Australian FTX creditors’ long wait | Metigy investors’ texts | A closer look at Airwallex

The Download’s take | When Bankman-Fried was interviewed for a profile in The Australian Financial Review Magazine last October, he was happy to criticise the “scammy” operators he said were giving the industry a bad name. The irony here is obvious, and yet plenty of cryptocurrency types are still using the same type of tactic to distance themselves from their peers. Closer to home this week we bring you fresh news on Metigy, the Australian AI marketing start-up that turned out to be a disaster for its investors, some of whom were worried more than a year before it collapsed.

What’s next | Sier will be watching SBF’s trial closely, just as she has done throughout FTX’s staggering collapse, to keep you informed about the implications from this totemic case for the broader crypto industry. A little over a year on since the FTX collapse, the sector has proven fairly resilient. One popular token, ether, is up more than a third over the last 12 months. Bitcoin is up 46 per cent. Metigy’s creditors, on the other hand, are watching public examinations in the Federal Court to see whether its liquidators will launch legal claims against anyone involved in the company.

Quick takes |

• Lucas Baird and Jonathan Shapiro took a close look at Airwallex, the enormously successful fintech that has huge employee turnover and faces accusations of manipulating Glassdoor results.
• Eucalyptus, the telehealth start-up best known for selling the weight loss drug Ozempic, has had about a dozen staff leave under the banner of “underperformance” over the last couple of months.
• The AI “Nora Ephron problem” – named by striking Hollywood screenwriters afraid they’d have to compete with a virtual version of the late giant of their profession – is coming for more industries.
• The Australian Financial Review Cryptocurrency Summit is coming up on October 16 in Sydney. Join crypto investors, policymakers, regulators and tech innovators from Australia and abroad to probe the dynamic outlook for the industry. Tickets are available here.

Making news

Hong Kong crypto fraud linked to Sydney unit JPEX, the Hong Kong cryptocurrency exchange that collapsed owing more than $300 million, was registered to an apartment building in Sydney’s north.

The CBA-backed start-up that wants to pay your home deposit OwnHome plans to lend customers their deposit, but charges high interest rates and does not yet work with the major banks.

How Facebook allegedly ripped off this beloved author’s books for AI When John Marsden found out his books might be being used to train AI models, his first concern wasn’t about getting paid.

CurveBeam AI losses double its forecast after PwC auditors’ intervention Medical imaging company CurveBeam AI recorded a full-year statutory loss of $51.23 million – more than double the $25.46 million loss forecast in its prospectus.

Amazon sued in US in landmark antitrust case The federal lawsuit accuses the e-commerce giant of monopolising online marketplace services by degrading quality for shoppers and overcharging sellers.

Tech talk

It needs a board. It needs to get liquid and has too much risk

— Jonathan Rosham, Cygnet Capital

Public examinations have heard that Jonathan Rosham, a co-founder of Melbourne investment group Cygnet Capital, had put $750,000 of his own money into Metigy by 2019. Just two years later he was expressing concerns to his business partner, Darien Jagger, via text. These are the kind of internal investor messages you usually just don’t see.

Done deals

• Tikpay, which is trying to build an Opal or Oyster card-style transport ticketing system that can be rolled out much more easily, has banked $1.6 million.
• A six-year-old start-up, Infravision, has raised $US23 million ($36 million) to use drones string up high voltage power lines.
• Global fund Prosus Ventures has led a $15.25 million raise for Neara, a Sydney start-up that helps simulate the consequences of natural disasters on critical infrastructure.
• Eucalyptus raised about $8 million more than was previously known from a consortium of investors linked to Blackbird at a reported $560 million valuation.

Keep track of Aussie tech deals as soon as we hear about them in our Funded blog. Heard of a deal before we have? Email psmith@afr.com so we can tell the world.

Buy this (or not)

Our Digital Life columnist John Davidson gives you the lowdown on the latest gadgets.

What is it: The GoPro HERO12 (yes, with the block caps), a waterproof, high definition action camera from the company that more or less invented the category.

The verdict: Buy. You need to love looking at yourself, but Davidson thinks it’s fundamentally a fun device. Here’s why.

Back channel

Tickets for SXSW Sydney, the tech, music and culture festival that started in Austin, Texas, and has been drop-shipped into Sydney from October 15, are on sale. That’s a chance to see Chance the Rapper, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, TV host Osher Gunsberg and Tesla chair Robyn Denholm in the flesh, plus a host of other speakers and musical acts. But for a festival that presents at least a smidge of a countercultural vibe, has called for volunteers and got a government subsidy, and is looking toward the currently cash-strapped start-up set, tickets are rather expensive. A regular badge starts at $1295 and goes up to $1895 for the platinum version. In fairness, expo day passes are as cheap as $40.