SEC Charges BIT Mining with FCPA Violations for Bribery Scheme Involving Members of Japan’s Parliament

SEC Charges BIT Mining with FCPA Violations in Connection with Bribery Scheme to Influence Members of Japanese Parliament

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that BIT Mining Ltd., formerly known as 500.com Limited, agreed to pay a $4 million civil penalty to resolve charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) from 2017 to 2019 by engaging in a widespread bribery scheme to influence numerous foreign officials, including members of Japan’s parliament, in efforts to establish an integrated resort casino in Japan. 500.com was an online sports lottery service provider headquartered in Shenzhen, China, whose shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “WBAI.”

The SEC’s order finds that the bribery scheme involved illicit payments of approximately $2.5 million in the form of cash bribes, entertainment, and extravagant trips. The order further finds that the bribes were authorized by a 500.com senior executive and that, after the bribery scheme came to light, the company never entered the market.

Trump to Meet Privately With Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

President-elect Donald Trump is meeting with the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase Monday, according to people familiar with the matter. The duo is expected to discuss personnel appointments for his second administration. The meeting between Trump and Brian Armstrong would mark the first time the two have met since Election Day and comes as Trump continues to fill out his cabinet and other senior posts. Trump, formerly a crypto skeptic, has turned into a vocal supporter of the industry.

Tweet from Palantir board member’s account says move to Nasdaq “to force billions in ETF buying” and reward investors

Earlier in the day, my colleague Matt Phillips noted how the decision by Palantir Technologies to move its share listing from the NYSE to the Nasdaq could spur another wave of buying from exchange-traded funds that track the Nasdaq 100.

The X account of Alex Moore, a board member at the company, tweeted the quiet part out loud. Quite colorfully.

Wall Street’s Top Cop Plans to Quit Before Trump Takes Power

The top US prosecutor in Manhattan has privately told people he’ll step down before Donald Trump is inaugurated in January, marking the end of his tenure aggressively prosecuting crimes across Wall Street.

Damian Williams, who has served as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York since 2021, has shared his plans with associates following Trump’s election this month, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump last week announced that he would tap Jay Clayton, who served as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission until 2020, to serve as Williams’ successor.

Crypto hacker’s rapper-wife ‘Razzlekhan’ sent to prison in $10B bitcoin heist

A notorious crypto hacker’s wife — who rapped under the name Razzlekhan and styled herself as the “Crocodile of Wall Street” — was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday for helping her husband launder stolen bitcoin now worth $10 billion.

Heather Morgan, 34, was handed the sentence by a federal judge in Washington, DC – just days after her spouse, Ilya Lichtenstein, got five years in prison for swiping 119,754 bitcoin from the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in 2016.

Morgan and Lichtenstein both pleaded guilty last year.

Bitcoin’s shift towards respectability should concern us all

An even more frightening scenario looms on the horizon. Consider the next US administration, swept into power on a wave of deregulation promises. In this regulatory vacuum, we could witness things that make FTX’s misdeeds seem like mere child’s play.

Institutional players, freed from meaningful oversight, could create byzantine investment vehicles, packaging and repackaging digital assets into synthetic products that bundle both financial and software risks in new and unseen ways.

The next crypto winter — and rest assured there will be one — could affect retirement savings and institutional portfolios in ways we’ve not seen before.

Far from validating crypto’s fundamental value, the current bull run exposes a more precarious reality: the financial industry’s embrace of crypto represents nothing more than a perpetual talent for transforming speculative trends into fee-generating products.