🤔 SBF Trial Witnesses: A Get-Out-of-Jail Card?

Unlock your application’s full potential with the LayerZero interoperability protocol. Connect to 40+ blockchains. Enable cross-chain contract execution and native asset transfer. Secure by Google Cloud, Polyhedra and more.

VaultCraft by Popcorn is your no-code, DeFi toolkit for building automated, non-custodial yield strategies. Learn more on vaultcraft.io about how you can supercharge your crypto portfolio!

Get the easiest KYC for crypto – privacy-safe and fully compliant for 165+ markets with JS/SDK/API integration. Conversion increase guaranteed. Submit your site for an interactive demo!

Stablecoin Studio: The All-in-One Toolkit built on Hedera that makes stablecoin application development easy with dedicated proof-of-reserve, seamless integration with custodians, and KYC/AML account flagging.

👨‍⚖️ Sam Bankman Fried’s Trial Coverage

📅 Today, Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, is expected to take the stand. Stay tuned!

The first week of the criminal trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has come to a close, with his former friends and FTX colleagues Adam Yedidia and Gary Wang delivering powerful testimonies that are forming the foundations for the prosecution’s arguments — arguments that the defense may have a difficult time surmounting. Sam Enzer, partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and Brian Klein, partner at Waymaker, discuss Alameda’s special privileges coded into the FTX software, the reason why a scorched FTX customer may have been chosen as the first witness, and why upcoming key witnesses are going to be a “real problem” for the defense.

Cooperating Witnesses in the SBF Trial May Get Little to No Prison Time

by Juan Aranovich

If Judge Lewis Kaplan acts in line with the common practices of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, FTX insiders Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, and Nishad Singh may be spared prison time.

What’s Poppin’?

by Brandy Betz and Rosie Perper

FTX Used a Fake Number to Beef Up Its Insurance Fund: Gary Wang

In his testimony, FTX cofounder Gary Wang said that the insurance fund number FTX published on the site took the site’s daily volume, multiplied it by a random number, and divided it by a billion.

Government Moves to Bar SBF’s Investment in AI Startup Anthropic From Being Mentioned in Trial

Sam Bankman-Fried’s investment in the AI startup that’s raising $2 billion in funding is irrelevant to his FTX fraud, say prosecutors.

Binance, OKX Adapt to New UK Crypto Marketing Regulations

Paypal and Bybit opted to pause crypto activities in the region ahead of the new rules from the UK Financial Conduct Authority.

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

• 🛡️ Consultant Kumanan Ramanathan used his personal Ledger Nano wallet to protect between $400 and $500 million of FTX's assets during last year's hack. 🔐Also, lax security measures at FTX might have led to billions in losses during the hack, with a potential loss of over $1 billion.

• 📑 Sam Bankman-Fried seeks to scrutinize lawyers over alleged dubious company loans, hinting legal advice led to potential oversight.

• 🤝 In response to the Israel war, crypto firms, including Fireblocks and MarketAcross, launched Crypto Aid Israel to support affected citizens. Moreover, 🚫 Israeli police, collaborating with Binance, froze crypto accounts linked to the Hamas militant group.

• 👋 Ripple CFO Kristina Campbell departed the company after two and a half years, now serving as CFO at Maven Clinic.

• 🌐 Solana investment products saw their largest inflows since March 2022, adding $24 million, as per CoinShares' latest report.

• 🔄 Binance introduced a copy trading feature for futures markets, allowing users to emulate experienced traders' strategies.

• 🛠 Blocknative scaled down its workforce by over 33% following a halt in its MEV-Boost Relay project related to Ethereum.

• 💱 Ethereum Foundation reportedly sold $2.7 million in ETH on Uniswap to cover expenses.

What Do You Meme?

Recommended Reads

1. Hasu on Lido Finance’s Guided Open Objective Setting Exercise (GOOSE) proposal

2. Unchained: A Beginner’s Guide to Telegram Bot Coins

3. The Block: How Blur's low royalty fee helped decimate Yuga Labs' revenue

📈 Your Market Update 📉

• BTC is up .3%, trading at $27,617

• ETH is down .6%, trading at $1,585

• BTC dominance: 48.5%

• Crypto market cap: $1.11T

*All data as of today, 7:00 am ET

ICYMI: On Unchained Premium 💎

👯‍♀️ Refer Unchained with a friend and earn a Premium subscription

⛓️ Join Unchained Premium to get access to:

• 🎙️ Behind-the-scenes interviews, in which I talk with crypto experts and entrepreneurs to learn all about the latest developments in the industry.

• 💬 A subscriber-only Telegram group, where you can talk with the other members of the Unchained community, build a network in crypto, and talk directly with me and the Unchained team!

• 📰 Transcripts of all the shows, for subscribers only.

Thank you for reading Unchained. This post is public so feel free to share it. 📩📤