured $401 million in funding, including $366 million in 0G tokens valued at $3 each and $35 million in cash, and received a $22.9 million strategic investment from DeFi Development to launch its Zero Gravity AI token treasury strategy and rebrand as ZeroStack.

▌FTX to initiate third round of creditor repayments, totaling $1.6 billion

The bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX will initiate its third round of creditor fund distributions starting September 30, with a planned total repayment of approximately $1.6 billion. This round of repayments will be made to both "convenient" and "non-convenient" creditors. Convenient creditors primarily comprise individual and small creditors, who account for 99% of all creditors. According to FTX's previous two distribution plans, retail users were expected to receive approximately 120% of their account balances at the time of bankruptcy in fiat currency. However, some users expressed dissatisfaction, pointing out that the cryptocurrency market has rebounded significantly, and the cash payments are far below the value of their original assets. To date, unsecured creditors have received 85% of their payments, and the FTX bankruptcy plan anticipates that these creditors will ultimately receive full repayment. The bankruptcy plan is based on over $15 billion in recovered assets, including cash, proceeds from the sale of Anchorage, Robinhood shares, and cryptocurrencies such as SOL. Eligible creditors are expected to receive their payments within 1-3 business days starting September 30th through partner service providers such as BitGo, Kraken, or Payoneer. FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 due to a liquidity crisis, and subsequently revealed that a large amount of user funds had been misused and mismanaged.

Market

As of press time, according to Coingecko data:

BTC price is $115,989, up or down -1.4% in the past 24 hours;

ETH price is $4,483.72, up or down -3.0% in the past 24 hours;

BNB price is $985.71, up or down -0.0% in the past 24 hours;

-3.3%;

DOGE price is 0.2667 U.S. dollars, with a 24-hour increase or decrease of -5.5%;

XRP price is 3.0 U.S. dollars, with a 24-hour increase or decrease of -3.0%;

TRX price is 0.3401 U.S. dollars, with a 24-hour increase or decrease of -2.3%;

The price of WLFI is $0.2194, with a 24-hour change of -0.53%. US Judge Dismisses Trump's $15 Billion Lawsuit Against The New York Times. Court documents dated September 19th revealed that a US judge dismissed US President Trump's $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, allowing him to amend the complaint. The judge ruled that Trump's complaint violated federal rules requiring a concise statement to prove the plaintiff's claim for damages. The judge stated, "A complaint is not an open forum for verbal abuse, nor a protected platform for attacking opponents." On September 15th, local time, Trump posted on his social media account, "Real Social," announcing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. A temporary spending bill aimed at averting a US government shutdown failed to pass the US Senate. Platform X accuses a crypto fraud ring of bribing its employees to restore accounts. Social platform X recently publicly accused a group previously involved in crypto fraud of attempting to bribe its employees through intermediaries to restore frozen accounts. X claims to have uncovered this "bribery network" and that the individuals involved are linked to an international criminal organization known as "The Com." Legal proceedings are ongoing, and X pledges to fully cooperate with law enforcement. It is reported that the group operates across multiple platforms simultaneously. The FBI issued a warning against "The Com" in July, alleging that multiple minors were involved in transnational cybercrime.

Robinhood CEO to Meet with Federal Reserve and US Treasury Secretary Bessant Next Month

The Federal Reserve will meet with Blackstone, Robinhood CEO, and US Treasury Secretary Bessant next month to discuss challenges affecting community banks.

Blockchain Applications

▌XAI: Introducing Grok 4 Fast

XAI announced the release of Grok 4 Fast, a multimodal reasoning model with 2M context windows. All users, including free users, will have unlimited access to our latest model. Bloomberg Analyst: New Crypto ETFs, Including GDLC, Show Strong First-Day Trading Performance, Exceeding Market Averages. Data released by Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas shows that several newly approved cryptocurrency ETFs saw strong first-day trading. Among them: $GDLC, the first five-asset spot cryptocurrency basket ETF, saw $22 million in trading volume; $DOJE, the Dogecoin ETF, saw $12 million in trading volume; and $XRPR, the Ripple ETF, saw $15 million in trading volume. Analysts stated that while the first-day trading volumes of these three products fell far short of the previous record-breaking Bitcoin ETF, they still significantly exceeded the average for US ETF debuts, demonstrating a solid start overall. This performance reflects continued market demand for diversified crypto asset ETFs, which issuers are expected to leverage to further expand their product offerings. Tether issued an additional 1 billion USDT three hours ago. According to WhaleAlert, Tether issued an additional 1 billion USDT on the Ethereum network three hours ago. Over the past eight days, a total of 5 billion USDT has been issued. A whale/institution that has profited $76.05 million from ETH trading has purchased another 16,569 ETH today. According to on-chain analyst Ember, a whale/institution that has profited $76.05 million from ETH trading bought 18,000 ETH at an average price of $4,487 the day before yesterday, sold 10,000 ETH at $4,600 yesterday, and bought another 16,569 ETH ($74.29 million) at an average price of $4,484 early this morning. Swing trading ETH yielded another $1.13 million in profits, bringing the total profit to $76.05 million. Bitmine received 15,427 ETH from Galaxy Digital in the past eight hours. According to Arkham monitoring, Bitmine received 15,427 ETH (approximately $68.96 million) from Galaxy Digital in the past eight hours. A whale purchased 134,628 SOL worth $32.4 million in the past six hours. According to Ember monitoring, a whale likely purchased 134,628 SOL worth $32.4 million in the past six hours. After transferring 32.4 million USDC to Binance, he withdrew 134,628 SOL on-chain from Binance.

Important Economic Developments

▌Federal Reserve Bank's Mary Daly: The slowdown in the job market is partly related to the outlook for the US economy.

Federal Reserve Bank's Mary Daly: The slowdown in the job market is partly related to the outlook for the US economy. It is difficult to know to what extent the slowdown in employment is caused by artificial intelligence. The job market has weakened significantly over the past year. The Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates in an attempt to support the labor market.

Spot silver rose above $43 per ounce for the first time since September 2011.

Spot silver rose above $43 per ounce for the first time since September 2011, and has risen nearly 49% so far this year.

IMF: Once it becomes clearer that inflation is heading towards the 3% target, monetary easing should continue

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that once it becomes clearer that inflation is heading towards the 3% target, monetary easing should continue.

Federal Reserve Board Governor Milan: believes interest rate cuts will continue in the coming months

Federal Reserve Board Governor Milan said he believes interest rate cuts will continue in the coming months. (Golden Ten)

Golden Encyclopedia

▌Is SUI the future of decentralized networks? Sui was launched in May 2023 by Mysten Labs, founded by former Meta engineers who worked on Facebook's Diem project (formerly Libra). Sui aims to provide a decentralized solution capable of processing large volumes of transactions with minimal latency. One of Sui's standout features is its parallel transaction processing. While other networks like Solana and Avalanche use similar technology, Sui stands out by reducing the complexity of coordination between validators. This streamlined approach makes the network more efficient and scalable, maintaining high throughput even under heavy traffic without the bottlenecks that typically plague other blockchains. As part of this, Sui introduces an object-centric model. This not only allows for more granular transaction processing; it also allows digital assets to evolve and change over time, rather than remaining static. This makes the platform well-suited for applications involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs), GamingFi, and decentralized finance (DeFi), where assets frequently require updates or modifications. In contrast, blockchains like Solana and Avalanche are optimized for speed but lack this flexibility when handling dynamic data. From DeFi to gaming and supply chain management, Sui's architecture enables fast and efficient transactions, making it an attractive platform for developers looking to build on cutting-edge blockchains.