Perella Weinberg, the investment bank handling FTX’s bankruptcy, told bidders this month about the pause, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The move followed months of bidders’ due diligence on the stake in the creator of ChatGPT rival chatbot Claude, the people said. Source
CryptoX – Cryptocurrency Analysis and News Portal Bankman-Fried, who faces wire fraud, bank fraud, operating an unlicensed money transmitter, bribery and campaign finance charges, filed to dismiss the bulk of these charges last month across seven pretrial motions. After a court hearing earlier this month, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the last three of those motions. Source The post Judge Rejects FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s Motions to Dismiss Criminal Charges appeared first on CryptoX. CryptoX Portal
Bankman-Fried, who faces wire fraud, bank fraud, operating an unlicensed money transmitter, bribery and campaign finance charges, filed to dismiss the bulk of these charges last month across seven pretrial motions. After a court hearing earlier this month, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the last three of those motions. Source
Two notes before diving in: First, all of the following are allegations made by the FTX liquidators. The claims may or may not surface or be confirmed in the separate criminal trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, currently scheduled to begin in October. And second, for clarity, I’ll be referring throughout to “customer funds” interchangeably with “commingled funds,” because by their nature, the vast majority of commingled funds would likely have been customer funds. Source
Former FTX executives allegedly splurged millions on funding niche projects unrelated to crypto or Web3, including a uniquely named $1.8 million “Pineapple house.” A June 26 report from FTX restructuring chief and CEO John Ray laid out the uses of the allegedly misappropriated customer funds. According to the report, this included “charitable” donations made by the exchange’s co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried and other former executives under the nonprofit FTX Foundation. Detailed were $700,000 worth of FTX Foundation “grants,” $400,000 of which were given to “an entity that posted animated videos on…
FTX has recovered about $7 billion in liquid assets so far, and the search for additional assets is continuing, CEO John Ray said in the FTX Debtors’ second interim report, released June 26. The extensive commingling of funds complicates their efforts, however. The FTX Debtors, made up of FTX and affiliates, currently estimate the amount of customer assets misappropriated at $8.7 billion. Most of that money, about $6.4 billion, was in fiat and stablecoins, which FTX did not differentiate between in its accounting. FTX debtor have filed the second interim…
Commingling and misuse of customer and corporate funds occurred from the inception of FTX, says current CEO John J. Ray III. Source
A creditor of now-bankrupted crypto exchange FTX pledged a claim as collateral for a loan in the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Arcade. The transaction was the first on-chain loan backed by a FTX claim, according to the bankruptcy claims platform Found. The claim worth $31,307 was tokenized and its ownership represented by a nonfungible token (NFT). The NFT was then used on June 23 as a collateral for a $7,500 loan to be repaid in five days. In the event of a payment default, the lender is entitled to the…
The four major media outlets advocating for the release of FTX customer names have opposed the decision to seal them. Meanwhile, a crypto lawyer told Cointelegraph that “there is clear evidence” of potential harm if the names were to be disclosed. According to a June 23 Reuters report, Bloomberg, Dow Jones & Company, The New York Times, and the Financial Times have appealed Judge Dorsey’s decision to seal the names of FTX customers from the public. The decision to allow FTX to “permanently redact” the names of individual customers from all…
Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has taken legal action by filing a lawsuit against a former aide to Hillary Clinton and the aide’s investment firm. The exchange seeks to reclaim $700 million in investments that it alleges were made using misappropriated FTX funds. According to court documents, FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, authorized the transfer of $700 million to entities affiliated with K5 Global, an investment firm led by former Clinton aide Michael Kives and co-founder Bryan Baum. FTX claims that Bankman-Fried allowed this transfer as part of a scheme to misuse…