In a letter to the judge, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers say they are unable to adequately prepare for trial because Bankman-Fried doesn’t have enough internet access. Also the battery life on his laptop isn’t good enough. His lawyers are asking that he be released to prepare for trial.
Regulatory actions and concerns about money laundering were among the reasons for the contract termination, which was effective as of yesterday.
Binance was once Checkout.com’s largest client — with more than $2 billion in transactions in one month in 2021. Here’s an interesting tidbit about the relationship:
Shortly after the launch, Visa alerted Checkout.com to a flood of fraudulent transactions on Binance — approximately $10 million, according to two people familiar with the incident. (Checkout said this figure is “inflated and inaccurate.”) Binance’s refusal to deploy Checkout’s 3D-secure measures had left the platform vulnerable to credit card fraud, and a European organized crime syndicate had taken full advantage.
This Is Not Financial Advice and Easy Money attempt to explain the extremely online financial mania. Their very divergent takes show how difficult it is to fully understand.
On Monday, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment charging Bankman-Fried once again with violating campaign finance law.
In order to get the crypto boy wonder extradited from the Bahamas last year, US prosecutors revoked the charges that alleged Bankman Fried ran a straw donor scheme to defraud the Federal Election Commission.
Despite bringing back the overall charge of campaign finance misconduct, Monday’s indictment doesn’t mention straw donors and narrows the scope of Bankman-Fried’s misconduct, accusing him of wrongfully donating more than $100 million to campaigns.
CoinDesk, the publication that set off the chain of events that led to Sam Bankman-Fried’s downfall, is cutting almost half its editorial staff to make itself more attractive to buyers. It’s a damn shame — those are fine journalists who deserve better than this unceremonious dumping.
The bankrupt exchange agreed to pay a fine of $24 million to settle the SEC’s charges that it operated as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.
The SEC also alleged that Bittrex attempted to get rid of “problematic” public statements that suggested the exchange sold securities:
For years, Bittrex worked with token issuers to ‘scrub’ their online statements of any indicia that they were investment contracts — all in an effort to evade the federal securities laws. They failed.
Bloomberg reports Ryan Salame, who donated $24 million to Republican campaigns, is negotiating a guilty plea on charges of violating campaign finance laws.
Coincidentally, prosecutors recently confirmed (PDF) they’re still charging FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried for an illegal campaign finance scheme (as well as other alleged fraud and money laundering). He is due back in court on Friday (PDF) after a New York Times article published details from the diary of Caroline Ellison, who has already pleaded guilty and is cooperating in the case against him.
