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Mariah Carey & More Celebs Targeted by Atlanta Gang, According to New Indictment
A prosecutor on Monday (Aug. 29) announced a sprawling indictment targeting members of what she said is a violent street gang that has been targeting the Atlanta area homes of famous athletes, entertainers and others who flaunt expensive possessions on social media. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Singer Mariah Carey, Marlo Hampton of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Atlanta United soccer player Brad Guzan and Atlanta Falcons football player Calvin Ridley all had their homes broken into, the indictment says. The 220-count indictment was filed Aug. 22 and charges 26 people, most of whom are accused of violating Georgia’s anti-gang and racketeering laws. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said the crimes alleged in the indictment ...
Sony Lawsuit Claims Triller Hasn’t Paid in Months But Is Still Using Its Music Catalog
Sony Music Entertainment is suing Triller for breach of contract, claiming the video-sharing social networking app has failed to make payments for months and after being served a termination notice has also failed to pull the company’s catalog of music from the platform. According to Sony’s lawsuit filed Monday (Aug. 29) in New York, Triller has “historically failed to make payments in a timely manner” but those “failures” escalated in March 2022 when the company “failed to make any monthly payments required under the Agreement, totaling millions of dollars.” Since then, Triller has allegedly continued to fail to pay its outstanding fees, despite Sony’s requests (“and near-total radio silence in response,” the suit states). On July 22, Sony notified Triller that it was in material breach o...
South Korean central bank eyes MiCA, says future regulations may allow ICOs again
The South Korean central bank has indicated that initial coin offerings (ICOs) will be allowed under the Digital Assets Framework Act, according to a local news report. That comprehensive legislation is expected to be introduced in 2023 and implemented the following year. The Bank of Korea (BOK) discussed ICOs in comments to a Korean translation of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) legislation released Monday. The BOK stated that the MiCA regulatory package protected users and investors without hindering innovation. “A balanced approach is needed to foster a sound market through the introduction of a crypto asset regulatory system to promote blockchain and crypto asset innovation while not hindering the development of related industries due to excessive regulation,...
Australian regulators rattle their saber as adoption takes a major leap: Law Decoded, Aug. 22–29
Australia’s financial regulator, the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), has pledged to put crypto assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) firmly in its sights over the next four years. The regulator intends to focus on “digitally enabled misconducts” and to protect investors “from harms posed by crypto-assets.” Given the ASIC’s history of anti-crypto sentiments, such an announcement could be perceived as hostile, but at least it contains a promise to implement some regulatory framework that is still absent. And it is hardly a coincidence that the announcement came only days after Australia’s new ruling government announced plans to move forward with regulation of the crypto sector by conducting a “token mapping” exercise by the end of the year. At the same time, Australia’...
Central African Republic court says new $60,000 citizenship-by-crypto-investment program is unconstitutional
According to Reuters, the Constitutional Court of the Central African Republic (CAR) said on Monday that the purchase of citizenship, e-residency and land using its government-backed Sango digital currency is unconstitutional because a nationality has no market value. Earlier in July, the CAR unveiled its Sango crypto hub to attract global crypto talent and enthusiasts, boost Bitcoin (BTC) adoption and implement new crypto regulatory frameworks. The Sango blockchain is built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, similar to a layer-2 solution. Part of the program includes a citizenship-by-investment program, where foreign nationals can effectively purchase citizenship in the CAR for $60,000 in crypto, with an equivalent amount of Sango tokens held as collateral and returned...
Lawyer Roche alleges statements he made about Ava Labs are false, the result of intoxication
Kyle Roche, the lawyer at the center of allegations made by website Cryptoleaks about a secret agreement between his firm and Ava Labs, responded Monday in a post on Medium. Like Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer, Roche denied the existence of any secret agreement between the parties. Roche claimed that the recordings that have been published on Cryptoleaks’ website were made at the behest of ICP Token creator Dominic Williams. Roche’s firm, Roche Freedman, brought a class action suit against Williams and his Dfinity Foundation last October. Roche said the recordings were heavily edited and he denied the truth of the statements he made in them. According to Roche: “Statements in the video […] are false, and were obtained through deceptive means, including a deliberate scheme to intoxicate, and t...
Why DeFi, GameFi and SocialFi are horizontals in the Metaverse
The future of value creation and exchange will know no national boundaries and jurisdictions. They will all be ecosystem specific. Therefore, all use cases need to be ecosystem-specific. The future for DeFi, GameFi and SocialFi may be embedded. But, this embedding can only be implemented in a well-oiled ecosystem. The Metaverse that brings these user functions together will not only have experiential elements but also utilitarian and gamification elements. For instance, a metaverse in which DeFi can be applicable will need to have opportunities for microtransactions. A metaverse in which SocialFi can be embedded will need to have an ecosystem that has creators and consumers contributing, being compensated and acknowledged for these contributions. Let us now look at what we could see as emb...
CME Group launches euro-denominated Bitcoin and Ether futures
Derivatives marketplace Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group has launched trading for Bitcoin euro and Ether euro futures contracts. In a Monday announcement, CME Group said that it launched contracts for euro-denominated Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) futures sized at 5 BTC and 50 ETH per contract. Both contracts will be listed on CME, cash-settled and based on the CME CF Bitcoin-Euro Reference Rate and CME CF Ether-Euro Reference Rate, respectively. “Our new Bitcoin Euro and Ether Euro futures will provide institutional clients, both within and outside the U.S., with more precise and regulated tools to trade and hedge exposure to the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap,” said CME Group global head of equity and FX products Tim McCourt. First announced on Aug. 4, the euro-denomin...
Sam Bankman-Fried denies report FTX plans to purchase stake in Huobi
Global crypto exchange FTX will not be acquiring a majority stake in Huobi, according to CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF. In a Monday tweet, SBF explicitly denied a Bloomberg report that claimed FTX was planning to purchase crypto exchange Huobi. Cointelegraph reported on Aug. 12 that Huobi co-founder Leon Li was considering selling his majority stake, valued at more than $1 billion, in the company. “We are not planning to acquire Huobi,” said SBF. Just to be explicit because apparently a lot of people are saying this: No, we are not planning to acquire Huobi. — SBF (@SBF_FTX) August 29, 2022 Under SBF’s leadership, both FTX and Alameda Research have stepped in a few times amid the bear market to bail out crypto firms facing liquidity issues. In a June NPR interview, Bankman-Fried...
NFTs Gaming CEO apologizes for losing 12% of startup capital through crypto trading
According to a recent blog post, 0xfanfaron, CEO of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) gaming project Ragnarok, apologized publicly for his missteps in leading the company. Ragnarok is a crypto startup that brought in $15.5 million worth of Ether (ETH) for gaming development in April through its first-ever NFT sale. However, 0xfanfaron disclosed: “We exchanged the ETH from the mint for 15.5 million in USD Coin. As it turns out, this was a good move in treasury management. But when ETH’s price went down, I made mistakes by buying ETH multiple times when I thought it was an advantageous investment for the project.” 0xfanfaron further elaborated that he sold the firm’s Ether positions through a series of trades with the plan to reinvest at a “better time.” The ventu...
Cleopatra Records Founder on How to Make It as an Indie Label for 30 Years
Goth, industrial, punk and space-rock fans were the first to discover Los Angeles’ Cleopatra Records in the 1990s. The independent upstart — formed in 1992 by Brian Perera — initially rode the second wave of goth music right into the bins of indie record stores and chains. During that decade, it presciently created electronic music label Hypnotic Records (in 1996) and hair metal imprint Deadline Music (1998) ahead of the EDM explosion and the hard rock revival. Perera noticed the electronic body music movement in Europe expanding into trance and big beat and licensed earlier releases by U.K. stars like Juno Reactor and The Future Sound of London. The business strategy of signing ’80s hard-rock groups for moderate advances with low expectations and then watching the genre revive worked out ...
NFL’s First Head Of Music On Halftime Show Planning & Why They Don’t Pay Performers
Even before the National Football League announced that Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem would perform during the Pepsi-sponsored halftime show at Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 13, Seth Dudowsky knew he had a crucial sound issue to solve. One of his many responsibilities as the point person for the production at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., which would be seen by 103.4 million television viewers (and rack up more than 121 million YouTube views), was keeping the set list under wraps. The problem, however, was the venue, which is next door to the NFL’s Los Angeles-area headquarters where he works and is anything but soundproof. “It’s technically an outdoor stadium with a roof,” Dudowsky says. “So sound blows out the [open] sides of the stadium.” Knowing that medi...
