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Top executives at Binance resigned this week over CEO Changpeng Zhao’s handling of regulatory investigations into the company, Fortune reported, citing sources.

Senior officials at the company including general counsel Han Ng, chief strategy officer Patrick Hillmann and SVP for compliance Steven Christie told Zhao they are leaving the company, Fortune said.

The departures follow the recent exit of Matthew Price, a former IRS agent Binance had placed in charge of global investigations and intelligence.

Binance did immediately responded to a request for comment, Fortune said, adding that the executives decided to depart because of Zhao’s response to an ongoing investigation being conducted by the Department of Justice. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The digital asset industry seems the most ripe for M&A disputes, according to a newly released report by Berkeley Research Group. 

The firm’s mid-year merger and acquisition disputes report noted that 43% of surveyed dealmaking professionals expected an increase in M&A disputes in the sector — the highest of any other industry studied in the report. 

Source: BRG Group

“Deals in digital assets and services are ripe for disputes as market volatility and proposed regulations disrupt cryptocurrency activity,” the report noted.

The sector has witnessed a number of big ticket deals fall apart in the wake of the crypto credit crisis and meltdown of the FTX crypto exchange. In August 2022, Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital called off its $1.2 billion deal to acquire custody provider BitGo. More recently, BitGo said it would not go through with its plan to acquire beleaguered Prime Trust. 

BitGo’s suit against Galaxy over the cancelled transaction was recently dismissed by a Delaware court. 

Crypto lifecycle 

“The cryptocurrency industry is at a point in its lifecycle where we’ve seen a high degree of new development — companies sprouting up left and right as coin values were high and speculative conditions were optimistic — and now there’s a greater move towards consolidation, both as the industry matures and as macroeconomic headwinds shift,” noted BRG Managing Director Albert Metz.

“When coupled with depressed values among major cryptocurrencies complicating profitability, this is an environment which can generate more disputes.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

A Twitter account belonging to the Aptos Foundation appears to have been hacked, with those responsible directing people to a fraudulent website that offers the chance to participate in a fake airdrop.

The fraudulent post references an airdrop on the Ethereum blockchain. Aptos CEO Mo Shaikh’s Twitter account also appears it may have been hacked as part of the scam attempt.

Aptos Labs quickly posted a warning to Twitter, advising people not to engage with a link that directs to a convincing, but fake website where users are urged to click a “claim” button which then provides a QR code aimed at duping people into connecting their wallet.

“We’ve received official communication from Aptos Foundation that @Aptos_Network has been compromised.” the post reads. “The latest tweet regarding an $APT airdrop is fraudulent. Please DO NOT engage with that tweet or the link provided.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Tens of millions of dollars of tokens have been withdrawn from the Multichain bridge on the Fantom network, with security firms speculating that it may be a security breach.

The tokens moved include $58 million of the stablecoin USDC, 1,020 wrapped bitcoin ($30.9 million), 7,200 wrapped ether ($13.7 million) and $4 million of the stablecoin DAI. It also included further tokens like Chainlink and UniDex.

Security firm PeckShield questioned whether this was related to cross-chain platform LayerZero adding support for four tokens, matching those that were moved. Yet this doesn’t align with the complete list of tokens that were moved. LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino also told The Block he is not aware of the current issue and is looking into it.

The Multichain bridge is supported by multi-party computation involving 21 nodes with a combination of them required to sign transactions authorizing the movement of funds. Multichain has previously been exploited in 2021, when it was named Anyswap.

Multichain and Fantom have not yet replied to a request for comment.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged two Florida men for conducting a multi-million dollar bitcoin fraud and accused one of using his position as an attorney to trick investors. 

Randy Craig Levine and Philip Reichenthal, an attorney, “induced” investors to send the lawyer $5.3 million to buy bitcoin from Levine. Reichenthal then used his title to “pose as an escrow agent” for the transactions, and investors were told that the lawyer would hold their funds in trust accounts until the investors received their bitcoin, the CFTC said Thursday in a statement. 

Reichenthal then transferred the funds to Levine, and investors didn’t receive bitcoin, the CFTC said.

“The conduct in this case is particularly reprehensible because one of the fraudsters was an attorney who should have known better, but instead took advantage of his title,” said Ian McGinley, the CFTC’s enforcement director. 

Levine and Reichenthal agreed to settle with the CFTC and pay just over $5 million in restitution. They both also faced criminal charges and pleaded guilty last year in the Southern District of New York. 

Crypto fraud

Crypto currency related fraud has become “all too common,” CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson said in a statement on Thursday. 

“Fraudsters often take advantage of individual retail customers’ fear of missing out on and interest in access to novel asset classes to perpetrate their scams,” Johnson said. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev said that despite bitcoin’s recent fall, institutional interest and a wave of new spot bitcoin ETF applications are continuing to fuel bullish behavior.

“It’s tapping into the rhythm of institutional adoption and upcoming spot ETFs, with BlackRock leading the charge,” Trenchev told The Block, adding that bullish comments from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink yesterday could start to incite more retail activity. 

Bitcoin ETFs

Craig Erlam, an analyst at Oanda, is taking a more cautious outlook and noted that there was still uncertainty as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission starts to process all the filings for spot bitcoin ETFs it’s received over recent weeks. It has yet to approve a single one. 

“I don’t think we can expect the SEC to back down just because bigger players are getting involved but it’s possible that the two can work together towards a solution in a manner that more traditional crypto firms may have otherwise struggled to,” he told The Block.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.