There wasn’t just one huge news story this week, even though you would have been forgiven for thinking otherwise. As well as Ripple sticking it to the SEC, we saw Alex Mashinsky arrested on SEVEN counts regarding his ‘running’ of Celsius and Prometheum facing more scrutiny over its love-in with the authorities.
He’s like a greasy lizard, seriously.
Ripple Wins SEC Case
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Ripple this week won its lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the alleged classification of XRP as a security. The news elicited the biggest outpouring of emotions in the crypto space since the collapse of FTX and seems to have breathed new life into the sector.
The market loved it, exchanges immediately relisted it, and those who have been crowing about all cryptocurrencies being securities were forced to eat humble pie. While the war is still being fought, this was a huge battle to have won.
Alex Mashinsky Arrested
This news was buried by Ripple’s victory, but on another day it would have dominated: Alex Mashinsky, the founder of Celsius Network, was this week taken into custody by US authorities on allegations of defrauding customers of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange.
The Justice Department has leveled SEVEN criminal charges against Mashinsky, encompassing securities fraud, commodities fraud, and market manipulation, with Roni Cohen-Pavon, the former chief revenue officer of the exchange, also being charged. The pair have been accused of engaging in a long-running scheme to deceive customers regarding the true value of Celsius’s token, while for Mashinsky they come in addition to civil charges already brought by the New York Attorney General.
Pressure Grows on Prometheum “Backroom Deal” with SEC
Calls to investigate crypto platform Prometheum gathered strength this week when the Blockchain Association and Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, demanded that the SEC investigate its deal with the crypto platform Prometheum. Prometheum was awarded the SEC’s first purpose broker-dealer (SPBD) license at a time when most platforms can’t even get a meeting, in return for which its CEO and Wall Street extra Aaron Kaplan was allowed into a House Financial Services Committee to praise the SEC’s approach.
The Blockchain Association first wrote to the SEC demanding that it tell the truth about the deal, a move which was echoed by Torres who wrote to SEC Inspector General Deborah Jeffrey urging her to scrutinize the “unconventional arrangement.” Hopefully the pressure will continue to grow and we will get answers about what happened between the SEC and Kaplan to afford Prometheum the honor that all others have so far been denied.
