CFTC issues $54M default judgment against trader in crypto fraud scheme

On June 28th, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York had issued a default judgment that granted a permanent injunction against Michael Ackerman, a resident of Alliance, Ohio.  Today a federal court ordered an Ohio man to pay more than $50M for a fraudulent digital asset trading scheme. Learn more: https://t.co/z0WOqXIqih — CFTC (@CFTC) June 28, 2023 Ackerman is now subjected to a ban from participating in any trading activities within CFTC-regulated markets…

Payment Technology Company Mastercard is Piloting Tokenized Bank Deposits in New UK Testbed

“What powers the global economy today is regulated money in the banks,” Dhamodharan said in an interview with CoinDesk. “So we’re starting with making tokenized bank deposits, so the unit of money in a bank account is a digital asset on the blockchain, bringing the same level of programmability to those as you find with digital currency in the crypto ecosystem.” Source

$7.8B lost in crypto ponzi and pyramid schemes in 2022: Report

According to a report published by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs on June 28, a combined $7.8 billion was paid to cryptocurrency pyramid and Ponzi schemes worldwide in 2022. In addition, another $1.5 billion in crypto was alleged by TRM to have been spent on darknets for illicit activities, while another $3.7 billion in crypto was lost in hacks or exploits. In total, $9.04 billion in crypto were sent to all types of financial fraud schemes, as alleged by TRM Labs. Despite a collapse in cryptocurrency prices from the ongoing…

Bitcoin ETF race gets hotter as ARK Invest adds surveillance agreement to application

ARK Investment Management has amended its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), making it similar to BlackRock’s recent filing.  The amendments include a surveillance sharing agreement with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) futures markets and crypto exchange, most “likely Coinbase”, said Bloomberg’s ETF analyst Eric Balchunas on Twitter. In the race for the first Bitcoin ETF in the United States, ARK’s filing update puts it ahead of its competitors. JUST IN: ARK has amended their 19b-4 for spot bitcoin ETF to include…

You Can Now Show ‘Proof of Work’ History Through Coordinape’s Soulbound NFT

“We think that work history will live on-chain for digital communities and digitally native organizations (like DAOs), as a record of provable interactions between individuals, teams, orgs, etc.,” said Zemm. “For contributors using Coordinape, this is an early primitive that we think can add to the space and story of someone’s work and collaborations, and in a manner that will become more sovereign and provable than has been done before.” Source

Sotheby’s to Launch New Gen Art Program Highlighting Generative Artists

The Gen Art Program at Sotheby’s will launch on July 26 and will highlight two to three generative artists per year. The first sale will honor generative art pioneer Vera Molnar, who is considered by many scholars to be the first female digital artist. Beginning her career in the mid-1940s, Molnar began creating computer art in the 1960s, building out an impressive portfolio that is regularly cited as an influence for modern generative artists such as Dmitri Cherniak and Tyler Hobbs. Source

Girlfriends, murdered kids, assassin androids — is AI cursed?

Is artificial intelligence (AI) cursed? It seems to be accelerating us toward a dystopia that humanity isn’t ready for. It’s true that AI has had positive effects for some people. Twitter hustlers have an endless stream of new AI tools, giving them endless content about useless ChatGPT prompts that they can use to compile threads for shilling  their newsletters. More significantly, AI has helped to streamline information — and is being used to detect cancer in some cases. However, many have chosen to use AI to create content — and…

Ethereum $ETH Layer 2 Teams Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync Want You to Clone Their Code

In this “future internet of value,” Matter Labs says zkSync Era will be just one among many compatible blockchains. As it stands now, though, Era is the chain with the most liquidity, the largest number of builders, and the greatest number of platforms already on its network. New blockchains that launch using the ZK Stack could just clone zkSync to compete with it, but they’re more likely to rely on Era for its liquidity and interoperability tech. Source ArbitrumCloneCodeETHEthereumLayerOptimismTeamszkSync CryptoX Portal