Another failed crypto company agrees to settle with SEC

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TheStreet’s Conway Gittens brings the latest business headlines from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as markets close for trading Monday, June 17th.

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Full Video Transcript Below:

CONWAY GITTENS: I'm Conway Gittens reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. Here’s what we’re watching on TheStreet today.

The Dow snapped a five-day losing streak, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq carved out record closing highs. Investors are betting inflation is on track to soften enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates sometime this year.

Wall Street will have its eyes on economic data during this holiday-shortened week, including retail sales, industrial production, and new housing construction.

In other news, another big name in crypto is being forced to pay real dollars for his digital misdeeds. A judge has approved a $4.5 billion settlement between Do Kwon, his bankrupt crypto company Terraform Labs, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In April, a jury unanimously found Kwon and TerraLabs guilty of securities fraud.

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Kwon has been hiding for years after the implosion of his two digital stablecoins, Luna and Terra. While stablecoins are backed by actual hard assets, Kwon’s coins turned out to be backed by a web of complex codes. When an algorithm failed in 2022, $40 billion in market value went poof; hedge funds collapsed, and investors ran for the exit.

Kwon is not alone in his crypto corruption. Changpeng Zhao, head of Binance, the world’s largest crypto company, was sentenced in April to four months in jail for money laundering. He also has to forfeit $4.3 billion. And then there’s FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy in March. The judge in that case ordered the seizure of $11 billion in assets.

That’ll do it for your daily briefing. From the New York Stock Exchange, I’m Conway Gittens with TheStreet.

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