Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former CEO of FTX, appeared in the U.S. federal court in New York on Thursday on allegations that he was the brains behind the fraud and illegal transfer of customers’ money. The federal judge allowed bail at $250 million. Bankman was brought to the U.S. by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as soon as his extradition from the Bahamas was cleared on Wednesday. Equity in his parents’ Palo Alto, California, home served as security for Bankman-Fried’s bail. Several conditions were applied to him as he was about to be set free while he was facing charges. According to the agreement, Bankman will not be allowed to make transactions of more than $1,000, he must not go out of the house until it is for exercise purposes, he can not open a new line of credit, and shall go for mental health and substance abuse treatment. Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, have pleaded guilty to federal charges. Bankman-Fried will be issued a tracking device and has already surrendered his passport. By January 12, his parents must use their home equity agreement to pay the bail. The accusations against Bankman-FTX Fried’s associates shed more light on the unauthorized transfer of customer funds between FTX and Alameda, the trading company he also founded, and they detailed how the senior executives massively boosted the apparent value of FTT, the exchange’s native token. Additionally, enforcement cases against Ellison and Wang were resolved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). FTT was identified as a security in the SEC complaint, which was another shot in the industry’s dispute with the securities regulator.
In September, New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), with a focus on bitcoin (BTC) published a paper describing bitcoin’s evolution from a software development point of view. The report talks about how BTC evolved over time from a minor technological achievement to a dominant force on a global scale. Only a small number of people are still actively maintaining the bitcoin network while tens of thousands of staff work for Visa, PayPal, and Mastercard. On October 31, 2008, Bitcoin’s fictitious creator Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper. The kingdom’s keys were given to Gavin Andresen by Satoshi in 2010. According to consensus, Bitcoin has 1,140 active developers, with 5 to 20 new contributors testing the waters each month. The overall ecosystem has between 600 and 1,000 monthly active developers.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the U.S. Securities Exchange and Commission (SEC) is investigating cryptocurrency companies’ audits more seriously. According to Paul Munter, the acting chief accountant for the SEC, “Investors should not place too much reliance in the mere fact that a corporation states it has a proof-of-reserves from an audit firm.” The development has been significant as there have been concerns about Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, released a proof-of-reserves report but later withdrew it after the auditing firm it hired, Mazars, announced it would no longer be working with crypto companies. After Mazars left Binance, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Binance was seeking another audit firm.
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