This week in the crypto world we saw nChain rocked by allegations of fraud and a potential lawsuit, Ripple win another victory in its battle against the SEC and Sam Bankman-Fried stand trial at long last.
He’s not Satoshi, just give it up already.
nChain Rocked by Fraud Allegations
If there’s one thing you don’t want your sacked (or recently resigned, the jury’s out) CEO to do once he’s gone, it’s spill the beans on all the crazy shit going down at the company in question. That’s why you have NDAs. If you’re Christen Ager-Hanssen, recently dispatched CEO of blockchain patent hoarder nChain, however, you apparently don’t give two figs for NDAs, if one was actually signed.
Ager-Hanssen has spent the week tearing it up, tweeting out (Xing out?) emails, videos, internal documents, and more to show the power struggle going on behind the scenes at nChain, a struggle which saw five board members hoofed off it last week. The Norwegian has been having a gay old time sticking it to his former employers, embarrassing the hell out of anybody left in a position of power and throwing Craig Wright’s Satoshi dreams under the bus as well. In addition, nChain might be sued by TradeWindow, a company it purportedly bought 19.99% of back in July, having missed a payment.
And there’s almost certainly more to come.
SEC Denied Permission to Appeal Ripple Ruling
Ripple got a shot in the arm this week when the judge in its case against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that the agency cannot appeal her ruling over the XRP token because it failed to show a significant enough error in her finding.
US District Judge Analisa Torres determined in July that the sale of Ripple’s XRP digital token on public exchanges adhered to federal securities laws because buyers did not have a reasonable expectation of profit based on Ripple’s efforts. The SEC sought leave to appeal over certain elements of the ruling, but Judge Torres rejected the request.
However, the SEC can, and almost certainly will given its importance, appeal to the Supreme Court, which will take well over a year to play out.
Sam Bankman-Fried on the Stand
It’s felt a long time coming, but Sam Bankman-Fried, shorn of his famous locks and wrangled into a suit, finally faced a jury this week over the clusterfuck that was his running of FTX. The week began with jury selection and saw opening statements and the first witness, who lost $100,000 on FTX when it imploded in November.
Bankman-Fried faces about a million years in jail if he’s found guilty on all charges, and it will be interesting to see how the defense will frame his actions given the overwhelming evidence against him, much of which comes from former colleagues.
