City Manhattan Financial News

Alex Mashinsky, the former chief executive of Celsius Network Ltd., was accused by prosecutors of orchestrating a years-long scheme to mislead customers about the financial health of his failing crypto lender and manipulate cryptocurrency prices for his own profits. 

Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, was arrested and charged with fraud, a US prosecutor in New York said Thursday morning, as three federal regulatory agencies sued him and his company. Mashinsky, 57, was charged with seven criminal counts — including securities fraud, commodities fraud and wire fraud — while Celsius' former chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon, was charged with four criminal counts, according to the indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday.

Former FTX executive Ryan Salame and his girlfriend Michelle Bond, a former congressional candidate, are under investigation for potential violations of campaign-finance law. 

Inside Tesla, it was known as “Project 42," and the plans called for a dramatic glass-walled building to rise near the automaker’s headquarters outside this capital city. Internally, the secret project was described as a house for Chief Executive Elon Musk. One concept showed a structure in the shape of a twisted hexagon on waterfront land with Tesla’s factory in the background, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

A senior official of the US think tank Institute for the Analysis of Global Security has been accused of acting as an unregistered agent of China, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Monday. Gal Luft, a citizen of the US and Israel, is accused of recruiting and paying a former high-ranking US government official on behalf of principals based in China in 2016, without registering as a foreign agent as required by law.

An Asian American-owned bookstore in Manhattan’s Chinatown left gutted by a July fourth fire is getting flooded with support from the community, writers and celebrities

Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub have sued New York City to block its new minimum pay rules for food delivery workers

Investigators from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have reportedly determined that bankrupt crypto lender Celsius and its former CEO Alex Mashinsky broke a number of U.S. rules before the company's implosion.

SOME YEARS AGO, a traumatizing encounter with a New York City rat provoked Nicole Vassallo to swear off wearing flimsy, strappy sandals on urban streets. Once a sewer-dwelling rodent comes dangerously close to scampering over your nearly nude feet, “you quickly realize exposed toes—flat on the ground—are not the way to go," said Vassallo, a 32-year-old luxury-travel publicist who lives in Manhattan. It’s not just gutsy vermin that can make cities objectively disgusting.

BlackRock Inc that will reflect the price of bitcoin to add additional details, according to a filing made public on Monday. The refreshed filing, submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, said that Coinbase Global Inc will provide market surveillance in support of the proposed ETF from the world's largest asset manager. The move comes after the regulator reportedly had concerns over the initial filings by Nasdaq as being unclear and incomplete. It had flagged similar concerns to Cboe related to a filing from Fidelity. The digital asset space is looking to regain popularity after a bruising 2022 that saw several crypto ventures collapse, including the spectacular implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX.

For over a century in New York, commercial-property investors have carved up the value of the city’s skyscrapers by separating the land from the building and trading the pieces separately. But now, in the midst of one of the worst office downturns since World War II, that practice is escalating disputes between the owners of the different pieces. Under ground-lease arrangements, the building operator pays rent to the owner of the land.

On a recent Sunday evening, fans crowded into line outside a multiplex in India’s capital city of New Delhi. After the lights dimmed inside, they erupted in cheers, with some whistling and dancing in the aisle when their favorite character appeared on screen. India is the most movie-crazy country on the planet, and led the world in the number of tickets sold in 2022, according to Statista.

(Reuters) — Nasdaq refiled an application with the U.S. securities regulator to list an exchange-traded fund by BlackRock Inc (NYSE:BLK) that will reflect the price of bitcoin to add additional details, according to a filing made public on Monday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office last week charged a recidivist fraudster experienced in real estate scams with yet another Ponzi scheme. Wilson Baston of Brooklyn allegedly used an investment fund to claim he was deploying investor money to fund real estate transactions in New York.

SEC) had last week sued Coinbase and Binance, two of the world's largest crypto exchanges for allegedly breaching its rules.Nithin Kamath, the co-founder and CEO of India's leading broker Zerodha, said the SEC action is warranted to protect the interest of retail investors. Kamath said the public markets are prone to some scams even with a number of regulations and batted for regulatory oversight in the crypto markets too. «Even with all the regulations, some promoters scam retail investors in the public markets. If random crypto tokens can raise money from the public, there has to be regulatory oversight. Otherwise, retail investors will be taken advantage of. Current SEC action was maybe warranted,» he said.

What is the SEC alleging? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Coinbase on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court and accused the largest US cryptocurrency platform of operating illegally by evading disclosure requirements. The SEC said Coinbase allowed users to trade at least 13 crypto assets that should have been registered as securities, including tokens such as Solana, Cardano and Polygon.

Coinbase on Tuesday, the second lawsuit in two days against a major crypto exchange, in a dramatic escalation of a crackdown on the industry and one that could dramatically transform a market that has largely operated outside regulation. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday took aim at Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. The SEC accuses Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao of operating a «web of deception». If successful, the lawsuits could transform the crypto market by successfully asserting the SEC's jurisdiction over the industry which for years has argued that tokens do not constitute securities and should not be regulated by the SEC. «The two cases are different, but overlap and point in the same direction: the SEC's increasingly aggressive campaign to bring cryptocurrencies under the jurisdiction of the federal securities laws,» said Kevin O'Brien, a partner at Ford O'Brien Landy and a former federal prosecutor, adding, however, that the SEC has not previously taken on such major crypto players.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Coinbase, accusing it of illegally operating without registration with the regulator. The SEC also filed a lawsuit against Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, on Monday. In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, the SEC said Coinbase has since at least 2019 operated as an unregistered broker by handling cryptocurrency transactions, evading the disclosure requirements meant to protect investors. Coinbase shares fell 16% in premarket trading, while Blockchain farm operator Bitfarms' stock dropped 4.5%.

In a recent update, the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, run by the Winklevoss twins, filed a motion to dismiss the SEC’s securities violation lawsuit. 

Crypto lender Voyager Digital said Wednesday that customers will soon recover about 35% of their cryptocurrency deposits as the company winds down operations after a failed buyout attempt by crypto exchange Binance.US. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles approved Voyager's liquidation plan at a court hearing in Manhattan, allowing the company to return about $1.33 billion in crypto assets to customers and end its efforts to reorganize under Chapter 11. Customers may be able to make withdrawals by June 1, Voyager's official creditors committee said. Any distribution beyond the initial 35% would depend on the result of future litigation. Voyager filed for bankruptcy protection in July, citing volatility in cryptocurrency markets and a default on a large loan made to crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC).

Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital has won court approval to self-liquidate assets and start repaying customers a portion of their frozen funds.