Coindesk

Confidential protocols put in place to deal with news of regulatory failings by one of the top-five crypto exchanges, OKX, suggest that the company likely has been expecting a settlement with U.S. authorities for some time.This happened on Monday when OKX announced a $500 million-plus settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice after failing to secure a money transmitter license and allegedly facilitating $5 billion in "suspicious transactions and criminal proceeds."OKX’s meticulous planning makes for some fascinating reading. The secret crisis management document seen by CoinDesk refers to a messaging “SWAT Team” that can be mobilized to implement various ways the firm’s top executives can communicate a settlement via social media and when speaking to reporters.Well in advance of Monday’s...

Michael Novogratz's Galaxy Digital (GLXY) has hired Zac Prince as a managing director, according to an internal memo seen by CoinDesk.Prince will be working closely with Galaxy's President, Chris Ferraro, to expand the company's digital assets offering.Galaxy believes that crypto is entering a "pivotal era of transformation," and has hired Prince to help deliver the firm's strategic vision, the company said in the memo.He joins from real estate advisory firm RE Cost Seg, where he was employed as CEO for the last year.Prince is well known in the industry. He is the former CEO and co-founder of bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi.Galaxy hired former Point72 chief financial officer Anthony Paquette to serve in the same role at the crypto financial services...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has dropped its investigation into Uniswap Labs, the Brooklyn-based company behind the decentralized protocol of the same name, according to a Tuesday announcement from Uniswap.Uniswap received a Wells notice — essentially, a heads-up from the regulator informing respondents of the charges the SEC is planning to bring against them — last April, accusing the decentralized exchange of operating as an unregistered securities broker and unregistered securities exchange, and of issuing an unregistered security. In subsequent blog posts and social media posts, the company and its executives defended the legality of Uniswap’s operations and pledged to fight the pending charges.The company celebrated the SEC’s decision to drop the charges, calling it a “huge win for DeFi”...

Hacked cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has declared a “war against Lazarus” and launched a new website tracking the group’s wallet addresses, hoping to crowdsource the investigative efforts. In return for submissions that lead to frozen funds, the exchange is offering 5% of what gets frozen.The declaration of “war” came from Bybit’s CEO, Ben Zhou, in a social media post in which he noted the firm was launching the first “first bounty site that shows aggregated full transparency on the sanctioned Lazarus money laundering activities.”Read more: North Korean Hackers Were Behind Crypto's Largest 'Theft of All Time'Zhou wrote that users can connect their wallets to the newly launched website to help trace the stolen funds, adding that when a submission leads to...

Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi shared Tuesday that she would be leaving her position and would soon be transitioning to her new role as president at the organization.The news comes as the nonprofit goes through a leadership shake-up and as Ethereum has become less popular for new builders in recent months, with some even blaming Miyaguchi’s leadership as for why the blockchain’s token price is lagging behind other cryptocurrencies.“This new opportunity will allow me to continue supporting EF’s institutional relationships, and to expand the reach of our vision and culture more broadly,” Miyaguchi wrote in a blog post.The Ethereum Foundation is a nonprofit that supports the development of the Ethereum blockchain. Founded in 2014, Miyaguchi joined in 2018 and...