Court and Courtrooms, Law and Lawsuits and 20 Crypto Jokes

This week in crypto: JPMorgan predicted a 20% drop in the Bitcoin hashrate after the next halving, some argued there’s a connection between McRib, bitcoin, and stocks, and while Jim Cramer predicted a sharp drop for bitcoin, Yann Allemann opined that no major bitcoin drop is to be expected. Binance’s $1 billion industry recovery fund after the FTX disaster underperformed, while Coinbase trading volume plunged 52% to $76 billion and marked the lowest quarter after public listing. On the other hand, ‘The Quiet Maid’, a movie funded by the sale of NFTs, secured a global sales deal.

In the legal event of the crypto century, Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial began with stunning revelations, Bankman-Fried wrote a draft Twitter thread to announce the possible closure of Alameda Research two months before the FTX collapse, Caroline Ellison made claims involving Alameda Research’s ties to international government officials, and a former engineer said Alameda Research lost $200m million to several phishing attacks due to “poor security practices”. Meanwhile, a Coinbase director said Alameda Research minted upwards of $39.55 billion in USDT throughout 2021.

In the meantime, a Brazilian congressional committee recommended the indictment of four Binance senior executives including CZ, a US federal judge ordered mediation for the BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital dispute over the $284 million payments, the Trader Joe’s supermarket sued the Trader Joe DEX for federal trademark infringement, and Ethereum DeFi protocol BarnBridge opened token-holder voting as it faced SEC action and fines. Then, Coinbase, Revolut, and Binance updated their apps to comply with the new regulations from the UK FCA, the FCA sanctioned Binance’s UK partner RebuildingSociety.com for financial promotions, and it added 143 crypto exchanges to its warning list. In Cyprus, the authorities said they’d impose hefty penalties on unregistered crypto asset service providers.

As that was happening, Circle announced its plans to begin minting USDC directly on the Polygon network, Bitstamp was in talks with three large European banks about offering crypto services, JPMorgan Chase conducted the first blockchain-based collateral settlement with BlackRock and Barclays, a consortium of Japanese firms was set to launch a yen-based digital currency by July 2024, Russia’s Central Bank argued its digital ruble could let citizens pay abroad without using SWIFT, and the Central Bank of Nigeria said its digital currency the e-naira is not a threat.

Meanwhile, crypto stolen from a businessman in India was traced to accounts linked to Hamas, and Hamas received $41 million in crypto in the lead-up to the attack on Israel. Hong Kong police issued an alert after 11 Binance users in the region fell victim to phishing scams, Platypus Finance fell victim to a security breach resulting in the loss of over $2 million, crypto exchange HTX recovered $8 million lost to a hacker in the recent security breach, and Avalanche-based Star Arena recovered 90% of the hacked funds and offered 10% bounty.

Jokes time!

__________

GM, Cryptoverse!

How was your week, everybody?

Let’s check on the markets.