SBF Takes the Stand and Binance Takes the Hot Seat

SBF has officially taken the stand in his trial today, in a much awaited day in court.

In fact he is on the stand as I am writing this out at around 3:30pm EST so there is not much to report as of yet. The most interesting piece of information so far is that the judge decided to send home the entire jury as "there are area of testimony that the Government contends jury should not hear."

As is generally the case, this is the stuff I want to hear about most. Is it government official bribery related? Polycule orgy related? Intel on the latest stimulants the kids are using to optimize performance? Either way, the fact that a lot of the testimony will be omitted from view of the jury or the public is disappointing. It does lead to the question however of what is in SBF’s testimony that is so egregious that the jury should not know about it?

Over the next week or so we will find out the final fate of SBF, and whether or not (really how long) he gets put away for. It would be poetic if we lose SBF, Su Zhu, and Bitboy right as the next cycle starts.

For the best, I am ready to move on.

US Regulators Urging DOJ to Investigate Binance

There is the running theme of a main character in crypto. It rotates from person to person as time goes by, and the main goal of the crypto game is to be successful yet never become the main character.

Previous main characters include Do Kwon, Su Zhu, SBF, Jihan Wu, Roger Ver, the list goes on. Generally things don’t end well for the main character.

One person however has been the main character so long and played the game so well some surmise he is the real richest man in the world. I am of course talking about CZ.

However there are people convinced of CZ and Binance’s fraud and malicious activity in the space, and they are determined to prove it. SBF was, funnily enough, one of those people. Expect this to come up during his day in court again tomorrow. Another person in that camp: Senator Cynthia Lummis.

The allegations here are that Binance (and Tether LOL) are involved in terrorist financing using crypto. This comes days after Elizabeth Warren spearheaded a movement to crack down on crypto companies using false data showing that a large chunk of Hamas and other terrorist financing was conducted via crypto as well.

A couple of points here. First being that Tether is always involved in these kinds of investigations no matter what. It seems this will be the case until the end of time.

Second, this is different than most of the Binance related allegations throughout the year. Most of those have been related to insider trading, misuse of customer funds, the more normal types of crypto fraud.

Deep Dive: ETHBTC is Dead (?)

ETH/BTC is slowly grinding down to levels not seen in years. For the uninitiated, this is the ratio of ETH price vs. BTC price.

As all of crypto has rallied the past week or so, one major token has been noticeably behind: Ethereum.

Luckily, your favorite podcast talked about why the ETH decline might be a consistent theme throughout this bull market.

Check out our deep dive below!

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