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SHOCKER: SEC Thinks Judge Got Ripple Decision Wrong

Plus a more permanent crypto crime-fighting force

Author

Nathaniel Whittemore
July 24, 2023

The Breakdown First Five - Monday July 24 2023

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day

/imagine prompt gritty political illustration of a frantic courtroom with lots of shouting

5. X to Meme

With the announcement that Twitter will become X.com only one question remained, when token? While Elon Musk might be the king of memecoin trends and disrespecting the SEC, even he wasn’t brazen enough to launch a token in the middle of a major corporate restructuring. In that gap, the market provides. Multitudes of valueless X themed tokens popped up across all chains with spammy airdrop announcements inundating Twitter.. err X.

4. Coinbase closes loans

Coinbase has announced plans to sunset Bitcoin backed loans for retail customers. In May the loan book was closed to new borrowers and now the exchange has called in all outstanding balances, due on November 20. Prime and institutional customers will not be affected. Customers have four months to repay and Coinbase are waiving liquidation fees if customers repay using their collateral, but some users are reporting difficulties executing this option.

3. Celsius Settlement

Celsius debtors have cleared the decks, settling two lawsuits in preparation to move forward with a bankruptcy plan. A group of 30,000 customers claimed $78B in damages for fraud conducted by former management. Another lawsuit related to the status of collateral for borrowers on the platform. With these matters settled a recovery plan is set to be put forward in October where assets will be distributed alongside shares in the continuing mining operation.

2. NCET made permanent

The DOJ’s NCET Crypto division has been viewed as such a success it will be made a permanent fixture, merging with another Cybercrime division and massively bolstering resources. The workforce of prosecutors dealing with Crypto cases will double, with officials saying that Crypto is now “intertwined” with Cybercrime. And who can argue after the crimefighters brought down Bitzlato?

1. Will the SEC appeal Ripple?

The SEC thinks the Ripple case was “wrongly decided”, but only the parts they lost. New filings in the Terraform labs lawsuit indicate the SEC is not ready to accept the Ripple decision as precedent, arguing that the Judge should partially disregard the orders as precedent.

Thanks for reading -NLW