CryptoQuestion

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Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX's new chief executive, John Ray, is looking into the possibility of reviving the platform.

He told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that he has set up a taskforce to explore restarting FTX.com to "recover more value" for people who lost money.

A year ago FTX was valued at $32bn (£26bn), but it filed for bankruptcy protection in November.

It has been estimated that $8bn worth of funds was missing.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former chief executive of the exchange, has been accused of defrauding customers and investors to pay debts incurred by his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research.

Cyber-crime gangs have had a 40% drop in earnings as victims are refusing to pay ransoms, researchers say.

Cryptocurrency experts at Chainalysis say ransomware groups extorted at least $457m (£370m) from victims in 2022 - $311m less than the year before.

The true figures are likely to be higher, but experts agree that fewer victims are paying.

However, while there has been a drop in criminal revenue, the number of attacks is rising.

Companies, governments, schools and even hospitals around the world are regularly falling victim to ransomware hackers, who lock staff out of their IT systems until a ransom is paid, usually in Bitcoin.

Many ransomware crews are thought to be based in Russia, although Russian officials deny the country is a haven for the groups.

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Authorities have seized cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato, and arrested its co-founder, accusing the firm of fuelling a "high-tech axis of crypto crime".

The US Department of Justice charged Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national living in China, with running a business that catered to what he once described as "crooks".

They said Bitzlato processed more than $700m (£567m) in illicit funds, breaking rules designed to thwart money laundering.

"As alleged, Bitzlato sold itself to criminals as a no-questions-asked cryptocurrency exchange, and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of deposits as a result. The defendant is now paying the price for the malign role that his company played in the cryptocurrency ecosystem."

Four people at the centre of a multimillion-pound cryptocurrency fraud have been jailed.

They were involved in a conspiracy to dishonestly obtain Bitcoin worth £21m between October 2017 and January 2018.

Stephen Boys, Kelly Caton, Jordan Robinson and James Austin-Beddoes were convicted of a number of fraud offences.

The group worked with ringleader James Parker, who died in 2021 before he could be prosecuted for masterminding the conspiracy from his Blackpool home.

The court heard he exploited a loophole to withdraw dishonestly-obtained crypto assets worth £15m from his trading account on an Australian-based cryptocurrency exchange.

Parker's financial adviser Boys worked with a UK national based in the United Arab Emirates to convert the cryptocurrency into cash.

The money was then laundered through various foreign-based online accounts.

Yield farming is a method of earning rewards or interest by depositing your cryptocurrency into a pool with other users. The pooled funds are used to carry out smart contracts such as cryptocurrency lending that generates interest in return.

Former FTX US President Brett Harrison has lashed out at Sam Bankman-Fried for manipulating and threatening colleagues who proposed solutions to reorganize FTX US’ management structure.

Harrison shared his experiences with Bankman-Fried and FTX US on Dec. 14, explaining how he was hired “casually over text” in March 2021 after working together at New York-based trading firm Jane Street for a few years.

But six months into Harrison’s tenure at FTX US, “cracks began to form” between the two, he said.

Despite recalling Bankman-Fried to be a “sensitive and intellectually curious person” at first, Harrison said he saw “total insecurity and intransigence” in Bankman-Fried when confronted with conflict, particularly when Harrison suggested FTX US establish separate branches for its executive, developer and legal teams.

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Cryptocurrency firms Gemini and Genesis have been charged by US regulators with illegally selling crypto assets to hundreds of thousands of investors.

The companies are accused of breaking the law by offering and selling the products through their joint programme, Gemini Earn, which launched in 2021.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in charge of the case.

Gemini was co-founded by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss - known for their legal dispute with Facebook.

Genesis, which is owned by the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, has so far not commented on the charges.

Collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX has located more than $5bn (£4.1bn) of assets, an attorney for the firm says.

However, a US bankruptcy court was told on Wednesday that the extent of losses to customers is still not known.

Prosecutors have accused FTX's former chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried of orchestrating an "epic" fraud that may have cost investors, customers and lenders billions of dollars.

Mr Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to charges that he cheated investors.

"We have located over 5 billion dollars of cash, liquid cryptocurrency and liquid investment securities," Andy Dietderich, an attorney for FTX, told US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Delaware.

Mr Dietderich said that the recovered funds do not include assets seized by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, where FTX was based and where Mr Bankman-Fried was living at the time of his arrest.

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Ethical Sales
Ethical considerations when selling financial products.

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The government is considering introducing a national cryptocurrency or "digital pound", the economic secretary to the Treasury has told MPs.

A public consultation on the attributes of a digital pound would be launched in coming weeks, Mr Griffith told the Treasury Select Committee.

"I want to see us establish a regime, and this is within the FSMB [Financial Services and Markets Bill, currently being debated in Parliament], for the wholesale use for payment purposes of stablecoins," he said.

The EU has set out the world's first comprehensive set of rules for regulating crypto markets.

They are due to receive final approval in the coming weeks and come into effect in 2024.

Mr Griffith said the UK rules could be broader, to include decentralised finance, and everyone would benefit from greater transparency.