Tausi Insider

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were under pressure on Monday following last week’s spectacular collapse of crypto exchange FTX, while regulators opened probes and rival exchanges sought to reassure jittery investors of their own stability. The implosion of FTX, once a darling of the crypto industry with a US$32-billion valuation as of January, has spurred investigations by the U.S. Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a source with knowledge of the investigations said. The SEC’s probe is also targeting FTX executives, their knowledge of the handling of customer funds and any potential breaking of securities laws, a second source with knowledge of the investigation said. While the crypto industry has touted digital assets as fundamentally different from traditional finance, the sector has proven to be susceptible to the same risks and should be subject to the same rules, Federal Reserve vice-chair Lael Brainard said o...

The stunning implosion of FTX Ltd. has derailed its plans to officially launch in Canada, but it’s unclear if regulators in this country were even able to peer into the books of the cryptocurrency exchange as part of their due diligence on the company that now faces potentially criminal liability. Months before it filed for bankruptcy amid a scandal that continues to reverberate across the global crypto industry, FTX was on course in June to acquire Bitvo Inc., a Calgary-based crypto exchange regulated by all 13 provincial and territorial securities commissions in Canada. It was one of several opportunities Canadian regulators were ostensibly provided to look closely at FTX’s finances. Bahamas-based FTX had already been operating in Canada, despite not having regulatory approval. Retail investors were able to hold digital wallets on FTX’s platform to store their crypto, with many using VPN technology, which anonymized their Canadian location and created a private network from a publ...

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of crypto currency exchange FTX, is escorted out of the Magistrate Court building in Nassau, Bahamas, Dec. 21, 2022. DANTE CARRER/Reuters Crypto exchange FTX invented a currency, repeatedly propped up its price, then used the inflated value to orchestrate wide-scale fraud, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In charges laid late Wednesday against Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, two former top officials in the FTX ecosystem, the SEC painted the clearest picture yet of how exactly FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried orchestrated what the regulator alleges was “a massive, years-long fraud.” The scheme, according to the SEC , involved “diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for [Mr. Bankman-Fried’s] own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.” FTT, a cryptocurrency that FTX invented, was central to the alleged fraud, according to the SEC. In the crypto world, FTT is known as an e...