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Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriquez and William Lonergan Hill have pleaded guilty to unlicensed money transmission in the Southern District of New York today. The money laundering charge, which the two developers were also indicted on, will be dropped. These pleas were part of deals between the two bitcoin mixer developers and the government. Who are Samourai Wallet’s Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill? Read more: What to do if you’ve used Samourai Wallet According to reporting from The Rage, Rodriguez was ordered to pay a $250,000 fine, and Hill was ordered to pay a $400,000 fine. Additionally, approximately $6 million will be paid against a $237 million judgement. The Samourai defendants agreed not to appeal any prison sentence of five years or less. Final sentencing procedures will start November 6, 2025. This case has drawn further attention to the ongoing Tornado Cash criminal prosecution. In May, the government filed a lette...

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has moved to dismiss the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) amended lawsuit, claiming that the regulator can’t differentiate between crypto securities and Beanie Babies. Binance and Zhao filed the motion to dismiss yesterday while alleging the SEC’s new filing “refuses to articulate any standard for courts, litigants, or market participants to know which crypto-asset transactions qualify as investment contracts, and which do not.”  The SEC filed the lawsuit in June 2023 and amended it last month. It names Binance, BAM Trading Services Inc., and BAM Management US Holdings, alongside Zhao, as defendants.  According to the motion to dismiss, winners and losers are being chosen “arbitrarily” by the SEC and “its non-test cannot differentiate securities from Beanie Babies at the pleading stage.” The filing then singles out five types of transactions that it believes the SEC has misinterpreted within its fresh allegations . ...

The attorneys representing Nathaniel Chastain informed the court that Chastain will self-surrender on Nov. 2 to begin serving his sentence. A former manager at nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea sentenced to three months in prison for insider trading has opted to serve the sentence while his appeal is pending . On Sept. 6, Nathaniel Chastain’s lawyers filed a letter with a New York District Court informing the judge that Chastain decided to withdraw his application for bail pending appeal. As a result, per the court's previous order and judgment, Chastain will self-surrender by Nov. 2 to begin serving his sentence while his appeal is pending . Screenshot of the letter from Chastain’s lawyers. Source: CourtListener Chastain, a former OpenSea product manager, was convicted on May 3 on counts of wire fraud and money laundering and on Aug. 22 was sentenced to three months in prison for offenses relating to insider trading on the NFT platform. He was also ordered to pay a $...

United States District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla is also the judge overseeing the SEC's lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase. A United States District Court judge has called Ether (ETH) a commodity in her dismissal of a class action lawsuit against the decentralized exchange Uniswap. In an Aug. 30 dismissal order of the case brought by Uniswap users who claimed they lost money due to scam tokens on the exchange — Judge Katherine Polk Failla wrote ETH and Bitcoin (BTC) were “crypto commodities.” The distinction was also part of her reasoning for dismissing the case — Failla said she wasn’t convinced by an argument that Uniswap’s token sales were subject to the Exchange Act. Interestingly, Failla is also the judge overseeing the SEC lawsuit against Coinbase. She has also had previous experience in overseeing other crypto cases in the past, including one involving Tether and Bitfinex.  The SDNY (Failla, J.) also explicitly found in its August 29 decision in Risely v. ...

The SEC claims the transactions involved with redistributing the funds to impacted Voyager account holders will trigger U.S. securities laws. The United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) won’t be allowed to fine executives involved in Voyager Digital should it end up issuing bankruptcy token s to help repay impacted customers, bankruptcy judge Michael Wiles has said. The comments from Wiles came on Mar. 6, the third day of hearings regarding a plan by Voyager to issue a repayment token and sell $1 billion of assets to Binance.US. The SEC earlier argued that the repayment token would constitute an unregistered security offering, while Binance.US is operating an unregulated securities exchange. In a supplemental objection statement, it also objected to a legal protection which stated that no U.S. agency, including the SEC, will be able to bring “any claim against any Person on account of or relating to the Restructuring Transactions.” Essentially, this means that executiv...

Luxury brand Hermès filed a suit against digital artist Mason Rothschild after the artist released his Metabirkins NFT collection depicting the company's Birkin bag product without permission. The trademark infringement trial between French luxury brand Hermès and digital artist Mason Rothschild is set to go ahead on Jan. 30 in a Manhattan federal court. The luxury brand accused the nonfungible token (NFT) artist of trademark infringement for promoting and selling MetaBirkins, an NFT collection said to be inspired by the group's Birkin bags. The trial and its related lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York can be first traced back to Jan. 14, 2022, when Hermès first filed a complaint against Mason Rothschild after the artist allegedly refused to stop selling his NFT collection. MetaBirkins depict Birkin handbags covered in colorful fur instead of leather. Source: MetaBirkins Twitter According to court documents filed on Jan. 23, Her...

Amid Genesis going through its first bankruptcy hearings, a group of creditors have slapped the firm with a new class action lawsuit. Troubled cryptocurrency company Digital Currency Group (DCG) is facing more legal issues as its subsidiary Genesis Capital got slapped with a new class action lawsuit. A group of Genesis creditors filed a securities class action (SCA) lawsuit against DCG and its founder and CEO Barry Silbert, alleging violations of the federal securities laws. The lawsuit was filed by Connecticut-based Law firm Silver Golub & Teitell (SGT) on behalf of individuals and entities who entered into digital asset lending agreements with Genesis. The Law firm is known for handling major industry lawsuit s, including a class action suit filed against Coinbase in March 2022. The new complaint against DCG and Silbert alleges that Genesis engaged in an unregistered securities offering in violation of securities laws by executing lending agreements involving securities without...