Just days after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued it, the American arm of Binance, the giant cryptocurrency exchange, announced some painful news: It will no longer allow customers to trade on its platform using U.S. dollars. Banking partners of the exchange’s U.S. unit, Binance.US, had been spooked by the S.E.C.’s action, the company said, and […]
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Founders of Three Arrows, Failed Crypto Fund, Are Living Large
Mr. Zhu said he was tuning out the criticism. On Twitter, he responded to a negative article in The Wall Street Journal by quoting John F. Kennedy: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” “I’ve already created […]
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Binance Halts Trading in Dollars on Binance.US
The American branch of Binance, the giant cryptocurrency exchange, said late on Thursday that it would no longer allow customers to trade on its platform using U.S. dollars, after its banking partners cut the firm off in response to a crackdown by federal regulators. The move is a major blow to Binance.US, the American arm […]
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PGA Tour-LIV Golf Deal Bolsters Saudi Arabia’s Global Ambitions
Golf becomes a geopolitical trophy The shock news that the PGA Tour plans to join forces with LIV Golf, the upstart circuit that it has spent the past year feuding with, rattled the normally staid world of golf. But the ramifications extend far beyond putting greens and 9-irons. Saudi Arabia, LIV’s backer, now stands to […]
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Crypto Crackdown: Coinbase and Binance Lawsuits Shake Markets
In more blows to the cryptocurrency sector, two of its biggest players were sued this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission: On Monday, the agency filed charges against Binance, the world’s biggest exchange, and the next day it accused Coinbase, the only publicly listed exchange in the United States, of violating securities laws. The […]
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Crypto Firms Start Looking Abroad as U.S. Cracks Down
The wave of government enforcement against cryptocurrency companies is beginning to remake the industry. Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the United States, has opened a business in Bermuda. Gemini, a rival firm based in New York, is seeking a license in the United Arab Emirates. And Bittrex, an exchange in Seattle, has shut down […]
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SEC Sues Coinbase, Accuses Crypto Platform of Breaking Market Rules
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the United States, on Tuesday, claiming that the company broke securities law by not registering as a broker. The nation’s top securities regulators filed the lawsuit a day after it sued Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency trading exchange, for mishandling customer funds […]
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S.E.C. Accuses Binance of Mishandling Funds and Lying to Regulators
The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, of mishandling customer funds as well as lying to regulators and investors about its operations in a sweeping case filed in federal court on Monday. The Wall Street regulator said Binance had been mixing “billions of dollars” in customer funds and secretly […]
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Mountain of FTX Evidence: Emails, Chat Logs, Code and a Notebook
Snippets of computer code. More than six million pages of emails, Slack messages and other digital records. And a small black notebook, filled with handwritten observations. For months, federal prosecutors building the criminal case against the fallen cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried have assembled a vast and unusually varied array of evidence. The documents include crypto […]
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Sam Bankman-Fried, in First Detailed Defense, Seeks to Dismiss Charges
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has issued his first detailed legal defense since prosecutors accused him of fraud, seeking to dismiss several of the charges and claiming that the high-powered law firm representing FTX in its bankruptcy has been doing the government’s bidding. In court filings late Monday, lawyers for […]
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Binance Faces Mounting Pressure as U.S. Crypto Crackdown Intensifies
For years, the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance has had a reputation for dodging regulators and skirting financial rules, all without significant consequences. Now the world’s largest crypto exchange is facing mounting legal pressure. Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder and chief executive, has hired white-collar defense lawyers at the law firm Latham & Watkins to represent him […]
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The Calculus Behind Firing Tucker Carlson
Dropping anchors Fox News’s firing of Tucker Carlson, the most popular prime-time host in cable news, sent shockwaves through the media and political spheres yesterday. Few had thought that repercussions from Fox’s $788 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems would reach Mr. Carlson, who commanded a following of millions and has the ear of […]
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The Crypto Detectives Are Cleaning Up
Before a new breed of cryptocurrency detectives helped bring him down, Ryan Felton marketed his crypto scheme with a grandiose promise: He was creating “Netflix on the blockchain.” He called the crypto-themed streaming service FLiK. For a small amount of the popular digital currency Ether, customers could purchase a FLiK token, which would give them […]
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Why Ron DeSantis Is Taking Aim at the Federal Reserve
WASHINGTON — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is preparing to take a widely anticipated leap into a 2024 presidential campaign, appears to have discovered something that populists throughout history have found to be true: Bashing the Federal Reserve is good politics. Mr. DeSantis has begun to criticize Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, in […]
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Why Is DeSantis Against Central Bank Digital Currencies?
“Florida,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis in his November victory speech, “is where woke goes to die.” Indeed, DeSantis — who currently seems to be the only halfway viable rival to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — has sought to crack down on wokeness in all its forms, whether that means acknowledging the […]
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Twitter’s Logo Changes to Doge as Users Await Blue Check-Mark Removal
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter users anticipated a reckoning over the weekend as the verification check marks that denoted the accounts of celebrities, politicians and other notable figures and organizations were set to be removed en masse. That reckoning didn’t come. While Twitter took away the check mark from some accounts, including that of The New […]
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Has Bitcoin Benefited From the Banking Crisis? Not in the Way Its Fans Hoped.
Shortly after Silicon Valley Bank failed this month, the price of Bitcoin soared above $25,000, reaching a threshold the digital currency hadn’t touched since June. This week, Bitcoin reached nearly $30,000, up 70 percent for the year. Bitcoin proponents seized on the price rise to argue that the banking crisis was prompting investors to convert […]
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Sam Bankman-Fried Pleads Not Guilty to Additional Set of Charges
The disgraced cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried on Thursday pleaded not guilty to an array of criminal charges, including new accusations that he committed bank fraud and bribed a foreign official. Sporting a new haircut that trimmed his distinctive mop, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, was back in Federal District Court in Manhattan to be arraigned on an updated indictment […]
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Do Kwon, Crypto Fugitive, Led a Very Public Life While on the Run
A year ago, Mr. Kwon was one of the richest and most powerful figures in the crypto industry. After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in computer science, he started Terraform Labs, which issued two closely linked digital currencies: TerraUSD, a stablecoin with a price of $1, and Luna, a more traditional cryptocurrency with […]
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The Younger Brother Caught in the Middle of the FTX Investigation
The money flowed freely at a pandemic-prevention organization run by the younger brother of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul. Just over $375,000 financed a failed campaign in Colorado to increase taxes on cannabis sales in order to support pandemic research. Another $1 million was spent on consulting and advertising expenses in a single year. […]
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Crypto Fugitive Do Kwon Is Arrested in Montenegro, Authorities Say
The cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon — who designed a pair of digital currencies that failed spectacularly last year, triggering a market meltdown — was charged with fraud by federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday, hours after the authorities in Montenegro arrested him as he prepared to board a flight. Mr. Kwon, 31, and another […]
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Investors Try to Parse Powell and Yellen’s Next Moves on Banks
No clear path on helping banks U.S. banking regulators gave investors a lot to chew on yesterday. The Federal Reserve went ahead with a quarter-point increase in interest rates, signaling that, for now, it remained more worried about inflation than banking stability. But while Jerome Powell, the central bank’s chair, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen […]
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Crypto Wants Its Shine Back
At a cryptocurrency conference in Denver this month, a group of singers clad in bright orange onesies took the stage to perform what one industry website later described as an anthem for the crypto faithful, a “blockchain ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’” The chorus was a list of crypto’s most notorious villains, from the trash-talking entrepreneur Do Kwon […]
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Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Sets Off Blame Game Between Crypto and Tech
SAN FRANCISCO — For once, the crisis didn’t seem to revolve around a cryptocurrency company. The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday set off panic across the technology industry. But crypto executives and investors — who have endured a year of near-constant upheaval — seized on the moment to preach and scold. Centralized […]
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Manchester United Sale Fetches Billion-Dollar Bids
The big money in pro soccer While American sports teams have been skyrocketing in valuation — witness the $4.65 billion that the N.F.L.’s Denver Broncos recently sold for — the world’s top soccer clubs are increasingly leaving them in the dust. At least two bids have been submitted for Manchester United, the English team owned […]
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Judge Signals Jail Time if Bankman-Fried’s Internet Access Is Not Curbed
Judge Kaplan noted that the hearing was not called to consider bail revocation, “but it could get there, conceivably.” A lawyer for Mr. Bankman-Fried, Mark S. Cohen, called the government’s proposal “draconian,” noting that it would prevent his client from doing research or viewing evidence. He also denied that Mr. Bankman-Fried had committed any wrongdoing […]
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FTX Negotiates for Return of $400 Million From Obscure Hedge Fund
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have also seized assets they contend were acquired with money misappropriated from FTX’s customer accounts. Last month, the prosecutors disclosed that they had seized more than $600 million in assets belonging to Mr. Bankman-Fried, including cash and stocks kept in bank and brokerage accounts. It’s unclear why prosecutors have not seized […]
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Sam Bankman-Fried Needs Tighter Bail Restrictions, Judge Says
A federal judge on Thursday ordered lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, to create a plan with prosecutors that would ensure Mr. Bankman-Fried does not delete text messages he sends while he awaits trial on charges that he orchestrated the theft of billions of dollars in customer deposits. […]
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FTX Inquiry Expands as Prosecutors Reach Out to Former Executives
Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing a growing array of people tied to Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed cryptocurrency empire, including his father, his brother and former colleagues, as part of a rapidly expanding investigation into one of the biggest American financial crime cases in more than a decade, according to 13 people with knowledge of the inquiry. The […]
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