Bitcoin.com to compensate victims of FTX, Blockfi, Celsius, Voyager
Bitcoin.com is launching a program to help victims of centralized crypto insolvencies as the consequences of the massive blowout at FTX have begun to unfold.
Called ‘The CEX Education Program’, the initiative also promotes the adoption of decentralized finance and self-custody. Without revealing further details, the scheme will be financed by dedicating five percent of the total supply of Verse, a rewards and utility token for the Bitcoin.com ecosystem.
In the days since FTX filed for bankruptcy, entities ranging from Blockfi, Celsius, Voyager to Genesis to Gemini have been hit by the fallout. Bitcoin.com says victims of these platforms and other failed centralized entities will be eligible to claim a reward from the CEX Education Program by signing up at getverse.com. In the future, the program will also assist victims and incentivize them to onboard to self-custodial products.
Bitcoin.com has already collected $33.6 million in a private sale of its community-facing token as it bids to scale its ecosystem dedicated to the cryptocurrency industry. The relatively big funding highlights how the blockchain and crypto publishers are growing in prominence. In Bitcoin.com’s case, the company claims that it has created nearly 30 million wallets alongside over five million monthly active users.
Two thirds of Verse tokens are reserved for the community in the form of a development fund and ecosystem incentives and rewards. The latter includes staking rewards, airdrops, yield for liquidity providers on the soon to be launched Verse DEX, and more.
“With slick UX, logos on sports stadiums, Matt Damon commercials, Tom Brady endorsements, and big ‘guaranteed’ returns, the lure of CeFi is strong. But as we’ve seen, lack of transparency in the centralized model, whether it be in crypto or tradfi, is an enabler for the gross mismanagement of customer funds and, in some cases, blatant fraud,” said Bitcoin.com CEO Dennis Jarvis.
“Centralized companies masquerade as ‘crypto,’ but in reality their business model relies on separating users from their coins, which is antithetical to the entire proposition of crypto. Bitcoin and decentralized finance are transformative precisely because they empower people to take custody of their assets while at the same time enforcing radical transparency in the underlying financial infrastructure. The CEX Education Program is an effort to provide the incentives needed to encourage the transition away from risky centralized exchanges to self-custody, where the real benefits of this technology lie,” he added.
As such, Bitcoin.com decided to tap into its customers’ loyalty with the launch of a mechanism to reward them for buying, selling, spending, swapping, investing, and staying informed about crypto. That mechanism is Verse, a cross-chain token built on the ERC-20 standard with a focus on expanding into low-fee, EVM-compatible chains.
Bitcoin.com is a crypto news and information site that provides a variety of related services, with an emphasis on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, including a media outlet, crypto casino and a mobile wallet for both of these cryptocurrencies.
