A Bloomberg investigative reporter wrote a new book titled Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. This week Bloomberg published an excerpt that begins when the reporter received a flirtatious text message from a woman named Vicky Ho for a scam that's called "pig butchering".

"Vicky's random text had found its way to pretty much exactly the wrong target. I'd been investigating the crypto bubble for more than a year..." After a day, Vicky revealed her true love language: Bitcoin price data. She started sending me charts. She told me she'd figured out how to predict market fluctuations and make quick gains of 20% or more. The screenshots she shared showed that during that week alone she'd made $18,600 on one trade, $4,320 on another and $3,600 on a third... For days, she went on chatting without asking for me to send any money. I was supposed to be the mark, but I had to work her to con me.... Vicky sent me a link to download an app called ZBXS. It looked pretty much like other crypto-exchange apps. "New safe and stable trading market," a banner read at the top. Then Vicky gave me some instructions. They involved buying one cryptocurrency using another crypto-exchange app, then transferring the crypto to ZBXS's deposit address on the blockchain, a 42-character string of letters and numbers...

People around the world really were losing huge sums of money to the con. A project finance lawyer in Boston with terminal cancer handed over $2.5 million. A divorced mother of three in St. Louis was defrauded of $5 million. And the victims I spoke to all told me they'd been told to use Tether, the same coin Vicky suggested to me. Rich Sanders, the lead investigator at CipherBlade, a crypto-tracing firm, said that at least $10 billion had been lost to crypto romance scams.

The huge sums involved weren't the most shocking part. I learned that whoever was posing as Vicky was likely a victim as well — of human trafficking. Most "pig-butchering" operations were orchestrated by Chinese gangsters based in Cambodia or Myanmar. They'd lure young people from across Southeast Asia to move abroad with the promise of well-paying jobs in customer service or online gambling. Then, when the workers arrived, they'd be held captive and forced into a criminal racket. Thousands have been tricked this way. Entire office towers are filled with floor after floor of people sending spam messages around the clock, under threat of torture or death.

With the assistance of translators, I started video chatting with people who'd escaped...

I'd heard that [southwestern Cambodia's giant building complex] Chinatown alone held as many as 6,000 captive workers like "Vicky Ho."
Two of the workers interviewed "said they'd seen workers murdered." And another worker said Tether was used specifically because "It's more safe. We are afraid people will track us... It's untraceable."

The reporter's conclusion? "It was hard to see how this slave complex could exist without cryptocurrency."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Sotheby's auction house has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by investors who regret buying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that sold for highly inflated prices during the NFT craze in 2021. A Sotheby's auction duped investors by giving the Bored Ape NFTs "an air of legitimacy... to generate investors' interest and hype around the Bored Ape brand," the class-action lawsuit claims. The boost to Bored Ape NFT prices provided by the auction "was rooted in deception," said the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Central District of California. It wasn't revealed at the time of the auction that the buyer was the now-disgraced FTX, the lawsuit said.

"Sotheby's representations that the undisclosed buyer was a 'traditional' collector had misleadingly created the impression that the market for BAYC NFTs had crossed over to a mainstream audience," the lawsuit claimed. Lawsuit plaintiffs say that harmed investors bought the NFTs "with a reasonable expectation of profit from owning them." Sotheby's sold a lot of 101 Bored Ape NFTs for $24.4 million at its "Ape In!" auction in September 2021, well above the pre-auction estimates of $12 million to $18 million. That's an average price of over $241,000, but Bored Ape NFTs now sell for a floor price of about $50,000 worth of ether cryptocrurrency, according to CoinGecko data accessed today. [...]

The amended lawsuit alleges that "[Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs] colluded with fine arts broker, Defendant Sotheby's, to run a deceptive auction." After the sale, a Sotheby's representative described the winning bidder during a Twitter Spaces event as a "traditional" collector, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said it turned out the auction buyer was now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail awaiting trial on criminal charges. Ethereum blockchain transaction data shows that after the auction, "Sotheby's transferred the lot of BAYC NFTs to wallet address 0xf8e0C93Fd48B4C34A4194d3AF436b13032E641F3,77 which, upon information and belief, is owned/controlled by FTX," the complaint said. Speculation that FTX was the buyer had been percolating since at least January 2023. The lawsuit alleges that Yuga Labs and Sotheby's violated the California Unfair Competition Law, the California Corporate Securities Law, the US Securities Exchange Act, and the California Corporations Code. The plaintiffs also claim that Sotheby's Metaverse, an NFT trading platform opened after the auction, "operated (or attempted to operate) as an unregistered broker of securities."

Sam Bankman-Fried used money he stole from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange to make more than $100 million in political campaign contributions before the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Monday. Reuters reports: An amended indictment accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of directing two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans, and to conceal where the money came from. "He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow," the indictment said.

Bankman-Fried faces seven counts of conspiracy and fraud over FTX's collapse, though the indictment no longer includes conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws as a separate count. [...] Bankman-Fried's indictment does not name the two people prosecutors say he used for "straw donors" to donate money at his direction. But other court papers and Federal Elections Commission data show they are Nishad Singh and Ryan Salame. Singh, FTX's former engineering chief, pleaded guilty to fraud and campaign finance violations in February. He donated $9.7 million to Democratic candidates and causes, and said in court he knew the money came from FTX customers.

Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX's Bahamian unit, gave more than $24 million to Republican candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commision data. He has not been charged with a crime. In a separate court filing on Monday, prosecutors said Salame's lawyer had told them he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to testify. Prosecutors said Salame told a family member in a November 2021 message that Bankman-Fried wanted to use political donations to "weed-out" anti-crypto Democratic and Republican lawmakers, and would likely "route money through me to weed out that republican [sic] side." On Friday, a U.S. judge revoked Sam Bankman-Fried's bail due to probable cause that he tampered with witnesses at least twice. He is being sent to jail.

What to make of the news that early research appears unable to duplicate the much-ballyhooed claims for the LK99 superconductor?

"The episode revealed the intense appetite in Silicon Valley for finding the next big thing," argues the Washington Post, "after years of hand-wringing that the tech world has lost its ability to come up with big, world-changing innovations, instead channeling all its money and energy into building new variations of social media apps and business software..." [M]any tech leaders are nervous that the current focus on consumer and business software has led to stagnation. A decade ago, investors prophesied that self-driving cars would take over the roads by the mid-2020s — but they are still firmly in the testing phase, despite billions of dollars of investment. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have had multiple hype cycles of their own, but have yet to fundamentally change any industry, besides crime and money laundering. Tech meant to help mitigate climate change, like carbon capture and storage, has lagged without major advances in years. Meanwhile, Big Tech companies used their huge cash hoards to snap up smaller competitors, with antitrust regulators only recently beginning to clamp down on consolidation. Over the last year, as higher interest rates have cut into the amount of venture capital and slowing growth has caused companies to pull back spending, a massive wave of layoffs has swept the industry, and companies such as Google that previously said they'd invest some of their profits in big, risky ideas have turned away from such "moonshots..."

Room-temperature superconductors would be especially relevant to the tech industry right now, which is busy burning billions of dollars on new computer chips and the energy costs to run them to train the AI models behind tools like ChatGPT and Google's Bard. For years, computer chips have gotten smaller and more efficient, but that progress has run up against the limits of the physical world as transistors get so small some are now just one atom thick.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: The mastermind behind a ransomware hosting service that allegedly helped criminals collect more than 5,000 bitcoin in ransom from hundreds of victims was indicted in federal court this week, prosecutors announced Thursday. Artur Grabowski's LolekHosted service operated for about a decade and advertised itself as a haven for "everything but child porn," according to Florida prosecutors. Clients allegedly used the hosting service to deploy ransomware viruses that infected around 400 networks around the world... [That's 400 just for the Netwalker ransomware, which the announcement calls "one of the ransomware variants facilitated by LolekHosted."]

Grabowski was charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit international money laundering. Grabowski himself is also the subject of a $21.5 million seizure order... Grabowski, a Polish national, faces a maximum sentence of 45 years, if he is ever detained and convicted.
Grabowski also "remains a fugitive," according to an announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice. It notes that the 36-year-old's site — registered in 2014 — also "facilitated" brute-force attacks, and phishing.

"Grabowski allegedly facilitated the criminal activities of LolekHosted clients by allowing clients to register accounts using false information, not maintaining Internet Protocol (IP) address logs of client servers, frequently changing the IP addresses of client servers, ignoring abuse complaints made by third parties against clients, and notifying clients of legal inquiries received from law enforcement."

PayPal has launched a U.S. dollar stablecoin, becoming the first major financial technology firm to embrace digital currencies for payments and transfers. Reuters reports: PayPal's announcement, which lifted its shares 2.66% on Monday, reflects a show of confidence in the troubled cryptocurrency industry that has over the last 12 months grappled with regulatory headwinds that were exacerbated by a string of high-profile collapses. "PayPal isn't quite as polarizing as Facebook, but it's a high-profile name that will surely get attention on Capitol Hill, and from the [Federal Reserve] and [Securities and Exchange Commission]," said Ian Katz, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners, in a note.

PayPal's stablecoin, dubbed PayPal USD, is backed by U.S. dollar deposits and short-term U.S Treasuries, and will be issued by Paxos Trust Co. It will gradually be available to PayPal customers in the United States. The token can be redeemed for U.S. dollars at any time, and can also be used to buy and sell the other cryptocurrencies PayPal offers on its platform, including bitcoin. "PYUSD is the first of its kind, representing the next phase of U.S. dollars on the blockchain," Paxos posted on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter. "This is not just a milestone moment for Paxos & PayPal, but for the entire financial industry."

Brazil's central bank has named its upcoming digital currency "DREX," which it aims to use to boost financial services. DREX is scheduled to launch next year. Reuters reports: The DREX will use distributed ledger technology (DLT) to settle wholesale interbank transactions, while retail access will be based on tokenized bank deposits. Officials from the central bank previously predicted that the adoption of the Brazilian digital currency would commence by the end of 2024, following the completion of its testing phase.

But Fabio Araujo, the coordinator of the initiative at the bank, said that employee strikes demanding better career advancement could potentially impact the project. During a live discussion organized by the central bank, he emphasized that the development of DREX is primarily aimed at improving access to financial services in the country. "By enabling simple and reliable access to registered values through DLT technology, we reduce costs and democratize access to financial services," Araujo stated.

He also highlighted that Brazilians are already engaging in extensive digital payments through the instant payment platform Pix, which was launched in late 2021 and has been widely embraced. Now, the expectation is that DREX will bolster lending, investments, and insurance services. "We aim to make these financial products accessible to the public and increase financial inclusion in Brazil," Araujo added.

A husband and wife cyber-crime team have pleaded guilty to trying to launder $4.5bn of Bitcoin that he had stolen in a hack in 2016. From a report: Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein were arrested last year in New York after police traced their riches back to the crypto heist. While evading police, Morgan masqueraded as a rapper and tech entrepreneur. As part of a plea deal, Lichtenstein admitted he was behind the hack. The couple both pleaded guilty to money laundering, but Morgan pleaded guilty to an additional count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. In spite of attempting to cover up her crimes, Morgan published dozens of expletive-filled music videos and rap songs filmed in locations around New York, under the name Razzlekhan. In her lyrics she called herself a "bad-ass money maker" and "the crocodile of Wall Street."

In articles published in Forbes, Morgan also claimed to be a successful tech businesswoman, calling herself an "economist, serial entrepreneur, software investor and rapper." But while developing her rapping and tech persona, she and her computer programmer husband were attempting to cash out their fortune stolen from the crypto firm Bitfinex. The couple now face prison sentences with Lichtenstein in line for a possible maximum 20 years in prison and Morgan a possible 10. At the time of their arrest in February 2022, the stash of 119,000 Bitcoins was worth about $4.5bn -- making it the US Department of Justice's largest single financial seizure in its history. When the hack was carried out, the Bitcoins were worth about $71m.

Worldcoin (WLD), the eyeball-scanning crypto project launched by OpenAI's Sam Altman, is being investigated by French data protection regulator CNI for "questionable" practises, the regulator told CoinDesk. From a report: "The legality of this [data] collection seems questionable, as do the conditions for preservation of biometric data," a CNIL spokesperson said in a written statement, referring to Worldcoin's practise of scanning retinas to ensure that no single person can claim crypto rewards twice.

"CNIL has initiated investigations," supporting the work of Bavarian privacy regulators who have primary responsibility under EU law, the spokesperson added. Worldcoin went live on Monday and its cheerleaders say it could spread crypto wider than bitcoin (BTC), but it has drawn the ire of privacy watchdogs in the U.K., where the Information Commissioner's Office has warned that people must freely give consent to the processing of their personal data, and be able to withdraw it without detriment.

United States presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced a plan to back the dollar with Bitcoin, and end taxes on Bitcoin.

From a report: Speaking at a Heal-the-Divide PAC event, Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlined specific Bitcoin-focused policies that he would enact as president, including gradually backing the U.S. dollar with bitcoin and making bitcoin profits exempt from capital gains taxes.

"My plan would be to start very, very small, perhaps 1% of issued T-bills would be backed by hard currency, by gold, silver platinum or bitcoin," Kennedy said, describing his vision for returning to a hard currency standard in the U.S.

He added that, depending on the outcome of that initial step, he would increase that allocation annually. This potential policy reimagines the financial system, pointing to a future where bitcoin's absolute scarcity and sound monetary principles reinforce the U.S. dollar's eroding position as the world reserve currency. Kennedy Jr. added: "Backing dollars and U.S. debt obligations with hard assets could help restore strength back to the dollar, rein in inflation and usher in a new era of American financial stability, peace and prosperity."

In addition, Kennedy announced his administration "will exempt the conversion of bitcoin to the U.S. dollar from capital gains taxes"

BlackRock's move into crypto fits into the asset management giant's broader mission of creating products that are easy to use and cheap for investors, CEO Larry Fink said Friday. From a report: "We believe we have a responsibility to democratize investing. We've done a great job, and the role of ETFs in the world is transforming investing. And we're only at the beginning of that," Fink said. BlackRock applied for a spot bitcoin ETF on June 15, which appeared to spur a rally in cryptocurrencies and a flurry of similar filings from other asset managers. The initial filing for the iShares Bitcoin Trust did not include a management fee.

[...] Fink had previously been critical of crypto, saying in 2017 that the popularity of digital currencies was do in large part to money laundering. However, interest from clients and the high cost of transactions motivated BlackRock to take a closer look at entering the space, Fink said. He also added that crypto can serve a diversification role in investor portfolios. "It has a differentiating value versus other asset classes, but more importantly, because it's so international it's going to transcend any one currency," Fink said.

It was the court case the entire crypto industry was waiting for -- the showdown between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple, an early digital assets firm behind the popular XRP token. From a report: The SEC alleged that sales of XRP constituted offering unregistered securities, while Ripple defended its $25 billion market, chiding the SEC's lack of clear guidance. On Thursday, a federal judge agreed partly in favor of both parties, with Ripple -- and the broader crypto industry -- appearing the early victor. The existential question for the U.S. crypto sector has been whether the thousands of tokens, from Bitcoin and Ether to Dogecoin and Pepecoin, are securities -- a financial term for an investment contract, which would require registration with the SEC. Crypto firms have argued that working with the agency is impossible under the current rules, while the SEC has accused nearly every token, with the clear exception of Bitcoin, as operating illegally.

Ripple became an important trial balloon for the debate. In 2020, the SEC charged the company -- founded in 2012 with the promise of disrupting the global payments network through its proprietary token, XRP -- and two of its executives with raising over $1.3 billion through an unregistered digital asset securities offering. Unlike other subjects of SEC lawsuits, Ripple challenged the case, which has been litigated for the past three years in the Southern District of New York. The proceedings have enraptured the crypto industry, especially as the SEC has aggressively pursued other exchanges and projects for allegedly offering unregistered securities. A decision that found XRP was not a security could buoy other firms and weaken the SEC's torrent of lawsuits against the industry, while a total victory for the SEC would have proved disastrous and likely climbed its way to the Supreme Court.

The crypto-mining company formerly known as Hive Blockchain Technologies is pivoting to artificial intelligence and web3, and has changed its name accordingly. From a report: The Vancouver-based miner has dropped the "blockchain" marker and said that its new branding as Hive Digital Technologies is intended to reflect "its mission to drive advancements" in AI applications like ChatGPT, and to "support the new web3 ecosystem."

Hive intends to use its existing fleet of Nvidia graphics processing units "for computational tasks on a massive scale," according to a July 12 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The vast majority of crypto-mining companies are focused on Bitcoin and use specialized chips that are different from so-called GPUs. Hive is among a handful of companies that deploy GPUs at scale to mine Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by market value. A recent set of changes on the Ethereum blockchain has meant that these GPUs are no longer necessary, which is a problem for the Ether miners who hold large stocks of them.

As an "ambassador" for FTX, football quarterback Tom Brady appeared at the company's conference in the Bahamas, and in TV commercials promoting the exchange as "the most trusted" institution in crypto, remembers the New York Times. And it was all about to go very bad...

"His money was also at stake. As part of an endorsement agreement Brady signed in 2021, FTX had paid him $30 million, a deal that consisted almost entirely of FTX stock, three people with knowledge of the contract said. Brady's wife at the time, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, was paid $18 million in FTX stock, one of the people said." Now FTX is bankrupt, and Bankman-Fried is facing criminal fraud charges. Brady, 45, and Bündchen, 42, have been sued by a group of FTX customers seeking compensation from the celebrities who endorsed the exchange. On top of it all, the terms of the deal would have required the former couple, who divorced last year, to pay taxes on at least some of their now worthless FTX stock, two people familiar with the endorsement deal said. Their situation is the highest-profile example of a humiliating reckoning facing the actors, athletes, and other celebrities who rushed to embrace the easy money and online hype of cryptocurrencies...

But last year's crash ended the celebrity crypto bonanza. In October, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Kim Kardashian to pay $1.26 million for failing to make adequate disclosures when she endorsed the EthereumMax crypto token. In December, a lawyer in California sued two crypto companies, MoonPay and Yuga Labs, accusing them of using a "vast network of A-list musicians, athletes and celebrity clients" to mislead investors about digital assets. In March, the S.E.C. charged the actress Lindsay Lohan, the online influencer Jake Paul and musicians including Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty with illegally promoting crypto assets. And in late May, after months of failed attempts, a process server delivered court papers to Shaquille O'Neal, the retired basketball star, who was sued for promoting FTX, according to legal filings. Mr. O'Neal was served while broadcasting from a National Basketball Association playoff game...

Brady has also faced legal trouble. In December, Adam Moskowitz and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida accusing him and Bündchen of misleading investors. Among the other defendants are comedian Larry David, NBA star Steph Curry and tennis player Naomi Osaka, all of whom endorsed FTX. "None of these defendants performed any due diligence prior to marketing these FTX products to the public," the lawsuit said.

Asset management giant Fidelity is preparing to submit its own filing for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The news helped push bitcoin above the $31,000 mark earlier today. The Block reports: The launch of a spot bitcoin ETF has been described as a gamechanger among market pundits since it can provide a way for investors to get exposure to the market without having to deal with the underlying asset. BlackRock's filing specifically has been pointed out as significant given the firm's size and significance in global markets. "BlackRock's decision to file for a Bitcoin ETF signals that large institutional players are positive on the long-term outlook for the digital asset," Ark analyst Yassine Elmandjra wrote.

Fidelity is also a powerhouse, with tens of millions of retail brokerage clients and over $11 trillion in assets under its administration. The firm is also no stranger to crypto as it has operated an institutional custody and trading services business in the market since 2018. [...] This will be Fidelity's second attempt at such a product. In 2021, it filed for a bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund called the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust but was denied by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in early 2022.

Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple's strict payment rules. From a report: Apple had threatened to remove Damus earlier this month over the app's tips feature, claiming that it could be used by content creators to sell digital content on the platform. The tech giant has a long history of prohibiting developers from selling additional in-app content unless the transactions go through Apple, which takes a 30% cut. To avoid a ban, the team behind Damus had to tweak the app's tipping feature, which is made possible by way of Bitcoin's Lightning Network. The company previously explained in a tweet that it had to remove the tips button from posts and was only allowed to permit tips on profiles.

"Bitcoin on Friday shot up to its highest level in about a year," reports CNN: The cryptocurrency rose above $31,400 a coin on Friday, its highest level since 2022, before paring back its gains. Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, earlier this week traded above $30,000 for the first time since April, when the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank sent investors in search of safer places to hold their cash.

Bitcoin is up by about 87% this year. Its most recent gains come after a wave of interest in crypto from financial giants. BlackRock last week applied to register a bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Crypto exchange EDX Markets, backed by firms such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity Digital Assets and Citadel, also launched its digital asset trading platform this week...

Despite its surge this year, bitcoin remains well below its all-time highs of more than $60,000 in 2021.

The SEC has approved the first leveraged cryptocurrency ETF in the United States, which will allow customers to gain bitcoin exposure by putting up only half the value of the bitcoin. The ETF is set to launch on Tuesday and corresponds with the CME Bitcoin Futures Daily Roll Index. CoinDesk reports: The regulator has not denied the application for the 2x ETF, Volatility Shares Chief Investment Officer Stuart Barton said, paving the way for its launch this upcoming Tuesday. "It's exciting to see digital assets in the ETF wrapper," Barton said.

According to a recently discovered patent application, Mastercard plans to develop software optimized for bitcoin and blockchain transactions. The second-largest payment-processing corporation also aims to facilitate crypto-based transactions by reducing connections between virtual asset service providers. Crypto News reports: The trademark application is a fascinating window into Mastercard's plans for the future of digital currency. Details have been revealed about creating a downloadable application programming interface (API) designed to verify transactions inside blockchain networks and ease the handling or trading of cryptocurrency. By standardizing this API software, communication between VASPs may be streamlined and crypto transactions easier. Mastercard wants to set up a platform for financial institutions to exchange customer information to verify compliance. This new step is significant for Mastercard's fast-growing presence in the cryptocurrency sector. The corporation announced its intention to offer a limited number of cryptocurrencies on its network in February 2021.

Trial lawyer Kyle Roche has led an interesting life, according to the New York Times. He once earned $100 million selling bitcoin. He helped win a case against Craig Wright (who claims to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto) through his law firm Roche Freedman. And Roche also founded a startup that lets people bet on the outcome of (civil) lawsuits, "to make access to justice more affordable."

But something very bad for his career happened in January of 2022 when two businessmen flew Roche from Miami to the U.K. to discuss an investment. When he woke up the next morning, Roche said, he felt groggy... The brain fog was odd because he didn't think he'd had all that much to drink. As he flew back to Miami a few days later, Roche couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss.

Months passed. Then, one day last summer, Roche's world detonated. A website called Crypto Leaks posted two dozen videos of him that had been secretly recorded during his meetings with Villavicencio and Ager-Hanssen. The videos portrayed Roche and his law firm, Roche Freedman, as being in the pocket of one of their crypto clients [Ava Labs]... In other clips, Roche made it sound like his sole concern, even when representing other clients, was to promote Ava Labs' interests...

One after another, companies that Roche Freedman had sued filed motions to disqualify the firm from their cases. In October, the first of those motions succeeded: A federal judge in New York tossed Roche Freedman from a case it had filed against Tether, the operator of the world's most used "stablecoin." Within days, Roche was forced to resign from the law firm he had founded. With his career in tatters, he said, he enrolled in ethics classes and began to see a therapist.
Roche calls the recorded remarks baseless bluster to impress a prospective investor (and alleges in court there are signs of deep fake alterations). While Roche "was felled by his own loose lips and his overly cozy relationship with a client," the Times reports "he also was the victim of an elaborate international setup." On April 3, 2020, Roche Freedman filed lawsuits seeking class-action status against seven issuers of digital coins, alleging they had pumped what amounted to unregistered securities with false statements and then dumped them, leaving retail investors holding the bag... Those suits were just an opening salvo: Sixteen months later, Roche filed his biggest securities fraud case yet. It alleged that a British entrepreneur, Dominic Williams, and entities he controlled had swindled investors out of billions of dollars by aggressively promoting, and then dumping, a digital coin tied to a grandiose plan to revolutionize computing. Williams had boldly proclaimed that his Internet Computer blockchain — a decentralized network of computers powered by a digital token called ICP — would supplant the big cloud services offered by Amazon and Microsoft and become humanity's primary computing platform. But after an initial surge that briefly made it one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies, ICP had plummeted 92% — a collapse that Roche's lawsuit attributed to "massive" selling by Williams and other insiders. (Williams denied the allegations.)
The Times reports that Roche's prospective investor Ager-Hanssen, "in addition to running his venture capital firm, has long had a sideline digging up dirt on behalf of wealthy clients entangled in business disputes in Britain and Scandinavia. On multiple occasions, he has secretly recorded his targets. For example, in a 2014 interview, he recounted how he had snared the adversary of a Swedish financier with a hidden microphone and boasted that he employed former intelligence officers from the CIA, MI6 and Mossad..." Roche believes them because he thinks he knows who hired Ager-Hanssen: Williams, the British entrepreneur who was the target of Roche Freedman's biggest pump-and-dump lawsuit... On May 12, 2022, Williams wrote on Twitter that he was "coming for" his critics. That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered. That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered. Then, on June 9, 2022, the Crypto Leaks website went live. Billing itself as the defender of "the honest crypto community," it posted two reports that aligned with Williams' interests...

The first espoused a complicated theory about the ICP token crash that Williams had previously floated on Twitter. The second attacked the Times for an article it had published about the crash. Williams tweeted a link to that Crypto Leaks report, calling it "Gobsmacking." The Dfinity Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit that Williams created to oversee his blockchain, has since sued the Times for defamation in New York. The Times is seeking to dismiss the suit. The videos of Roche were the crux of Crypto Leaks' third exposé. After they were published, Williams and Dfinity filed a motion to disqualify Roche Freedman as plaintiffs' counsel in the pump-and-dump lawsuit, saying Roche's comments demonstrated "a disregard for the integrity of the judicial system...."

Last month, the judge overseeing the pump-and-dump case granted Williams' motion and disqualified Freedman Normand Friedland as plaintiffs' counsel.