Two California men have been charged in the largest NFT fraud case ever prosecuted, accused of defrauding investors of over $22 million through deceptive schemes.

According to a six-count indictment unsealed in Los Angeles, Gabriel Hay, known by aliases such as “Mr. Handz” and “Vaultkeeper,” and Gavin Mayo, known as “Gavinm,” launched fraudulent projects like Vault of Gems and Faceless.

They promised investors lucrative returns using fabricated claims and fake project roadmaps.

Vault of Gems

Jump Trading’s Tai Mo Shan Ltd. will pay $123 million to settle allegations it misled investors by stabilising TerraUSD during its collapse, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday.

The firm, tied to Jump’s crypto unit, made significant purchases to prop up the failed stablecoin’s $1 peg, deceiving the market.

The SEC accused Tai Mo Shan of negligence, citing its $20 million in trades that created a false impression of TerraUSD’s stability.

The regulator also highlighted its role i

Fewer than half of all DeFi protocols that suffer a hack or exploit survive the experience.

That’s according to research from Cozy Finance, a blockchain-based market that offers DeFi businesses “FDIC-like” insurance.

Cozy reviewed the experience of 64 projects that had at least $1 million in user deposits at the time of the hack. Only 39%, or 25 of those projects, survived.

“Many DeFi founders take a fatalistic view of hacks, striving to prevent them with best security practices but assuming

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The Federal Reserve’s hawkish outlook for 2025 spooked investors.

Cryptocurrencies were hit hardest. Bitcoin plummeted double-digits overnight, although it has since recovered. It is now down 2.5% to $97,400.

Ethereum plunged a whopping 12%, while XRP and Solana shed 10% and 12% respectively. Most digital assets have erased their earlier losses.

The plunge came from Powell’s hawkish stance on furthe

Parts of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire are still kicking.

MNNC Group told DL News that it’s raised more than $100 million.

According to Thursday filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Cayman Islands-based firm, which was previously called LedgerPrime, had raised $53 million across two funds.

But Ayesha Kiani, the chief operating officer of MNNC Group, said: “It’s a lot more than that. That’s just one of our onshore entities.”

Kiani declined to elaborate to DL News on Fr

Craig Wright, the man who long claimed to be Bitcoin’s inventor, received a one-year suspended sentence after breaching a UK High Court order.

The court found Wright in contempt after he filed a $1.2 trillion lawsuit against Bitcoin developers, violating an injunction barring him from claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto or pursuing related legal action.

His conduct was described as “flagrant.”

“There is no doubt whatever that each of these contempts has been proved,” Justice Mellor said during th

Wolfgang Münchau is a columnist for DL News. He is co-founder and director of Eurointelligence, and writes a column on European affairs for the New Statesman. Opinions are his own.

The crypto industry is full of buzz at reports that Donald Trump might consider the use of the exchange stabilisation fund, or ESF, to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

They are right to be excited, but for the wrong reasons.

The focus in the markets is purely on the short-term price effects. I am not denying tha

This week’s slump in the crypto market hasn’t abated.

Over the past 24 hours, the price of Bitcoin has dropped 7.3% to now $94,662. And Ether has plummeted 13% to $3,213.

The flagging market has been especially brutal for dominant altcoins. Solana is down 14%, Cardano has dropped 18%, and XRP, the token linked to Ripple, tanked almost 13%.

The drawback is a continuation of bearish sentiment from earlier in the week.

On Wednesday, Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, hinted that inter

BlackRock is caught in the eye of a storm from the Bitcoin community after it let out a suspicious line in a three minute Bitcoin explainer.

In the video, the narrator describes one of BItcoin’s core aspects, its 21 million fixed supply, as a hard-coded rule. Yet a subtle disclaimer at the bottom caught Bitcoiners’ attention.

“There is no guarantee that Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap will not be changed,” read the subtitle.

Bitcoiners baulked.

“Is BlackRock already coming up with a way to i

Sam Altman’s eye-scanning crypto project needs to take a second look at its European operations.

The German data agency investigating World over its data collection practices concluded today that the firm does not meet Europe’s strict data privacy laws.

“Worldcoin still has to do some homework,” Will told DL News in a phone call.

Michael Will, the president of the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection, said that doesn’t mean they must stop their operations in the European Union.

The BayL

Worries over the debanking of crypto companies and executives have reached the highest rungs of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In Wednesday comments, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce expressed skepticism over a budget from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a nonprofit that oversees the audits of publicly listed companies in the US.

Peirce pointed to the Board’s decision to focus on companies that have significant crypto holdings or facilitate crypto transactions.

“In recen

Bitcoin and other blue chip cryptocurrencies dropped sharply Wednesday after the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates 0.25%, and Chair Jerome Powell signalled interest rate cuts would slow in 2025.

Bitcoin plunged to $100,800 following Powell’s comments. It registered a 5% drop in the past 24 hours after topping $108,000 earlier this week. Ethereum, meanwhile, fell 6% to $3,690, and XRP dropped 9%.

The Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates in September, as inflation cooled and the unem

Bitcoiners are beginning to call into question the idea of a US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.

The idea, floated by Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, would create a stockpile of Bitcoin in the hands of the US government.

Lummis proposed a bill that would mean the US buy 1 million Bitcoin over the course of five years. Yesterday, a think tank dubbed the Bitcoin Policy Institute outlined an executive order for President-elect Donald Trump that wo

Bitcoin is consolidating above $100,000 and heading into “uncharted waters.”

Altcoins, however, have struggled to keep up with Bitcoin’s barnstorming run this year.

Apart from XRP, Solana and a few other cryptocurrencies, the altcoin market has largely lagged Bitcoin’s growth in 2024.

Ethereum, crypto’s second-biggest asset, is perhaps the best indicator of the underperformance of altcoins compared to Bitcoin.

It’s up only 69% this year, compared to Bitcoin’s 150% year-to-date performance. U

If history repeats itself, Bitcoin will continue its stunning post-election climb and hit $180,000 next year, according to Wall Street asset manager VanEck.

But company analysts could be wrong. If they are, two data points will be flashing red: Bitcoin funding rates and traders’ “relative unrealised profit,” the company’s chief crypto analyst said Tuesday.

“We continue to put significant weight in the four year cycle for Bitcoin,” Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, said o

This year packed quite a wallop for Worldcoin. There were regulatory clampdowns, investigations, and even brawls at its eyeball-scanning stations.

And yet Sam Altman’s crypto-powered, online identity venture is growing faster than ever — just not in Europe.

Hemmed in by the European Union’s strict data privacy rules, the venture’s locations for scanning users’ biometric information have rolled out just 16 new kiosks in the past three months, according to company data.

By contrast, the venture

Dylan Meissner, the former vice president of finance at crypto research firm Delphi Digital, was sentenced to four years in prison on Wednesday for embezzlement, according to the Department of Justice.

A Connecticut judge ordered Meissner to pay $4.6 million to Delphi Digital and said his sentence will be followed by two years of supervised release.

The restitution amount included the money he stole and an unpaid loan.

Anil Lulla, co-founder and CEO of Delphi Digital, confirmed to DL News tha

Market players are overwhelmingly anticipating an interest rate cut at the US Federal Reserve meeting on Wednesday.

That means rate cuts are already priced in to markets, helping so-called risk-on assets surge higher.

But the Fed might adopt a “more hawkish tone” in the meeting, which could dampen the crypto rally, Haider Rafique, Global CMO of OKX told DL News.

That would signal more aggressive moves from the Fed.

But, he added: “Investors should remain vigilant, as the Fed’s policy decisio

Retail customers of Binance in Australia weren’t shielded by consumer protections for risky derivatives that led to big losses, regulators in the country claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday.

From July 2022 to April 2023, Binance miscategorized over 500 customers on its Australian derivatives exchange as “wholesale clients,” the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said.

This means that these customers did not receive the same protections that smaller-pocketed investors do, including the

Wall Street could be in store for a deluge of crypto exchange-traded funds in 2025.

That’s according to senior ETF analysts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart – though specific cryptocurrencies’ fate will depend on the incoming SEC administration.

“We expect a wave of cryptocurrency ETFs next year, albeit not all at once,” Bloomberg ETF expert Balchunas said on X. The prediction comes off the back of record-breaking Bitcoin ETF fund flows.

Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated more than $129 billion i