ChainCatcher message, according to a public document, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against UBI Blockchain, accusing it of violations. According to the lawsuit documents, BI Blockchain Internet Ltd. is a Delaware company located in Hong Kong, registered with the Commission under Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act for a class of securities.The SEC stated that UBIA has failed to submit periodic filings as required, and since the Commission ordered the dismissal of the previous lawsuit against UBIA on June 2, 2023, the company has not submitted any periodic or other reports.

ChainCatcher news reports that Craig Wright, known as "Satoshi Nakamoto," filed a lawsuit against BTC Core and Jack Dorsey's payment company Square in the High Court of England on October 10 as a "litigant in person," without hiring a lawyer. The specific purpose of the case has not been disclosed.Craig Wright also posted legal threats related to MicroStrategy on the X platform, and it remains unclear whether they are related to this lawsuit.Additionally, Craig Wright is currently attempting to initiate three appeals in the UK, two of which are against the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA).

ChainCatcher news, according to CryptoNews, up to 20,000 people in San Pedro, Argentina have been caught up in a fraudulent crypto project related to USDT, which was promoted by some unknown actors.Lawyers state that the platform's operators promised to double investors' funds within six weeks and offered some investors daily returns of 1% to 2% in USD. Currently, at least 50 victims are preparing to file a lawsuit against a company named Knight Consortium. This company operates a crypto platform called "RainbowEx," but it is not registered or legally supported.Among the victims are some retirees, and some investors have been unable to withdraw their funds for three weeks, causing widespread panic.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, Crypto.com has stated that it has received a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and has also announced that it has filed a lawsuit against the SEC.The Wells Notice indicates that SEC staff believe the company may have violated federal securities laws. The company is currently assessing the situation and preparing to respond to the allegations.Crypto.com states that its lawsuit argues that the SEC has unilaterally expanded its jurisdiction beyond statutory limits and that the SEC has established an illegal rule that almost all transactions of crypto assets are securities transactions, regardless of how they are sold, while the same transactions of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are not.

ChainCatcher news reports that, according to market news, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against Merrill Lynch, accusing it of profiting from market fluctuations in client trades.According to previous related reports, Merrill Lynch's brokerage division is providing Bitcoin spot ETF trading services to wealth management clients. Due to client demand, the bank initially offered the approved ETF products to some wealth management clients with brokerage accounts.

According to ChainCatcher news, the plaintiff Van Loon appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court on September 2, suing the U.S. Department of the Treasury for its decision to place Tornado Cash on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. The plaintiff argues that the Treasury imposed sanctions on this open-source project without clear guidelines, which could threaten programmers' First Amendment rights. Van Loon and his team sued the Treasury in September 2023, accusing it of overstepping its authority.Tornado Cash was sanctioned for allegedly being involved in money laundering activities, with the government claiming that the platform has been linked to over $7 billion in illegal funds since 2019. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) supports this lawsuit, expressing concerns that government sanctions could have a chilling effect on open-source software development. A lower court previously dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the sanctions were limited to transactions involving Tornado Cash smart contracts and did not affect the development and discussion of open-source code. However, the EFF and other digital rights advocates remain vigilant about the broader implications of the case, emphasizing the importance of protecting programmers' rights.

ChainCatcher news reports that, according to official sources, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against BitClout founder Nader Al-Naji, accusing him of running a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme worth millions of dollars, involving the social media platform BitClout and its native token BTCLT. Since November 2020, Al-Naji has raised over $257 million from the unregistered BTCLT issuance and falsely informed investors that the funds would not be used for personal compensation.The SEC alleges that Al-Naji described BitClout as a decentralized project, using the alias "Diamondhands" to evade regulatory scrutiny. In reality, Al-Naji used over $7 million of investor funds for personal expenses, including renting a mansion in Beverly Hills and giving luxurious cash gifts to family members. Meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has also brought charges against Al-Naji.

ChainCatcher news, according to CryptoSlate, the bankruptcy trustee of the collapsed cryptocurrency lending company Celsius Network has filed a lawsuit against account holders who received preferential transfers within 90 days prior to the company's bankruptcy filing. These lawsuits were filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, targeting accounts with withdrawal priority exposure (WPE) exceeding $100,000.Previously, the company successfully settled with over 1,500 account holders, recovering nearly $100 million. These settlements addressed over $500 million in priority debt issues, providing significant relief to eligible Celsius creditors.During the priority period from April 14, 2022, to July 13, 2022, massive withdrawals led to severe financial imbalances for the company, ultimately resulting in bankruptcy after the priority period ended. Former CEO Alex Mashinsky and other executives of Celsius are facing allegations of fraud and market manipulation, which contributed to the company's collapse.

ChainCatcher news, according to DL News, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York stated in a press release that they have charged three British nationals in connection with a rug pull scam involving a series of 10,000 NFTs called "Evolved Apes" that took place in 2021.According to the statement, they collected approximately $2.7 million worth of Ethereum from investors. 23-year-old Mohamed-Amin Atcha, Mohamed Rilaz Waleedh, and Daood Hassan are charged with wire fraud and money laundering. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, based on court documents submitted in the Southern District of New York, another participant in OneCoin, William Morro, has been arrested. Prosecutors stated that Morro concealed the source of funds related to OneCoin by falsely reporting the source of funds to banks. He was involved in transferring $35 million related to OneCoin to an account in Hong Kong and also transferred about $6 million to an account in the United States.Prosecutors ultimately charged Morro with conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Morro signed a related statement agreeing to "waive the right to a trial by indictment and consent to proceed by information rather than an indictment."OneCoin was founded in 2014 by Karl Sebastian Greenwood and the so-called crypto queen Ruja Ignatova. Greenwood was arrested in Thailand in 2018, charged with fraud and money laundering, and extradited to the United States. Last year, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $300 million.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelgraph, early Ethereum advisor Steven Nerayoff has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, accusing federal agents of making false allegations against him from 2019 to 2023. It is reported that Steven Nerayoff has filed a Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) lawsuit regarding a blackmail case against him, seeking $9.6 billion in damages from the U.S. government.

ChainCatcher news, following the charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week, the daily trading volume of the cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has dropped from $2 billion on March 26 to $520 million, a decrease of about 75%. Since March 26, KuCoin has seen outflows exceeding $1.2 billion.Kaiko analysts believe that on-chain data indicates KuCoin users have been transferring funds to competing cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase, Binance, and OKX.

ChainCatcher news reports that, according to court documents, a coalition of several U.S. mining companies led by Texas Blockchain and Riot Platforms has filed a civil lawsuit against the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), accusing it of "illegally collecting proprietary data from 82 Bitcoin mining companies, including Riot." Previously, the EIA received permission from the Biden administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to conduct investigations among cryptocurrency miners in the U.S. The environmental impact assessment suggests that if traditional mining activities continue, it is highly likely to cause public harm.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, the Texas Crypto Freedom Alliance (CFAT) and digital asset company Lejilex have sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), seeking a court ruling on the status of digital assets sold on the secondary market. It is reported that Lejilex is planning to launch a cryptocurrency exchange called Legit.Exchange. According to his LinkedIn profile, Mike Wawszczak, co-founder of Lejilex, is the attorney and general counsel for Alliance DAO.The lawsuit presents a charge against the SEC and cites the Declaratory Judgment Act and a 2007 case as precedent. The plaintiffs request multiple rulings from the court, including that the secondary market sales of digital assets facilitated by Lejilex through Legit.Exchange are not sales of securities as defined by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Securities Act of 1933.They also seek a declaration from the court that Legit.Exchange is not an unregistered securities exchange and that Lejilex will not become an unregistered broker or unregistered clearing agency by operating the exchange. The plaintiffs argue that "the SEC's recent enforcement actions have adopted a novel position that nearly all digital asset transactions involve 'investment contracts' under federal securities law."

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, the debtors of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange have filed an independent lawsuit in the bankruptcy case concerning the acquisition of the liquidation platform Embed. According to documents from the U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, the FTX debtors stated that they have reached a proposed settlement with SBF regarding claims in the "Embed Proceeding." Although FTX acquired Embed for $2.2 billion through its U.S. branch in June 2022, lawyers for FTX's leadership indicated that there was almost no substantive due diligence conducted at the time of the transaction. The documents noted that the proposed agreement is most beneficial to the debtors' assets, creditors, and stakeholders, and called for swift execution.The agreement stipulates that SBF will return the full value of two future equity simple agreements sent to him by FTX US and waive all asset rights in accounts under Embed. This proposal only addresses specific aspects of the bankruptcy case related to Embed and SBF, excluding all assets handled by the exchange to address creditor claims.It is reported that FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, after which Bankman-Fried resigned and was convicted of seven felonies in the U.S. The debtors also plan to merge assets with FTX Digital Markets as part of efforts to allocate funds to customers. This move is the latest attempt by the debtors to manage company assets and repay creditors under the proposed organizational plan.

ChainCatcher news reports that court documents show that six representatives, including Coinbase, Joseph Van Loon, Tyler Almeida, Alexander Fisher, Preston Van Loon, Kevin Vitale, and Nate Welch, have submitted a case to the Fifth Circuit Court regarding the Treasury's inclusion of Tornado Cash on the sanctions list, which will be reviewed by the court.According to a previous report from September 2022, six individuals, including two Coinbase employees, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against the Treasury's decision to include Tornado Cash on the sanctions list, with Coinbase providing financial support for the lawsuit.In April 2023, the plaintiffs submitted a motion for summary judgment.In August 2023, The Block reported that in the Coinbase-supported lawsuit regarding the Tornado Cash sanctions, District Court Judge Robert Pitman stated in a document submitted to the U.S. District Court that he ordered the dismissal of part of the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment from Joseph Van Loon, Tyler Almeida, Alexander Fisher, Preston Van Loon, Kevin Vitale, and Nate Welch. The court found that Tornado Cash is an association in the ordinary sense, and therefore is an entity that can be designated under OFAC regulations.

ChainCatcher News, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun legal action against the auditing firm Prager Metis, which provided services to the cryptocurrency exchange FTX before it announced bankruptcy.According to a statement on September 29, the SEC claims that Prager Metis provided auditing services to clients without maintaining the necessary independence, as the firm allegedly continued to provide accounting services. This practice is prohibited under the auditor independence framework, which requires a clear separation of accounting and auditing tasks to prevent conflicts of interest. However, the SEC claims that these activities spanned approximately three years: there were allegedly "hundreds" of violations of auditor independence during that entire three-year period.

ChainCatcher news, FTX creditor @sunil_trades stated on social media that, according to the lawsuit documents, FTX has filed a recovery lawsuit against relevant parties including LayerZero Labs. It is reported that before FTX shut down and prohibited withdrawals, LayerZero illegally extracted assets worth $21.37 million from FTX using insider information.In addition, FTX is also seeking to recover approximately $13.07 million and $6.65 million from LayerZero Labs' former Chief Operating Officer Ari Litan and his company Skip & Goose, respectively.

ChainCatcher news, shareholders of the Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital have filed a lawsuit against the company's top management in the U.S. District Court for Nevada, accusing Marathon Digital CEO Fred Thiel and other executives of violating the Securities Exchange Act, breaching fiduciary duties, unjust enrichment, and wasting company assets.

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has filed a lawsuit in court attempting to prevent debtors from controlling his $450 million stake in Robinhood. Lawyers representing SBF argue that these shares do not belong to any FTX-related entities currently in bankruptcy proceedings, and that SBF needs the money to pay for his legal fees. The 56.2 million shares were previously purchased by SBF and another FTX co-founder, Gary Wang, through the special purpose vehicle Emergent Fidelity Technology. (Source link)