The Crypto Currier 2nd April

Crypto vs. April Fool's, the latest on SBF since he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Craig not-Satoshi Wright's assets seized to make sure he pays his court fees, and Google searches vs. privacy

A new whitepaper for ‘BunkerCoin: a low bandwidth, shortwave radio-compatible blockchain protocol’ is out. Vitalik Butertin, founder of Ethereum released a statement about: ‘degen communism: the only correct political ideology’, and a rumour led to a pump-and-dump, all yesterday morning. Crypto as usual, yesterday under the banner of April Fools jokes on crypto Twitter .

Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for his $8 billion fraud while he was the founder of crypto exchange FTX. Prosecutors argued?that SBF, 32, showed a lack of remorse for his crimes while leading a life of “unmatched greed and hubris”. They argued that with a shorter sentence, SBF might have gone on to commit more crimes had the money been right.

SBF is now claiming he never thought what he was doing was illegal. Interim CEO John Ray disagrees. Ray wrote of him: "Mr. Bankman-Fried continues to live a life of delusion. The 'business' he left on November 11, 2022, was neither solvent nor safe”.

Judge Kaplan rejected SBF’s claims that the money wasn’t lost. In total, $11 billion of customer funds were lost when accounting for investors and lenders for FTX and Alameda Research. Many have lost their life savings.

The judge said he imposed the long sentence on SBF in part because of "the brazenness of his actions, his exceptional flexibility with the truth," and "his apparent lack of real remorse."

Judge Kaplan also said that SBF perjured himself several times when he testified during his trial.

"I have been doing this job for 30 years. I have never seen a performance like that," Kaplan said of SBF’s testimony.

Still, prison consultants say SBF could go to a low- or medium-security prison and get out in 17 years if he manages to resist contraband and exercises impulse control.

Because it’s crypto, hours before SBF’s sentencing, a new memecoin dubbed Sam Baseman Fraud , ticker FTX, launched. It spiked more than 23,300% in seven hours, peaking at a $1.5 million market capitalisation before crashing over 85% within three hours.

Two Binance executives, one of whom is still detained in Nigeria, have sued the Nigerian government for violating their fundamental human rights. Nadeem Anjarwalla, a dual UK-Kenya citizen, reportedly?managed to flee custody?after guards escorted him to a mosque for prayer.?Tigran Gambaryan, Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, is still reported to be detailed.

Authorities say Binance was operating in the country illegally . Central Bank Governor Olayemi Cardoso claims $26 billion has passed via Binance in Nigeria “from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify.” Officials also say Binance has hampered the local exchange rate.

A UK judge has ordered a worldwide freezing order on ￡6 million ($7.6 million) of Craig Wright’s assets to prevent him from moving them offshore and evading costs arising from his court case . Judge James Mellor found that Wright wasn’t Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin and didn't author the Bitcoin white paper or the initial versions of the Bitcoin software. Wright has to pay COPA's court costs, which amount to about 6.7 million pounds .

"Understandably, that gave rise to serious concerns on COPA’s part that Dr Wright was implementing measures to seek to evade the costs consequences of his loss at trial," Judge Mellor wrote in the judgment.

Google has introduced a new feature allowing users to check their crypto wallet balances and see the last time the balance was updated directly through its search engine. This raises some pretty big privacy concerns and queries around the centralisation of crypto users’ data—all things crypto users don’t want.

A blockchain platform for building 'AI girlfriends' and productivity apps has raised $11 million. Crypto will "uniquely enable" Tokyo-based MyShell to "help creators and AI model researchers to monetize their work," and blockchains will serve as the foundation for "a dedicated platform to trade, and own AI assets," MyShell CEO wrote.

Disclaimer: The Crypto Currier offers information, not advice or recommendations.? It does not recommend any particular investment or investment strategy and focus on news, use cases and applications of the technologies rather than investment. You should carry out your own independent research including your own independent verification of facts and data. I write the Currier carefully but we can’t guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information we publish and we accept no liability for any act or omission by a reader of our content. Opinions entirely my own and might be totally incorrect.