Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's note In a tweet late last night, President Trump said that he and Melania had tested positive for COVID-19. If you weren’t already aware of that, you may want to catch up on a deluge of wishes for life and death, alongside speculation as to Trump’s announcement being a hoax, before sitting down to this week’s Law Decoded. Or possibly not. Every week leading up to the presidential election features more amplified headlines. Law Decoded is likely not the ideal …
BitMEX, one of the world’s largest crypto derivatives exchanges, has been accused in court of being “deliberately designed, from the ground up” to facilitate “a myriad of illegal activities.” The allegations were made in a major new lawsuit filed by BMA LLC in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on May 16. The plaintiff accuses BitMEX’s parent company — HDR Global Trading — and the exchange’s top executives — Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed — of engaging in or abetting multiple crimes that include racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud and operating an unlicensed …
The ongoing saga of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb continues, this time with ruling from local courts. On Jan. 13 the South Korean Supreme Court finalized its ruling that the exchange must pay damages to investors over a 1.5-hour service outage on Nov. 12, 2017. According to a local news source, the damages are equivalent to $202, 400 - or 251.4 million in the regional currency won. Initially, a district ruled against the investors, though it was later overturned. The finalized ruling from the Supreme Court ordered damages to be paid ranging from as little as $6 to around …
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is reportedly being probed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over whether it breached rules around the offering of securities. According to a Feb. 8 Bloomberg report, the probe relates to certain offerings that Kraken has made to U.S. clients. A person with knowledge of the matter said the probe is at an advanced stage and could reach a settlement in the coming days. However, at this stage, it is not clear which offerings are being scrutinized by the securities regulator. When asked about the alleged probe, an SEC spokesperson told Cointelegraph, "The SEC …
An investor with nearly $2 million worth of funds frozen in bankrupt cryptocurrency lender BlockFi has filed a class action complaint against its founders, two directors and crypto exchange Gemini. In a Feb. 28 complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, investor Trey Greene accused the defendants of numerous wrongdoings, including violating the consumer fraud and exchange acts, breaching its fiduciary duties, as well as offering and selling unregistered securities. “The unregistered securities sold by the BFI [BlockFi] Defendants on behalf of BlockFi were marketed and sold via a steady stream of misrepresentations and …