| Bitcoin | $23,453 | 7 day: +20.1% | | Ethereum | $628 | 7 day: +6.1% | | All crypto | $652B | 7 day: +14.8% | | Bitcoin dominance | 66.7% | 7 day: +3.1% | Prices as of 3:30 p.m. EST
| |
Ripple's CEO pre-announced an SEC lawsuit against Ripple, his co-founder, and himself regarding their XRP (XRP) sales. Fortune was first to break the story. We previously published an in-depth Ripple edition here at Inside Cryptocurrency, and have followed the "never-ending" ICO of XRP for years. Pre-announcing the SEC: - Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that yesterday the SEC "voted to attack crypto" and is preparing a lawsuit against Ripple, co-founder Chris Larsen (a billionaire due to his personal XRP liquidations), and himself.
- The SEC announced the lawsuit moments before publication.
- The SEC's lawsuit claims that XRP are unregistered securities. Moreover, it claims that Ripple and its executives failed over a period of years to satisfy "core investor protection provisions, and as a result investors lacked information to which they were entitled."
- Garlinghouse oddly chose to pre-announce the suit, likely due to his knowledge of non-public, discovery processes that started long ago.
- From its high last week of $0.65, XRP has declined over 25% to $0.46 today.
- This story continues in part 2, below...
Fortune 
| |
 Brad Garlinghouse Part 2: The opinion of a centimillionaire - Garlinghouse, whose personal fortune increased hundreds of millions of dollars from XRP on the backs of retail investors, lashed out at the SEC yesterday, calling the unannounced lawsuit an "attack" on the crypto industry and "out of step with other G20 countries."
- XRP has declined 85% from its all-time high.
- Garlinghouse also said that outgoing Chairman Jay Clayton is "trying to limit US innovation."
- Garlinghouse tweeted that, in his opinion, Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland agree that XRP is not a security. (Writer's note: I regret the lack of time to fact-check these three claims.)
Context: - A plaintiff in an earlier Ripple lawsuit, Ryan Coffey, called Ripple's ICO "never-ending" because of Ripple's continuous XRP liquidations.
- In 2012, Larsen and others created 100 billion XRP tokens, giving XRP a fully diluted market capitalization of $46B today. Over half of that value is locked within escrow accounts; XRP's current market cap is $21B.
- In 2018 and on various occasions, Ripple's CEO gave false assurances that by the end of 2019, "dozens" of banks would integrate XRP tokens, among numerous other forecasts that failed to materialize.
- Despite calling itself a separate entity from XRP, Ripple Labs has historically controlled a significant amount of XRP. It also earns income by selling XRP under its control.
- Apart from ongoing lawsuits, the Financial Times has also reported that Ripple Labs has long struggled to find meaningful use-cases for XRP.
- Brave New Coin investigated the extensive use of bots that artificially aggrandize the size of XRP's community.
The Block Crypto
| |
Italian police say the operator of BitGrail stole over $146M from the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange in a series of hacks. - A cryptocurrency exchange called BitGrail, which declared bankruptcy in 2019, lost about $146M through several hacks, as reported by Reuters.
- Italian police suspect that a Florence-based man who managed the exchange, known only by his initials F.F, stole cryptocurrencies from his own customers.
- BitGrail's F.F., suspected by Italian authorities to be Francesco Firano, reported the hack to the police. He is now facing charges himself of fraudulent bankruptcy, money-laundering, and computer fraud.
- BitGrail's victim count exceeded 230,000, making it one of the most widespread financial attacks in Italian history.
- The director of Italy's national center for cyber crimes (CNAIPIC), Ivano Gabrielli, stated that the investigation revealed F.F's involvement in the NANO hack, costing 17 million NANO tokens ($17.5M).
Coindesk
| |
Craig Wright's wife, Ramona Ang, has won a lawsuit against UFX exchange in a U.K. court. - Ramona Ang, wife of the controversial and self-professed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, has won a 2018 case against UFX exchange for abruptly closing Ang's bitcoin trading account without quickly returning her funds.
- According to a ruling dated Dec. 22, defendant ReliantCo, the Cyprus-based operator of UFX, failed to prove in court that Ang's husband, Craig Wright, was using the account created in 2017.
- In early 2019, Judge Andrew Baker dismissed ReliantCo's motion to move the case to Cyprus.
- Judge Justice Butcher ruled that the UFX operator could not justify its counterclaim and performed a breach of trust, granting Ang compensation of approximately $3M.
- However, the Judge also deemed Ang's information regarding Wright using the same account as "inaccurate."
Coindesk
| |
 Michael Saylor (2013) MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) has purchased more than 29,000 bitcoin through money raised via debt issuance. - CEO Michael Saylor announced that MicroStrategy bought 29,646 bitcoin, according to a blog dated Dec. 21.
- After this purchase, the business intelligence company now holds 70,470 BTCs worth some $1.6B in its treasury.
- MicroStrategy upsized its original $400M issuance to $650M.
- Saylor issued the debt for no other reason than for his public company to buy more bitcoin.
Coindesk
| |
QUICK HITS: - You don't need to have any experience in crypto trading to reap the benefits. eToro has found a way for non-traders to copy experienced ones.*
- Despite regulatory uncertainty in India, local cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX recently closed a Series B funding round, raising $13.9M led by Block.one, Coinbase Ventures, and others.
- FTX derivatives exchange has listed a Coinbase equity-linked futures contract ahead of its IPO. We noted FTX founder Sam-Bankman Fried's donation to President-elect Joe Biden's presidential campaign here.
- Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge hedge fund filed a Form D with the SEC on Dec. 21 for a private security offering. In a November filing, SkyBridge revealed that two of its funds were aiming to buy digital assets.
- "Shark Tank's" Mark Cuban told Forbes that his opinion on bitcoin has not changed since 2019 when the billionaire said, "bitcoin has no chance of becoming a reliable currency."
- Are you a seed-stage startup? The IRS could owe you tens of thousands of dollars in R&D tax credits – it's free to see how much you're owed.*
*This is sponsored content.
| |
 |  | Curated by Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, and bitcoin follower since $1, Aaron Wise. Temporarily listening to news squawk boxes in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. |  | | Editor | Charlotte Hayes-Clemens is an editor and writer based in Vancouver. She has dabbled in both the fiction and non-fiction world, having worked at HarperCollins Publishers and more recently as a writing coach for new and self-published authors. Proper semi-colon usage is her hill to die on. | |
