Crypto
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Yuga Labs, Moonpay faces lawsuit over celebrities NFT promotion
Yuga Labs, creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and crypto fintech Moonpay are facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly using celebrities to misleadingly promote and sell nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Over 40 people and companies are named as defendants in the lawsuit, including Paris Hilton, Snoop Dog, Jimmy Fallon, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Serena Williams, Post Malone, and Diplo. The class-action was filed on Dec. 8 by John T. Jasnoch of Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP in the Central District of California and claims the crypto companies used its Hollywood network to promote the digital assets without complying with disclosure requirements. The document states: “This case epitomizes these concerns as it involves a vast scheme between a blockchain start-up company, Yuga Lab...
US regulator seeks feedback on DeFi’s impact on financial crime: Finance Redefined
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. The United States regulators want to take a closer look at money laundering and terror financing laws by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), as it asked banking sector players for feedback on DeFi’s crime risks. Ethereum developers are targeting the last week of March for Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork and some additional improvement upgrades by June of next year. Ankr protocol has deployed $15 million to buy back the bad debt resulting from its recent exploit and the resultant circulation of HAY (HAY). Chainlink deploys staking to increase the security of oracle services. Stakers will earn Chainlink...
A year after Taproot, Bitcoin community works to unlock its DeFi potential
Taproot support across the industry is still crawling one year after the Bitcoin soft fork, indicating a strong potential for innovation and broader adoption of Web3 solutions to be unlocked through the world’s largest cryptocurrency, sources told Cointelegraph. “Since early on, Satoshi predicted that layers being built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain would enable Bitcoin to move beyond being only sound money by adding programmability, which makes Bitcoin the optimal framework to build out Web3 capabilities,” noted Alex Miller, CEO of the Web3 developer platform Hiro. The Taproot upgrade took place in November 2021 and laid the foundation for accelerating decentralized financial services through the Bitcoin (BTC) network. It enables more efficient validation o...
Bahamian attorneys pursue access to FTX data of international customers
Authorities across the globe are fighting against time to bring justice to the millions of people impacted by the financial frauds committed by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. As part of the ongoing investigations, attorneys representing the Securities Commission of the Bahamas seek access to FTX’s database with international customer information. The Bahamian attorneys filed an emergency motion with a Delaware bankruptcy judge requesting access to FTX’s customer database to aid their ongoing investigations. The motion highlighted previous failed attempts to access the defunct crypto exchange’s database. As a result, the lawyers claimed that FTX employees and counsel prevented authorities from getting critical financial information. The database in question is reportedly stored on Amazon Web Se...
US DOJ reportedly investigating FTX CEO for siphoning funds out of the US
While many crypto fraudsters were able to slip through the cracks in the past, the same does not hold for FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). Running parallel to the ongoing scrutiny related to FTX frauds, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly investigating a potential fraud that involves SBF siphoning funds offshore just days before FTX filed for bankruptcy. According to a Bloomberg report, the federal investigation aims to examine SBF’s involvement in improperly transferring FTX funds to the Bahamas as the defunct crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11. The anonymous informant further revealed that DOJ officials met with FTX’s court-appointed overseers to discuss the scope of the information they need for further investigation. DOJ also plans to investigate wh...
Who’s expected to testify before Congressional hearings on FTX?
United States lawmakers have been pushing for certain witnesses — including Sam Bankman-Fried — to appear before committee hearings scheduled in December. Who should the crypto space expect to see testifying on the events leading to the downfall of FTX? On Dec. 9, Bankman-Fried, or SBF, said — under threat of a potential subpoena — that he was willing to speak at a U.S. House hearing aimed at exploring FTX’s collapse. Leadership with both the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee had suggested that they might subpoena the former FTX CEO, prompting SBF to say on Twitter he was “willing to testify” on Dec. 13. At the time of publication, SBF’s name did not appear as a witness in the House committee’s ‘Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part I’ hearing — suggesting m...
Ethereum and Litecoin make a move while Bitcoin price searches for firmer footing
Crypto price action has been rough over the past few months, but a few green shoots are finally beginning to emerge. While Bitcoin (BTC) remains in a downtrend, its price has recently found support at the $17,000 level, and ping-pong price action in the $16,700–$17,300 range appears to be allowing traders to pursue some interesting setups in a few altcoins. Let’s take a quick peek at some enticing patterns showing up on the weekly time frame. Time for Litecoin’s halving hopium? LTC/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView As a fork of Bitcoin, Litecoin (LTC) tends to turn bullish several months before its reward halving takes place, as was the case in 2015 and 2019. Litecoin’s next reward halving is 237 days away, and it appears that the altcoin is undergoing a little pre-halving hype. Since ...
Data shows the Bitcoin mining bear market has a ways to go
Bitcoin (BTC) mining is the backbone of the BTC ecosystem and miners’ returns also provide insight into BTC’s price movements and the health of the wider crypto sector. It is well-documented that Bitcoin miners are struggling in the current bear market. Blockstream, a leading Bitcoin miner recently raised funds at a 70% discount. Current mining activity shares similarities to historic BTC bear markets with a few caveats. Let’s explore what this means for the current Bitcoin cycle. Analysis shows that based on previous cycles the bear market may continue Bitcoin mining profitability can be measured by taking the miner’s revenue per kilowatt hour (kWh). According to Jaran Mellerud, a Bitcoin analyst for Hashrate Index, a BTC mining bear market has a sustained period of revenue per kWh of les...
Lessons we learned from the Terraform-FTX implosions
In May 2022, Terraform Labs’ LUNA cryptocurrency and TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin collapsed, triggering a massive shock in the crypto industry. Six months later, the bruised industry took another hammering as one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX, filed for bankruptcy protection and billions of dollars of user assets went missing. The FTX empire, once valued at more than $30 billion, fell to zero in fewer than 10 days. FTX reportedly has more than 1 million creditors, most of whom are retail investors who were convinced that FTX would not collapse and had been keeping their assets on the exchange. Taking a look at Mt. Gox in 2014 — whose creditors still failed to reclaim compensation — FTX may be a repeat of that mistake. It can be said that FTX succeeded because of Alameda Researc...
Amber Group ditches expansion plans after denying insolvency: Report
Cryptocurrency trading firm Amber Group is putting its expansion plans on hold despite the FTX contagion having “no disruption” to its daily operations, according to a senior executive. Amber has scrapped plans to expand in Europe and the United States as a consequence of exposure to the now-defunct exchange FTX and will focus on institutional clients in Asia, according to managing partner Annabelle Huang. Huang also said that Amber has been forced to deprioritize its new metaverse project due the FTX contagion, the Financial Times reported on Dec. 9. Apart from ditching its expansion plans, the firm has reportedly been cutting its headcount recently. After reportedly laying off up to 40% of staff in September, the firm continued to lay off employees again in December. According to Huang, ...
CZ and SBF duke it out on Twitter over failed FTX/Binance deal
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, and former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF, have revealed new details about the failed agreement between the exchanges during FTX’s liquidity crisis in November. In a Dec. 9 Twitter thread, CZ referred to Bankman-Fried as a “fraudster,” saying Binance exited its position in FTX in July 2021 after becoming “increasingly uncomfortable with Alameda/SBF.” According to the Binance CEO, SBF was “unhinged” at the exchange pulling out — a claim that prompted an online response from the former FTX CEO. Bankman-Fried criticized CZ for his public admonition of FTX, adding details about the negotiations between the exchanges amid FTX’s reported “liquidity crunch” in November prior to the firm filing for bankruptcy. SBF said at the time that FTX had reached a ...
BTC price tests $17K on PPI as Bitcoin analysts eye CPI, FOMC catalysts
Bitcoin (BTC) fell on the Dec. 9 Wall Street open as United States economic data appeared to disappoint markets. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Attention turns to Bitcoin vs. CPI “big trigger” Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping to come closer to $17,000 after passing the level overnight. The pair reacted badly to U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) data, which despite being above expectations still beat the readout from the month prior. “Bit of an over reaction towards PPI, which has been dropping significantly from last month, but less than expected,” Michaël van de Poppe, founder and CEO of trading firm Eight, responded. Van de Poppe, like others, noted that the crux of macro cues would come next week in the for...
