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Forbes
21-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Crypto's Fresh $5 Billion Disaster
This is a published version of our weekly Forbes Crypto Confidential newsletter. Sign up here to get Crypto Confidential days earlier free in your inbox. THE OM COLLAPSE Just last week, Mantra's OM token looked great: up over 800% year‑on‑year, a fresh $108 million ecosystem fund and a $1 billion Dubai real‑estate deal (Mantra is a blockchain for tokenizing physical assets like buildings and art) in the pipeline. Then, over last Sunday, its price cratered more than 90% from around $6.3 to below $0.5, erasing over $5.4 billion in value and sending traders hunting for villains. The problem wasn't a clever exploit. Blockchain analysts flagged 17 wallets moving 43.6 million OM (about $227 million) to exchanges Binance and OKX in the days leading up to the crash. Rumors of OTC fire‑sales at half price fueled the panic. Once the selling started, liquidity vanished. Traditionally thin Sunday order books couldn't absorb the flood, triggering forced liquidations of leveraged positions. By the time the cascade stopped, veteran traders were comparing the mess to Terra's LUNA collapse. CEO John Patrick Mullin denied insider sales, blamed 'reckless forced closures' by centralized exchanges and promised a token buyback. Exchange OKX pointed to MANTRA's suspicious token economics changes and concentrated ownership. A high‑profile investor, Nomura-backed Laser Digital, also jumped on X to deny it was among the sellers after an analytics platform apparently mistagged its wallets. THE NEW ORDER OF CRYPTO LENDING The crater BlockFi, Celsius & Co. left in crypto credit hasn't stayed empty. In centralized crypto lending, the throne now belongs to Tether, Galaxy Digital and Ledn—a trio that controls nearly 90 % of what remains of centralized lending. The bigger shift, however, is on‑chain: DeFi protocols now originate just over half of all crypto loans ($19.1 billion of the market's $36.5 billion total), turning smart contracts into the sector's chief credit officers. Wall Street is circling too: Cantor Fitzgerald is preparing to wade into bitcoin financing. Read more. TEMPERATURE CHECK ON TRUMP'S CRYPTO GAMBIT On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to make the U.S. the world's undisputed crypto super‑power. Four months into his second term, the sprint is on: SAB 121 is gone, freeing banks from punitive capital rules on digital‑asset custody; April's bill scrapped the nightmare cost‑basis paperwork for DeFi; and the DOJ has shuttered its crypto task force, vowing to chase scammers, not software. Beyond holding a variety of crypto tokens in a strategic reserve and putting an end to prosecutions of industry players, the administration is leaning into bipartisan efforts to craft rules for dollar‑pegged stablecoins. So far the bet is paying off: bitcoin is up almost 30% since election night, and broader crypto prices have held firm despite Wall Street chop. Read more. ELSEWHERE: Donald Trump's 29-Year-Old Crypto Guru Lays Out The President's Plans For Regulating Crypto And Rolling Back A Biden-Era Crackdown [Fortune] The Analyst Who Predicted Crypto's Latest $5 Billion Collapse [The Street] Kraken Expands Beyond Crypto With Commission-Free Trading Launch [Reuters]
Forbes
25-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
SEC Vs Ripple Lawsuit Dropped
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the SEC has finally pulled the plug on a four-year legal fight. This is a published version of our weekly Forbes Crypto Confidential newsletter. Sign up here to get Crypto Confidential days earlier free in your inbox. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, at Collision 2022 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo By Stephen ... More McCarthy/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images) RIPPLE CEO SAYS SEC HAS DROPPED ITS LAWSUIT AGAINST THE COMPANY Brad Garlinghouse didn't bury the lede. 'It's over,' the CEO of Ripple declared in a video posted to X on Wednesday, announcing the end of the Securities and Exchange Commission's yearslong lawsuit against his company, the developer of the XRP Ledger and its native token. XRP surged 10% on the news. The SEC sued Ripple in 2020, accusing it of raising $1.3 billion through an unregistered securities offering. In 2023, Ripple notched a partial victory: a federal judge ruled that XRP wasn't a security when sold to retail investors, but was when sold to institutions. The agency appealed that decision, but according to Garlinghouse, it is now backing down. The SEC has yet to confirm it. In recent weeks, the securities regulator has also dropped cases and investigations into Coinbase, Uniswap, Robinhood, OpenSea, Kraken and Consensys, as its newly formed crypto task force is working on a more 'comprehensive and clear' regulatory framework for the industry. TORNADO CASH REMOVED FROM SANCTIONS LIST The U.S. Treasury has removed Tornado Cash, a crypto privacy tool, from its sanctions list, marking a major reversal in one of the most controversial enforcement actions of the Biden era. The decentralized Ethereum-based mixer was blacklisted in 2022 after U.S. authorities linked it to more than $7 billion in laundered funds, including over $455 million allegedly stolen by North Korea's Lazarus Group. The move effectively banned U.S. persons from using the service and sparked backlash from crypto advocates, who argued that targeting a smart contract, an autonomous piece of code, set a dangerous legal precedent. Now, addresses associated with Tornado Cash have been scrubbed from the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement on Friday the administration "remains deeply concerned" about North Korea's "state-sponsored hacking and money laundering campaign" and would continue to monitor transactions that may benefit hackers. The decision could impact the case against Roman Storm, one of Tornado Cash's developers, who still faces charges related to money laundering and sanctions violations. COINBASE IS IN 'ADVANCED TALKS' TO BUY DERIBIT The largest crypto exchange in the U.S. could soon acquire Deribit, the leading platform for bitcoin and ether options trading, according to Bloomberg. The companies have reportedly informed regulators in Dubai, where Deribit holds a license that would transfer to any buyer. If finalized, the deal would mark Coinbase's most aggressive move yet into the booming crypto derivatives market, which has long been dominated by offshore players. ELSEWHERE: Crypto Exchange Kraken Strikes $1.5 Billion Deal For Futures Trading Business [The Wall Street Journal] US SEC Holds Crypto Task Force Roundtable As Trump Plans Regulatory Revamp [Reuters] Crypto VC Giant Haun Ventures Raising $1 Billion For Two New Funds Amid Trump-Driven Blockchain Boom [Fortune]
