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Conway Gittens: This is Conway Gittens reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. This is what we are seeing today on TheStreet.
The stock market is coming off its best week of the year and extending that rally into this new week. bitcoin jumped above $82,000 for the first time as the next White House and Congress are believed to be more favorable to digital assets. The record also comes amid news that Microstrategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, recently added $2 billion to its stake.
Related: Cryptocriminals are stealing more money than ever
Continuing with the world of digital assets, time has not healed the bitter dispute between the American cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its largest rival, Binance.
FTX has filed a lawsuit against Binance and the company's former CEO Changpeng Zhao for approximately $1.8 billion.
The lawsuit claims that through a complex transaction, Binance sold a 20 percent stake in FTX in 2021 by reselling those shares to FTX through financing from FTX's sister company, Alameda Research. But according to the lawsuit, “Alameda was insolvent at the time of the stock repurchase and could not afford to finance the transaction.” Therefore, the lawsuit alleges that this was a “fraudulent” stock deal. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried approved the transaction as his crypto empire was imploding, due in large part to a series of tweets made by Zhao.
Binance called the allegations “baseless,” according to a statement emailed to CNBC.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years in prison for fraud and theft, responsible for bankrupting his $32 billion empire.
In an unrelated case, Zhao and Binance plead guilty in 2023 to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act. The settlement included $4.3 billion in fines and Zhao was forced to resign as CEO.
That will be enough for your daily report. From the New York Stock Exchange, I'm Conway Gittens of TheStreet.
Watch ICYMI this week:
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