Family Affair: SEC Brings Mother-Son Insider Trading Case

SEC Brings Insider Trading Charges Against Family Member of Silicon Valley Executive

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Daniel of South Miami, Florida misappropriated material nonpublic information regarding the acquisition during a telephone call with his mother that occurred while his mother was at the home of Daniel’s close relative, a senior employee at Cypress. Daniel, the SEC alleges, learned during this phone call that his family member was working on urgent issues related to Cypress’s acquisition and that the acquisition would likely occur soon. After the phone call, Daniel immediately sought to purchase Cypress call options and, under false pretenses, borrowed $50,000 from his mother to fund the Cypress trades, just days before Cypress’s acquisition announcement.Source:

Will Congress Let Crypto Pick Its Regulator? – The American Prospect

The industry wants Congress to give all crypto regulation to the relatively weak and understaffed Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC regulates mainly futures and some financial derivatives in wholesale markets, but has no proven capacity to regulate the kind of retail transactions and small-investor abuses that are typical of crypto.

Shifting crypto regulation to the CFTC would change existing law for the worse. For now, the far stronger Securities and Exchange Commission is able to regulate most kinds of crypto under established law, on the reasonable premise that most crypto vehicles are securities.

There are a couple of rings to this circus, and they also include competition in Congress and the executive branch over turf. One involves a kind of crypto known as stablecoins. These are supposedly guaranteed to hold their value, except sometimes they don’t because they are not always backed by cash or cash equivalents.

Joe Weisenthal on Tornado Cash: Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day

Take away the uncensorability of crypto, and all you’re left with is Ponzi schemes, dog coins, and drawings of monkeys. (Wait! That’s basically all that exists right now in the space, so ignore that thought.)

Anyway, by sanctioning a piece of software and some addresses associated with it, it may show that uncensorability is just a lie. Sure maybe the code can technically live online forever, but no regulated entity or fiat gateway is going to want to interact with wallets that have a history of using Tornado Cash. It’s true that people could just launch more versions of the same software publicly (clone it, fork it, redeploy it, whatever). But merely creating a cat & mouse game for regulators is not a particularly powerful defense.

Crypto Ads Starring Matt Damon, Tom Brady Vanish From Television

Matt Damon’s pitch to invest in crypto has disappeared from US television sets. Same goes for glitzy commercials starring LeBron James and Tom Brady.

The drop in national TV marketing by the industry in the US has coincided with the selloff in Bitcoin and other crypto assets, according to the TV-ad measurement company ISpot.tv Inc., which tracks the spots. Damon’s commercial for Crypto.com, which ends with him uttering “fortune favors the brave,” last aired in February during the Super Bowl. The four-month national campaign cost an estimated $65 million, according to ISpot, exceeding the outlays by others in investment services, including giants such as Fidelity and Vanguard, over the same stretch.

Inside the Crash of Three Arrows Capital

The yacht has since become the subject of endless memes and jokes on Twitter, the functional center of the crypto universe. Pretty much everyone in that world, from the millions of small-scale crypto holders to industry employees and investors, has watched in shock and dismay as Three Arrows Capital, once perhaps the most highly regarded investment fund in a burgeoning global financial sector, collapsed in excruciating and embarrassing fashion. The firm’s implosion, a result of both recklessness and likely criminal misconduct, set off a contagion that not only forced a historic sell-off in bitcoin and its ilk but also wiped out a wide swath of the cryptocurrency industry.

Tesla Legal Head Who Led Purchasing Probe Has Left Automaker

Tesla Inc. has parted ways with the law department leader heading an internal inquiry into purchase orders at the electric vehicle maker.

David Searle left his position as Tesla’s head of legal less than a month ago, according to three people familiar with the matter. Dinna Eskin, a deputy general counsel at the company, has taken over the role, the people said.

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Tesla has had at least four top lawyers since its last full-time general counsel Jonathan Chang departed in December 2019.

They Lost Crypto in the Crash. They’re Trying to Get It Back.

About 58,000 customers held cryptocurrencies in the company’s custody accounts. The lawyer whom Mr. Little’s group hired, Kyle Ortiz, plans to argue that those funds — worth $180 million — remain the customers’ property under the terms of service.

For Celsius’s interest-bearing accounts, that would be a difficult case to make, legal experts said. But custody holders have a better shot, because the contractual language appears more favorable.

“The custody customers have a decent chance of prevailing and getting their money back,” said Adam Levitin, a bankruptcy professor at Georgetown Law.