Activity tagged "law"

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Prosecutors have requested Alex Mashinsky, CEO of the collapsed Celsius cryptocurrency company, be sentenced to at least twenty years in prison for his "sustained, calculated campaign of deceit carried out over years, targeting ordinary people."

Prosecutors say that such a severe sentence is necessary not only for deterrence, but because despite his guilty plea, Mashinsky has not fully accepted responsibility for his actions.

Sentencing guidelines recommend a 30 year sentence, which is only because of the statutory cap resulting from his guilty plea agreement; otherwise the recommendation would be life. Mashinsky has argued he should be sentenced to no more than a year in prison. Sentencing will happen on May 8.

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Quote from man sued: "What are you gonna do, sue me?"

Kevin O'Leary has sued crypto personality Ben Armstrong (aka "BitBoy Crypto") for repeatedly claiming O'Leary murdered two people.

27. On March 19, 2025, Armstrong unleashed another tweet accusing O’Leary of committing “actual crimes”: “Doesn’t everybody think it’s weird that I’ve been publicly calling … @kevinolearytv [a] murderer[] and yet not a single word or legal action? It’s almost like they ‘can’t’ because a lawsuit would open up their actual crimes and they know it.”

(O'Leary and his wife were indeed involved in a boating collision that killed two people in 2019; O'Leary states in the lawsuit that it was his wife driving the boat, and she was acquitted of any charges.)

BitBoy also suggested that O'Leary was trying to have him killed, and claimed he'd swatted him. Shortly after, he posted O'Leary's cell phone number and encouraged his followers to "call a real life murderer"

Armstong launched his defamatory campaign on March 17, 2025. On that day, he posted the following: “You guys think I’m kidding about all this stuff and all these claims. There is a reason my life is actually in danger. Kevin O’Leary has already verifiably murdered one couple in Toronto.” Over 30,000 people viewed this tweet.

Tweet screenshot:
The BitBoy
@BenArmstrongsX
You guys think I'm kidding about all this stuff and all these claims.
There is a reason my life is actually in danger.
Kevin O'Leary has already verifiably murdered one couple in Toronto. You don't think Mr One-To-2-Inch would try to kill the old BitBoy?
He SWATTED me once

Tweet screenshot:
The BitBoy
@BenArmstrongsX
Hey @kevinolearytv, what the fuck are you going to do with me?
You can't sue me. You can't stop me. You can't shut me up.
I'm a rabid dog with my teeth sunk deep into your leg.
Your usual tricks don't work.
Going to be hard to put the rabid dog down with everyone watching.

Amusingly, BitBoy once tried to file a defamation lawsuit of his own against a YouTuber who called him a "shady dirtbag". He dropped the suit almost immediately after the YouTuber raised over $200,000 for his defense, and Armstrong admitted he didn't know lawsuits were public.

It's not clear that BitBoy even knows he's been sued yet; he was arrested two days ago after sending threatening emails to the judge in a different defamation case he's facing from his former business partners after he publicly accused them of various crimes.

Read:

"EFF Sues DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management to Halt Ransacking of Federal Data".

Jason Kelley in Electronic Frontier Foundation. Published February 11, 2025.

EFF and a coalition of privacy defenders have filed a lawsuit today asking a federal court to block Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the private information of millions of Americans that is stored by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and to delete any data that has been collected or removed from databases thus far.

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taking psychic damage reading the lawsuit by Justin Sun’s Bit Global against Coinbase

COINBASE’S NONEXISTENT LISTING “STANDARDS” 62. While Coinbase claims to have made the decision to delist wBTC to adhere to the company’s “listing standards,” the truth is that Coinbase has virtually no standards for what can be listed at all. Around the same time that it was delisting wBTC, Coinbase has onboarded various “memecoins” which unlike wBTC have no inherent value other than demand created by their memetic potential as jokes. The decision to allow users to trade these memecoins makes clear that Coinbase did not delist wBTC because of any listing standard, but because Coinbase coveted wBTC’s market share and wanted it for itself. 63. On November 13, 2024, Coinbase announced that it was listing a memecoin called PEPE, named after a controversial picture of a cartoon frog which has been identified as a hate symbol and/or a “racist frog.” The coin is promoted to “Dank Meme Enjoyoors” with an official website that purports to perform an “Autism Test” on their computers to ensure that the user’s autism is over 9,000 before proceeding.17

i have to respect the argument that “memecoins... unlike wBTC have no inherent value other than demand created by their memetic potential as jokes”. your honor, wBTC’s lack of inherent value is for a different reason entirely

Posted:

Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky has entered a guilty plea in his criminal fraud trial, which was scheduled to begin in about two months. His Celsius cryptocurrency platform collapsed in July 2022 after it couldn't meet customer withdrawal demands. Its failure was particularly devastating because it had actively marketed itself to customers as safer than banks, regularly telling customers that "banks are not your friends". Many people believed that because Celsius was based in the US, it was carefully regulated and therefore safe.

Alex Mashinsky wearing a "banks are not your friends" t-shirt onstage at WebSummit 2021

Letters written to the judge in the bankruptcy case revealed the extent of the devastation to people around the world, some of whom had their entire life savings or retirement money on the platform. I published some excerpts back in July 2022.

These Celsius letters to the bankruptcy judge should be required reading for anyone who thinks that the only victims of crypto collapses are degens out there gambling on memecoins.

They thought they were insured from losses (and some believed Celsius had FDIC insurance like a bank would). Some of them only had money in stablecoins, which themselves make big promises about reliability. They believed US regulators wouldn't let this happen.

These letters are a big reason why I don't have a lot of patience for people who react to crypto scams with "they should have known better" or "they had it coming".

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The Fifth Circuit has just opined that the smart contracts that comprise the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency tumbler are "not property because they are not capable of being owned", and thus cannot be sanctioned by OFAC.

The six plaintiffs-appellants are users of Tornado Cash. They argue that Tornado Cash’s inclusion on the SDN list exceeded OFAC’s statutory authority. The district court disagreed, granting summary judgment to the Department and finding Tornado Cash subject to OFAC’s sanctioning authority. Van Loon and the other plaintiffs appealed, making the same principal argument here—that Tornado Cash’s open-source, self-executing software is not sanctionable under the Act (as opposed to the rogue persons and entities who abuse it). OFAC’s concerns with illicit foreign actors laundering funds are undeniably legitimate. Perhaps Congress will update IEEPA, enacted during the Carter Administration, to target modern technologies like crypto-mixing software. Until then, we hold that Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of privacy-enabling software code) are not the “property” of a foreign national or entity, meaning (1) they cannot be blocked under IEEPA, and (2) OFAC overstepped its congressionally defined authority.

The immutable smart contracts at issue in this appeal are not property because they are not capable of being owned. More than one thousand volunteers participated in a “trusted setup ceremony” to “irrevocably remov[e] the option for anyone to update, remove, or otherwise control those lines of code.” And as a result, no one can “exclude” anyone from using the Tornado Cash pool smart contracts. In fact, because these immutable smart contracts are unchangeable and unremovable, they remain available for anyone to use and “the targeted North Korean wrongdoers are not actually blocked from retrieving their assets,” even under the sanctions regime. Simply put, regardless of OFAC’s designation of Tornado Cash, the immutable

Full opinion

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pro tip: name your organization something that sounds terrible to sue

FTX Trading Ltd. et al, Plaintiffs, against Fair Democracy, Defendant

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The drumbeat of legal threats signals a potentially ominous trend for journalists during Trump’s second term in office. Litigation is costly and time-consuming. Most news organizations will look to settle rather than face months—more likely years—of discovery and depositions, plus significant legal fees.

“It is both conscious and unconscious. Journalists at smaller outlets know very well that the costs for their organization to defend themselves could mean bankruptcy. Even journalists at larger outlets don’t want to burden themselves or their employees with lawsuits. It puts another layer of influence into the journalistic process,” [Anne Champion] said.

Perhaps the CJR editors decided it went without saying, but it feels worth mentioning that — if Trump’s appointments go as planned — he will have the entire judicial branch to bring to bear on journalists, not just his wacky lawyer neighbor.

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“Plaintiff, through individual intelligence, entrepreneurship and human ingenuity, along with the aid of God, is in the professional business of servicing subprime auto loans”

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this reminds me of the time that cryptoland project sent me a “cease and decease”

Tweets with screenshots by Molly White.<br>lol<br>Screenshot of an email: “Cease and Desist Letter for Defamation of Character

Legal Department <legal@cryptoland.is>
Sat, Jan 8, 2022, 7:24 PM
to me

Dear Ms. White,
It has come to our attention that you have been making statements about Cryptoland that are both false and misleading. These statements constitute libel since they defame both Cryptoland and its founders.

We demand you immediately cease and desist making these false and libellous statements, delete them from any platform and issue a public apology on all platforms where the libellous statements have been placed.

Please be advised that, if you fail to fulfil the petition above, we will have no choice but to take the appropriate legal steps to protect Cryptoland’s reputation, including seeking relief in a court of law for monetary damages.

Sincerely,
Cryptoland Legal Team”<br><br>Screenshot of an email: “Dear Legal Team,

I have removed all of the false statements.

Sincerely,
Molly White”

Tweets by Molly White: and i sincerely apologize for each and every one of them
Molly White<br><br>“cease and decease”<br>Screenshot of a tweet by Cryptoland: “We are not impersonating anyone. Sending a letter of cease and decease is a perfectly legit tool to ask a person to stop spreading misinformation.”

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