Last week presented the usual:
Fresh, unhinged stories to keep the crypto community entertained as the market woke up fully.
This week, we had everything from Elon Musk dragging Sam Altman and the entire Open AI board to court, to a massive hack on MicroStrategy's X account that drained +$400,000, to Bankman-Fried reportedly writing to tell the world that he is "deeply sorry" for the FTX scam.
Here are some of the freshest crypto stories from all over the market:
Bitcoin price rallied by more than 20% in the last week, to a new 2024 high at around $64,000 on 28 February.
Most of this price movement has so far been ascribed to investors' expectations of the upcoming Bitcoin halving (which is usually accompanied by strong upside price action).
Moreover, last week, trading volumes for the ten new U.S. Bitcoin ETFs set a new record, more than doubling their previous high from days ago.
The ten ETFs saw $7.69 billion in volume according to a 28 February X post from Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart.
In addition, the volume of Bitcoin put options traded in block trades surged to over $500 million in the same timeframe, according to data from Greeks.live.
In all, Bitcoin currently trades at around $62,000 and is consolidating for either a potential break above $64,000 or a decline to $55,000.
Last week, MicroStrategy became the victim of a massive X account hack on Sunday, 26 February.
The hacker (or group of hackers) somehow got access to the business intelligence firm's X page and posted a tweet announcing a fake Ethereum token called $MSTR (which is also the ticker symbol of MicroStrategy).
This tweet contained a phishing link, and urged users to click and claim "free tokens".
The attack was quickly spotted by some users—but not before some users already clicked the link.
According to analyst and crypto sleuth, ZachXBT, the scammers were able to drain unsuspecting users of $440,000, with the largest loss being from a single user who lost $424,786 worth of various altcoins, including wBAI, CHEX, and wPOKT, to the scam.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who is facing a possible life sentence for his role in one of the biggest crypto frauds in history, just tendered an apology.
Bankman-Fried apologized for the crash of FTX and Alameda Research in a letter dated 28 February 2024, which was written to his former staff members, investors, and clients. He admitted that he had "let everyone down" and committed "terrible mistakes."
In addition, he asserted that he acted in good faith and that he had never intended to harm anyone.
He expressed his hope that people would one day forgive him and said that he was "deeply sorry" for the losses and harm that his actions had caused.
Moreover, according to the New York Times, Bankman-Fried has also reportedly been urging his prison guards and fellow inmates to buy Solana.
According to reports from the BBC, Binance faced some serious issues in Nigeria this week, where it has been accused of harming the economy.
According to reports, the Nigerian authorities detained two officials from Binance and ordered the company to pay $10 billion in fines.
Several reports also state that on Thursday, 29 February, Binance executives were taken into custody by Nigerian authorities upon their arrival for negotiations, and were questioned over several accusations including money laundering, financing terrorism, tax fraud, and currency manipulation.
Although Binance hasn't yet released an official comment on the event, it has deactivated its Nigerian Twitter account and taken the country off its list of supported nations.
Nevertheless, the Nigerian government still demands that Binance pay at least $10 billion in retaliation.
Last week, Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman.
The lawsuit, which was filed on 1 March, in San Francisco, accuses OpenAI and Altman of going against the company's original mission to create and share artificial intelligence freely with the public.
According to Musk, Altman and OpenAI have turned Open AI into a for-profit company that puts Microsoft's interests ahead of the general public.
According to the complaint, Altman and Brockman have made personal profits from this venture, and OpenAI has evolved into a "closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft".
Overall, Musk is requesting that the court compel OpenAI to stop providing personal benefits to Microsoft and Altman and to make all of its research and technologies available to the general public.
In addition, he is also requesting that Altman forfeit whatever money he may have made from these collaborations.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.