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By Elizabeth Howcroft, Crypto Correspondent
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The fallout from last year’s crypto crashes continue to dominate the news agenda, with Sam Bankman-Friend and Do Kwon facing U.S. charges. Top cryptocurrency bitcoin is hovering around nine-month highs and options markets suggest traders are betting it’ll go up more. Here’s what you need to know:
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Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud charges over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, walks outside the Manhattan federal court in New York City, U.S. March 30, 2023. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
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Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty, again
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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.
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- Binance outflows: Investors pulled $1.6 billion from Binance in the couple of days after it was sued by the CFTC, including $852 million in a 24-hour period, according to Nansen data. That’s more than usual, but less than in December, when investors pulled $3 billion from the exchange over worries about Binance’s reserves, Nansen said.
- Ex-Binance exec lawyers up: Catherine Coley launched Binance.US in 2019 then left suddenly in 2021. Now, she’s hired a former federal prosecutor to represent her in the U.S. government’s investigations into Binance, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Coley hasn’t made any public comments since leaving the company.
- Digital yen: Japan is creating a government advisory panel and launching a pilot programme to explore the idea of a central bank digital currency. What is a CBDC? Check out the Reuters explainer. Important to note: there’s little to suggest a CBDC would be run on blockchain.
- China regulation: China will step up its regulation of the digital economy, the deputy governor of the country’s central bank said. He said that new forms of finance should not be blindly accepted and that digital currencies, including cryptocurrencies, can create problems rather than solve them.
- Coinbase insider trading: The SEC is getting closer to a settlement with a former Coinbase product manager accused of insider trading, according to a court filing. Read up on the case here.
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Demand for bitcoin derivatives – options and futures – has spiked in the past month, according to derivatives exchange Deribit. Most are betting on bitcoin prices going up.
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- Markets are increasingly feeling the pinch from the end of the easy-cash era. Check out these charts.
- With the cheapest mobile data rates in the world and the explosive growth of social media and personal entertainment, Indian consumers are spending money online at a breakneck pace. Here’s what it means for investors.
- The chief executive of JPMorgan says the current U.S. banking crisis is still ongoing and there will be repercussions from it “for years to come”. Full story here.
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Confused by all the crypto jargon? Can’t tell your bridging from your staking, or your DAOs from your Discord?
We’d like to add a jargon-busting feature to this newsletter, turning crypto gobbledygook into Reuters-level clarity. Send us the words or phrases you want explaining and we’ll feature them here in weeks to come. cryptowire@thomsonreuters.com” style=”text-decoration: underline; color: #404040;” rel=”noopener”>Email us here.
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