REKT Reminders

Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Launched in 2010, it was handling over 70% of all bitcoin (BTC) transactions worldwide by early 2014 when it abruptly ceased operations amid revelations of its involvement in the loss/theft of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, then worth hundreds of millions in US dollars. 
 
In February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended trading, closed its website and exchange service, and filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. In April 2014, the company began liquidation proceedings. Although 200,000 bitcoins have since been "found," the reasons for the disappearancetheft, fraud, mismanagement, or a combination of thesewere initially unclear. New evidence presented in April 2015 by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that "most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot cryptocurrency wallet over time, beginning in late 2011." On 24 February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended all trading, and hours later its website went offline, returning a blank page. A leaked alleged internal crisis management document claimed that the company was insolvent, after having lost 744,408 bitcoins in a theft that went undetected for years. 
 
By May 2016, creditors of Mt. Gox had claimed they lost $2.4 trillion when Mt. Gox went bankrupt, which they asked to be paid to them. The Japanese trustee overseeing the bankruptcy said that only $91 million in assets had been tracked down to distribute to claimants, despite Mt. Gox having asserted in the weeks before it went bankrupt that it had more than $500 million in assets. The trustee's interim legal and accounting costs through that date, to be paid ultimately by creditors, were $5.5 million. On 15 January 2021, Bloomberg News reported CoinLab Inc. had made an agreement with Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee to the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, and the Mt. Gox Investment Fund LP, a unit of Fortress Investment Group. As much as 90% of the remaining Bitcoin tied up in bankruptcy proceedings would be offered to creditors. 
 
At the creditors' meeting on 20 October 2021, it was announced that the Civil Rehabilitation Plan was accepted by 99% of the creditors (representing 83% of the total amount of voting rights) and that billions of dollars in Bitcoin would be provided as compensation. The plan was officially approved on 16 November 2021. On April 6, 2023, MtGox announced that the deadline for filing claims for damages had expired. Payments are promised to begin before October 31, 2023.

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In January 2022, in a class-action lawsuit filed against the cryptocurrency company EthereumMax that alleged the company is a pump and dump scheme, Pierce was named as a defendant along with media personality Kim Kardashian, former professional boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., and other celebrities for promoting the EthereumMax token on their social media accounts. In February 2022, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit against Bitconnect that the Securities Act of 1933 extends to targeted solicitation using social media. 
 
Though the name begins with Ethereum, its not related to the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, but a token built on top of the blockchain. Like many cryptocurrencies, it promises to reshape the future of finance in hyperbolic terms. It screams that vision to the world with flashy ads and sidewalk spray paint stencils that implore readers to buy in. Any investor who read the EthereumMax projects grand plans for inking deals that drive value into EMAX or heard its promoters predicting price pumps would have the reasonable expectation of making money, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said. In other words, EMAX is a security. While the SEC doesnt have a mandate for crypto, its top brass believes the vast majority of digital assets are securities they can regulate like stocks or bonds. Getting branded as one by the SEC dramatically escalates whats required of a crypto project and its promoters, but relatively few have faced SEC action.

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Squid Game Token was based onbut not affiliated withthe runaway Netflix series of the same name. The coin harnessed the zeitgeist for the Netflix series Squid Game by apparently offering obsessed gamers access to a play-to-earn game. The projects whitepaper, published on its now-defunct website, promised big things for investors but sounded awfully like a Ponzi scheme. The more people join, the larger the reward pool will be, it promised. Just after 1:38 pm UTC on November 1, 2021, $3.36 million that had been invested into Squid Game coin was yanked out of the project by its creators. The liquidity pool in the exchange disappeared in an instant, and within 10 minutes, the coin was almost worthless, trading at one-third of a cent. 
 
Eight wallets out of the 43,455 addresses tied to Squid Games coins hold more than 1 percent of all tokens in circulation, according to BscScan. One such account, tagged by Ethereum analytics company Etherscan as an account that definitely pulled the rug out from under investors, held 5 percent of all the tokens. That same account transferred $3.36 million to another wallet.

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Clever DeFi was a cryptocurrency launched on Ethereum by its creator Brian Legend. CLVAs white paper made claims of 307% interest paid over the course of 1 yr. Brian Legend is known for his AMAs where he is able to smooth talk investors into believing that his ponzinomics will make all of them rich. Clever DeFi was eventually delisted, costing investors who were swindled by the promises of Legend, chasing the too good to be true APYs. More recently, Legend has been at it again with a new token called saffu. Saffu was an auto rebase token that also promised insane returns of 2% daily. Unfortunately, Saffu has suffered a similar fate to Clever DeFi, but Legend being the smooth talker he is, was able to talk his investors into sacrificing their saffu tokens for a chance of owning a part of a new blockchain that he was bringing to the market. To this day, no one has received any compensation for Clever DeFi or Saffu.

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In June 2022, Voyager Digital led by CEO Steve Ehrlich announced that Three Arrows Capital had not repaid loans totaling $666 Million. On July 1, the company suspended trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards, and subsequently on July 5, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Later in July, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC in a joint letter ordered the company to cease and desist from making false and misleading statements. In August, the company received approval from a judge to return $270 million in customer cash, which was locked up after the companys bankruptcy filing in July. The money accounted for only a small portion of total investor funds. In September, Binance and FTX both made nearly $50 million bids for the company. FTX would win the auction with a nearly $50 million bid. In November, FTX filed for bankruptcy, and Voyager Digital had to find a new buyer. A major investor in Voyager said that the collapse of FTX puts into jeopardy the company's bailout, with $1.3 billion of investor assets threatened. Following the bankruptcy of FTX, the US subsidiary of Binance won the bid to buy the assets of Voyager for approximately $1 billion in December 2022. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a limited objection to Binance US's proposed $1 billion acquisition of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Voyager Digital, a bankruptcy court filing showed in January 2023.

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In 2017, Alex Mashinsky founded Celsius Network, a borrowing and lending platform for digital assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. It encouraged its customers to "unbank" themselves and offered interest rates as high as 18.6 per cent on cryptocurrency deposits. As CEO, he hosted "Ask Mashinsky Anything," a weekly YouTube livestream in which he answered questions about Celsius. He became known for wearing T-shirts reading "Banks are not your friends" and Un-Bank Yourself. 
 
In January 2022, Mashinsky took control of Celsius's trading strategy. Some insiders reported that he personally directed large individual cryptocurrency trades, overruling executives with significant financial experience. Mashinsky withdrew $10 million from Celsius in May 2022. The withdrawals came as customers were withdrawing assets in large quantities while the company was nearing bankruptcy, according to a report in October 2022. A spokesperson for Mashinsky told the Financial Times that the funds were used for tax payments and estate planning. In total, Arkham Intelligence estimates that Mashinsky sold $44 million worth of CEL tokens through exchanges. On July 13, 2022, one month after it paused customer withdrawals, Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Mashinsky said that "the Company made what, in hindsight, proved to be certain poor asset deployment decisions." Mashinsky resigned as Celsius CEO on September 27, 2022. 
 
On July 13, 2023, Celsius Network agreed to a $4.7 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). On the same day, Mashinsky was arrested and charged with committing securities, commodities, and wire fraud, and with committing securities manipulation and fraud charges. If they are convicted, Mashinsky and a co-defendant, Roni Cohen-Pavon, face decades in prison. Mashinsky pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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The liquidation of FTX, a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange, began in November 2022. The collapse of FTX, caused by a liquidity crisis of the company's token, FTT, served as the impetus for its bankruptcy. Prior to its collapse, FTX was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume and had over one million users. 
 
On 2 November 2022, CoinDesk published an article stating that Alameda Research, a trading firm affiliated with FTX and owned by FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, held a significant amount of FTX's exchange token, FTT. Following the allegations, Binancea competing cryptocurrency exchange and a prior investor in FTXannounced it would sell its FTT, leading the market price of the token to crash. The move also triggered a spike in withdrawals from FTX, causing the exchange to freeze withdrawals and creating a liquidity crisis. On 8 November, Binance signed an offer to acquire FTX, but then withdrew the offer. On 11 November, FTX, Alameda Research, and over 100 affiliated entities filed for bankruptcy. Bankman-Fried resigned as FTX CEO. 
 
The collapse of FTX has had a wide impact on cryptocurrency markets and was described by federal prosecutors as "one of the biggest financial frauds in American history. Bankman-Fried's net worth, estimated at $16 billion prior to the collapse, was reported as having been wiped out, and several institutional investors of FTX wrote off their investment stakes in the company. Some $473 million in funds were later taken from FTX in an "unauthorized transaction." The collapse of FTX has resulted in a ripple effect across the cryptocurrency industry, with the price of Bitcoin falling to its lowest level in two years. Anonymous sources cited by the Wall Street Journal on 10 November 2022 stated that FTX had lent $10 billion from customers' accounts to fund Alameda Research earlier in 2022, a move forbidden by FTX's terms of service. The same sources stated that Bankman-Fried, Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, and other FTX executives were aware of the decision. FTX and its handling of customer funds are under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the United States. Anonymous sources cited by Reuters said that between $1 billion and $2 billion in consumer funds could not be accounted for.

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Beginning on 9 May 2022, the tokens made headlines after UST began to break its peg to the US dollar. Over the next week, the price of UST plunged to 10 cents, while Luna fell to "virtually zero," down from an all-time high of $119.51. Before the crash, Luna was one of the top ten largest cryptocurrencies on the market. The collapse wiped out almost $45 billion of market capitalization over the course of a week. 
 
On 13 May, Terraform Labs temporarily halted the Terra blockchain in response to the falling prices of UST and Luna. Despite the company's attempts to stabilize UST and Luna via its bitcoin and other cryptocurrency reserves from the Luna Foundation Guard, the 1:1 peg of UST to USD did not materialize. As of 16 May 2022, blockchain analysts claim that the usage of the bitcoin reserves of LFG still remains largely uncertain. Likely causes of the collapse included mass withdrawals from the Anchor Protocol days before the collapse, investor concerns about cryptocurrencies more generally, and a drop in the price of bitcoin. During the collapse, holders converted Terra into Luna via the mint-and-burn system, which caused the price of Luna to collapse due to its increased supply. This, in turn, destabilized the balancing mechanism between the currencies. 
 
On 25 May, a proposal was approved to reissue a new Luna cryptocurrency and to decouple from and abandon the devalued UST stablecoin. The original blockchain is now called Terra Classic (LUNC), and the original Luna token is called Luna Classic. The new Luna coin is called "Terra 2.0" by investors and has lost valuation in the opening days of being listed on exchanges. 
 
In an August 2022 interview on the NFTV series Coinage, which occurred a few months following the collapse, Terra founder Do Kwon remarked that his faith in Terra now "seems super irrational." However, he would also deny that the Terra system was a Ponzi scheme. 
 
On 23 March 2023, Kwon attempted to travel to Dubai using falsified Costa Rican documents while also carrying falsified Belgian travel documents, but was intercepted and arrested at Podgorica Airport in Montenegro. A federal grand jury in Manhattan subsequently laid eight charges against Kwon, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy. The following month, KBS News reported that Kwon had sent 9 billion won, equaling USD $7 million, to the law firm Kim & Chang, prior to the collapse of TerraUSD.