The Guardian - Cryptocurrency News Sites

Exclusive: Asic had concerns about crypto platform six months before spectacular failureFollow our Australia news live blog for the latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastAustralian regulators were concerned about failed cryptocurrency platform FTX’s local operations six months before the company’s spectacular collapse, and were actively surveilling the company, documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal.FTX put its Australian companies into voluntary administration in November following its bankruptcy filing in the US. Around 30,000 Australian customers were owed money or cryptocurrency from the exchange, in amounts ranging up to $1m.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Continue reading...

Investigation reveals more than 150 fake firms, many with ties to China, are targeting people online, breaking their hearts – and emptying their bank accounts.A woman meets a man online. They flirt. Then, after a few weeks, they begin imagining a future together. Fast forward a few months and one of them has had their heart broken and been defrauded of their life savings.It sounds like a classic romance scam, but it isn’t. This is “pig butchering”: a brutal, elaborate and rapidly expanding form of organised crime, often involving criminal syndicates, modern-day slaves and victims around the world. Continue reading...

The Brisbane-based firm lost $33m in the collapse of the global platform FTX but now aims to pay back customers over five yearsGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastA Brisbane-based cryptocurrency exchange will continue to operate after creditors agreed to a long-term plan from administrators keep the business going in an attempt to recover from the global collapse of FTX.Digital Surge went into administration in December last year as a result of the company having transferred $33m worth of its assets to global platform FTX just two weeks before that company’s spectacular collapse in November. Continue reading...

While the fraudsters I’ve encountered are often cunning, sooner or later they get carried awayFTX’s HQ, we now know, was not your typical one. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried ran his business from a $40m Bahamian penthouse named the Orchid, complete with Venetian plaster walls and a grand piano. The lot was nestled beside a championship golf course and a mega-yacht marina. Since Amazon doesn’t deliver to the Bahamas, private jets did the job instead.It wasn’t your typical corporate HQ – but then, FTX is not your typical corporation. It’s bankrupt, dragged down by its own financial abuses, with its chief executive facing prison. Yet while FTX has made headlines, its tale is not as unusual as you might think. Continue reading...

Joanna Lumley delights in musical exchanges with her real husband, and turns up the comedy with a fictional spouse; the excellent Aleks Krotoski tells the story of cryptocurrency Tether; and Ken Bruce pulls a shockerJoanna & the Maestro (Cup & Nuzzle, Burning Bright Productions and Bauer Media) | Planet Radio Conversations from a Long Marriage (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds Real Money: The Hunt for Tether’s Billions (Tortoise Media) | Tortoise Ken Bruce (Radio 2) | BBC SoundsAll-the-medals national treasure Dame Joanna Lumley has a new classical music podcast with her husband, Stephen “Stevie” Barlow. It’s called Joanna & the Maestro and it’s quite the most wonderfully fruity thing you ever heard. Just 10 minutes in its company and you find yourself describing things – even quite ordinary things, such as a cup of coffee or the dog – as divine. Beautiful. Exquisite. Gorgeous. Continue reading...

Firm is latest casualty in sector as cryptocurrencies contagion spreads after FTX collapseThe cryptocurrency lender Genesis has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, becoming the latest victim of the shakeout in the digital asset market after the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX.Genesis Global Capital, one of three Genesis entities that applied for bankruptcy protection on Thursday, froze customer withdrawals on 16 November, days after FTX made its own Chapter 11 filing.The lender said it had assets and liabilities in the range of $1bn to $10bn, and estimated it had more than 100,000 creditors in its filing with the US bankruptcy court for the southern district of New York. Genesis Global Holdco, the parent group of Genesis Global Capital, also filed for bankruptcy protection, along with another lending unit, Genesis Asia Pacific.Genesis Global Holdco said options under consideration included a sale and that it had $150m in cash to support the restructuring. Under a Chapter 11 process, a struggling company is sheltered from creditors temporarily while it attempts to restructure its finances.Genesis’s derivatives and spot trading, broker dealer and custody businesses were not part of the bankruptcy process, and would continue their client trading operations, the holding company said.The bankruptcy filing is the latest in a cascade of crypto failures and steep job cuts triggered by plunging digital asset prices last year.Last year, Genesis extended $130.6bn in crypto loans and traded $116.5bn in assets, according to its website. Its two biggest borrowers were Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based crypto hedge fund, and Alameda Research, a trading company closely affiliated with FTX, a source told Reuters. Three Arrows, Alameda and FTX are in bankruptcy proceedings.Three Arrows’ debt to Genesis was assumed by its parent company, the venture capital firm Digital Currency Group (DCG), which then filed a claim against Three Arrows. DCG’s portfolio companies also include the crypto asset manager Grayscale and news service CoinDesk.Crypto lenders, which acted as de facto banks, boomed during the pandemic. But unlike traditional banks, they are not required to hold capital cushions. This year, a shortfall of collateral forced some lenders – and their customers – to shoulder large losses. Continue reading...

Prosecutors allege Anatoly Legkodymov’s company became a ‘safe haven’ for proceeds of criminal activityA Russian national who founded a cryptocurrency exchange that the justice department says became a haven for the proceeds of criminal activity has been arrested, federal officials said on Wednesday.Anatoly Legkodymov, who lives in China, was arrested on Tuesday night in Miami and was due in court on a charge of conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Continue reading...

The downfall of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange proves how much markets need rulesI’ve laboured hard not to engage with cryptocurrency, to turn the page on its scandals and file its many bin fires under “fools and their money being easily parted”. But this has been a mistake, because the story is just getting good.The PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel said in 2020 that crypto was one of two poles of technological conflict, the other being artificial intelligence. AI could “theoretically make it possible to centrally control an entire economy” while crypto “holds out the prospect of a decentralised and individualised world”. He concluded that AI is communist and crypto is libertarian; it was unnecessary to add which of those he thought was better.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Lawsuit argues move to allow energy-intensive cryptocurrency miner to take over power plant violates state’s 2019 climate lawEnvironmental activists filed a lawsuit against a New York state agency on Friday for approving a cryptocurrency mining company’s takeover of an upstate power plant.The group said the move violates the state’s landmark climate law that was passed in 2019 and the lawsuit is the first to test how energy-intensive crypto mining legally holds up against the state’s climate goals. Continue reading...