Ponzi Schemes, Restraining Orders, Bankruptcies, Congestions and 20 Crypto Jokes

This week in crypto, the US CPI inflation numbers were released and we looked at what it means for Bitcoin, Tether announced a profit of $1.48 billion for the first quarter of this year, Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital reported a profit of $134 million in Q1, PayPal disclosed it held nearly $1 billion in crypto, mainly BTC and ETH, Goldman Sachs said family offices were ramping up their crypto investments despite the market downturn, and MasterCard, PayPal, and Robinhood were set to facilitate crypto adoption through smoother on-ramps. The Central Bank of Ireland Governor likened unbacked cryptocurrencies to a “Ponzi scheme” but said that “crypto is not going away very soon”. Chinese CBDC was set to find new uses in the worlds of education and public transport, and Kazakhstan collected around $7 million in taxes from crypto miners last year, while the organizers of a new Brazilian chess tournament will reward winners with NFTs.

Then, Bittrex US filed for bankruptcy less than a month after the US SEC accused it of running an unregistered securities exchange, but Bittrex processed $425 million in withdrawals since April 1. Apollo teamed up with NovaWulf to explore the acquisition of Celsius Network, Binance moved a large BTC stash between its crypto wallets as it halted BTC withdrawals citing network congestion, Binance’s NFT marketplace revealed plans to support Bitcoin Ordinals later this month, $60 million in USDT and MASK was sent from OKX to Alameda Research, and Chinese citizens continued trading crypto despite the ban. Meanwhile, QuadrigaCX was set to commence an “interim distribution” of funds to creditors, while Su Zhu got a restraining order against Arthur Hayes.

In the US, President Joe Biden critiqued “wealthy crypto investors” in a tweet, lawmakers drifted the idea of regulating crypto through a self-regulatory organization with the SEC and CFTC in charge, US House Financial Services Committee Chair accused the SEC Chair of avoiding answering questions, a Republican in the House of Representatives claimed some Democrats secretly supports his anti-CBDC bill, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer pushed back against the SEC’s crypto custody rule proposal, the Chamber of Commerce backed Coinbase’s request for the SEC to write rules for crypto, and Binance criticized crypto regulations in the US and eyed UK for better oversight. While Jane Street Group and Jump Crypto cut back their digital asset trading activities in the US due to heightened regulatory pressure, EY launched its Ethereum-based carbon credit traceability platform.

Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried asked a judge to dismiss most of the criminal charges brought against him, Do Kwon pleaded not guilty to allegedly using false passports from Belgium and Costa Rica in a Montenegro court, the US DoJ announced the extradition of a 23-year-old UK citizen behind the 2020 Twitter hack, and the notorious crypto scammer Nicholas Truglia was arrested in the US for fraud and gun possession. A former Coinbase product manager was sentenced to two years in prison in an insider trading case, while a South Korean assembly member found himself under fire for alleged crypto insider trading. Spanish police freed a crypto portfolio manager who was being held at gunpoint by armed kidnappers, and the US White House said that a half of North Korea’s missile funding comes from crypto theft and cybercrime.

Now, let’s laugh at some jokes.

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Good morning!

What’s up, CT?

And I am fabulous.

Source: zwmtradings / Instagram

Sure, laugh now, cry later.