Qrafty knows how Ethereum's co-founder rugged his employees, BlackRock aims at CEX's and Gary folded against Ripple!

***Qrafty smiling the biggest smile*** Aloha, crypto curious! I am Qrafty - the crypto lovin’ honey badger 🦡 !

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1. Ethereum Co-Founder Rugged His Employees

2. Gensler Folds Against Ripple

3. NY Attorney General sues Gemini and Genesis

Bonus: Bitcoin Broke Above $30,000

Ethereum’s Co-Founder Rugged His Employees

Over two dozen ex-Consensys all-stars are taking their former captain, Joseph Lubin, to the courtroom rodeo. Why? They're waving their hands in the air about their equity shares getting a trim close to 0, and it's definitely not what they signed up for back in 2015.

Lubin, who is also the co-founder of Ethereum, apparently painted a future where Consensys was not just a company but the "crypto Google" and the crowned jewel of cryptocurrency. Employees followed this vision into the wild world of crypto and business.

In black and white, a document stated that Lubin pledged not to dilute their equity shares. Fast forward a bit, and guess what? That promise went up in smoke.

The ex-employees are crying foul, claiming Lubin made a killing while they got zilch. To add insult to injury, he played musical chairs with the company's assets, carting them off to a shiny new US-based entity in 2020, with a little help from his buddies over at JPMorgan. Now, JPMorgan has equity in the new US company.

If that wasn’t enough, most of the old employees from the beginning weren’t transferred to the new US company, essentially being left at the old, worthless one in Switzerland.

A Consensys rep said that the claims are worthless and are legally backed by nothing because the accusers were never employees of Consensys. What the rep failed to mention is that the High Court of Zug, Switzerland issued a sentence in favor of the employees.

Just to be very clear, the scheme was simple: Lubin had Consensys registered in Switzerland, with employees and assets. He transferred the assets from the company to a new US company and got JPMorgan into the deal, taking just a few of the old employees in the new entity. The rest were left on the old company. So when they sued, they weren’t employees of the new company. It’s not illegal to break your promises. What and how it is, you’ll decide for yourself.

🙃 Qrafty hopes that today’s main story brought brave badgery value to you! Now it’s time for a break, you deserve a bit of fun! 😇 👇️

Only We Are Allowed Do It

Uncle Sam is about to drop the hammer on some crypto sorcery. The US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) just unleashed a set of proposed rules that could turn the world of foreign cryptocurrency mixers upside down.

Qrafty, what are these mixers?

Picture them as the crypto's very own David Copperfields, making your digital money vanish into thin air, sprinkling a pinch of secrecy to the mix. Because transactions are visible on public blockchains, some use these mixers to make them harder to track and anonymize them. It’s a form of combining transactions from multiple sources, wallets and blockchains to obscure the source of money.

But FinCEN isn't in the mood for a magic show. They're slapping a "money laundering tool" label on these crypto illusionists and raising the national security flag like it's the Fourth of July. Basically FinCEN is saying that they have a monopoly on money laundering and they won’t allow anyone to play without their approval.

What happens now?

Of course, these measures were already being worked on way before the Gaza conflict. But it’s a great opportunity to use terrorism to justify this kind of legal action against… software. Crypto mixers are software, one could argue software used for own financial privacy. But who wants financial privacy anymore, right?

BlackRock Targets Competition

BlackRock Says Operations of Centralized Exchanges Are Unregulated and Lack Transparency. What BlackRock is actually saying is that centralized exchanges can move the price however and whenever they want because they control the market makers, who control the price.

Just so that you understand, most volumes in crypto are actually wash trading, which means that there are just bots pretending to trade to present the illusion of traders actively trading in the market.

Also, a coin’s price is moved up or down by an actor in the market that has enough capital to influence the order flow in the desired direction.

In the unregulated crypto space, whales and exchanges do that by sending funds to market makers and telling them how to move the price, so that they’re not directly involved. All that is visible on the blockchain.

In the regulated TradFi space, that’s called a kill switch. This means that the big boys will literally halt trading across the entire market if things aren’t going as planned, whether it’s up or down.

Now, BlackRock just wants to make sure that they control what the price is doing and not the centralized exchanges. That’s all.

Gary Gensler Fookd Up, Again

Big plot twist in the world of Ripple and the SEC. Gary Gensler did a complete 180, dropping their lawsuit against the Ripple bigwigs. Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, the top dogs, are off the hook.

The SEC is saying that even though they had everything to do with selling XRP as a security, now they have nothing to do with that anymore. Back in July, a judge sided partially with Ripple, ruling that the XRP that was sold on exchanges wasn’t sold as a security, which was a big ouchie for the SEC.

Here's the punchline: The SEC's batting average is looking a little rough. This is the third time they've swung and missed in their lawsuits against Ripple. It's like watching the rookie team at the big game. And to make it sting a little more, it's ringing up a bill of multiple millions for the taxpayers.

Qrafty hopes there will come a time when Gary Genslers connection with Wanxiang and The Ethereum Foundation involvements in bashing Ripple and XRP will come to light.

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Tomorrow's like a software update - you hope it fixes bugs, but you never quite know what new glitches it'll introduce!

Qrafty’s thought of the day

Other stories

Searches for Bitcoin ETF are high. Are they?

Crypto publications will tell you today that Google searches for Bitcoin ETF are going through the roof and the internet cables are getting red with all that traffic.

While it’s true that search volumes have grown a bit, a part of it is only projected volume.

Also, most of that volume is coming from Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore or Germany, with a search score of over 50. US is below 35 in these searches. So don’t believe quite everything, please.

Yuan overtook Euro

The Chinese yuan just pulled a rabbit out of its monetary hat and became the world's second most-used currency, after the almighty USD. Don’t worry, the dollar is still the king with over 80% of the volumes. What this shows is China’s currency power compared to all the states in the European Union. It also shows the incompetence of EU leaders to do anything on the global scene.

NY Attorney General sues Gemini and Genesis

Once the dude whose words were religiously followed by crypto communities and moved prices when he tweeted, now haunted by his own incompetence and hubris.

Letitia James, New York's attorney general, filed a lawsuit against Genesis, Gemini, and Digital Currency Group for defrauding more than 230,000 investors, including at least 29,000 New Yorkers, of more than $1 billion.

The lawsuit alleges that Genesis, along with its former CEO Soichiro Moro, its parent company DCG, and DCG's CEO Barry Silbert, engaged in fraudulent activities aimed at concealing over $1.1 billion in losses, ultimately placing the burden of these losses on investors while deceiving the public.

Market Whispers

Looks like Bitcoin made its own "bull market", leaving everyone on the side, looking confused.

Opened the day at $28,700 and it went up to $30,200. That's a big candle! It was sold a bit from the top, currently is holding $29.5k. Yep, that's the level we've been talking about in the last days, but considering the weekend, if you are not in a short position from the highs is better to wait till Sunday night to see what's the direction for next week. It sounds too good to be true to continue this move to the upside, honestly. If there's not ETF approval coming or some “news“ to justify this move, we are in for a correction.

ETH is really...Qrafty doesn't want to be rude. The ETH high was $1,630! And it's back to $1600. If Bitcoin will consolidate at these level for a few days, ETH and alts might catch a breath and pump a bit. But don't get too excited, as soon as BTC corrects alts will drop harder.

Qrafty ends channeling his inner trader.

Today is INTERNATIONAL PROCRASTINATION DAY!

That’s all from Qrafty 🦡 for today! Qrafty thanks you and wishes you to live each moment as if you are listening to the music you love most!

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