Crypto

The controversial head of the SEC was targeted by Donald Trump during Trump’s presidential campaign. It is customary for the SEC chair to resign when a president from the other party is elected. That cheering you hear? It’s the crypto lobby.

During trial, prosecutors pressed Wang for creating code that allowed Alameda to have a negative balance in FTX’s database.

But the prosecution ultimately advocated for Wang during his sentencing on Wednesday, citing his cooperation in deciphering the FTX case, along with his work to create a tool to help the government to detect fraud, CNBC reports.

A new tidbit about the prediction markets startup from last week’s issue of Command Line:

Coplan recently raised, but has yet to announce, a $30 million round of funding at a $350 million valuation. And in recent conversations with investors (a surprising number of whom passed on the round, which was less than Coplan hoped to raise), I’m told he was noncommittal about whether the company would work to get the Commodity Futures Trading Commission license it needs to operate in the US.

Bernie Moreno, an Ohio car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur, unseated Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) with a little help from his friends.

Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and other crypto firms poured more than $40 million into Moreno’s campaign — and their bet paid off. Moreno flipped the seat, getting Republicans even closer to controlling the Senate.

As the vote count increasingly points toward Trump, who courted the crypto industry throughout his campaign, the price of Bitcoin has hit a new all-time high of over $74,000.

Forbes reports on “evidence of rampant wash trading on Polymarket,” a prediction market site backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Wash trading is a form of market manipulation. “The suspicious activity on Polymarket raises questions about the accuracy of the site,” Forbes writes.

Singh, now the fourth FTX executive to be sentenced after Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and Ryan Salame, will receive three years of supervised release.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has presided over the cases, said that Mr. Singh provided crucial assistance to the government and that he had played a “much more limited” role in the scheme than his colleagues had.

Its $15 million funding round was led by Blockchain Capital, a venture capital group that has invested in crypto firms, like Kraken, OpenSea, and Coinbase. Despite this, Bluesky says it’s not changing its stance on blockchains:

This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.)

Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning crypto startup announced a shorter name and a new scanning orb today at an event, as reported by Axios. You can watch a replay of the event on YouTube.

Here’s his LinkedIn update about prison!

Following a lengthy bankruptcy process, FTX says 98 percent of customers who lost assets in the collapsed crypto exchange will receive their money back within 60 days. Delaware Judge John Dorsey called the outcome a “model case for how to deal with a very complex Chapter 11 proceeding.”

Crypto businesses keep accidentally hiring IT workers from North Korea. This is a problem because it is, first of all, against US law but second, “CoinDesk encountered multiple examples of companies hiring DPRK IT workers and subsequently getting hacked.”

Nike is moving on from CEO John Donahoe less than a week after Bloomberg published its unflatteringly-titled profile of his four-year tenure.

Under Donahoe, Nike de-emphasized retail stores to chase direct sales, flooded the market with retros like the Panda Dunks, and put the RTFKT NFT shoe brand on the same level as the Swoosh and Jordan Jumpman.

Today’s announcement doesn’t include the RTFKT logo.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argue that Judge Lewis Kaplan unfairly limited the evidence that was allowed in court, including that Bankman-Fried had relied on lawyers in making his decisions. Also stealing all that money wasn’t really that bad because his victims were eventually repaid.

Trump will roll out “World Liberty Financial” on X Spaces, at 8pm ET on September 16th.

The former president announced the project last month, providing virtually no details about what it actually is. We’ll find out next week — assuming the stream doesn’t crash like Trump’s interview with Elon Musk.