Crypto

Bullish, a crypto exchange led by former New York Stock Exchange president Tom Farley, is just one of the companies that could potentially relaunch the fallen exchange, The WSJ reports.

We’ve got the goss on early wake-ups, lawyer fashion, courtroom sketches, and other pressing matters. Go ahead and leave a question here if you’ve got one... [Arnold voice] I’ll be back.

Kevin Dugan’s overview really sums it up: stripped of the affectations, we discovered there wasn’t much to Sam Bankman-Fried at all.

CEO Devin Finzer says OpenSea is “shifting to a smaller team with a direct connection to users.” Decrypt reports about 50 percent of employees are impacted. When it laid off 20 percent of its employees last year, around 230 people remained.

The jury only started deliberating a few hours ago, but after all of the testimony and evidence, they notified court officials they reached a verdict, as former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried faces seven charges, including wire fraud. We’ll have their decision here as soon as it is available.

The 12-person jury will decide whether Bankman-Fried is guilty of seven criminal charges, including two counts of wire fraud. If convicted, Bankman-Fried faces over 100 years in prison.

That’s what experienced litigator Mitchell Epner wrote about this incident during the cross-examination of Sam Bankman-Fried. Elizabeth Lopatto’s summary of SBF’s final day of testimony captures it as part of being “vivisected” on the stand.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are done calling witnesses in the big FTX fraud case over the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse last year. The lawyers are likely preparing to make their closing arguments, and Elizabeth Lopatto will have more reports from the courtroom later today, following last night’s story on all the things SBF conveniently doesn’t remember.

One of the books, Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up, was given to Bankman-Fried on the witness stand yesterday (He did not recall anything he was quoted as saying, naturally). The author of the other, Michael Lewis, was sitting in the gallery.

In a document published Monday, the UK government outlines how it intends to regulate the digital asset industry, stating that it wants crypto companies and activities to fall under the same regulations as traditional financial services, like banks.

Said Sam Bankman-Fried, as reported by Inner City Press and the New York Times, on the stand testifying as he faces fraud charges over the collapse of his failed crypto exchange FTX.

However, unlike yesterday’s testimony, the jury members who will rule on the multiple fraud accusations he’s facing are present too. As Elizabeth Lopatto reports, what he’s said so far shows his defense is going to rely on an argument that he was operating on the advice of his lawyers, and we have some guesses about how well that might work out.

Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs has been awarded over $1.5 million in damages, plus lawyer’s fees, for the trademark infringement lawsuit it won in April against Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, who had launched a copycat version of the NFT collection.

Remember when we told you how one guy lost the password to $220 million? Wired reports that hackers have finally figured out how to crack the encrypted IronKey thumbdrive where those Bitcoins are stored.

The mix in the courtroom for the Sam Bankman-Fried / FTX trial has been reporters, occasional members of the general public, curious lawyers, crypto influencers... and one very devoted degen. Fellow line-stander David Yaffe-Bellany profiles Taco, who politely refused to tell me his government name.

The platform is going to roll out “Collectible Expressions,” which let you slot in your Collectible Avatars into “a library of expressions created by Reddit” to use in post comments, starting October 26th. Here’s a GIF of what they look like, and I included a screenshot below. They still don’t make me want to get one of the avatars.

We are very close to the end of the prosecution’s case, and today was pretty uneventful. I will be writing a wrap of some of the financial testimony shortly, but if you can’t wait, the talented reporters at CoinDesk have been doing all-hands-on-deck coverage.

A year ago, the DOJ announced it recovered more than 50k Bitcoin stolen from the Silk Road market in 2012 and that James Zhong had pleaded guilty to the crime.

The majority of FBI agent Richard Busik’s testimony seemed geared toward establishing jurisdiction — he was explaining cell phone pings that occurred in New York City — so I left it out of my recap.

CoinDesk notes that Binance.US just updated its terms of service, saying users can only withdraw funds in the form of stablecoins or other crypto instead of US dollars. Oh, and that US dollar funds in Binance.US wallets are not protected by FDIC insurance.

Monday morning, the price of Bitcoin spiked 10 percent to $30,000 after a tweet from CoinTelegraph erroneously claimed the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a spot Bitcoin ETF for BlackRock. Crypto folks have been unsuccessfully trying to make this happen for years, to allow Bitcoin investment without using an exchange.

The FTX fraud trial continues, now with testimony from Singh, who’d owned 7.8 percent of the company and pleaded guilty to fraud charges in February.

There’s a Sunday evening filing from the defense team (PDF) in SBF’s fraud trial.

If you were just itching to buy a Ferrari with your crypto stash, that’s apparently possible now. Reuters reported this morning that the company now accepts bitcoin, ether, and USDC BitPay payments in the US and will allow Europeans to do so next year.

Questions from Sam Bankman-Fried’s own lawyers allowed jurors to hear snippets recorded from a November 2022 all-hands Days before SBF resigned and the company filed for bankruptcy, Caroline Ellison admitted to employees that Alameda took customer money from SBF’s other big business, the FTX crypto exchange.