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Tether has released its most recent attestation, which claims record profits of $5.2 billion for the first half of 2024. However, a close review of the attestations shows that Tether ’s purchases of bitcoin seem to have been paused . For context, in May 2023, Tether announced its intention to “regularly allocate up to 15% of its net realized operating profits towards purchasing Bitcoin.” It further noted that these investments would “not exceed the Shareholder Capital Cushion” which has reached a total of almost $12 billion, however, the total amount of bitcoin on hand is less than $5 billion. Closely reviewing the attestations seems to suggest that Tether has not increased its quantity of bitcoin since its last attestation three months ago, despite these record profits .  This can be further confirmed by checking bc1qjasf9z3h7w3jspkhtgatgpyvvzgpa2wwd2lr0eh5tx44reyn2k7sfc27a4, the address that The Block has previously identified as where Tether w...

Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial. Few events have stirred as much attention as the Sam Bankman-Fried trial. As allegations of fraud and money laundering surface within FTX’s affiliated Alameda Research, the crypto community is reminded of the need for robust crisis management. Crypto projects operate in a perfect storm of volatility, regulation, hacks, and technical complexity. Any misstep can snowball into an existential crisis in an instant.  You might also like: Crypto market on Christmas: historical trends and what to expect  Major crypto crisis categories Crises in crypto aren’t limited to legal battles. The threats are multifaceted, from unauthorized data access and technical code vulnerabilities to malicious hacks. Add to that the ever-changing regulatory environment, and projects find themselves navigating a maze of potential pit...

A request to delay the sentencing of Sam Bankman-Fried was rejected by Judge Lewis Kaplan ahead of a presentence interview slated for Dec. 21.  Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers requested to extend the sentencing procedure by four to six weeks, citing a possible second trial for the FTX founder on bank fraud and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges. The letter was submitted on Dec. 20, a day before Bankman-Fried’s scheduled presentence interview with the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System. This is the body tasked with recommending a prison sentence for the convicted former crypto billionaire. Notably, Bankman-Fried’s sentencing hearing is set for March 28. The defense requires additional time to collect materials necessary for the sentencing submission and to prepare for the presentence interview. In addition, a trial on the severed counts of the indictment is still set for March 11, 2024. The Government has not yet decided whether it intends to ...

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has blacklisted two Crypto web sites accused of scamming investors and lying about executives, following criticism that the agency reacted too slowly to the recent JPEX scandal. According to SFC director of enforcement Cheng Tak-ka, both BitCuped and HongKongDAO were placed on an alert list on November 10 and 24 respectively. As reported by the South China Morning Post, both crypto sites attempted to attract investors with misleading claims. The SFC says it was tipped off by an anonymous source that HongKongDAO falsely claimed to have applied for the relevant operating licenses. It also led investors to believe its native token had a high market value. HongKongDAO sold HKD through two group chats, one for 10,000 Chinese-speaking members and another that served 1,700 in English. Police probe HK crypto exchange after users lose $15M to scams Read more: Seven more arrested and another supercar seized over JPEX scandal Accord...

Circle chief strategy officer (CSO) Dante Disparte wrote a letter to Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren in response to claims surrounding the role of Circle in facilitating Hamas and other actors. In the letter, Circle makes sure to highlight two things: “Circle does not facilitate, directly or indirectly, or finance Hamas… Nor does Circle bank Justin Sun.”  On Justin Sun, Circle said that “Neither Mr. Sun nor any entity owned or controlled by Mr. Sun, including the TRON Foundation or Huobi Global, currently have accounts with Circle. To date, the U.S. government has not specifically designated Mr. Sun or his entities as Specially Designated Nationals. Nonetheless, Circle terminated all accounts held by Mr. Sun and his affiliated companies in February 2023.” This seems to imply that Circle did serve Justin Sun or his companies up until February 2023 . Sun is a very important figure in the stablecoin ecosystem, receiving more Tether than any ot...

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero said the regulator will continue to pursue cryptocurrency exchange s that break the law. In a statement quoted by Business Insider, the commissioner emphasized that “there are no pirate ships in US markets” and that “access to American customers is a privilege, not a right.” Romero added that the CFTC will not tolerate the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and other services that help users circumvent know your customer (KYC) rules, including pop-up questions that simply ask users to confirm that they are not located in the United States. “It should be crystal clear that the CFTC will not stop in its pursuit of non-U.S. entities.” Caroline D. Pham, CFTC Commissioner Statements by representatives of the regulator came against the backdrop of several high-profile proceedings against the largest cryptocurrency exchange s. You might also like: CFTC files legal ...

The court cited Sam Bankman-Fried’s alleged witness tampering as the main grounds for rejecting his release bid. FTX founder and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried will stay jailed after failing to convince a United States appellate court that he should be freed while his legal team appeals his conviction. In a Nov. 21 mandate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said Bankman-Fried’s previous attempts to tamper with two witnesses while on pretrial release was a major reason behind rejecting his request. “We have reviewed the Defendant-Appellant’s additional arguments and find them unpersuasive,” the court said. Bankman-Fried’s release motion was rejected by a U.S. appeals court. Source: Courtlistener Government prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried of leaking Caroline Ellison’s diaries to The New York Times in July, which caused his bail to be revoked by a New York District Court. Bankman-Fried argued the New York court failed to consider that he was engaged in activity...

A July hack that siphoned nearly $40 million from CoinsPaid, one of the world’s biggest Crypto payment providers, was reportedly triggered by a fake 40-minute job interview . Hackers working with infamous North Korean cybercrime collective Lazarus apparently spent months probing the Estonia-based firm’s systems and security before launching the attack. As reported by Bloomberg, the hackers posed as a recruiter and reached out to a CoinsPaid employee with a tempting job offer, supposedly on behalf of Singapore-based exchange Crypto .com. During the interview , the employee, instructed by the fake recruiter, downloaded a malicious file onto his work computer, believing he was about to take a technical test. Instead, money started to disappear from the CoinsPaid platform and despite the firm shutting down the hackers within a few hours, $37 million had already been leeched from its Crypto wallets . US-based JumpCloud hacked by North Korean gov’t group to loot crypto firms R...

Watcher.Guru had earlier reported that Anthony Scaramucci is planning to invest in Brett Harrison’s cryptocurrency company. Brett Harrison, who was the previous head of the FTX US branch, recently dropped a tweet explaining his journey at FTX. He also describes how he moved out of the company to start his own firm. In a 49-tweet-long Twitter thread, Harrison digs deep into his relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried. He speaks about his 17-month journey and the actual reason why he quit his job at FTX. Source: Techstory FTX didn’t feel like the dream job, says Harrison Narrating his journey with FTX US, he stated that he didn’t feel like FTX was his dream job, even though it appeared that way to the industry and media. 3/49 The truth was that FTX US hadn’t felt to me like the dream job it appeared to the industry and media for some time, and my departure was not abrupt. — Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023 Harrison’s jour...