The central bank of the Netherlands, De Nederlandsche Bank, has issued a warning to investors in KuCoin, saying the exchange was operating without legal registration. In a Dec. 15 announcement, the central bank said MEK Global Limited, or MGL, which does business in the Netherlands as KuCoin, was not in compliance with the country’s anti-money laundering, or AML, and the equivalent of combatting the financing of terrorism, or CFT, regulations. De Nederlandsche Bank added the crypto firm was “illegally offering services” as well as “illegally offering custodian wallets” for users. “Customers of MGL are not in violation,” said the bank. …

Sam Bankman-Fried, former FTX CEO, faces eight accusations and could get 115 years in jail, but there is a "lot to play out" until he gets a final sentence over the coming months or even years, legal commentators told Cointelegraph. "It is difficult to say at this stage what the likely outcome will be, but the stakes are very high indeed. Sentences in major fraud cases can vary, with Bernie Madoff receiving a 150 year sentence in 2009, whilst in the Enron case a few years earlier the sentences handed out to the prime movers were much lower," stated Richard …

A United States Trustee has announced nine creditors to the committee responsible for part of crypto exchange FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings. According to court documents filed Dec. 15, U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara named crypto market maker Wintermute Asia among those on the ‘Committee of Unsecured Creditors’. Other creditors included individual investors, crypto hedge fund Coincident Capital, GGC International — an affiliate of lending platform Genesis — Pulsar Global, Wincent Investment Fund, and Octopus Information. The committee would play a role in representing creditors who lost funds or were otherwise affected by the downfall of FTX. The firm’s bankruptcy filing on Nov. …

After being denied bail in a Bahamas Magistrate Court, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried could spend up to two months in the country’s Fox Hill Prison, a facility with reported cases of physical abuse against prisoners and “harsh” conditions. Authorities in the Bahamas reportedly remanded Bankman-Fried to the medical wing of Fox Hill following a Dec. 13 hearing. SBF’s counsel said he had been taking medication prior to his arrest on Dec. 12 including Adderall and anti-depressants, but it’s unclear if the former CEO will serve his time at the correctional facility, its medical unit, or an alternative location. According …

United States lawmakers with the Senate Banking Committee had their share of crypto proponents and skeptics in a hearing exploring the collapse of the FTX exchange. In a Dec. 14 hearing on ‘Crypto Crash: Why the FTX Bubble Burst and the Harm to Consumers’, many senators reiterated views on crypto they had held seemingly without considering the events leading up to the collapse of FTX and the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried. Unlike in a Dec. 13 House hearing — in which FTX CEO John Ray was the sole witness — the Senate hearing featured a mix of anti- and pro-crypto …

In the months following the announcement of my company’s first experimental title, Cyberstella, visits to my personal LinkedIn profile increased by an astonishing 300%. What does this tell us about the rising trend of anonymous developers popping up in every Web3 community to spam users with investment opportunities and then disappear from the face of the Earth? Well, it spells out trouble for anonymous crypto developers who think they can get away with never putting their face where the money is, so to speak. The fundamental principle behind crypto investing is a two-step process: Issue your project’s native token, leverage …

As the cryptoworld focused on the drama unfolding around FTX, United States Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Roger Marshall introduced the “Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022” on Dec. 14. The seven-page bill would expand the classification of money service business (MSB), prohibit financial institutions from using technology such as digital asset mixers and regulate digital asset kiosks, otherwise known as automated teller machines (ATMs). Announcing the introduction of the bill at the Senate Banking Committee hearing on “Crypto Crash: Why the FTX Bubble Burst and the Harm to Consumers,” Warren, a vocal crypto critic, said: “Senator Marshall and …

With the crypto world still reeling from the FTX collapse, Brazil recently passed legislation that legalized cryptocurrency use for payments in the country. How to reconcile this with all those declarations in the West that crypto is having its “Lehman moment”? Brazil may have inadvertently revealed a cleft between the developed world and emerging markets with regard to the uses and misuses of cryptocurrencies. (The legislation still requires a presidential signature before it becomes law.) Unquestionably, FTX’s Nov. 11 bankruptcy filing hurt crypto exchanges and other crypto-focused enterprises in Brazil, as well as many crypto-based companies all through Latin America …

Damian Williams, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the investigation leading to charges against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried had been “very, very fast” but prosecutors were “not done” with arrests. In a press conference livestream on Dec. 13, Williams said the timing of the arrest of Bankman-Fried had been based on progress from law enforcement officials, who authorized charges on Dec. 7 and indicted the former FTX CEO on Dec. 9, leading to a warrant being executed in the Bahamas on Dec. 12. An eight-count indictment released on Dec. 13 revealed U.S. authorities alleged …

The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, has filed a lawsuit against Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Alameda Research, claiming violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and demanding a jury trial. According to court records filed Dec. 13 in the Southern District of New York, the CFTC filed a complaint for injunctive and other equitable relief as well as civil monetary penalties against Bankman-Fried, FTX Trading, and Alameda Research. The complaint alleged that SBF personally directed FTC executives to set up features allowing Alameda to use the crypto exchange as a line of credit for its lenders. “Contrary to …

The Bahamas government reportedly worked with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to issue a new cryptocurrency controlled by local officials. Following the FTX collapse in November, Bahamas government officials reportedly asked Bankman-Fried to mint new digital assets worth “hundreds of millions of dollars,” lawyers for FTX said in a court filing, Bloomberg reported on Dec. 12. The authorities also reportedly asked the former FTX CEO to transfer the new tokens to the control of island officials. The report also suggests that Bahamas officials tried to help Bankman-Fried regain access to key computer systems of the now-defunct FTX trading platform. According …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is taking further steps to stop Grayscale Investments’ efforts to launch a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). Grayscale began its legal challenge of the SEC’s denial order of the proposed investment product in June 2022. A 73-page brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Dec. 9 saw the SEC lay out the reasoning for its initial decision to bar Grayscale’s request to convert its existing Bitcoin Trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF. The SEC is looking for the D.C. Circuit to deny Grayscale’s appeal, which …