Shaquille O’Neal will pay $1.8 million to settle claims that he deceived investors by promoting a now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, CBNC reports. The case had been pending since November 2022. The FTX Class Action Lawsuit The class action lawsuit also includes notable celebrities such as Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Steph Curry, Naomi Osaka, Larry David, and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. However, O’Neal was the only celebrity defendant to remain associated with the company after he was served legal papers. After avoiding rocess servers for months, O’Neal was served with two complaints during
Join our Patreon for extra-long episodes and ad-free content. This week on Techish, host Abadesi is joined by TechCrunch reporter Dominic-Madori Davis. They break down: AI blackmail, the violence that’s rocking the crypto world, and why being frugal matters, Lauren Sanchez marrying Jeff Bezos, and what big racism payouts mean for tech giants. Chapters 01:07 Anthropic’s AI Chatbot Blackmails Engineer07:15 The Violence That’s Got the Crypto Elite Shook16:23 Why Keke Palmer Lives Below Her Means27:35 Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos’s Upcoming Wedding36:40 Google Settles $50M Race Discrimination Lawsuit [Patreon-Only] Listen
Calaxy, a Black-owned Web3 social marketplace, announced its $1 million fund to give creators more independence. The social marketplace, where users can produce more purposeful experiences to interact with their fans, was founded by tech entrepreneur Solo Ceesay and NBA star Spencer Dinwiddie. Calaxy, short for “The Creator’s Galaxy,” allows each creator to mint their own cryptocurrencies that their fans can buy to interact with their economy or trade value for a social media engagement. In 2022, it raised $26 million in strategic funding co-led by Animoca Brands and HBAR Foundation with
Nigeria is suing Binance for $79.5 billion in economic losses, which it alleges were caused by the cryptocurrency exchange’s actions in the country, and $2 billion in unpaid taxes, according to court documents seen by Reuters. Nigerian officials condemned Binance for Nigeria’s currency problems and detained two of its executives in 2024 following cryptocurrency websites emerging as preferred platforms for trading the local naira currency. Binance is one of the most significant crypto exchange currencies globally but is not registered in Nigeria. It did not respond to a request for
Pryce Yebesi, 24, has sold Utopia Labs, his crypto invoicing business, to Coinbase and announced the launch of his new startup, Open Ledger. Open Ledger implants automated accounting software into products that small businesses currently use and has already raised $3 million in a round led by Kindred Ventures and Blank Ventures, as first reported by TechCrunch. Why did Yebesi launch Open Ledger? Pryce Yebesi started thinking about Open Ledger while running Utopia Labs as the product and operations lead. After noticing that the businesses he operated with still used
Rapper 50 Cent recently claimed that his online accounts were hacked by a cryptocurrency schemer who made millions of dollars in the process. 50 Cent Fans Get Scammed 50 announced on Instagram that the scammer used his Twitter account to promote a crypto-token called $GUNIT – a reference to G-Unit, a hip-hop group that 50 was previously part of. Last Friday the scammer posted “$GUNIT for winners only…” which led an unknown number of users to buy the coin. The scammer also posted screenshots of the $GUNIT crypto, which showed
Nigeria, Africa’s top cryptocurrency market, is in a major dispute with Binance, one of the biggest names in the crypto world. Nigeria’s government has intensified its crackdown on unregulated crypto activities, resulting in a serious impasse following escalating tensions between Binance and the government. Binance is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Nigeria cracks down on crypto Nigeria is currently grappling with a debilitating economic crisis, with inflation soaring to nearly 30%. The Nigerian government has turned its attention to cryptocurrency in an attempt to stabilize its currency, the naira (NGN). The
Young Black people are more likely to invest in stocks than their white counterparts, according to a recently published survey by Ariel Investments and Charles Schwab. The survey, conducted in 2022, found that 68% of Black respondents under 40 invested in the stock market, compared to 57% of white under 40s. More Black Americans Investing In Stock The 2022 survey compared Black and white survey respondents with an average household income of $99,000 and $106,000. The study found that overall, the stock market participation is higher among younger Black Americans,
Blockchain research and development lab Polytope Labs aims to transform Africans from consumers to creators in the blockchain space. Founded by Nigerian engineers Seun Lanlege and David Salami, Polytope Labs’ first product is Hyperbridge, a cross-chain protocol designed to facilitate secure communication between blockchains. Africa’s Crypto Adoption and Consumption African countries have some of the highest rates of grassroots crypto adoption among everyday people. However, the continent has mostly been a consumer rather than a builder of blockchain technology. Lanlege drew on his experience of helping to build the Ethereum and Polkadot networks to establish Polytope Labs with David
FTX seeks to reverse payments made to Shaquille O’Neal, Naomi Osaka, Stephen Curry, and other celebrity athletes who promoted the crypto exchange before it filed for bankruptcy. FTX’s collapse Sam Bankman-Fried started FTX in 2019 as a digital currency exchange platform that lets people buy and trade cryptocurrency. Customers began opening accounts on FTX to trade and buy cryptocurrency, and top venture capital investors began pouring into it. According to Tech Target, by January 2022, the company was worth $32 billion. However, that ended in November 2022 when an accounting
