DeFI News by Thebittimes.Com

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried have met with lawyers and members of president Donald Trump’s administration Trump has already pardoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht who served 12 years in prison Early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver, who faces a 109-year prison sentence, has also asked Trump to help him The parents of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried are seeking to get their son a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried have reportedly met with lawyers and members of Trump’s administration. According to Bloomberg, the pair hopes to receive clemency for their son, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence. Bankman-Fried was sentenced last March after being found guilt of fraud. The platform filed for bankruptcy in 2022. Pardoning Ulbricht The move comes as Trump gave a presidential pardon to Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht in the first week of entering the White House. During his presidentia...

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer , David Mills, calls his client the worst witness ever and emphasizes the FTX founder made the case unwinnable .  In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Mills described the former FTX CEO’s trial as one of his most daunting cases yet. The case began with a personal request, as Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, Bankman-Fried’s parents and long-time acquaintances, sought his expertise. The parents believed in their son’s innocence and needed a capable defender in his corner. Mills, acknowledging the depth of their friendship, agreed to assist without any financial compensation. You might also like: Forbes publishes ‘Under 30 Wall of Shame’ with Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison and Martin Shkreli on list Bankman-Fried went off-script Throughout the trial, Mills witnessed Bankman-Fried’s approach in court, which often strayed from the planned defense strategy. Bankman-Fried’s responses under cross-examination, particularly wh...

Crypto exchange Coinbase has reportedly sent an email to select users, informing them of a subpoena it received from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) demanding user account information and transaction history. The email has sparked speculation that the CFTC is targeting Coinbase users that have interacted with Bybit — suggesting the commission may be preparing for legal action against the Dubai-based exchange. “We write to inform you that Coinbase has been served with a subpoena,” the email to select users read, “seeking information related to your account and account transaction activity.” However, the email stated that Coinbase may decide to counter the CFTC subpoena — and therefore user information will not yet be handed over. “No action is required from you,” the email continued, “but Coinbase may respond to the Subpoena unless served before November 30, 2023 with a motion to quash or other objection to the ...

From charges to testimony to strategy, here’s everything you need to know to follow the biggest fraud trial of the decade. This morning, Tuesday October 2, in downtown Manhattan, Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial for a litany of alleged financial crimes will begin.  Bankman-Fried stands accused of effectively stealing roughly $8 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency and other funds belonging to large and small speculators worldwide. His methods were a mix of complex related-party accounting, uncanny media magnetism, and simply giving money to his friends. If convicted, Bankman-Fried would be by many measures the biggest financial fraudster since Bernie Madoff. Here’s how Sam Bankman-Fried ’s alleged crimes, as well as some pretty wild stuff adjacent to the crimes , will be presented to a jury. Caroline Ellison’s diaries reveal Alameda chaos, imposter syndrome, toxic SBF Read more: SBF leaked diaries to harass Caroline Ellison and derail trial, lawsuit claims The courtr...

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao recently addressed various pertinent questions about the leading Bitcoin (BTC) trading venue and its future amid ongoing regulatory challenges. Zhao, known within the crypto sector as “CZ,” provided insight on the exchange’s current situation as well as BNB Chain’s momentum in a recent X (formerly Twitter) “Ask Me Anything” session. CZ debunks Binance rumors and FUD Zhao began by addressing the rumors surrounding Binance, emphasizing that negative news often spreads faster than the truth in the crypto world.  He acknowledged the presence of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) but highlighted that Binance is fundamentally different from the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.  According to Zhao, the key difference lies in Binance’s financial structure. He claims the world’s largest centralized crypto exchange operates without debt, ensuring its financial stability. When asked about the sluggish momentum of th...

FTX filed the complaint in the Delaware bankruptcy court naming co-founder Gary Wang, who was also the chief technology officer. Besides, the lawsuit also names Nisha Singh; the former director of engineering and Caroline Ellison, who was the co-chief executive of Alameda Research LLC. The lawsuit accuses all these people of fraudulent transactions personally benefitting them, and not the exchange. advertisement FTX accused the defendants of consistently misusing funds to finance luxury condominiums, political contributions, speculative investments, and other personal projects. Thus, it resulted in what the company described as “one of the largest financial frauds in history.” For instance, the complaint claims that Bankman-Fried and Wang took $546 million from Alameda in May 2022 to buy shares in Robinhood Markets Inc. They allegedly provided Alameda with fake loans, which didn’t need any collateral, and offered lower interest rates than usual. ...

It’s been a chaotic weekend for decentralized finance (DeFi) as two self-executing governance proposals wrought havoc on two well-known projects. The affected platforms are Aave, the sector’s premier lending and borrowing protocol, and Tornado Cash, a Crypto mixing tool favored by privacy advocates and hackers alike. on-chain-governance-causes- chaos -for-aave-and-tornado-cash Aave On Friday, an update to Aave V2 went into effect with the aim of adjusting interest rate calculations on certain assets across Ethereum, Avalanche and Polygon. However, the new code was incompatible with the Polygon deployment of the protocol due to the formatting of the ReserveInterestRateStrategy function, according to security firm BlockSec. .@AaveAave the latest upgrade of ReserveInterestRateStrategy in Aave V2 (Polygon) has caused a temporary halt of the protocol, impacting assets worth ~$110M! The root cause is the new ReserveInterestRateStrategy is only compatible with Ethereum, not compatib...

Welcome to the 118th Weekend Shift! What’s the deal? Over the weekend, we’ll update this post with some of the most interesting articles, podcasts, charts, and opinion pieces we’re too busy to write about. OK, only Crypto ? Not necessarily. We do that Monday to Friday, so we try to explore new subjects on weekends. Feel free to join in and submit entries on Twitter. Any topic is fair game. JUST IN 8 mins ago The Context: Bitcoin footgun Latest from @BennettTomlin Subscribe and read: https://t.co/NUSLzzvTvw pic.twitter.com/O3LqKFCWSd — Protos (@Protos) May 12, 2023 Latest issue of the Context. JUST IN 7 mins ago We’re live tweeting today’s US House joint committee hearing. Starting in ~15 mins. Turn on notifications and stay tuned pic.twitter.com/9GDZUAnKu1 — Protos (@Protos) May 10, 2023 ICYMI. JUST IN 7 mins ago The COO of the NYSE just used the term 'rugged' in Congress — Protos (@Protos) May 10, 2023 Highlight. ...

Charges against Sam Bankman-Fried have been piling up lately. Just a day back, he was charged with bribing a Chinese official. In fact, as reported earlier today, the FTX founder now has a total of 13 criminal counts and faces more than a century behind bars if convicted. Bankman-Fried’s legal team has been upfront all this while. Right from submitting motions to bargaining bail condition deals, the defense has been checking the boxes one by one. Now, a recent report from Forbes unveiled that Bankman-Fried’s legal defense is allegedly being paid with the “multi-million dollar gift” he gave his father with money borrowed from FTX ’s sister company, Alameda Research. Two unnamed sources with operational knowledge of FTX and Alameda confirmed to Forbes that Bankman-Fried gave “a large monetary gift” to his father Joseph Bankman. The transaction was made in 2021, when Bankman-Fried was the CEO of FTX. Sam Bankman-Fried ’s Legal Defense Is Being Funded With Alameda Money He G...

FTX has been consistently making it to the cryptocurrency news headlines. Just a day back, it was reported that the exchange’s debtors sent “confidential letters” to political figures, political action funds, and other recipients of donation contributions. Now, FTX wants all the funds back by Feb. 28, 2023. According to another development that has just unraveled, New York-based Signature Bank has been named in a lawsuit filed by investment firm Statistica Capital. The bank has been charged for playing a role in FTX ’s collapse by authorizing the exchange to merge customer accounts with its blockchain network. Signature Bank was accused in a lawsuit by an investment firm of facilitating the FTX collapse by allowing the now-defunct crypto exchange to commingle customer accounts with its blockchain network https://t.co/70n6ScZ7EH — Bloomberg (@business) February 7, 2023 Also Read: Goldman Sachs Denies Being FTX’s Creditor Accor...

The crypto-verse encountered the downfall of two major projects this year. While the community was just recovering from the infamous collapse of Terra, it was soon hit with the descent of the FTX empire. Manhattan prosecutors believe that there might be a connection between the two. Federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating to see if FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was involved in the collapse of TerraUSD and Luna. According to a recent report by New York Times, these prosecutors believe that SBF could have manipulated the price of the aforementioned assets. He would have done this in order to bring profits to the entities he owned. JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Federal prosecutors are investigating Sam Bankman-Fried & Alameda Research for market manipulation that led to the collapse of $LUNA and $UST. — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) December 8, 2022 Back in May 2022, Terra’s stablecoin UST lost its $1 peg causing immense chaos in the market. The asset fai...

The collapse of the FTX empire is having an impact on the entire cryptocurrency industry. The meltdown of the exchange had a significant impact on users, executives, investors, and employees. The market experienced extreme volatility during this time. The largest cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin [BTC], even fell to the $15,000 range. The fall of the cryptocurrency giant was something that no one saw coming. FTX, which was facing liquidity crunches, has now filed for bankruptcy. SBF has also resigned as the CEO of the exchange. As per recent reports, the downfall of the exchange is receiving global attention. The Royal Bahamas Police addressed on Sunday that they are launching an investigation into FTX ’s fall. JUST IN: 🇧🇸 Royal Bahamas Police launch investigation into the collapse of FTX. — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) November 13, 2022 Royal Bahamas Police looking into any criminal misconduct As per the statement given by the ...