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031039

Elon Musk sued for $258 billion over alleged Dogecoin pyramid scheme

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A Dogecoin investor has sued Elon Musk for $258 billion. The Tesla CEO has been accused of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency.

Plaintiff Keith Johnson in his complaint filed in the Federal Court in Manhattan accused Musk and his companies Tesla Inc and Space X of racketeering and promoting Dogecoin and letting the price up only to see it tumble down.

The complaint said that despite being aware of the depleting value of the OG crypto meme coin since 2019, Musk had used his position of being the richest man in the world to manipulate the Dogecoin pyramid scheme and use it for profit and amusement.

The complaint also consisted of comments from Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and others questioning the value of the cryptocurrency. Most of them have been against the crypto market let alone the meme crypto.

Additionally, Johnson is seeking $86 billion in damages representing the decline in Dogecoin’s market value since May 2021. He would like Musk to reimburse this sum, plus pay double that in damages-an additional $172 billion.

Dogecoin to go under the gambling category?

Johnson named Musk’s Tesla Electric carmaker in the suit because it accepts the cryptocurrency as payment for many of its products. Space X was also included after naming one of its products after the crypto meme coin.

He also wants Musk and his companies to get blocked from promoting the cryptocurrency and urged the Judges to announce that trading Dogecoin is gambling under Federal and New York law.

The complaint also said that Dogecoin’s sell-off began during the time when Musk had been hosting the show Saturday Night Live and playing a fictitious financial expert on a “weekend update” segment called the crypto “a hustle.”

At press time, the meme crypto was trading at $0.05 down from its May 2021 peak.

UK Minister wants the nation to be a crypto hub while making it less prone to criminal activities

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The UK’s digital Minister has said that his Government wants the nation to be a major crypto hub in the world while at the same time he says to be cautious and vigilant about the criminal activities in the digital domain.

“We do intend the United Kingdom and London to be crypto hub and centers,” Chris Philp said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio on Wednesday. “But of course, we’ve got to do that in a way that protects the public and pays attention to the issues concerning for example money laundering, and making sure that crypto is not used as a way to circumvent things like sanctions.”

The crypto industry has been accused of regulatory failings and scams over the years. In April, a US regulator said Anchorage Digital Bank, a major cryptocurrency lender, failed to prevent money laundering and also reported suspicious transactions. Both the US and the EU have appointed teams to check and investigate and at times prosecute illicit cryptocurrency schemes.

More recently, the state of the crypto market has been down. For instance, it can be seen through rising interest rates and a series of high-profile blowups like the last month’s collapse of the Terra Blockchain. Bitcoin on Wednesday came close to falling below $20,000 for the first time since December 2020. As per Philp,

“The treasury is working closely with the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Prudential Regulation Authority to make sure that balance is struck in the right way.”

Philp also said that the London Stock Exchange was weathering a pullback from equity markets better than New York’s Nasdaq.

“Nasdaq has actually suffered much more than the London Stock Exchange,” Philp said after talking to a couple of founders and CEOs at London Tech week on Monday who were discussing the fact that their stock price would have been hit much harder had they been Nasdaq listed instead of London listed. The Nasdaq composite index is worth about six times as much as the UK’s All-Share Index and Britain are considering reforms to stop firms listing overseas and make its course more competitive.

Office building listed in ETH as an NFT; Price dips by $12M

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The owner Chris Okada says the building will be relisted in the coming days for adjusting the 40% price drop of Ether.

A New York City office building went on sale 2 weeks ago for $29 million with a Web 3 twist. The rights to purchase the property were sold as an NFT on OpenSea.

The price of the listing was set in Ether, which plummeted over 40 % since the start of June, taking the listing price of the building down with it.

The dollar value of the NFT has got down from $29 million to $16.8 million. However, its owner Chris Okade says the price will soon be adjusted.

In an interview with CoinDesk earlier this week, Chris Okada said “We are going to relist the sale at $29.5 million”. And when asked if he would stay with ETH or go with USDC, Chris said that if he goes with ETH it will be closer to 26,500 ETH. It is currently listed for 15000 ETH.

Chris Okada is the CEO of Okada & Co, a commercial Real Estate company that owns 43 buildings in Manhattan and is now dealing with blockchain to make clientele strong.

In a recent interview, Okada says, “There are crypto billionaires and crypto millionaires out there but they have no real utility instead just keeping them in their wallet,” He also said about his listing of buildings in NFT that he sees this as a marriage of his real estate knowledge and NFT interest.

Linking real estate business with NFT

Okada said that his company is trying its best to link its real estate business with technology such as blockchain. They were excelling in it but ran into a legal complication with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently.

Future Plans

Future plans for the Blockchain-based real estate sales will include rentable office space and co-working desk, a similar concept exercised by the SOHO neighborhood of New York City just 2 months ago.

Here’s what is happening in the cryptocurrency market

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Cryptocurrency prices today have rebounded after crashing in the past few sessions, which has dragged down the crypto’s market value below $1 trillion for the first time since January last year. The world’s largest digital token rose over 3% and traded at $21,915. The most popular crypto is down more than 52% so far this year and is trading below its record high of $69,000 it had hit in November last year.

On the other hand, the coin Ether linked to the Ethereum blockchain and the second-largest cryptocurrency rose over 7% and traded at $1,195. Meanwhile, other cryptocurrency prices like dogecoin were also trading higher today at $0.05 whereas Shiba Inu also surged more than 4% to $0.000008. The global cryptocurrency market cap today is $978 billion, up about 5% in the last 24 hours.

Other cryptocurrency prices are also trading higher than before. The coins namely Stellar, Avalanche, Uniswap, XRP, Tether, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, Terra Luna Classic, Cardano, Litecoin and Chainlink were trading higher with gains in the range of 4-17% over the last 24 hours. However, Tron and Binance USD slipped.

The global cryptocurrency market cap surged high to its peak at $2.9 trillion in November 2021, but it has faltered so far this year. The market value of the industry came below $1 trillion in simply 2 months due to which the investors ditched riskier assets in the face of high inflation and fears that interest rate raises by central banks will hamper growth.

“The Crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc announced that it is going to lay off 18% of its workforce, which is another sign of the worsening crypto downturn.“

The cryptocurrency downturn began soon after Bitcoin hit its all-time high in November. Earlier this year, the collapse of the Tera USD stablecoin and related Luna token erased billions of market gains.

Cryptocurrency market value slumps under $1 trillion

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The value of the cryptocurrency market fell below $1 trillion for the first time since January 2021 according to the data site CoinMarketCap, reaching as low as $926 billion.

The global value of the cryptocurrency market peaked at $2.9 trillion in November 2021 but it has faltered so far this year. It has lost a value of $1 trillion in the last 2 months alone. And now the investors are ditching riskier assets in the face of high inflation and also fearing that the interest rates will rise by the central banks and it would potentially hamper growth.

The largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was down by more than 10% on the day, falling to $23,750. It is down by around 50% so far this year. Ethereum [ETH] fell over 15% to $1,210.

Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said,

“As inflation proves to be an even trickier opponent to beat than expected. Bitcoin and Ether are continuing to get a severe bruising in the ring.”

Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of Skybridge Capital, a 3.5 billion asset management firm has some advice for crypto investors on how to survive the bear market and a crypto bloodbath.

He said that investors should “Recognize that bear markets happen,” adding that “they probably happened one out of every five years if you look at it over the last 120 years.” He noted: “If you stay disciplined during those periods of time, you got yourself very wealthy, and I think that is the message for investors.”

If we look at this from another angle, though the value of the cryptocurrency is declining, there are still retailers who want to buy them at this stage according to a survey conducted by the Bank of America. So there is still a narrow hope that this bearish trend will end and the bullish notion will begin very soon.

Bank of America survey reveals 90% of Respondents plan to buy Crypto in 2022

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Bank of America survey reveals that 90% of respondents plan to buy crypto in 2022. Although this time of the year the situation of the cryptocurrency is depreciating and experts are terming this lowering graph to be Crypto Winter. Yet, in the midst of this, a survey conducted by the Bank of America states that most retailers are planning to buy cryptocurrencies as soon as this year.

According to a survey of 1000 people conducted by the Bank of America in early June, it has been observed that 90% of respondents are preparing to buy cryptocurrencies within the next 6 months.

In addition to this, the study reveals that the number of users who own cryptocurrencies was similar to the number who wanted to buy them. This means that the enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies is far from over.

However, there are critics such as Warren Buffet who are skeptical of cryptocurrency every now and then have something to say on his part.

According to the Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Bitcoin does not produce anything which is valuable whether or not its price goes up. According to him, cryptocurrency is a passive asset and investors hold them hoping its price will go up in the future.

Comparing BTC to other options, Buffet points out that Bitcoin as an asset could not beat or surpass other productive assets such as Farmlands and Apartments that produce food and rent. As a result, he says that he is not ready to invest in it even if all the bitcoins in the world are sold to him for $25.

According to the report by Bank of America, despite the massive decline of the crypto market, still, 30% of the respondents said they would not sell their cryptocurrencies during the next 6 months. This highlights their hope for the bearish trend to end and the bullish trend to begin once again.

Currently, Bitcoin has fallen far below the $30K support zone after almost a month of tight consolidation. Jason Kupferberg an analyst of Bank of America said in an interview for CNBC that he is hopeful about the state of the cryptocurrency and that it is going to change as he sees that the investors are positive about buying cryptocurrency in spite of the depreciating condition of the cryptocurrency and also the collapse of Terra’s Luna coin.

Turkish Cryptocurrency Exchange Bitay Marks Its Entry Into The Indian Market

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Bitay a Turkish Cryptocurrency Exchange is set to enter the Indian market to tap the rapid usage of Cryptocurrency in the country.
According to Bitay, it is going to comply with India’s proposed Cryptocurrency tax guidelines. The exchange with its wide range of customer base of approximately 1 million worldwide has also set up an office in Gurgaon, India.
As per sources, the exchange plans to reach out to the population between the ages of 21 and 35 in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, and Bangalore, Indore, Patna, Lucknow, and Jaipur.
Speaking on the new development, Niyazi Yilmaz, the CEO of the exchange, stated,

“The company embraces and welcomes the decision of the Govt of India of laying a 30 percent tax on Cryptocurrency profits and 1 percent TDS beginning in July”.


Yilmaz added that through their initiatives, they are going to attract Indian merchants and investors. Early users shall also receive an Airdrop after they have completed their KYC on the exchange platform.
In addition to this, Yilmaz also pointed out its goal to reach out to the millennial generation, which constitutes 30 percent of the population and generates 38 percent of the total gross income.

Bitay says “Namaste India!”


A few days back, the firm tweeted on its official handle “Namaste India. Our localization starts with India.”
Besides India, the trading platform also plans to expand into other nations such as England, the United States, the Netherlands, and Estonia. It claims to have licenses in 12 states in the US.
Not limited to cryptocurrency and trading activities, Bitay has also extended its operations into other initiatives and products namely Game, Bitay Academy, Bitay NFT Platform, and Bitay Visa Card.
This Cryptocurrency exchange based in Istanbul Turkey further claims to keep customer assets in cold storage such as hardware wallets rather than paper wallets and PCs without internet access.