Cristiano Ronaldo sued for promoting Binance and unregistered securities; The KyberSwap DEX hacker has sent an on-chain message: Be nice or else; Tether’s new capital raising Bitfinex bond fails
Cristiano Ronaldo could be in trouble
Professional football star Cristiano Ronaldo has been hit with a proposed class-action lawsuit by plaintiffs who claim to have been harmed by his promotion of the now embattled crypto exchange Binance.
In a filing with the Florida District Court on 27 November, Ronaldo is alleged to have “promoted, assisted and/or actively participated in the offer and sale of unregistered securities in coordination with Binance”.
Binance entered into a multi-year partnership with Ronaldo in mid-2022 to promote a series of its own non-fungible tokens (NFTs), of which it has at least three collections associated with Binance.
The complaint states that Ronaldo is an important part of Binance’s growing popularity with 650 million followers on social media. It is claimed that Ronaldo’s NFT sales have been “incredibly successful” in promoting the exchange, with searches for “Binance” increasing by 500% in the week following the first sale.
The lawsuit claims that Ronaldo knew or should have known that “Binance was selling unregistered crypto securities” because he had “investment experience and extensive resources to hire outside advisors”.
The lawsuit cites Securities and Exchange Commission guidance warning celebrities that they must disclose payments received to promote cryptocurrencies – the complaint alleges Ronaldo failed to do so.
Meanwhile, Binance and its founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao are facing their own legal troubles, having pleaded guilty to money laundering and paid $4.3 billion in restitution to the United States for running an unregistered money transfer business.
Zhao resigned as CEO and faces up to 18 months in prison. Binance agreed to compliance monitoring by the Justice and Treasury Departments for up to five years.
The SEC sued Binance for allegedly selling unregistered securities and is reportedly investigating whether Binance misappropriated customer funds.
The KyberSwap DEX hacker has sent an on-chain message: Be nice or else
The exploiter behind the $46 million crypto theft against KyberSwap has urged its executives and token holders to ease up on the hostilities, threatening to delay negotiations until everyone is “more civilized”.
In an on-chain message sent to KyberSwap executives, token holders and liquidity providers on 28 November, the exploiter said he planned to make an announcement about a potential deal with KyberSwap on 30 November, but would not do so if hostilities continued.
“I said I was ready to negotiate. In return, I received (mostly) threats, deadlines and a generally hostile attitude from the executive team,” they said.
“Assuming I was treated with further hostility, we can reschedule for a later date when we all feel more civilized,” they warned.
The team behind KyberSwap, a cross-chain decentralized exchange, initially proposed a bounty deal in which the hacker would return 90% of the funds from all exploits, allowing him to keep the remaining 10%.
However, when the hacker did not immediately accept this offer, they threatened legal action.
KyberSwap also informed the hacker that they will be launching a public bounty programme to incentivise anyone who provides information to assist law enforcement that could lead to his arrest and the recovery of user funds.
The team behind KyberSwap managed to recover $4.67 million from a $46 million vulnerability from operators of front-running bots that managed to extract around $5.7 million in crypto from KyberSwap pools on the Polygon and Avalanche networks on 26 November.
The team has yet to respond to the exploiter’s latest message on X (formerly Twitter), and is likely waiting to see the hacker’s new proposed deal.
Tether’s ‘new era of capital raising’ Bitfinex bond fails
Bitfinex’s ALT2611 tokenized tether bond has managed to raise just 15% of its target two weeks after launch.
Bitfinex recently launched Tether USDT tokenized bond, touted as a “new era in capital raising”, appears to have failed to attract the investment and interest the company expected.
Bitfinex Securities, a platform focused on listing tokenized real-world assets (RWA), announced its first tokenized bond, the ALT2611 Tokenized Bond, in October and the product went live on 15 November.
However, after a two-week offering period, only $1.5 million of the $10 million target was raised, according to the official website.
A target of 100,000 ALT2611 worth USDT10 million was set in the announcement for two weeks after the launch, but this appears to have been extended for another two weeks as only 15,000 ALT2611, or 15% of the target, have been raised so far.
ALT2611 is a 36-month 10% coupon bond denominated in USDT and issued by Alternative, a Luxembourg-based securitization fund managed by Mikro Kapital.
At launch, however, Tether’s chief technology officer, Paolo Ardoino, described it as “a new era for capital raising” that will see USDT become “the core denomination asset of this new financial system”.
The Bitfinex tokenized bond was issued on the Liquid Network, a high-throughput bitcoin sidechain.
In April, Bitfinex Securities received a Digital Asset Service Provider license in El Salvador, which is considering issuing its own bitcoin bonds.
