Prison Era

Hopium and "Highly Profitable Trading Strategies"

January 01, 2023

Quiet week. But don’t worry — we stayed online so you didn’t have to.

Club news:

Writer: RachlolEditor: Deana 

End of the Mango era. Crypto rubbed up against the law again this week, with the arrest of Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg on market manipulation charges. Avi notoriously executed a “highly profitable trading strategy” aka market manipulation in October, and walked away with $115M. This will be an important DeFi-meets-law case to keep an eye on, and it seems like it is not going to go his way. 2023 is giving PRISON.

Guilty as fuq. This week SBF will reportedly plead not guilty in court. Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, his two closest associates, pleaded guilty last week, partially in exchange for a promise that prosecutors would recommend a reduction in their sentences. Unfortunately, this soap opera will continue well in 2023. On Saturday, Martin Shkreli read SBF’s tea leaves with our beloved Laura Shin. Give it a listen if you want to get inside of the mind of ANOTHER criminal.

Hopium. The Securities Commission of the Bahamas is temporarily holding $3.5B of digital assets seized from FTX Digital Markets and is waiting to deliver them to customers and creditors who own them. Ha-lay-lou-yeah. The Commission says it seized the assets for safekeeping, following a peculiar cyberattack. They will continue to hold the assets until the Supreme Court tells them where to send it. This is the hopeful news we need as we tail spin into 2023!