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US CFTC Orders Ponzi Scheme Operator To Pay $32 Million Fine

A US District Court for the District of Nevada has fined Circle Society and owner David Gilbert Saffron for operating a cryptocurrency ponzi scheme. This is according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Circle Society Ponzi Scheme

The regulator stated that both the Nevada-based corporation and its operator have to pay $32 million as ordered by the court.

Saffron, an Australian citizen, residing in the US, started the firm Circle society to offer binary options on forex and cryptocurrency pairs. Both he and the company allegedly deceived investors to send funds in order to participate in a commodity pool, with promises of high returns.

Since 2017 when Circle society was created, Saffron has reportedly duped investors of at least $15.8 million from about 179 people. According to the CFTC, he diverted investor funds to his crypto wallet to pay other participants “in the manner of a Ponzi scheme.”

The court’s final judgment requires defendants Saffron and Circle Society, jointly and severally, to pay restitution claims of more than $14.8 million to defrauded pool participants and disgorgement fine of $15.8 million, and a civil monetary fine of over $1.48 million.

The judgment also enjoined the defendants from registering with the CFTC or trading on any other CFTC-regulated entities.

However, the CFTC has told victims not to expect much as they might not be able to get their full funds back.

“The CFTC cautions victims that restitution orders may not result in the recovery of any money lost because the wrongdoers may not have sufficient funds or assets,” the statement read.

The regulator filed the civil enforcement action against Saffron and Circle Society in 2019, alleging that Saffron solicited and accepted a minimum of $11 million in Bitcoin and US dollars with other defendants’ help in the company.

The CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert had then said that fraudulent schemes like Saffron and his company do not only cheat innocent people out of their hard-earned money, but they also threaten to undermine the development of new and innovative markets.

Spike In Crypto-Related Scams

Cybercrime seems to have increased since the advent of cryptocurrency as it is constantly being used to scam people. Even though regulators continue to warn users against crypto scams and, in fact, scams in general, people are still falling victims.

Even though fraudulent activities had existed before crypto came along a decade ago, many crypto owners are falling victims because many retail investors have knowledge gaps. With the fear of missing out (FOMO) surrounding digital tokens, crypto investors are readily suckered into deals with these fraudsters promising huge returns.

Last month, the CFTC ordered fraudulent Bitcoin trader Benjamin Reynolds to pay $572 million in penalty and restitution for a crime he committed in 2017. He was ordered to pay a $429 Million fine penalty and an additional $142 million as restitution to victims.

US CFTC Orders Ponzi Scheme Operator To Pay $32 Million Fine

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3X as many crypto figures make it onto Forbes 2021 billionaires list as last year

Forbes released their annual billionaires list on April 6, with Amazon overlord Jeff Bezos and his $177 billion topping the list for a fourth consecutive year.

The “digital gold rush” has seen nine new crypto billionaires join the Forbes list, pushing the total up to 12 (depending on whether you count the Winklevoss twins as one or two entries.) That’s up from just four in last year’s Forbes World’s Billionaires list

Sam Bankman-Fried – Newcomer

Sam Bankman-Fried is the wealthiest crypto-billionaire, with a net worth of $8.7 billion. Bankman-Fried founded trading firm Alameda Research and popular derivatives exchange FTX. The 29-year old has made waves in the crypto space, with FTX recently winning the naming rights to Miami Heat’s home stadium for 19 years. Cointelegraph recently ranked Bankman-Fried as the third most influential figure in crypto for 2020.

The Winklevoss Twins – Newcomers

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have a net worth of $3 billion each and started investing in Bitcoin in 2012. The brothers famously sued Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for IP theft in 2004 and won a $65 million settlement which they used to invest in Bitcoin. They started the crypto exchange Gemini in 2014, and they purchased Nifty Gateway in November 2019.

Chris Larsen – Returnee

Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple Labs saw his net worth grow from $2.6 billion to $3.4 billion over the past year.

Larson and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse have been fighting an ongoing dispute with the SEC in relation to XRP and unregistered securities offerings. However, the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple hasn’t appeared to affect its token too badly, with XRP increasing by 387% in the last 12 months.

Jed McCaleb – Newcomer

McCaleb is another co-founder of Ripple, and reportedly holds 3.4 billion XRP and 1 billion Stellar Lumens — the cryptocurrency he founded after leaving Ripple — with his holdings adding up to a net worth of $2 billion. Cointelegraph reported that McCaleb sold off $400 million worth of his XRP holdings in 2020 alone.

Michael Saylor – Newcomer

Saylor is the CEO of listed company MicroStrategy and co-founded the software giant in 1989, and now has a net worth of $2.3 billion. Saylor has become the leading advocate for corporations holding Bitcoin on balance sheets. Since its first purchase of Bitcoin in August 2020, Microstrategy has invested $2.226 billion, taking its tally up to 91,579 Bitcoins at an average cost of $24,311 per Bitcoin.

Brain Armstrong – Returnee

Armstrong is the CEO and co-founder of Coinbase and his net worth has gone from $1 billion to $6.5 billion within 12 months. Coinbase also had a successful year, generating $1 billion in revenue, and it’s set for a direct listing in a week. That will value Armstrong’s shares somewhere north of $14B, meaning he may well top the crypto billionaires’ list next year.

Fred Ersham – Newcomer

Ersham co-founded Coinbase with Brian Armstrong in 2012 and left the firm in 2017. He is now a board member of the company, and his 6% stake has an estimated worth of $1.9 billion.

Changpeng Zhao

Zhao is the founder of the largest crypto exchange Binance and owns an estimated 30% stake in the company. Zhao’s net worth is $1.9 billion, and the digital gold rush has been good to the Binance founder, with Binance Coin becoming the second-largest altcoin by market cap. Zhao revealed earlier this week that he holds close to 100% of his portfolio in crypto.

Matthew Roszak – Newcomer

Roszak is the Chairman and co-founder of blockchain technology firm Bloq and is a leading crypto and blockchain investor. Roszak is also a founding member of Tally Capital a crypto-focused private investment firm and has a net worth of $1.5 billion.

Tim Draper – Newcomer

Draper is a crypto evangelist with a net worth of $1.5 billion. He bought $18.7 million worth of Bitcoin in 2014 after it was confiscated from the Silk Road black market. Draper was also one of the primary investors in the Tezos project and co-founded Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading investment firm in early-stage tech startups.

Barry Silbert – Newcomer

Silbert founded the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group in 2015 and has a net worth of $1.6 billion. The DCG owns asset management firm Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which currently has $46 billion worth of assets under management.

3X as many crypto figures make it onto Forbes 2021 billionaires list as last year

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Sacramento Kings To Offer Bitcoin Salary Option To Players

US professional basketball team Sacramento Kings is offering its staff and players the option of earning in Bitcoin. This was disclosed by the team’s Chairman, CEO, and Governor Vivek Ranadivé on popular social networking app, Clubhouse.

Sacramento Becomes First NBA Team To Offer Bitcoin Salaries

Ranadivé made this known in a room hosted by a club called the ‘Satoshi Roundtable.’ The room was headed by Tim Draper, a venture capitalist well-known in the industry for purchasing Bitcoin from the US Marshall’s auction in 2014, and co-hosted by Bruce Fenton, a prominent Bitcoin advocate, and investor. 

The news first broke out on Twitter after a Clubhouse audience member, Neil Jacobs, tweeted what the Sacramento Kings owner said.

“I’m going to announce in the next few days that I’m going to offer everyone in the Kings organization, they can get paid as much of their salary in bitcoin as they want, including the players,” said Ranadivé, according to Jacobs.

The news has generated many opinions from crypto critics and enthusiasts. Most say that this move would strengthen the California NBA team’s long-standing claim to be one of the most pro-crypto teams in professional sports.

This is not the first time the sports team has innovated using blockchain tech. Sacramento Kings announced back in 2014 that they were open to receiving payments in Bitcoin for their team merchandise in partnership with payment processor BitPay.

It also started mining cryptocurrency in 2018 by setting up a program called MiningForGood that donates the funds to charity. 

In 2019, Sacramento Kings went on to launch rewards tokens for fans. The token was called The Kings Token, and it was done in partnership with blockchain-based event ticketing platform Blockparty.

Basketball Embraces Crypto

The recent use of crypto in sports has triggered the global expansion of sports and teams as cryptocurrencies are now widely adopted in the sports sector.

The Dallas Mavericks sports franchise owned by Mark Cuban is another NBA team using crypto as payments for tickets and sports merchandise. 

Last month, Cuban announced that they would be accepting Dogecoin as payment for tickets and merchandise. Shortly after that, Cuban confirmed that they immediately received more than 20,000 Dogecoin transactions making the Mavericks the largest Dogecoin merchant in the world.

Before the Dogecoin announcement, Mavericks already allow Bitcoin payments for tickets and merchandise through a partnership made with BitPay in 2019.

Not only is crypto being used to allow fans to purchase tickets and merchandise and for clubs to pay players’ salaries and transfer fees recently, but it has also gained momentum in the NFT sector.

The NFT market for trading cards and collectibles is a multi-million dollar industry enabling fans to immortalize sporting moments in pictures and other various mediums.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a major player in the NFT space through its online digital collectibles marketplace, the NBA Top Shot. The NFT mania has become a good source of revenue for basketball teams, with the NBA reportedly closing deals over $500 million, according to The Verge.

Sacramento Kings To Offer Bitcoin Salary Option To Players

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‘Silent crash’ as price floors collapse across NFT space

If prices plummet in an illiquid market, how soon before anyone notices?

While fungible tokens traded on centralized and decentralized exchanges have significant transparency regarding price movements, nonfungible tokens can be harder to track. Because of their illiquid nature, gauging the sentiment of the overall market market for a project can be difficult — a dynamic that has led one eGirl Capital member, Mewny, to dub NFT corrections ‘silent crashes.’

In a silent crash, speculators might not even be aware that one is underway — buyers simply evaporate and sellers fail to move their wares. However, metrics such as “floor price” — the lowest price at which a NFT can be bought for a particular project — as well as total volume can indicate that a bull is turning into a bear. 

There could be bad news on the horizon for NFT collectors, too, as signs are pointing to a nasty crash underway.

CryptoPunks, among the earliest and most popular NFT projects for collectors, have seen a over 40% decrease in floor price to 14 ETH (roughly $28,000 at the time of publication). The price capitulation has led to some on-chain horror stories today, such as one speculator who sold a Punk for 16 ETH after purchasing it for 25.5, and another that sold for 27.99 after a 42 ETH purchase:

CryptoPunks aren’t the only high-profile project experiencing a marketwide correction, either. Data from evaluate.market shows that sales volume in multiple price categories for NBA Top Shot have declined precipitously since a Feb. 22 peak. 

One semi-anon and self-described Top Shot enthusiast, Jordan, who charted the downturn points to two specific populations for the steep fall.

“The market has been trending downward since the Feb 22. It seems like there are two types of sellers. One, the investor who got in early and wants to cash out with exponential profit. Two, the investor who bought at or near the top and can’t stomach to watch their investment lose value by the day,” he said. 

Watching price floors plummet is difficult regardless of the project. According to market-tracking website Nonfungible, the pullback is effecting the entire market: total number of sales, total value of sales, and active wallets are all down on a 7-day and 30-day basis. 

Jordan ultimately thinks this a healthy, short-term pullback, however.

“I think it’s a healthy, relatively short-term correction. The rate at which prices rose from Jan 1 to Feb 22 was unsustainable. I think the next few months will continue to be bumpy, but I’m very bullish overall.”

‘Silent crash’ as price floors collapse across NFT space

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KeyBank & Laurel Road Unveils Digital Bank Specifically for Doctors

Laurel Road, a brand of KeyBank, announced earlier this week the launch of Laurel Road for Doctors, a digital bank specifically for physicians and dentists. According to Laurel, the goal of the new digital bank is to help ease the burden for doctors of paying down student debt, finding more balance between work and life, and planning for the future—many of whom have worked tirelessly through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With Laurel Road for Doctors, Laurel Road and KeyBank expand on its existing suite of tailored digital banking and lending products and extensive experience working directly with doctors to create a platform that meets the distinct challenges of this community.”

. The online experience, from originations to servicing tools, will include new offerings such as:

  • Student Loan Cashback Credit Card: The only credit card that offers 2% cashback to pay down student loans with most loan servicers.
  • Student Loan Refi & Linked Savings: Link new savings accounts when refinancing student loans to build savings while obtaining an even lower interest rate.
  • High Yield Savings Account: Qualified borrowers can open an account and earn 10x the national average Annual Percentage Yield (APY), with $0 to open, no minimum balance, and no monthly maintenance fees to fast-track savings goals.
  • Financial Insights: Personalized data and guidance that allows doctors to compare against those in similar specialties on salary, debt and more, utilize educational content to build financial literacy, and access custom insights for budgeting.
  • Laurel Road Perks!: Exclusive offers, discounts and benefits through a newly established and growing partner network of premium brand partners such as P.volve, Sakara, Rent the Runway, Brooklinen, KidPass, Talkspace and The White Coat Investor.
  • Premium Care Team: Financial healthcare support specialists to provide personalized care seven days a week.

While speaking about the launch, Chris Gorman, Chairman and CEO of KeyCorp, added:

“We acquired Laurel Road in 2019 with the intention of scaling this digital born business. Through this new digital bank offering we are able to provide a secure online experience and customized banking solutions to meet the special needs of physicians and dentists.”

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