BitMEX is a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform. It is owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited, which is registered in the Seychelles. HDR is an acronym of the last names of its founders, Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Sam Reed. In 2020, Plaintiffs brought a putative class action against the founders and HDR alleging multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”), including price manipulation. The Defendants moved to dismiss the case…
In 2021, Illusory Systems, Inc. developed a cross-chain bridge known as the Nomad Bridge. A “bridge” is a protocol that allows multiple blockchain networks to interact with each other and for users to swap one token for another without having to trade in and out of tokens on an exchange and incur multiple trading fees. While operational, the Nomad Bridge moved more than $912 million worth of crypto assets on behalf of more than 21,000…
The Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) describes itself as a nonprofit industry association that works to make the State of Texas the jurisdiction of choice for cryptocurrency, blockchain and digital asset innovation. Riot Platforms, Inc. is a TBC member and Bitcoin mining company. On February 22, 2024, the two sued the United States Department of Energy (“DOE”), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) and the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), among others, for what Plaintiffs…
On February 26, 2024, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, along with fellow Republican Senators Bill Hagerty, Rick Scott, Ted Budd and Mike Braun introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act. The Federal Reserve acts as the U.S. central bank. The proposed legislation states that no Federal Reserve Bank may “issue a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar, under any other name or label, directly to an individual.’’ This same prohibition was…
We have been following for years (see here) the steps that the United States Internal Revenue Service has taken to sensitize taxpayers to the need for them to properly report sales of cryptocurrency. There did not, however, seem to be any criminal cases brought for failure to do so. That is why the federal indictment against Frank Ahlgren III that was made public earlier this month was interesting. Unlike prior cryptocurrency criminal tax cases, which…
One of the issues that we, and much of the rest of the crypto community, have been following for many years is the battle between the crypto industry and the SEC on the issue of whether crypto assets are securities. In November 2022, a federal district judge in New Hampshire held that the LBRY token was a security. On July 13, 2023, a federal district judge in the Southern District of New York ruled that Ripple Labs’…
CoinList Markets LLC is a currency exchange. When its customers open accounts, there is a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process which requires individual applicants to provide, among other things, their country of residence and address. CoinList maintained several sanctions compliance measures, including screening new and existing customers against Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and other sanctions lists. By spring of 2021, CoinList’s onboarding protocols also included an automated process through which an application was meant to…
We previously reported on the indictment of Shakeeb Ahmed. According to the charging documents and other filings and statements made in court, the facts were as follows: In July 2022, Ahmed carried out an attack on a cryptocurrency exchange, the Crypto Exchange, by exploiting a vulnerability in one of the Crypto Exchange’s smart contracts and inserting fake pricing data to fraudulently cause that smart contract to generate approximately $9 million dollars’ worth of inflated fees…
KuCoin is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. In March of this year, the New York Attorney General (“AG”) sued KuCoin, accusing it of failing to register with the state before letting investors buy and sell cryptocurrencies on its platform. According to the AG, an investigator from the AG’s office was able to create an account with KuCoin using a computer with a New York-based IP address to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including popular tokens…
SEC v. Crowd Machine, Inc. was a lawsuit that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission brought against Crowd Machine Inc. (“CMI”), and others, for CMI’s making materially false and misleading statements in connection with an initial coin offering of Crowd Machine Compute Tokens (CMCTs). Rather than using the ICO proceeds for the stated purpose, Defendants diverted more than $5.8 million in ICO proceeds to gold mining entities in South Africa. The SEC also alleged…