Bad Day for Celsius, Glorious Day for XRP

GM Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and it's time to do those Web3 stretching exercises.

⭐️Today's selection:

• 🚓Former Celsius CEO Arrested
• 😲XRP NOT a Security
• 🧩️Answer To Thursday Quiz
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

FORMER CELSIUS CEO ARRESSTED

In a shocking turn of events, Alex Mashinsky, co-founder and former CEO of the now-insolvent crypto lender Celsius, has been arrested in New York. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged Mashinsky and others with multiple counts, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to manipulate the price of Celsius' token CEL, according to an indictment.

This indictment follows a series of lawsuits filed against Mashinsky and Celsius by regulatory bodies such as the SEC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The lawsuits allege various fraudulent activities and misleading statements made by Mashinsky and Celsius.

You could say that… The temperature for Celsius has reached 100 degrees Celsius, cause it's most definitely a boiling point!

Celsius, which filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, saw its assets being acquired by crypto consortium Fahrenheit (Oh, the never-ending tension between different temperature metrics).

However, the legal troubles for Mashinsky continued as New York Attorney General Letitia James sued him earlier this year, accusing him of misleading investors about the company's financial health prior to the bankruptcy filing.

Lawyers for Mashinsky, Celsius, and the SEC have yet to provide a comment on the matter. However, Mashinsky's legal representation vehemently denies the allegations, stating that he looks forward to vigorously defending himself against these baseless charges.

TL;DR: Celsius co-founder and former CEO, Alex Mashinsky, has been arrested in New York on charges of securities fraud and manipulation of CEL token price. This comes amidst a series of lawsuits against Mashinsky and Celsius by regulatory bodies, alleging fraudulent activities, while Celsius itself filed for bankruptcy and had its assets acquired by crypto consortium Fahrenheit. Lawyers for Mashinsky deny the allegations, expressing their determination to defend him.

VICTORY FOR XRP

To put it simply, here's a more detailed headline:

Ripple Labs secures partial victory in legal battle against SEC. Okay, so what happened?

In a significant development, Ripple Labs emerged victorious in the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York on July 13.

Judge Analisa Torres ruled partially in favor of the company in a long-standing case brought forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dating back to 2020.

According to court documents filed on July 13, Judge Torres granted summary judgment in favor of Ripple Labs, declaring that the XRP token is not a security, but only in relation to programmatic sales on digital asset exchanges.

However, the SEC also achieved a win of its own as the judge ruled that XRP is indeed a security when sold to institutional investors, meeting the conditions outlined in the Howey Test.

The SEC's lawsuit aimed to force Ripple to halt the offering of its XRP token, arguing that it qualified as an unregistered security and therefore required additional regulatory measures.

Following the news, the price of XRP experienced a swift surge, skyrocketing from $0.45 to $0.61 within minutes. This substantial increase hasn't faded away even right now, at the time of writing, as the token's price stands at around $0.78.

The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC has been ongoing since December 2020 when the SEC sued Ripple, along with its two chief executives, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, over allegations of offering an unregistered security.

With the notable upswing witnessed in the XRP token's value upon the news, the overall sentiment within the crypto community seems to be… really, really not bad!

TL;DR: Ripple Labs secures partial victory in legal battle against SEC as judge rules XRP is not a security for programmatic sales on digital asset exchanges. However, the judge also ruled that XRP qualifies as a security when sold to institutional investors, meeting the conditions of the Howey Test. The news caused a significant surge in XRP's price.

ANSWER TO YESTERDAY'S QUIZ

Yesterday we asked you to go out and look for the hidden MATIC logo.

Congrats to those who were successful in their mission! And if someone couldn't find it… Here it is!

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• Elon Musk's xAI Venture Fuels Growth of AI-Linked Crypto Assets. With the new company, Elon Musk aims to "understand the true nature of the universe."
• Coinbase Wallet Introduces XMTP-Based Messaging for Secure Conversations. Coinbase Wallet users can now chat with each other directly on the platform.
• Meta is Reportedly Planning to Launch a Commercial Version of Its AI Model. According to sources, Meta aims to "diminish the current dominance of OpenAI."