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Sam Bankman-Fried, the former chief exec of FTX and owner of Alameda Research, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison today, according to reporting from Inner City Press.  This sentence comes after a jury found him guilty of multiple felony offenses, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and money laundering conspiracy. Both FTX and Alameda Research declared bankruptcy following the misappropriation of billions of dollars of funds by Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators.  Bankman-Fried’s defense has claimed that the losses from these collapsed firms should not be considered, stating that the bankruptcy was likely to have a full recovery. Current FTX CEO John J. Ray III said this was “categorically, callously, and demonstrably false.”  Inner City Press reported that Judge Kaplan agreed with Ray’s characterization, claiming the defense’s argument was misleading .  Judge Kaplan: I reject the defense's argument about loss, both ...

Creditors of long-failed cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox have finally started receiving payments for their Bitcoin (BTC), which has been locked up on the exchange since February 2014. On Dec. 25, on the mtgoxinsolvency Reddit page, users speculated that Mt.Gox was sending refunds in Japanese yen through PayPal – almost ten years after the funds were blocked on the exchange on Feb. 24, 2014. In particular, one of the Reddit users, Free-end254, stated that he received payments and attached a screenshot with confirmation from PayPal. Another user also confirmed receipt of funds, noting that he initially mistook the message for phishing. Source: Reddit In late November, Mt. Gox creditors received an email from the bankruptcy trustee, who announced their intention to initiate payments. However, due to the different types of payments and other processing times, payments will continue into 2024. As part of this process, Mt. Gox will distribute various assets among creditors ....

Crypto.news spoke with David Shrier, the author of the book ‘Basic Metaverse,’ about the future of the virtual world. The global metaverse market could potentially reach a revenue of $1,237 billion by 2030, as projected by recent reports. However, intricate security and privacy concerns may slow down the market’s growth. Crypto.news discussed these and other concerns with David Shrier, a futurist, author, and entrepreneur, at Websummit in Lisbon. In his book ‘Basic Metaverse: How Virtual Worlds Will Change Our Reality and What You Can Do to Unlock Their Potential’, Shrier delves into the future of this emerging technology and its potential impact on our daily lives. During our conversation, we explored the metaverse challenges, and the possibility of a future where interacting with the virtual world via contact lenses or even brain implants may become a reality sooner than you may think. Crypto.news: Your book, ‘Basic Metaverse,’ was publi...

In the past years, it has been possible to observe a gradual, but constant trend of fewer Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools dominating the majority of the global network hashrate and block discovery. In this report, Finbold uses a data-based approach to analyze the decentralization state of the leading cryptocurrency network and explains why it is important. Going from an unknown number of Bitcoin miners having the majority of its hashrate since the first block was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, to four mining pools having mined over 59% of all blocks in the last three years, and only two of these institutions dominating over 52% of the new BTC distribution in the last three months. Bitcoin mining decentralization state This data was gathered from mempool.space pools ranking, which analyses the hashrate dominance by looking at who was responsible for each block ever added to the Bitcoin blockchain in each timeframe. Consequently receiving the reward in BTC through the creation of new coins ...

● The end of zero-COVID has implications for growth and inflation globally.  ● "China's reopening is happening faster, and earlier, and so is the recovery" China is rapidly reopening after three years of lockdown by abruptly relaxing strict Covid restrictions. Mainland China has opened sea and land crossings, with Hong Kong dismantling a final pillar of a zero-COVID policy that shielded 1.4 billion Chinese residents from the virus.  In a Tuesday report, Citi's Chief China Economist Xiangrong Yu said:  "We see markets and policymakers looking through the readings as eyes are on the strength and sustainability of China's-post COVID recovery. Reopening is happening faster and earlier, so could the recovery."  Following the historic protests, one of the world's tightest COVID regimes relaxed a policy that involved curbs on movement, frequent testing, and massive lockdown s which damaged the world's second-biggest economy.  While t...