DeFi News Today TheBitTimes.com

The SEC has filed a lawsuit against the accounting firm Prager Metis for allegedly violating audit or independence rules in relation to its work for cryptocurrency exchange FTX. According to a statement released by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Sept. 29, Prager Metis provided both auditing and accounting services to clients over a period of around three years, which is prohibited under SEC regulations. The rules state that auditors must remain fully independent from their clients to avoid conflicts of interest. The SEC alleges that Prager Metis conducted “hundreds” of audit s, reviews, and exams while also providing accounting services to those same clients between 2019 and 2021. The agency says this violated fundamental principles of audit or independence. While the SEC statement does not name specific companies, a court filing shows that in 2021, Prager Metis audit ed the financial statements of FTX and its subsidiary FTX US. FTX declar...

The decision reverses a prior ruling, allowing Craig Wright to appeal a lawsuit claiming copyright to the Bitcoin whitepaper and database. A British court granted an appeal on July 20 that gave Craig Wright the right to argue in a litigation that the Bitcoin file format is well-defined enough to qualify for copyright protection.  Wright, who since 2016 has claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin (BTC), launched a lawsuit against 13 Bitcoin Core developers and a group of companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, alleging violation of his copyright to the Bitcoin whitepaper, its file format and database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain. The decision reversed a ruling from February that considered Wright's arguments insufficient to show how the Bitcoin file format was first recorded, a concept known as fixation on copyright laws. "The Claimants may consider themselves unlucky to have had their application for leave to serve out come before a Judge with at least some...

Meanwhile, total liquidations have topped $280M in the last 12 hours as crypto market sentiment has turned more fearful. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index — a tool that measures broader market sentiment towards Bitcoin and the broader crypto market — has dipped to a level of “fear” not witnessed since March 11 this year, when Circle’s USD coin (USDC) briefly lost its dollar-peg.  The stumble in market sentiment comes in the wake of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing a lawsuit against Binance, its U.S. arm of operations and its CEO Changpeng Zhao. The SEC pressed a total of 13 charges against the exchange and its affiliates for failing to register as a securities exchange and operating illegally in the United States. The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me . The index works by aggregating a mixture of indicators to gauge market sentiment . It combines metrics including price volatility, momentum, trading volume with data from social medi...

Terraform Labs is the founder of US Dollar Terra (UST), an algorithmic stablecoin that lost its peg in May 2022. Albright Capital has dropped its lawsuit against Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon, according to a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal filed in U.S. District Court on January 9. Before its dismissal, the lawsuit had alleged that the company had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) by operating the stablecoin, UST, as a “Ponzi scheme.” Three Arrows Capital (3AC) Co-Founder Su Zhu posted the dismissal to Twitter, saying: Curious how long it will take cryptonative media to report on this sudden voluntary dismissal of class action against Luna foundation and Luna investors pic.twitter.com/8SyMhB4u4g — Zhu Su (@zhusu) January 10, 2023 Su Zhu had previously claimed that the bankruptcy of 3AC was partially caused by UST’s collapse. The lawsuit was dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning that the plaintiff has the option to refile it in t...