Faruk Özer and his two siblings were sentenced to 11,196 years in prison for their involvement in the $2 billion rug pull of Turkish crypto exchange Thodex in 2021.
Özer fled the country after the collapse of the exchange, but was detained in Albania a year later, and extradited back to Türkiye in April 2023 where he faced seven criminal charges.
The U.S. Department of Justice has expressed its concerns over Sam Bankman-Fried’s seven expert witnesses, and requested they be barred from testifying on the case.
The DoJ claimed most of the proposed experts lacked the necessary foundation for their opinions, making them unqualified to be an expert witness.
August 29, 2023, 12:28 PM
Former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the Federal Court in New York after pleading not guilty, 3 January, 2022. lev radin/Shutterstock
DeFi protocol Balancer confirmed it was exploited almost a week after disclosing a critical vulnerability affecting several of its boosted pools.
The platform did its best to mitigate some of the risks but was unable to pause the affected pools, and an estimated $980,000 in DAI were stolen in an attack.
A cyber security incident at bankruptcy service provider Kroll has resulted in the exposure of “non-sensitive” customer data for claimants involved in the FTX and BlockFi cases.
Both companies confirmed that account passwords, systems, and funds remained safe, but warned customers to be on the lookout for phishing scams.
Crypto exchange Bitget will make it mandatory for new users to undergo its level-1 KYC process starting 1 September, old users will have until 1 October to do the same.
The level-1 KYC process requires users to submit a government identification and undergo facial authentication, and is in line with global regulatory guidelines.
A spokesperson said the change was due to the “changing market and user needs”, and that Binance will now be refocusing its resources on its main products and long-term goals.
Launched in March 2022, Binance Connect helped crypto businesses connect with the traditional finance system, and supported 50 cryptocurrencies and networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
Coinbase’s Base blockchain was made available to the public on Wednesday, featuring over 100 dApps and services as part of its ecosystem.
In order to show its capabilities and promote its mainnet partners, Base has also launched an event called “Onchain Summer” that will allow users to mint exclusive NFTs on the network.
Bitstamp, the world’s longest-running crypto exchange, has been raising funds since late June, with its advisor being Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital.
The new funds will reportedly be used to launch a new derivatives platform in Europe, expand to new markets in Asia, scale its operations in the U.K..
During an interview with FT, CEO Brian Armstrong said that before the lawsuit a SEC staff member had said that all crypto except BTC was security, and should be delisted.
When asked how he came to that conclusion, the SEC staff member reportedly said “we’re not going to explain it to you, you need to delist every asset other that Bitcoin”.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong appears on stage at the 2014 TechCrunch Disrupt Europe/London, at The Old Billingsgate on October 21, 2014 in London, England. Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for TechCrunch