Christmas has come early for the bank’s shareholders with the decision to slightly increase the 2024 dividend – despite a single-digit decline in the net profit and cash earnings.
Beating the market benchmark is never easy, with 72 per cent of Australian actively managed global equity general funds trailing the S&P World Index in the six months to June 30, 2024. Domestic equity funds performed slightly better, albeit against a significantly lower bar set by the S&P/ASX 200 Index.
Voyager Digital is the latest domino to fall in the cryptocurrency market
Crypto markets were dealt another blow following the demise of crypto broker Voyager Digital. The company has filed for bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest domino to fall in the beleaguered digital-asset market.
Voyager Digital is a cryptocurrency lender whose services boomed during the pandemic as it attracted depositors with high interest rates and easy access to loans. It also offers broking services that find the best price for cryptocurrencies, either on the buy or sell side, as well as borrowing digital currencies in exchange for yields of up to 12%, and then lending them out. In a turn for the worse, the recent crypto crash and downfall of two major tokens has spread to crypto lenders.
As a result, Voyager Digital had suspended all withdrawals and trading last week. But it was a little too late, and the spreading contagion in the crypto markets forced it into a Chapter 11 filing, the US legal status that protects a business from creditors while it explores strategic alternatives.
It’s the second casualty of its type, with the Celsius platform having frozen withdrawals in June. The firm hired advisers on a possible bankruptcy filing. Voyager froze withdrawals as well as Singapore’s Vauld. Leading up to the recent announcement, Voyager had issued a notice of default to Singapore-based crypto hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital (3AC), for failing to make repayments on a crypto loan totalling over US$650 million ($956 million). This was followed by a Chapter 15 bankruptcy filing. 3AC is now being liquidated.
The cryptocurrency market has been in all sorts of trouble since its late-2021 crash, where it fell from a US$3 trillion market cap to less than US$1 trillion ($1.5 trillion). With Voyager’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, it is estimated that the company has more than 100,000 creditors and somewhere between US$1 billion-US$10 billion ($1.5 billion-$15 billion) in assets, and liabilities worth the same value.
In an insights article, Monochrome Capital said, “Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how the fall-out from the Terra-LUNA collapse and 3AC will continue to plague the cryptocurrency market. Elsewhere, embattled cryptocurrency custody platform BlockFi has received a $250 million offer from Morgan Creek Digital to purchase a majority stake in it, and an offer from Bankman-Fried’s FTX for a revolving credit facility worth $250 million in light of its financial distress. Since Alameda Research sold large quantities of Lido-staked Ethereum (stETH) and bought Ethereum, they had a sizable involvement in de-pegging stETH and subsequently destabilising many crypto-institutions.”
