It’s been five months since the collapse of U.S. mega-exchange FTX, but the crypto world is still gripped by the bankruptcy process and charges against its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Last week, he entered a “not guilty” plea to new accusations that he paid a $40 million bribe to Chinese officials and that he conspired to violate campaign finance laws by making more than 300 illegal political donations.
Since his arrest in December, he has also pleaded not guilty to eight counts of fraud and conspiracy. The trial is set to start in October.
Speaking of fraud charges, Do Kwon (the man behind last year’s spectacular TerraUSD stablecoin crash) was charged on Friday by U.S. prosecutors with two counts each of securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud and conspiracy. He was arrested at an airport in Montenegro last month after several months as a fugitive. Want a reminder of what happened with TerraUSD? Check out Reuters’ coverage from last May here and here.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk asked a judge in the U.S. to throw out a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency meme “Dogecoin”. The lawsuit was filed by a Dogecoin investor last year, saying that Musk drove up Dogecoin’s price more than 36,000% over two years then let it crash. Musk’s lawyers argued in a filing on Friday that Musk’s tweets about the coin were “innocuous and often silly” and that there is nothing unlawful about tweeting in support of a legitimate cryptocurrency. They rejected claims that Dogecoin is a security.
Dogecoin took off during the retail trading frenzy and is now the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency, according to CoinGecko data. Its wild price swings are closely linked to what Musk says or does. It surged in February last year when he tweeted about it and again in October when he sealed his $44 billion Twitter takeover deal. On Monday, as much as $4 billion flowed into the token after Twitter’s logo was replaced with the image of a Shiba Uni dog which serves as the coin’s brand.
