“Digital Currency”

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged a 22-year-old Canadian math whiz in connection with what it calls “cryptocurrency hacking schemes” that allegedly netted him US$65-million in digital tokens.

Andean Medjedovic, who at 19 had already completed a master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Waterloo, is accused of exploiting vulnerabilities in decentralized financial platforms and then laundering the proceeds of those schemes, according to the indictment unsealed on Monday.

Mr. Medjedovic went into hiding in 2021, according to Ontario court documents.

The hunt for a Bulgarian “cryptoqueen” wanted over one of the world’s biggest cases of fraud has spread to South Africa.

Ruja Ignatova, a Bulgarian citizen who was educated at Oxford, is the only woman on the FBI’s top 10 most-wanted list.

She allegedly swindled £3.6 billion out of millions of investors as part of a scam involving the fake cryptocurrency OneCoin.

He was a poster boy for cryptocurrency whose sudden ascent to stratospheric wealth was matched only by his downfall, as his financial empire fell to pieces and he found himself in a federal prison.

Now Hollywood studios are lining up to tell the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former-billionaire who stole $8 billion from investors and customers of FTX, the trading exchange he founded, that he had promised was a safe way to buy and sell bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Caroline Ellison was sentenced to 24 months in prison by a federal judge for her role in the FTX collapse, despite helping prosecutors in the conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, her former boss and boyfriend.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday imposed the two-year sentence on the 29-year-old, calling Ellison’s cooperation “remarkable” and praising her testimony during the fraud trial. But Kaplan noted that the case was one of the “most serious” financial frauds ever committed and that her cooperation can’t be a “get out of jail free card.”

The 11 Billion is just for show.

A few thoughts on how Americans thought about the crypto trial of the century.

When I first started chasing around after Sam Bankman-Fried, I had no idea where he might lead me. I certainly had no sense that I’d wind up with a ringside seat to a financial catastrophe. I had no slant or angle, much less a theory of the case. I was just curious about Sam and his bizarre situation. Inside of three years, he’d gone from socially and emotionally isolated 25-year-old with an upper-middle-class bank account to leader of a small army of math nerds and (according to Forbes magazine) not merely the world’s richest person under 30 but maybe the fastest creator of wealth in recorded history. The leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties solicited his money and his thoughts. The heads of big Wall Street banks felt a need to know him, and the leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists felt a need to invest in him. Tom Brady was hanging out with him, Taylor Swift was negotiating to endorse his crypto exchange, Shaquille O’Neal wanted to partner with him to solve the homeless problem in the Bahamas, and Orlando Bloom was asking to play him in a movie. He’d gone from having no friends as a child to having too many as an adult without ever developing a capacity for friendship.

Ryan Salame, a top executive at the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on Tuesday, making him the first of Sam Bankman-Fried’s circle of advisers at FTX to receive prison time.

Mr. Salame, 30, a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Bankman-Fried, the exchange’s founder, pleaded guilty last year to a campaign finance law violation and a charge of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. He is one of four top deputies in the FTX empire who have pleaded guilty to crimes since the company imploded in November 2022.

Mr. Salame’s sentence exceeded the five to seven years that prosecutors had recommended. Defense lawyers had requested an 18-month sentence.

Sam Bankman-Fried is going to be transferred from a New York lock-up to one in California, against his wishes, according to a report.

The convicted crypto-cook – who is appealing his 25-year prison sentence – is in the process of leaving Brooklyn Federal Metropolitan Detention Center for a prison in Mendota, California, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was this week sentenced to four months in an American prison for failing to take adequate measures against cybercriminals and terrorist groups on his exchange. For some crypto enthusiasts, there may yet be a silver lining to this sad episode. As crypto goes from being a buccaneering innovator in finance to one of the grown-ups in the room, the increased scrutiny from regulators will weed out some bad apples, in turn enabling a cleaned-up sector to move forward.

However, the incident underscores a tension at the heart of crypto. Created by libertarians angry at the bank bailouts that followed the 2008 global financial crisis, it was originally intended as a new form of money that would operate outside the formal system. Along with new dark web spaces that sprang up around that time, such as Silk Road, its whole purpose was to create an autonomous space where a new economy could emerge. If a few bad apples used it, that was a price worth paying for sticking it to the man. After all, the 2008 crash had revealed plenty of villains in the regulated banking sector.

Sam Bankman-Fried, facing the prospect of spending much of his adult life behind bars, on Thursday appealed his conviction and 25-year prison sentence for stealing $8 billion from customers of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.

Defense lawyer Marc Mukasey had announced plans for the appeal to the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals during Bankman-Fried’s March 28 sentencing hearing. The 32-year-old former billionaire crypto wunderkind was convicted in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in what federal prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.