Ryan Salame, a former high-ranking executive at the crypto exchange FTX, has entered a guilty plea in connection with criminal charges related to the extensive fraud case involving FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.
As part of the agreement, Salame has agreed to pay $5 million to debtors of FTX, and $6 million in fines to the government. He will also forfeit two Massachusetts homes and one 2021 Porsche automobile.
Another Witness Against SBF
Appearing in court on Thursday, Salame pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the Federal Elections Committee, and for operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The charges could land him up to a decade behind bars.
The executive once helmed FTX’s subsidiary in the Bahamas and was an active Republican donor, sending $24 million

The U.S. Financial Accounting Services Board (FASB) has passed a unanimous vote to drastically change the way crypto asset values are recorded on publicly traded companies’ balance sheets.
Experts predict the change will make crypto more attractive to hold by exposing big investors to the upside potential of their assets.
How FASB’s Change Impacts Crypto
On Wednesday, the Board held a meeting to evaluate comments on the proposed change, which would have crypto assets marked at fair value in companies’ accounting statements.
Under current rules, crypto assets are treated as intangible assets, The model has companies record their crypto values at the historical prices they paid for them, while regularly reassessing their assets for feeless “impairment” charges if these

Cathie Wood’s asset management firm, ARK Invest, has filed for the United States’ first Ether (ETH) spot ETF weeks after regulators placed the company’s Bitcoin ETF application on the backburner.
Fellow investment manager VanEck has submitted a similar 19b-4 application, starting the clock for when regulators must approve or deny each submission.
Ark’s Ether ETF Pitch
In an S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday, the ARK21Shares Ethereum ETF would “track the performance of ether” by holding ETH to back the value of its shares.
The custodian of the Trust would be Coinbase Custody, which serves other major fund providers like Grayscale and BlackRock. It also proposed forming a surveillance sharing agreement with Coinbase, as was proposed

With crypto market apathy in full effect, decentralized finance (DeFi) activity has plummeted across the board in 2023 – all but in one sub-sector.
Liquid staking protocols are approaching an all-time high in total value locked (TVL), having appreciated nearly 293% since their June 2022 lows.
The Rise of Liquid Staking
According to DeFiLlama, liquid staking protocols now hold $20.5 billion in assets – up from slightly over $5 billion 15 months ago. Lido alone boasts $14.1 billion in staked assets, of which the vast majority ($14.05 billion) is Ether (ETH).
Staking is when crypto users temporarily lock away their coins within the blockchain to secure the network while receiving periodic crypto rewards in return. From an investor perspective, it is similar to lending out

Ripple announced on Monday that it has added four new European institutions to its University Blockchain and Research Initiative (UBRI).
The partner universities will help promote blockchain research and education across the region.
According to Ripple’s announcement, the new universities include Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), EPITA (France), IE Madrid (Spain), and the University of Trento (Italy). This brings Ripple’s total European partners up to 14.
IE Madrid plans to host a three-day workshop with students on virtual asset regulation, related to “applied research, entrepreneurship, and corporate transformation.”

“We are delighted to partner with Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative to address the future of virtual asset regulation and the technology

After handily defeating the regulator in court, Grayscale sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday with key messages for the agency as it pursues next steps.
Given the court’s ruling, Grayscale emphasized that the commission has run out of reasons to continue denying the launch of a Bitcoin spot ETF.
No More Options for the SEC
Per Grayscale’s comment letter published on Tuesday, the firm encouraged the SEC to “move expeditiously” toward spot ETF approval, given that it has “no grounds” to treat spot Bitcoin ETFs differently from futures ETFs.
“If any other reason could be offered in attempting to differentiate spot bitcoin ETPs from bitcoin futures ETPs… we are confident that it would have surfaced by now in one of the fifteen Commission

Genesis Trading – the trading arm of crypto VC giant Digital Currency Group (DCG) – is set to shutter its trading operations in the United States later this month.
The suspension comes after DCG’s crypto lending firm – Genesis Global Holdco – filed for bankruptcy in January.
Why End U.S. Trading?
As reported by Bloomberg, a spokesperson for Genesis said that the company is winding down its U.S. trading service for “business reasons.”
“This decision was made voluntarily and for business reasons,” the spokesperson said. “We are working closely with regulatory authorities to coordinate an orderly discontinuation of services.”
After the firm’s lending arm fell earlier this year, DCG had claimed that its trading operation would “continue to operate business as usual.”
In an

Bitcoin’s price is well known for its four-year price cycles, which coincide with its “halving” schedule that reduces its inflation rate every four years.
But is one phenomenon truly related to the other? Some analysts believe that the asset’s cyclical movements are related to macro conditions. and that the halving schedule’s congruency is pure coincidence.
The Importance of Liquidity
According to crypto trading analyst TXMC, the location of the Bitcoin halving is a “wildly convenient coincidence” that happens to align with other macroeconomic factors that affect Bitcoin’s price. These include “interest rate oscillations, annualized equity returns, and manufacturing PMIs.”

This is the correct halving take IMO. Just look at interest rate oscillations, annualized equity

Crypto and stock trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) has executed a nine-figure buyback of its own shares from FTX’s former executives, including disgraced boss Sam Bankman-Fried and his fellow co-founder Gary Wang.
The purchase secured 55,273,469 HOOD shares worth $605.7 million.
Robinhood entered into the purchase agreement with the United States Marshal Service (USMS) on August 30, and closed the transaction the following day.
“The Company funded the purchase of the Shares from corporate cash available from its balance sheet,” stated the agreement’s Form 8-K filing on Thursday.
Robinhood’s Board of Directors had already authorized the company to pursue purchasing most or all of the shares on February 8, 2023. Before that, Bankman-Fried and Wang owned the shares via the

After suffering defeat against Grayscale in court, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is faced with a difficult decision on how to handle the wave of Bitcoin spot ETF applications knocking on its door.
The agency need not approve the applications, however: instead, it may choose to rescind prior approval of the nation’s Bitcoin futures ETFs, leaving all Bitcoin ETF options unavailable to U.S. buyers.
Will The SEC Spite BItcoiners?
Though an unlikely outcome, Bitcoin-supportive lawyer Joe Carlasare sees a full reversal on futures ETFs as within the realm of possibility.
“There is a decent chance that the SEC responds to this ruling today by reversing prior orders approving the futures ETFs,” he tweeted on Tuesday, following Grayscale’s victory. The lawyer assigns

As expected by analysts, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has again delayed its upcoming decision on whether to approve a slew of Bitcoin spot ETF applications.
This pushes forward their respective decision dates by another 45 days.
According to the SEC’s website, decisions for proposed ETFs from Blackrock, Invesco, WisdomTree, Valkyrie, Bitwise, VanEck, and Fidelity have all been postponed.

“The Commission finds it appropriate to designate a longer period within which to take action on the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change and the issues raised therein,” wrote the SEC in its delay letter to BlackRock on Thursday.

Bloomberg ETF analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balcunas predicted the delays ahead of time

Bitcoin’s rally to nearly $28,000 this week was short-lived.
On Thursday, the top crypto asset fell back to $26,300, which was roughly its level before the pump.
According to Coinglass, the price dump has triggered $103.58 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, including $3.12 million liquidation on Bybit.In total, over 34,700 traders were liquidated by the price drop.
The collapse comes shortly after a brief rally for Bitcoin on Tuesday, when Grayscale confirmed a decisive victory over the SEC in court in its battle to launch a Bitcoin spot ETF.
The victory still doesn’t confirm that a spot ETF will be approved, however, which many expect to catalyze major price appreciation for Bitcoin.
While Bloomberg analysts are confident the approval will happen, some still

Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnhenshein spoke to CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday on his company’s latest victory in its lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
While discussing next steps and the possibility of appeal, Sonnhenshein promised that Grayscale’s fees are prepared to drop should its Bitcoin trust successfully convert into an ETF.
What’s Next For Grayscale?
During the interview, Sonnhenshein explained that the SEC now has 45 days to request a “rehearing” of the case – an appeal for courts to reconsider a potential mistake from the previous ruling.
“We really have to be patient and follow the federal rules of appellate procedure here,” said Sonnhenshein. “Ultimately, the court will issue a final mandate that will detail the operational next

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone believes Bitcoin spot ETF approval is “inevitable” – but one bearish influence still remains: the Federal Reserve.
Given the ongoing hawkishness of most central banks worldwide, the analyst believes further downside pressure for both Bitcoin and stocks could lie ahead.
The Fed’s Looming Influence
As tweeted by McGlone, while the “inevitable approval” of the first Bitcoin spot ETF in the United States is “moving closer,” the Federal Reserve remains the “elephant in the room” for all risk assets – including Bitcoin.
“The Fed is still tightening despite the tilt toward economic contraction,” McGlone noted. “Breaking downward with volatility bottoming after extreme lows can often signal the start of a next price move.”
Last week, Fed

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has released its full letter explaining its decision to rule in Grayscale’s favor in its lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The decisive 3-0 victory for the company is based on the SEC’s “unreasonable” justification for favoring futures ETFs over spot products, and its inability to provide evidence for its claims.
Grayscale’s Victory Explained
Per the court’s decision on Tuesday, the SEC “failed to adequately explain why itapproved the listing of two bitcoin futures ETPs but not Grayscale’s proposed bitcoin ETP.”
Filed last year, Grayscale’s lawsuit against the SEC accused the agency of “arbitrary and capricious treatment” in denying the Bitcoin fund’s conversion into a Bitcoin spot ETF, despite

Though many doubted their odds, Grayscale has defeated the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in court, bringing the U.S. market one step closer to approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF.
Going into its lawsuit, certain legal and market experts saw Grayscale’s victory as quite likely: Here are just a few of them
Why Grayscale’s Victory Was Assured
Back in June, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Legal Analyst Elliot Z. Stein afforded Grayscale a 70% chance of winning its lawsuit against the SEC.
“The SEC and Chair Gary Gensler may be bracing for a loss and looking to preemptively soften it or make it meaningless by approving spot Bitcoin ETF application before or around the same time as a court decision,” the analyst wrote in a research note at the time.
Grayscale’s lawsuit

Is Elon Musk going to bring crypto payments to X?
In a Monday filing, the tech billionaire’s social media platform secured the Rhode Island Currency Transmission License, which is crucial for offering such services within the state.
Dogecoin On X?
The approval, confirmed by the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS), comes after X (formerly Twitter) began applying for money transmitter licenses in every required U.S. state last month.
In the United States, money transmitters are a subcategory of money services businesses (MSBs) and help facilitate fund transfers between disparate locations and across international borders.
As peer-to-peer payment technology, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are known for being open, permissionless, and

A little-discussed memo from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from five years ago may suggest that the agency faced internal struggles in concluding whether XRP was a security, according to crypto lawyer John Deaton.
This may indicate that Ripple – the company behind XRP – was not legally reckless in issuing the token years prior, as the SEC has often alleged.
The SEC’s Memo
According to Deaton, the “Howey memo” was written by SEC enforcement lawyers, and received by SEC chair Jay Clayton and Commissioner William Hinman on June 13, 2018. This was just one day before Hinman delivered a speech suggesting that Ethereum (ETH) may not be a security while neglecting to mention XRP.
Three months later, Both Clayton and Hinman held a meeting with Ripple CEO Brad

Stablecoin payment adoption continued to thrive last year despite massive capital outflows from the crypto market at large, according to a new report from European hedge fund manager Brevan Howard.
Analysts found that the stablecoin market settled over $11 trillion in value in 2022 and that over 25 million blockchain addresses held over $1 in stablecoins.
Stablecoin Adoption by the Numbers
The fund’s report – co-authored by Venture Co-Head Peter Johnson and quant analyst Sai Nimmagadda – analyzed “non-speculative stablecoin usage” across a range of blockchains and layer 2 networks.
Blockchains included Ethereum Tron, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Fantom, and Avalanche. The stablecoins analyzed included USDT, USDC, BUSD, and TUSD – all of which are

On-chain analysts at Glassnode and Ark have developed a new framework for analyzing the Bitcoin network’s “economic state.”
The framework, called “Cointime Economics (CE),” will help increase the accuracy of on-chain analysis, which savvy investors and traders often use to read where Bitcoin’s price is heading.
What is Cointime Economics?
According to lead Glassnode analyst James Check, CE moves away from analysis based on Bitcoin’s unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), which “zeroes in on individual transaction outputs and requires extensive datasets.”
Instead, the framework uses a new unit of time measurement called “Coinblocks,” which are created every time a new Bitcoin block is added to the network. Then, as Bitcoin UTXOs are spent, the Coinblocks within them are

The likelihood of another Federal Reserve policy rate hike grew stronger on Friday after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium.
During the speech, Powell reiterated that the Federal Reserve remains committed to bringing inflation down to 2%, despite some economists suggesting that achieving that target may be difficult.

“Two percent is and will remain our inflation target,” said Powell. Getting there, he added, will require a “period of below-trend economic growth.”

So far, the Fed isn’t getting the results it needs, as the economy “may not be cooling as expected,” he continued.
Earlier this week, popular economist Paul Krugman wrote a piece for the New York Times, arguing that the Fed may want to target 3% inflation instead, arguing that 2%

Stablecoin giant Tether has published another transparency report detailing the composition of its reserves, and the blockchains on which its tokens are issued.
The report confirms that Tether has $3.3 billion in excess reserves, meaning its tokens are over 100% backed.
Analyzing Tether’s Reserves
Per the report published on Thursday, Tether owns $86.1 billion in assets, while possessing $82.8 billion in liabilities. These liabilities exist in the form of dollar-pegged USDT tokens issued across various blockchains.
The largest amount of USDT (~42.5 billion) circulates on Tron, while a rivaling amount (~38.4 billion) trades on Ethereum. The next largest chain, Solana, hosts far fewer tokens at just ~$800 million USDT.
11 other chains comprise the remainder of Tether’s USDT,

The newly popular memecoin Pepe (PEPE) tanked 13% in value on Thursday after the crypto community noticed strange alterations to the multi-signature wallet used for enhancing the token’s adoption.
As noted by @Crypto_Noddy on X, the multsig wallet changed its threshold for token transfers from 5 of 8 to just 2 of 8 wallet signatures – far less than what is expected for storing reserves for popular coins.
The multisig is meant to reserve a portion of Pepe’s supply to provide liquidity for future exchange listing, liquidity pools, and bridges.
Onchain sleuth ZachXBT, backed up the claim, noting that the wallet has now sent $15.6 million PEPE tokens to a mix of exchanges including Binance, OKX, and Bybit. The amount left in the multisig totals 3.8% of the token’s supply

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) credited a little-known X (formerly Twitter) user on Wednesday for dispelling rumors of internal chaos at Binance, which suggested that the exchange was desperately selling its Bitcoin stash to protect the price of its native token, BNB.
The rumors pertained to a vulnerable BNB collateralized DeFi loan on Venus protocol that approached liquidation this week.
Is BNB in Trouble?
As explained by @zkHopium, the loan in question began with BNB Chain’s 2 million hack in October 2022, during which a hacker minted 2 million BNB (then worth $600 million) from thin air.
The hacker later deposited 900,000 stolen BNB into Venus, borrowing $150 million worth of USDT and USDC stablecoins. This theoretically puts those funds at risk of liquidation should

A former Chinese government official, Xiao Yi, has been sentenced to life in prison for helping subsidize a secret, large-scale Bitcoin mining operation within the country’s borders, alongside unrelated acts of corruption.
Yi pled guilty to the charges, and the government has already seized all of his bribes and profits.
Illegally Helping A Bitcoin Miner
On Tuesday, Yi was specifically convicted of abusing his power by providing financial and electricity subsidies to Jiumu Group Genesis Technology, a company based in Fuzhou. This firm was responsible for operating over 160,000 Bitcoin mining machines at one point and accounted for 10% of the city’s electricity consumption between 2017 and 2020.
Prosecutors contend that Xiao Yi attempted to conceal the illicit mining

An Ethereum address associated with the network’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, transferred 600 ETH to crypto reading platform Coinbase, worth roughly $1 million at writing time.
The transfer comes after crypto markets tanked last week, bringing ETH down to $1670 for the first time since June.
Is Vitalik Selling His ETH?
According to public blockchain data available on Etherscan, the wallet address behind the transfer – Vitalik. eth – now holds a balance of 3,933 ETH, worth $6.58 million right now. It also holds over $500,000 worth of other tokens, including $300,000 worth of DeFi protocol KyberNetowrk (KNC) tokens.
Onchain analysts at PeckShield flagged Vitalik’s transfer on Monday, which first went to a multichain address before being resent to another address that

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a motion requesting permission to appeal a federal court ruling last month claiming that secondary sales of Ripple’s XRP token are not securities.
The agency argued that there are still “substantial grounds for difference of opinion” regarding how securities laws apply to crypto, making frequent reference to a similar case involving Terraform Labs where the judge ruled differently.
Ripple Case Not Over?
The motion, filed on Friday, contested two of Judge Analisa Torres‘s rulings last month: one that “Programmatic Sales” of XRP (ex. secondary market sales) did not satisfy Howey, and another that “Other Distributions” (ex. Payments for services) also failed to do so.
“There are significant grounds for difference of

As crypto mining firms rapidly expand infrastructure ahead of the 2024 Bitcoin halving, the industry is also branching out into another growing tech frenzy: artificial intelligence.
A report from JP Morgan on Thursday explained how mining businesses are now repurposing their infrastructure to provide high-performance computing services.
Miners Pivot to AI
As led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the analysts wrote that miners are partly funding their shift to AI by selling BTC netted from their mining business.
One miner making the transition is Texas-based firm Applied Digital, which has signed a $460 million deal to host cloud computing in its data center. “As the AI industry continues to grow at unprecedented levels, we continue to see extraordinary demand for our new cloud

Is Bitcoin or Ethereum a better protocol for developers? A closer look reveals the answer may not be so obvious.
Tony Cai – CEO of Bitcoin-based DeFi platform Atomic Finance and former Ethereum builder – published a Twitter thread on Wednesday explaining the different experiences of building apps on both networks, including the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Bitcoin’s Advantage: Security and Focus
According to Cai, Bitcoin’s first advantage is the security of its programming language. The original crypto network’s Discrete Log Contracts (DLCs) boast fewer attack services than Ethereum’s smart contracts, which have lost users hundreds of millions of dollars due to coding mistakes and exploits over the past few years.
“In ETH, one tiny mistake (like 1-2 lines of code

Bitcoin’s price plummeted on Thursday to $25,300, touching lows the asset has not seen in the past two months.
The event triggered nearly $1 billion in liquidations across the entire crypto market.
Bitcoin slightly rebounded after the crash, trading for $26,386 at writing time.
The last time Bitcoin traded this low was in mid-June, shortly after Binance and Coinbase were sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and shortly before BlackRock announced its bid for a Bitcoin spot ETF.
According to Coinglass, over $788 million in liquidations have occurred in the past 24 hours, including over $812 million in the last hour alone. Roughly half of the liquidations were on Bitcoin trades, with another $245 million on ETH trades.
The largest single liquidation took