The Nigerian government has dismissed allegations from Binance CEO Richard Teng that representatives of the cryptocurrency exchange were solicited for a 0 million bribe by members of the House Committee on Financial Crimes (HCFC). A special assistant to the Nigerian Information Minister characterized Teng’s bribery claim as part of a coordinated international campaign by Binance […]
Bitcoin News
Cardano Founder Addresses ETHGate Rumors: Did Ethereum Bribe The SEC To Go After XRP?
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently gave his thoughts on whether the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had given Ethereum a regulatory free pass as recent rumors suggest.
Cardano Founder Alleges Favoritism Toward Ethereum
In an AMA session shared on X (formerly Twitter), Hoskinson mentioned that the Himman emails and other revelations expose the thought process of the SEC and show that there was unequal application, which he doesn’t see anything wrong with. Furthermore, he believes that none of the Commission’s actions presupposes corruption but only favoritism.
It is worth mentioning that Hoskinson happens to be a co-founder of Ethereum. However, he was forced to exit the team after he suggested that Ethereum be run as a commercial entity rather than a nonprofit, but this idea didn’t seem to resonate with others on the team.
As such, one can easily assume that there could be some form of bias in his statement, as he could feel endeared to Ethereum despite the circumstances surrounding his exit. Reacting to the clip, One X user stated that Hoskinson’s “old ETHGATE buddies” may have convinced him to make such statements.
Meanwhile, others in the crypto community criticized his statement, emphasizing that there was really no difference between favoritism and corruption, especially when a government agency is involved. Some went as far as alleging that Hoskinson could well have been involved in the scandal and that he was talking “like a defendant.”
Himman Emails And Other Revelations A Big Deal
While Hoskinson may have tried to downplay the Himman emails and other revelations, they undoubtedly lay a foundation as to possible wrongdoings of the Commission. For one, the email showed that Bill Hinman had interacted with Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin before he gave his speech, where he mentioned that ETH wasn’t a security. With this in mind, Buterin could have possibly influenced Hinman’s speech.
There have also been revelations of how the SEC had close ties with Ethereum, which instantly presupposes a conflict of interest as it becomes harder to regulate or deal fairly with such a body without being influenced by external factors.
Meanwhile, Steven Nerayoff, who was an active participant during Ethereum’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO), continues to allege that the SEC was corrupt in its dealings with Ethereum and that he has evidence to back up his claims.
Pro-XRP legal expert John Deaton has also confirmed Nerayoff’s claims as he has seen this supposed evidence under the attorney-client relationship.
In his announcement last month, Deaton mentioned that Bill Himman’s cross-examination would be of “epic proportions” and even offered to handle that personally if the SEC’s case against Ripple were to go to trial.
Russian Investigator Took Over 1,000 BTC in Bribe Money From Hackers, Report
An investigator working in Moscow has been caught with a record-breaking bribe paid by a hacking group in cryptocurrency. According to a Russian press report, the corrupt official accepted millions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin and saved the digital money for his retirement years.
Investigator Finds Himself Under Investigation in Russia for Receiving Huge Bribe in Bitcoin
Investigators in the Russian Federation are now working on a corruption case involving one of their former colleagues, the Kommersant daily reported. The news comes as a court in Moscow prepares to consider a lawsuit in which prosecutors seek to confiscate his crypto stash.
Marat Tambiev was hired in December 2011 and climbed the professional ladder to eventually become head of the Investigation Department in Moscow’s Tverskoy district. Officially, his salary was his only income and together with his family members did not possess any expensive property or savings in rubles, foreign currency or crypto.
Within the probe launched against Tambiev for large-scale bribe-taking, investigators and prosecutors found that he owns a total of 1032.1 BTC the value of which, as of January 30, 2023 was estimated at 1.662 billion rubles (almost million at the time).
The defendant allegedly received the cryptocurrency in April 2022 from members of the hacking group Infraud Organization, Mark and Konstantin Bergmanov and Kirill Samokutyaevsky, for not seizing their assets. Tambiev was leading the investigation into their criminal case.
Russian Authorities Seize Corrupt Official’s Cryptocurrency Savings
The crypto was discovered during a search of his apartment in the Russian capital. Among other items, law enforcement officers found his laptop, which they were able to penetrate a few months later. A folder on the computer named “Pension” contained a photograph of a sheet of paper with records that allowed Marat Tambiev to access two sums of cryptocurrency — 932.1 BTC and 100 BTC. The bitcoins were seized and transferred to a hardware wallet stored as a physical evidence.
The 1.6 billion rubles’ worth of cryptocurrency is a record-high amount for a corruption case involving a Russian official, the article notes. The previous comparable case was that of Dmitry Zakharchenko, an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who collected bribes totaling 1.4 billion rubles.
Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Razinkin described the coins taken by Tambiev as “receipt of property from sources not provided for by law.” Russia is yet to comprehensively regulate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin with several bills currently under review in parliament, including texts introducing criminal liability for using crypto assets for illicit purposes.
Do you think this is the largest crypto bribe accepted by a Russian official? Tell us in the comments section below.
Bribe Looks to Usher In DAO 2.0 With Voter Extractable Value
Community governance is a concept that hearkens back to the early days of cryptocurrency, when intrepid cypherpunks pooled resources, shared ideas, and tinkered with one another’s proposals. With everyone pulling in the same direction, but each bringing his own talents and theories to the table, the idea was that those most committed to a project were the ones best placed to influence its evolution.
This principle eventually gave rise to decentralised autonomous organisations – or DAOs for short. Made up of developers, engineers, coders and regular community members, these open-source organisations were intended to automate decisions without the need for a traditional management structure or board of directions.
Since Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin touted DAOs as the holy grail of organisation types in a 2013 article, there have been dozens of DAOs deployed on the blockchain, and though each had a decision-making mechanism at its core, the overall projects were highly varied. Alas, many DAOs have been hamstrung by low voter turnout while some have suffered reputational damage due to well-publicised hacks.
Reimagining the DAO Model
Now, a brand-new kind of DAO is being developed by the Bribe defi protocol. In a nutshell, Bribe is a DAO tooling platform that coordinates voters into formidable coalitions and allows ‘bidders’ to borrow a larger share of a voting pool to influence proposals they feel strongly about. In exchange for lending their own vote share, each community member earns a percentage of the winning bid denominated in the USDC stablecoin.
The brain trust at Bribe calls its concept Voter Extractable Value (VEV); in one fell swoop, opportunity costs for voters are slashed, DAO participation is boosted, and voting use-cases are increased. It’s DAO 2.0, and the idea has already caught the attention of several notable DeFi investors.
In late 2021, the protocol raised million in a funding round led by Spartan Group, having attracted investment from the likes of Hypersphere, Fundamental Labs, Dragonfly, Rarestone Capital, IOSG, Fenbushi Capital and others. The Protocol was incubated by Composable Labs and Advanced Blockchain AG.
Reflecting on the raise, Bribe’s founder Condorcet said: “Our early backers have joined us to formalise this essential mechanism by which DAOs come to decisions and reach quorums: voting markets.
“By moving this activity on-chain, we are ensuring that retail users can also participate, as well as providing data and case studies necessary to really understand what is going on ‘under-the-hood’ in DAO ecosystems.”
Bribe’s Bootstrapping Protocol
As with other DAO-based projects, Bribe has its own eponymous native token which powers governance and revenue-sharing. In this case, a single $BRIBE token represents an individual voting stake in the holder’s chosen BRIBE Pool.
It was recently announced that $BRIBE will be available for purchase via a Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool event on Copperlaunch scheduled for January 12, with a portion of any unsold tokens set to feature in a liquidity pool on Uniswap or SushiSwap after the LBP.
Of equal importance is the upcoming release of Bribe’s maiden VEV product for staking governance tokens, the Aave Bribe pool, which is set for later this month. Soon after, the Tokemak Bribe pool will be launched and further integrations are expected to be confirmed in the near future.
If Bribe achieves its lofty goal of incentivising protocol participation and helping DAOs function more effectively, expect its community to grow appreciably in the months ahead.