Ripple is coming under fire from a serial Bitcoin (BTC) proponent this week after news emerged a lawsuit against the company has intensified. Ripple will feel U.S. regulators’ wrath, says Vays Ripple, which notionally controls the token known as XRP, is currently being taken to court by an investor, Bradley Sostack, who claims the company engaged in selling unregistered securities. As Cointelegraph reported, the stakes increased this week, after Sostack amended his original claim to include fresh guidance from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to reports, the SEC’s latest pronouncements lend weight to Sostack’s argument, and …

A United States District Court has entered an emergency freeze to preserve $8 million of a New York citizen and two of his entities’ related assets following the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint filed on Aug. 12. Per the SEC's announcement published on Aug. 13, the court ordered the temporary freeze of at least $8 million of the $14.8 million raised by the defendants. The sum was reportedly raised by Reginald Middleton and two entities under his management, Veritaseum, Inc. and Veritaseum, LLC, in 2017 and 2018 by conducting an allegedly fraudulent and unregistered initial coin offering. The …

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase did not act fraudulently during its botched launch of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a United States judge has ruled. Coinbase accused of insider trading BCH listing In a court order issued on Aug. 6, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California (San Francisco) threw out claims by traders that Coinbase committed fraud by halting trading after two minutes. The move is the latest in a protracted lawsuit brought by trader Jeffery Berk over the events, which occurred in December 2017. At the time, BCH was only four months old and still being added to …

The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, Canada, has approved over $1.6 million in fees for parties seeking funds from former Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, according to recently released court documents. Justice Darlene Jamieson ordered to approve the activities, fees and disbursements incurred by the Monitor — Big Four audit firm EY — in the ongoing proceedings of QuadrigaCX. The exchange ostensibly lost access to its cold wallet holdings following the death of its founder, Gerald Cotten, in December 2018, and now owes over $198.4 million to an estimated 115,000 users. Jamieson also approved the fees and disbursements of representative counsel, …

Justice Joel M. Cohen of the New York Supreme Court (NYSC) has ruled to extend the preliminary injunction in the ongoing case of crypto exchange Bitfinex and Tether’s parent company, iFinex, against the New York Attorney General (NYAG), on July 29. Cohen reportedly decided to give a 90 day extension to the case, which apparently means that OAG can continue investigating. Lawyers of Tether tried to appeal to dismiss the motion immediately, but Cohen rejected their appeal. Speaking before the court, iFinex also argued that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction because Tether is not a security or …

United States-based traders can still purportedly access Bitfinex’s cryptocurrency trading services, despite recent claims that the firm is not active in the state. An anonymous source told blockchain and crypto news agency The Block that they were able to access Bitfinex from within the borders of the state of New York, according to a July 26 report. Per The Block, the unnamed trader created an account with the tongue-in-cheek username “ImaNYresident”, and subsequently gained access to the platform by simply selecting a query stating that they are not a U.S. resident. Bitfinex discontinued services for U.S.-based customers in August 2017 …

Four individuals allegedly involved in hacking the cell phones of Brazil’s Justice Minister Sergio Moro regularly used Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, Cointelegraph Brazil reported on July 25. On July 23, the Federal Police of Brazil arrested four individuals who allegedly hacked Moro’s cell phones while he was acting as a judge in the Operation Car Wash case involving former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Operation Car Wash is a major criminal money laundering investigation initiated by Moro, which further expanded to allegations of corruption at major Brailizan petroleum firm Petrobras. Political parties subsequently found themselves implicated into the …

Lawyers for Bitfinex and Tether, in the course of an ongoing case against the New York Attorney General (NYAG), submitted multiple fillings on July 22 alleging that the companies never served customers within New York. In one filing, attorney Stuart Hoegner noted the provision in Bitfinex’s terms of service that require that customers that transact be foreign entities: “Under Bitfinex’s and Tether’s Terms of Service, Eligible Contract Participants (‘ECPs’) that transact with Bitfinex or Tether must be foreign entities. Although those foreign entities may have shareholders or personnel who reside in, or otherwise have contact with, the United States or …

The founder of ConsenSys-incubated startup Token Foundry, Harrison Hines, is suing Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin for breach of contract. Per court documents filed with the Supreme Court of the State of New York County of New York, Hines has filed a lawsuit against Lubin in connection with “breach of contract, conversion, quantum meruit, unjust enrichment, fraud, declaratory judgment and unpaid profits arising from the defendants’ acts in connection with the business known as Token Foundry.” Hines thus intends to collect over $13 million, wherein “the relief sought is monetary damages in the amount of $12,827,000 on the contract, quasi-contract and …

The State of New Jersey alleges that a blockchain-based online rental marketplace sold over $400,000 of unregistered securities. A complaint filed on July 17 accuses Pocketinns, Inc. and its president Sarvajnya G. Mada of offering and selling around $410,000 of unregistered securities in the form of a cryptocurrency dubbed PINNS Tokens. The tokens were sold through an initial token offering between Jan. 15 and Jan. 31, 2018. Neither Pockettins nor Mada have allegedly been registered with the state’s Bureau of Securities. The defendants purportedly sold tokens to 217 investors in violation of New Jersey’s Uniform Securities Law, wherein only 11 …

The operator of now-defunct Bitcoin (BTC) exchange BitFunder, Jon Montroll, has received a 14 months prison sentence following federal charges of obstruction of justice and securities fraud, finance and trading industry news outlet FinanceFeeds reported on July 12. The proceedings against Montroll began last year. In July 2018, Montroll pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, admitting that he provided false balance statements to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in an investigation of the fake 6,000 BTC BitFunder hack in 2013. The proceedings against Montroll ended on July 11, 2019, wherein Judge Richard M. Berman of the New York …

A Texas Federal Court has ordered two defendants to pay $400,000 for conducting a fraudulent scheme to solicit Bitcoin (BTC) from members of the public, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced on July 10. Judge Reed C. O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas filed an Order and Default Judgment on June 28, 2019, alleging that U.S. citizens Morgan Hunt and Kim Hecroft engaged in a fraudulent scheme to solicit Bitcoin from the public to invest in trading products like binary options, diamonds and foreign currency contracts. The defendants allegedly did business …