Historic wildfires have swept across the greater LA area in southern California. So far, the massive fires have collectively burned more than 15,000 acres and forced the evacuations of over 100,000 residents.
Fueled by high winds and months of drought, the Pacific Palisades firenear the beach communities of Santa Monica and southern Malibu has already burned over 1,000 structures. The inland Eaton firenear Pasadena has also burned hundreds of structures.
On Wednesday night, an offshoot Sunset firesparked evacuations in the Hollywood Hills. Soon, news watchers lost track of the many fires in the inland empire and other southern California areas, including the Hurst, Lidia, Bridge, Turbine, and Viewline fires.
As well as threatening millions of California residents, the rapidly spreading blazes are threatening several crypto companies and prominent community members. Indeed, a number have already lost their homes and belongings, including precious hardware wallets.
Unbelievably, Polymarket is accepting and advertising crypto bets on the deadly outcome of the wildfires.
Crypto companies near the LA wildfires
Workers at the Santa Monica Bitcoin Officeare directly south of the raging Palisades and Sunset fires. Several Swan Bitcoinworkers who hosted the Pacific Bitcoin conference in Santa Monica are also immediately south of the blaze.
Blockchain service provider BlockDaemonis headquartered in Los Angeles, as is SuperVerse, another crypto game developer. Blockchain-based ID and tokenization company Spring Labs is headquartered in nearby Marina del Ray.
Some companies have been more fortunate. The Crypto.com Arenain downtown Los Angeles has, so far, been guarded from flames. The wildfires have also spared the DaBank and Junglacrypto entertainment venuesin Hawthorne and North Hollywood, respectively.
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Fire departments have reported massive challenges combating the blazes, including winds, overwhelmed workers and infrastructure, and fire hydrants running dry.
Many areas around the blazes are under evacuation orders and most real estate insurance companies anticipate record losses in the aftermath of the fires.