From Free to Fee 🦄

In today's edition: 🚨 Singh exposes SBF's dismissive attitude, 🤑 FTX's $9B promise, 🌍 Tether's global freeze, 🚨 Bitcoin's ETF false tweet, and more!

October 17, 2023

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👨‍⚖️ Sam Bankman Fried’s Trial Coverage

On day nine of the SBF Trial, FTX head of engineering Nishad Singh took the stand again detailing the crypto exchange giant’s alleged financial mismanagement and former CEO and Sam Bankman-Fried’s bullying management style and seeming indifference to his company’s mushrooming debt.

Samson Enzer, partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and Greg Strong, partner at DLX Law, dissect the second week of the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. At this point, the prosecution’s star witness, former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, has testified, as well as another prominent insider, cofounder Gary Wang. Both Enzer and Strong believe that it’s already over for the defense, but agree that the only thing that could turn it around is testimony from SBF himself—but that runs the risk of the defendant significantly increasing his sentence.

Find out how they thought the more salacious details of Ellison’s testimony, concerning alleged bribes to Chinese government officials, would affect the jury, and why Enzer believes introducing that testimony may have been risky for the government.

Nishad Singh described an organization that allegedly defrauded FTX customers and Sam Bankman-Fried’s dismissiveness toward senior managers who expressed concerns about the firm’s balance sheet.

What’s Poppin’?

by Sam Sriram, Brandy Betz and James Rubin

The entity behind the decentralized exchange plans to charge a flat fee on a limited set of tokens to “sustainably fund operations.”

The FTX bankruptcy estate announced a major milestone in its efforts to reimburse creditors of FTX.com and FTX US as early as the second quarter of 2024.

The USDT stablecoin issuer was working with law enforcement to crack down on the illicit use of crypto to fund terrorism and war.

The token climbed from $27,900 after a social media post that the SEC had approved BlackRock’s application.

Last week, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) restricted the promotional partner Binance had selected to help comply with new regulations.

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  • 📢 Genesis has been ordered by a New York judge to comply with a subpoena related to Terra within five days.  

  • 🔨 Pennsylvania lawmaker removed a two-year crypto mining ban from energy conservation bill to improve its chances of passage.

  • 🇪🇺 EU regulators warned of “opaque” crypto firms exploiting MiCA loopholes and urged firms to prepare for regulation.

  • 🔒 Israel froze over 100 Binance accounts suspected of links to Hamas, and seeks information on 200 more accounts.

  • 📰 Manta's Pacific Network, initially launched on OP Labs' OP Stack, is shifting to zk-rollups using Polygon's Chain Development Kit.

  • 🔓 Stablecoin issuer TrueUSD experienced a third-party security breach that exposed personal and financial information of its clients.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • 📊 Fidelity Digital Assets becomes the inaugural enterprise user of EY's blockchain analytics tool for internal risk management enhancements.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 💱 BC Technology Group is considering the sale of its crypto exchange OSL, valued at approximately $128 million.

  • 💰 Solana-based multisig protocol developer Squads Labs raised $5.7 million in funding from investors including Multicoin and Placeholder.

  • 🤖 Web3-enabled AI platform MyShell secured $5.6 million in seed funding, raising its valuation to $57 million.

What Do You Meme?

Recommended Reads

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is up 2.7%, trading at $28,475

  • ETH is up .2%, trading at $1,584

  • BTC dominance: 49.05%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.13T

*All data as of today, 7:43 am ET

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