Wow Heather Morgan, Forbes contributor and rapper, and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein were arrested on Tuesday in Manhattan. The couple had in their possession roughly $3.6 billion in Bitcoin, which was hacked from Hong Kong exchange Bitfinex in 2016. The Justice Department reports that this seizure of crypto is its largest financial seizure to date. The charges going against the couple are conspiracy to launder money, and conspiracy to defraud the US. It is still unclear if they were the ones who orchestrated the hack. The couple allegedly laundered the money through a series of crypto wallets and transactions, and up until recently did a good job of it, they…
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The stablecoin Tether USDT is the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap. (Photo: DIAMOND VISUALS/Shutterstock)CoinDesk ME Lewitinn May Be Eligible for $1M Reward on Tether Transparency
Short researcher Hindenburg offered bounty to anyone who uncovers info
Anyone interested in great business journalism, or short-selling in general, must read Andrew Rice’s profile of short seller Nathan Anderson, the founder of Hindenburg research. But here at Modern Consensus, we read it and thought of its relevance to one reader in particular. Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper. Last week I wrote about how CoinDesk has been on a jihad to shed some transparency on exactly how the stablecoin Tether funds its gigantic reserves. The company claims that those reserves are backed dollar for dollar with actual, real-world dollar and dollar equivalent investing instruments. But Tether, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, has a…
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CoinDesk on the Verge of Victory in Fight to FOIL Tether Records
Stablecoin has resisted sharing details of its reserves with publication it deems ‘unprofessional’
One of the biggest mysteries in crypto revolves around token issuer Tether. Crypto enthusiasts—and crypto journalists— have long tried to figure out exactly what hard assets comprise the massive reserves that tether, as a “stablecoin,” is required to keep its dollar for dollar ratio in backing bitcoin with American dollars. The question is not academic. Tether has more than $78 billion worth of tokens in circulation and is by far the largest stablecoin issuer, accounting for about half of all transactions against bitcoin on centralized exchanges. Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper. If the market began to question the stability of those dollar…
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Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather Are Being Sued for Advertising a Crypto Token
Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather and Reality TV star and model Kim Kardashian are under fire after promoting an alleged “pump and dump” scam
The controversy Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, basketball player Paul Pierce are all under fire for using their platforms to promote the EthereumMax (EMAX) token. As stated in the class action complaint “This case arises from a scheme among various individuals in the cryptocurrency sector to misleadingly promote and sell the digital asset associated with EthereumMax (the EMAX Tokens) to unsuspecting investors.” The case essentially states that the defendants used their own influence as celebrities to artificially inflate the price of the token. From there, investors bought EMAX tokens at an inflated price. After this, supposedly the defendants involved then went and sold off their shares of the token, made a…
