Did Prime Trust Commit Fraud? 😯

In today's edition: 🎙️ New episode of The Chopping Block, 😣 Prime Trust's $45 million, 🧑‍⚖️ Coinbase's response to the SEC, and more!

June 29, 2023

What’s Poppin’?

by Samyuktha Sriram

The Prime Trust team reportedly reintroduced the legacy wallet for customer use in January 2021, only to realize it was inaccessible nearly 12 months later.

The blockchain-based corporate credit market plans to address the gap left by bankrupt lenders that damaged trust on their way out, leaving Web3 businesses without a source for reliable debt capital.

The short-term government bond fund will maintain a secondary record of shares on the Ethereum blockchain.

On the Pod…

Welcome to “The Chopping Block” – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest crypto news. 

Show highlights: 

  • why the Azuki new NFT collection 'Elementals' caused such a controversy among holders

  • why Robert bought an Elemental and what was he expecting

  • how BitGo 'pulled a Binance' on Prime Trust

  • how Prime Trust, a crypto custodian, collapsed and was put into receivership

  • what the problems are with current Layer 2 rollups such as Optimism and Arbitrum

  • why rollups are so 'political' in the Ethereum ecosystem

  • what makes Arbitrum better than Optimism, according to Tarun

  • and more!

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  • 👨‍⚖️ In its first response to an SEC lawsuit, Coinbase asserted that the digital assets on its platform aren't within the SEC's jurisdiction as they do not constitute investment contracts, therefore not securities.

  • 📝 Cboe BZX Exchange revised its filing for the proposed ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF to incorporate a surveillance sharing agreement, akin to a feature in BlackRock's planned spot bitcoin fund, aiming to deter market manipulation and fraud.

  • ⏰ FTX's former clients have until September 29 to file claims related to the crypto exchange's bankruptcy estate, with claims needing to be defined by asset type and valued in USD.

  • 🇩🇪 Germany's financial watchdog BaFin reportedly denied Binance's application for a crypto custody license, although Binance maintains its commitment to meeting regulatory requirements.

  • 🚫 According to a report by TRM Labs, crypto Ponzi schemes resulted in a loss of $7.8 billion for victims in 2022, with criminals now favoring altcoins over Bitcoin.

  • 💡 Republic Crypto and Upside are introducing ERC-1404 Prime, an upgraded version of the widely used Ethereum smart-contract framework ERC-1404, envisaged as a new basis for issuing regulatory-compliant assets on the Ethereum blockchain.

  • 💰 Following charges by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2020, former NYSE broker Michael Ackerman was ordered by a New York court to pay a $54 million fine for a fraudulent digital asset trading scheme.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • 🎵 Warner Music Group (WMG) partnered with Polygon Labs to launch a music accelerator program targeting future blockchain music projects and decentralized apps (dapps) on the Polygon network.

  • 🔄 Mastercard is piloting a Multi-Token Network (MTN) in the UK to test tokenized bank deposits, with plans to experiment with stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in the future.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 💸 Bitpanda Pro, now rebranded as One Trading, raised $33 million in a funding round led by Valar Ventures, cofounded by Peter Thiel, as it separates from Bitpanda and plans European expansion.

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📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is up 1.2%, trading at $30,679

  • ETH is up .2%, trading at $1,865

  • BTC dominance: 48.74%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.22 trillion

*All data as of today, 7:25 am ET

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