The following important events occurred in the crypto market today:
1: Ripple CFO resigns
Ripple Chief Financial Officer Christina Campbell has resigned. Campbell joined Ripple in April 2021, six months after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against the company for alleged violations of securities laws. Although Campbell described her experience working at Ripple as "unforgettable," it is unclear whether her resignation is related to the ongoing SEC litigation.
2: Prosecutors say Sam Bankman-Fried’s $500 million investment has nothing to do with the case
U.S. prosecutors have asked the court presiding over Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial to bar his legal team from making any arguments regarding the potential recovery of the assets of FTX clients invested in Anthropic. Bankman-Fried invested $500 million in Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup, in April 2022; however, the U.S. government will provide evidence that Anthropic’s investment was made using funds misappropriated from FTX customer deposits. The situation has raised eyebrows as Anthropic has looked to raise new money from investors in recent weeks and attracted interest from the likes of Amazon and Google that could lead to a valuation of $20 to $30 billion. Prosecutors believe the evidence could help FTX customers and other creditors in FTX's bankruptcy recover their funds.
3: FTX uses Python code to forge insurance fund numbers
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX used hidden Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance funds, according to testimony from FTX co-founder Gary Wang. The insurance fund is designed to protect users from losses in the event of mass liquidation. Gary Wang said that FTX’s so-called $100 million insurance fund for 2021 was actually a fabrication and never included any of the exchange’s FTX tokens (FTT), as claimed. Instead, the numbers seen by the public are calculated by multiplying the FTX token’s daily trading volume by a random number close to 7,500. One piece of evidence also showed code that generated the size of the so-called "reserve fund," or public insurance fund. The allegation could trigger legal action and wider market attention.