Crypto

I was going to ask if companies like Prada really gain much by storing certificates of authenticity (a concept that far predates the blockchain!) on a distributed ledger system rather than some basic, un-sexy centralized database. Then I learned there’s a much funnier issue here: you can’t even check the database yourself!

Stake, an online cryptocurrency betting platform, allegedly lost about $40 million in unauthorized withdrawals from several of its hot wallets. Stake says that “user funds are safe,” which, you know. Hope so! It’d be terrible to lose your money to hackers before you had a chance to lose it by gambling with crypto.

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.

On Monday, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment charging Bankman-Fried once again with violating campaign finance law.

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.

Bloomberg reports Ryan Salame, who donated $24 million to Republican campaigns, is negotiating a guilty plea on charges of violating campaign finance laws.

According to a report from Semafor, US prosecutors believe charging Binance with fraud could result in mass withdrawals from the crypto exchange, which is something we saw with the collapse of FTX.

It’s removing the GameStop Wallet from the App Store and Chrome Web Store on November 1st, according to a notice posted on its NFT website. GameStop is blaming the “regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space.”

That’s the statement from Brian Armstrong to the Financial Times, about the company’s choices that led to a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company announced its fourth series of Collectible Avatars on Wednesday. Reddit is putting some limits on who can buy them for the first day of launch as part of an “initial access” period.

Worldcoin, the OpenAI CEO’s “privacy-preserving” cryptocurrency, is starting its global rollout today. The initiative claims to provide a “reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online” by scanning people’s retinas with an orb-shaped biometric verification device to create a unique user ID for the currency’s World App crypto wallet.

A lawsuit filed Thursday by FTX against its former leaders showed Sam Bankman-Fried’s younger brother messaging someone at the FTX Foundation charity about buying the Pacific island nation of Nauru, as reported by Bloomberg.

This Threads post about the NFT for Jack Dorsey’s first tweet isn’t quite right. There is a $3~ bid, but another one is nearly $2,000, and the owner, Sina Estavi, has claimed he might never sell anyway.

Remember the “Crocodile of Wall Street,” aka Razzlekhan, aka Heather Morgan? She and her husband were arrested in 2022 on charges of trying to launder billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 hack of Bitfinex. She’s also a rapper, among many other things.

Looks like CoinDesk found buyers:

If The New York Times were to report on the contents of my diary I would simply die from humiliation. Anyway, this trial is going to be a showstopper.

Does this inspire confidence?

The last crypto bank standing is Customers Bank Corp, a “super community” bank that would prefer we’d all stop calling it a crypto bank, please.

But this time by Ripple, not Elon Musk. (I now get a personal notification every time his vacations are interrupted.) Levine writes:

So today’s ruling — using the much-contested Howey test — may be appealed by both sides, says Ann Lipton.