I love the way he winks at Dean WermerVanadium 50 said:Somehow this reminds me of "The issue is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female ...
Rather, selling such kind of wallet was a teeny bit fishy to start with...fluidistic said:Another closed source security mistake.
The SEC also alleged that from at least September 2019 until June 2022, Sigma Chain, a trading firm owned and controlled by Zhao, engaged in wash trading that artificially inflated the trading volume of crypto asset securities on the Binance.US Platform....
Binance's global trading platform, Binance.com dominates the crypto trading landscape, last year processing trades worth about $65 billion a day with up to 70% of the market.
The firm has processed at least $10 billion in payments for criminals and companies seeking to evade U.S. sanctions, Reuters has previously reported.
Reuters also reported on May 23 that Binance commingled its customers’ funds with its corporate revenues in Silvergate Bank account belonging to trading firm Merit Peak, in breach of U.S. financial rules that require client money to be kept separate.
“We allege that Coinbase, despite being subject to the securities laws, commingled and unlawfully offered exchange, broker-dealer, and clearinghouse functions,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “In other parts of our securities markets, these functions are separate. Coinbase’s alleged failures deprive investors of critical protections, including rulebooks that prevent fraud and manipulation, proper disclosure, safeguards against conflicts of interest, and routine inspection by the SEC. Further, as we allege, Coinbase never registered its staking-as-a-service program as required by the securities laws, again depriving investors of critical disclosure and other protections.”
...
The SEC’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that Coinbase and CGI violated certain registration provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and that Coinbase violated the securities offering registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933. The complaint seeks injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest, penalties, and other equitable relief.
I wonder if those who bought Binance's digital currency can redeem them for real $ and put them in real banks. Do investors even 'own' their digital currency?LONDON (Reuters) - Merit Peak, an offshore trading company controlled by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, received around $11 billion of client assets through a Seychelles-based firm set up to take customer deposits, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows.
The SEC filing, which on Tuesday asked a U.S. court to freeze Binance's U.S. assets, came a day after the SEC sued Binance, its billionaire CEO Zhao, and the operator of its U.S. affiliate exchange, for allegedly operating a "web of deception."
In its 13 charges, the SEC alleged that Binance and Zhao used Merit Peak and Sigma Chain, another trading firm controlled by Zhao, to commingle corporate funds with client assets and use the monies "as they please." This put customers' assets at risk while Binance sought to "maximize" its profits, the SEC wrote in its civil complaint on Monday.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-winklevoss-outlines-final-offer-032155738.htmlBillionaire Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the Gemini Trust Co. crypto platform, outlined what he termed a “best and final offer” for digital-asset lender Genesis Global Holdco’s bankruptcy restructuring.
As they say, nice work if you can get it.Astronuc said:but the billionaire keeps the money he payed himself?
https://apnews.com/article/cryptocurrency-celsius-mashinsky-arrest-4b4296d01e15d171e51ad5bd94c19c7aNEW YORK (AP) — The founder and former CEO of the failed cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network was freed on $40 million bail Thursday after pleading not guilty to federal fraud charges alleging that he schemed to defraud customers by misleading them about key aspects of the business.
Alexander Mashinsky, 57, of Manhattan, was charged with securities, commodities and wire fraud in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court. He was also charged with illegally manipulating the price of Celsius’s proprietary crypto token while secretly selling his own tokens at inflated prices.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/celsius-founder-alex-mashinsky-arrested-charged-with-fraud/Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius, has been arrested and charged with fraud, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.
Mashinsky was charged with seven criminal counts, including securities, commodities and wire fraud, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. He is also accused of misleading Celsius customers about the company's business, including how it would use their money, while depicting the lender as a bank when in fact it operated as a risky investment fund, according to the indictment.
My guess would be that wallet is already empty or will be "mysteriously" accessed and the money taken away years from now.A buzzy startup offering financial infrastructure to crypto companies has found itself bankrupt primarily because it can’t gain access to a physical crypto wallet with $38.9 million in it. The company also did not write down recovery phrases, locking itself out of the wallet forever in something it has called “The Wallet Event” to a bankruptcy judge.
Prime Trust pitches itself as a crypto fintech company designed to help other startups offer crypto retirement plans, know-your-customer interfaces, ensure liquidity, and a host of other services. It says it can help companies build crypto exchanges, payment platforms, and create stablecoins for its clients. The company has not had a good few months. In June, the state of Nevada filed to seize control of the company because it was near insolvency. It was then ordered to cease all operations by a federal judge because it allegedly used customers’ money to cover withdrawal requests from other companies.
Absolutely mindblowing, totally impossible to believe. They ''lost'' the steel plates that has written on them the seedphrase (i.e. the private key to the 38 M dollars wallet)?nsaspook said:https://www.404media.co/crypto-star...osing-password-to-38-9-million-crypto-wallet/
My guess would be that wallet is already empty or will be "mysteriously" accessed and the money taken away years from now.
11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days in a Turkish prison, seems like a just punishment.Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder of the collapsed Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, his sister Serap Özer and his brother Güven Özer have been sentenced to 11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days in prison, according to local media. A judicial fine of 135 million liras ($5 million approx.) was also imposed.
Thodex was one of Turkey's largest crypto exchanges before it suddenly went offline in April 2021 and Özer went missing. Over 400,000 members were left in the dark without access to deposits of $2 billion in cryptocurrencies. Özer had fled to Albania but was arrested in August 2022 after an Interpol red notice against him.
But two years after El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as its currency, alongside the US dollar, "the goals that were pursued... have not been achieved, people hardly use it, they don't have much trust" in crypto, economist and former Reserve Bank governor Carlos Acevedo told AFP.
"The experiment has not worked, it is a crypto winter," he said.
There are no figures available on how many Salvadorans have taken up Bitcoin.
But a poll conducted in May by the Central American University found that 71 percent believed the cryptocurrency "has in no way helped to improve their family economic situation."
On the streets of San Salvador, the verdict is harsh.
"I don't see that money working, it's just propaganda. Where's the benefit? There's no benefit. It's a bad investment," newspaper vendor Juan Antonio Salgado, 65, told AFP.
"It's robbery," he added, in reference to the currency's volatility.
The co-founder of the fraudulent OneCoin cryptocurrency, a massive pyramid scheme that amassed more than $4 billion from millions of investors worldwide, was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison.
Karl Greenwood, 46, who orchestrated the multibillion-dollar multilevel marketing con, pleaded guilty in December to wire fraud and money laundering charges.
His partner, Ruja Ignatova, 43, known as the “Cryptoqueen” on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list, remains at large, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Greenwood “operated one of the largest fraud schemes ever perpetrated,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a press release.
Global cryptocurrency exchange CoinEX announced that someone hacked its hot wallets and stole large amounts of digital assets that were used to support the platform's operations.
The incident occurred on September 12 and preliminary results of the investigation show that the unauthorized transactions involved Ethereum ($ETH), Tron ($TRON), and Polygon ($MATIC) cryptocurrency.
Payable in crypto?nsaspook said:The FBI is offering a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to the arrest of Ruja Ignatova.
The suit goes on to allege that as early as 2019, Sam’s father directly participated in efforts to cover up a whistleblower complaint which threatened to “expose the FTX Group as a house of cards.” The filing also details emails written by Bankman in which he complained to the FTX US Head of Administration that his annual salary was $200,000, when he was “supposed to be getting $1M/yr.”
That grievance was ultimately elevated to his son in an email, according to the lawsuit: “Gee, Sam I don’t know what to say here. This is the first have heard of the 200K a year salary! Putting Barbara on this.”
The filing characterizes the correspondence as Bankman lobbying his son to “massively increase his own salary.” Within two weeks, the suit claims that Bankman-Fried had collectively gifted his parents $10 million in funds coming from Alameda, and within three months, the couple was deeded the $16.4 million property in The Bahamas.
Uh oh, looks like dad and kid may end up cellmates.nsaspook said:
Stanford University plans to return millions of dollars it received from bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and related entities, a university spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“We have been in discussions with attorneys for the FTX debtors to recover these gifts and we will be returning the funds in their entirety,” the spokesperson said.