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The Arrington Capital-backed grouping beat fellow bidder NovaWulf for Celsius’ assets, with the Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium selected as back-up.

Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal has finally been served in FTX class action lawsuit — again.

O’Neal was served legal papers on Tuesday night in Miami at the Kaseya Center (formerly FTX Arena) during Game 4 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals, according to Adam Moskowitz, a lawyer representing the FTX investors, as the Wall Street Journal reported.

Last month, Moskowitz told The Block that O’Neal was finally served in the case outside his Atlanta home after a three-month chase. But O’Neal had alleged in court that process servers tossed papers at his moving car and failed to officially serve him.

This time, a process server bought a ticket to the Tuesday game between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics and delivered the papers again, according to Moskowitz. O’Neal was providing commentary on the game from a platform in the arena.

The process server approached him while O’Neal was on the platform and delivered the legal documents in the FTX case, according to Moskowitz. The process server also served O’Neal in a new lawsuit over the Astrals Project, an NFT project of 3-D avatars. The new lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Moskowitz in U.S. District Court in Florida, alleges O’Neal violated securities laws by selling unregistered securities. O’Neal later had the process server thrown out of the arena, according to Moskowitz.

O’Neal is among more than a dozen celebrities and sports teams who are being sued for promoting FTX, the now-bankrupt crypto exchange. He had at one point been so supportive of FTX that the company dubbed him “Shaqtoshi,” referencing Satoshi Nakamoto, the name of the person who apparently wrote the white paper on Bitcoin.

O’Neal has distanced himself from FTX in the wake of the company’s collapse. “I was just a paid spokesperson for a commercial,” O’Neal said after the company went bankrupt.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to criminal fraud charges, while three other executives from the company pleaded guilty in federal court.

© 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.

Florida’s governor and the Republican’s latest leadership candidate talked crypto and central bank digital currencies in a Twitter space with Elon Musk.

ALSO: Market maker Flowdesk is looking to expand in the U.S., even as a number of major crypto firms, including Coinbase, have lost enthusiasm there because of ongoing regulatory uncertainties.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who launched his presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk on Wednesday evening, said he’d protect bitcoin if he’s elected next year.

“I think people should be able to do bitcoin,” DeSantis said as 300,000 listeners tuned in. “As president, we’ll protect the ability to do things like bitcoin.”

DeSantis, who earlier this month moved to prohibit any kind of a central bank digital currency in the state, said that bitcoin represented a threat to “central planners” that want “control over society.” He said any kind of regulation over cryptocurrencies should ultimately be up to Congress, and that he’d oppose any kind of a ban should one ever emerge.

The Republican, who will try and take on former President Donald Trump in the primary election, has expressed support in the past for decentralized cryptocurrencies. He acknowledged risks in the sector but said that people should be able to make their own decisions. 

“I just do not have an itch to have to control everything that people may be doing in this space, and I think the current regime, clearly, they have it out for bitcoin, and if it continues for another four years, they’ll probably end up killing it,” DeSantis said. 

The comments come as crypto exchanges such as Coinbase have battled U.S. regulators, with some warning that regulatory uncertainly in the country could push the industry offshore. Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest wrote earlier this week that the country is at risk of losing a leading position in the global crypto ecosystem to countries including the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Australia and Switzerland.

© 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.

Bitpanda, the Vienna-based crypto investment business, has inked a licensing deal with Coinbase.

The arrangement will see Coinbase added as a liquidity provider for Bitpanda Technology Solutions, Bitpanda’s “investing-as-a-service” arm, which will also begin using Coinbase Prime’s custody services.

The deal will pave the way for clients of Coinbase Institutional outside of the United States to white-label Bitpanda’s investing-as-a-service platform, according to the announcement.

Institutional clients of the platform can integrate trading infrastructure to begin offering their own customers trading, investment and custody tools for a range of assets, including stocks and crypto. Austrian bank Raiffeisenlandesbank, German neobank N26, French fintech firm Lydia and the UK’s Plum are already using the service.

A high bar

In today’s announcement, both firms emphasized that they are regulated entities with high KYC standards.

“Bitpanda and Coinbase share an ambition — to make investing in digital assets safe and secure in a regulated way,” said Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, deputy CEO and COO of Bitpanda, in a written statement. “At a time of unparalleled opportunity for the industry to harness the potential of digital assets for its customers, we are coming together to define a clear future and drive forward that ambition.”

The move is the latest sign that Coinbase is trying to put down deeper roots outside of the U.S. amid a crackdown by regulators in the region. The company recently secured a license to operate an international exchange out of Bermuda, where it plans to offer derivatives trading while also expanding its offering in Singapore.

© 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.

Coinbase will use Bitpanda Technology Solutions, a business-to-business infrastructure layer provider, to connect directly into banks and fintechs.

The continued contraction of the stablecoin market capitalization suggests that the crypto markets are still in their bear phase, macro analyst Tom Dunleavy said.

Last year, a group of CoinDesk reporters traveled to Seneca Lake to examine the effect Greenidge Generation – a resurrected power plant that now mines bitcoin – had on the surrounding communities. Though we expected to hear locals say they disliked the plant and its continued operation, we found the opposite.

The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization sank below $26.2K early Wednesday after disappointing U.K. inflation data.