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ARK’s application may now be in pole position to be approved first as as it was filed earlier than BlackRock’s.

Michael Ackerman pleaded guilty in 2021 to charges of defrauding around 150 investors for $33 million in a digital asset trading scheme.

A U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered an Ohio man to pay over $50 million for allegedly operating a multi-million dollar cryptocurrency investment scam.

Michael Ackerman, of Alliance, Ohio, will be banned from trading in any Commodity Futures Trading Commission markets and from registering with the agency. He was ordered to pay $27 million in restitution to the victims as well as $27 million in penalties, the CFTC said Wednesday in a statement. 

The CFTC in 2020 alleged that Ackerman “operated a fraudulent scheme that solicited and misappropriated funds to purportedly trade digital commodity assets.” More than 150 people and entities deposited at least $33 million with him. 

False accounting statements

“However, less than $10 million was used to trade digital commodity assets and the remaining funds were misappropriated for personal use or to prolong the fraudulent trading scheme,” the CFTC said on Wednesday. 

To get potential customers, Ackerman “knowingly and falsely represented” that he was trading digital commodity assets and earning monthly returns of about 15 percent, the agency said. 

“However, Ackerman was not a successful trader, and to conceal the fraud he provided customers with false accounting statements, newsletters containing false trading returns, and fictitious screenshots of the amount of money under management,” the agency 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.

The European Commission on Wednesday released a proposal for a digital euro that would ensure free access to the CBDC across the bloc and establish a legal framework so that digital euro payments can be made from device to device, both online and offline.

“The digital euro would be available alongside existing national and international private means of payment, such as cards or applications and it would work like a digital wallet where people and businesses could pay with the digital euro anytime and anywhere in the euro area,” the proposal said.

The proposed legislation aims to guarantee privacy akin to that of physical cash, with online transactions offering the same level of protection as existing digital means of payments, “with no one able to see what people are paying for when using the digital euro offline.”

European Commissioner for financial stability Mairead McGuinness said she expected debate over a digital euro to continue, but added that the new proposed measures could win over skeptics.

Digital euro debate

“Today’s proposal will help frame the debate around what a digital euro is and the advantages of creating it,” McGuiness said. “We are at the beginning of a long democratic process, one which will be done hand-in-hand with the European Parliament, Council, and of course, the European Central Bank, who will decide if and when to introduce the digital euro.”

The European Central Bank will ultimately decide whether to issue the bloc’s CBDC. In a  statement published Wednesday, it welcomed the EC’s proposal and confirmed it will decide in the coming months whether to move to the next phase of its CBDC project.

“The euro is the most tangible symbol of European integration,” said ECB President Christine Lagarde. “We look forward to continuing working together with other EU institutions towards a digital euro to ensure our currency is fit for the digital age.”

The ECB’s Fabio Panetta added that the proposal “is key to ensuring that the digital euro brings value to the people, taking the appreciated features of cash into the digital sphere.”

© 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 latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for June 28, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.

Past data shows bitcoin tends to drop 2% on the day MSTR announces new purchases.

In April, Celo joined Chainlink Scale to access the data provider’s oracle services at a low cost.

Azuki is ready to admit it dropped the ball. 

Responding to community criticism that its new Elementals NFTs were too similar and dilutive to the original collection, the team acknowledged it “missed the mark,” vowing to improve its communication and execution to regain trust.

Azuki admitted the minting process for Elementals was hectic and had left its community confused as to how the  the new collection differed from the original Azukis. “We hear you – the mint process was hectic, the PFPs feel similar and, even worse, dilutive to Azuki,” the NFT project said in a statement on Twitter.

“We challenged ourselves to make four variations of almost every trait … creating characters that feel consistent with their Azuki roots, while still offering something new,” it added. “However, our ambitious goals led to a new collection which confused the community on the tangible differences with the original Azuki collection.”

Azuki sought to clarify the original Azuki collection was its priority but acknowledged it needed to communicate and execute better to rebuild lost trust.

“The OG Azuki collection defined who we are, and will always have top priority and outsized allocation for all future rewards, drops, and experiences,” it said. “Azuki’s vision is to build a decentralized brand. Doing so requires great communication and execution, both of which were lacking with the Elementals sale. We know that we lost a piece of trust today, but nothing gets us more motivated to make things right.”

Duplicate concerns

In an earlier response to additional concerns over duplicates within the Elementals collection — with several NFTs found to have the same image — Azuki co-founder “2PMFLOW.ETH” said there had been a technical glitch.

“This was a technical glitch where the metadata for a few tokens was processed incorrectly due to event logs from a data provider that was outdated because of an Ethereum block reorg. We are on it right now to restore the correct images and metadata,” they said. 

Fellow co-founder “Location TBA” also said the mint was not up to Azuki’s standards, clarifying the team had underestimated the time needed between the mint’s phases. “We dropped the ball. I take personal responsibility for what happened and should have lengthened the presale windows.”

Falling through the floor

The floor price for the Elementals collection has fallen below the mint price of 2 ETH to 1.79 ETH, according to the OpenSea NFT marketplace. The original Azuki collection floor price has fallen 31% to 9.5 ETH over the last 24 hours, leading to criticism over dilution.

“Azuki and BEANZ taking a beating after the launch of Elementals, both down 40-50% in the last 7 days,” crypto analytics provider Nansen told The Block. “We’re seeing the highest daily trading volume since May 5, 2022 for Azuki,” it added, with “net selling from existing Azuki holders in the last 24 hours — 5,849 ETH in buying, 8,469 ETH in selling. 137 buyers vs. 360 sellers.”

Azuki’s Elemental Beans NFT collection sold out within 15 minutes of launch yesterday, minting all 10,000 NFTs on sale before it even opened to the public. Consuming an Azuki Elemental Bean reveals the user’s Azuki Elemental, an avatar that can control water, fire, earth or lightning, according to its OpenSea page.

The collection generated 20,000 ETH (around $37.5 million) in sales, with the first 20 minutes of the mint only available to Azuki or BEANZ holders. Elementals is the largest NFT mint by revenue since Yuga Labs generated $319 million from Otherdeeds for Otherside, according to The Block Research analyst Brad Kay.

© 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.

Paris-based Ledger, the crypto security firm, this morning announced its expansion into the institutional trading space.

The company is rolling out a new trading network for institutions named Tradelink to enable custodial trading via select exchange and custodial partners.

“We are creating a future-proof solution that will give Ledger Enterprise customers flexibility and security allowing institutions to de-risk their businesses,” said Pascal Gauthier, chairman and CEO of Ledger, in a statement. “It is this core security foundation that can now be used to reduce counterparty risk and enable custodial trading for institutional investors.”

A bevy of wholesale partners will support the exchange at launch, including asset managers Laser Digital and Hodl Group; custodians such as Komainu, TetraTrust, Etana, Crypto Garage, Damex and Kryptodian; and exchanges and other kinds of brokers including Crypto.com, Bitstamp, Huobi, Uphold Institutional, CEX.IO, Wintermute, Coinsquare, NDAX, Damex, Bitazza, Flowdesk and YouHodler.

Heightened third-party risk in crypto

In in its announcement, Ledger highlighted the “growing need to mitigate third-party risk” in crypto trading, given heightened security and regulatory concerns — while positioning Tradelink as a solution, in that it eliminates “network lock-in risks.”

Founded in 2014 and best-known for hardware wallets, Ledger is among Europe’s biggest crypto businesses. It has sold more than 6 million devices to customers across 200 countries to date, according to this morning’s announcement.

The company raised another $108 million in March this year at a flat $1.5 billion valuation.

© 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.