The "Elon Sweep"

Celsius Used New Customer Funds to Pay for Withdrawals: Independent Examiner

Celsius misled its investors – and on occasion used new customer funds to pay for other customers’ withdrawals, the usual definition of a Ponzi scheme, an independent examiner for the New York bankruptcy court said in a Tuesday filing.

In September, Shoba Pillay was asked by the court to offer an outside view of goings-on at the crypto lender, has now published an account of the firm’s operations in the run up to bankruptcy being declared in July.

“In every key respect—from how Celsius described its contract with its customers to the risks it took with their crypto assets—how Celsius ran its business differed significantly from what Celsius told its customers,” Pillay wrote, after interviewing staffers, including former chief Executive Officer Alex Mashinsky, as well as customers of and vendors to the company.

NFT Stuff – Bloomberg

Or take non-fungible tokens. One common approach with NFTs is that there is some sort of physical or electronic object, and you sell an NFT “of” it. The relationship between the NFT and the object is that the NFT is a label referring to the object. That’s it. Often you also destroy the physical object: You make or buy a painting, burn it to ashes, and sell an NFT “of” it; now the NFT is the only … version? … of the artwork. The “object-fire-token-money cycle,” I call it. But this is not essential. We talked once about a Bohemian prince who wanted money to restore his ancestral castle, so he sold NFTs “of” his art collection. If you bought an NFT of one of his artworks, (1) you gave him money, (2) he kept the money and (3) he also kept the artwork. But you got the NFT! Was he kidding? Wrong question!

Wealthy Russian undertook $90 mln hack-and-trade scheme, U.S. says at trial

A wealthy Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin made tens of millions of dollars trading on secret financial information obtained by hackers about multiple companies before it was public, a U.S. prosecutor said Monday at the start of his trial.

Vladislav Klyushin, 42, and his associates made nearly $90 million trading stocks based on yet-to-be-announced information about hundreds of publicly-traded companies stolen by hackers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Frank told a federal jury in Boston.

Who Helped FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Post Bail? Identities Can Be Made PublicThe identities of two people who helped secure Samuel Bankman-Fried’s bail can be made public, a federal judge has ruled.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan put his order on hold until Feb. 7 to allow for an appeal. If a notice of appeal is filed before then, the hold can be extended another week to allow for a request to the higher court to stay the order further, the judge said.

Osprey Sues Grayscale (GBTC) for Misleading Advertising on Crypto Trust

Osprey accused Grayscale of conducting “false and misleading advertising” for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC) since late 2020, according to a complaint filed Monday in Connecticut Superior Court. Grayscale presented that GBTC would be converted into an exchange-traded fund as “foregone conclusion, when it knew that access was never likely to happen,” the suit read. US regulators denied Grayscale’s application for ETF conversion in June, prompting the firm to sue the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Because of those “unfair trade practices,” Osprey alleges that Grayscale has been able to conquer 99.5% of assets in trust-based crypto products despite the fact that GBTC’s fee is four times higher than a similar offering from Osprey. Fairfield, Connecticut-based Osprey manages about $100 million in assets.

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Sought Leniency From Foreign Regulators, Says Justice Department

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried attempted to stall bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. in November in order to transfer assets from his crypto exchange to foreign regulators, the Justice Department alleged in a filing Monday.

Mr. Bankman-Fried hoped foreign regulators would treat him leniently and eventually allow him to regain control of FTX, according to federal prosecutors. FTX’s lawyers wanted to secure the assets for bankruptcy at the time he was trying to move the money, the prosecutors said.

Fyre Fest fraudster Billy McFarland asking $1,800 an hour for ‘consulting’

Infamous Fyre Festival fraudster Billy McFarland thinks an hour of his valuable time is worth nearly $2,000.

The convicted con man, who had nothing but time on his hands while spending four years in prison for bilking investors out of $26 million, recently launched a new scheme that offers advice to tech entrepreneurs for a mere $1,800.

The consulting fee is one of the services provided by PYRT (pronounced “pirate”), McFarland’s new venture that smacks of his notorious music festival fiasco in the Bahamas.