Do Kwon, the co-founder of the now collapsed Terraform Labs has asked a US district judge to dismiss the federal securities regulator’s lawsuit alleging securities and fraud, on the ground that it did provide sufficient evidence of their wrongdoing.
He further said that he and his firm did not skirt US securities laws.
Attorneys for Kwon and Terraform contended in a filing to a New York District Court on October 27, 2023 that the following cryptocurrencies – Terra Luna Classic (LUNC), TerraClassicUSD (USTC), Mirror Protocol (MIR), and its Mirrored Assets (mAssets), which are on-chain reflections of stocks, are not securities, contrary to what the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed.
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The attorneys said: “The SEC is no closer to proving that the defendants did anything wrong after two years of investigation, the conclusion of a discovery period that resulted in the taking of more than 20 depositions, and the exchange of over two million pages of documents and data.”
The SEC knew some of its allegations were false and the evidence does not exist to support many of its claims, they said.
One such claim was that Kwon and Terraform covertly shifted millions of dollars into Swiss bank accounts for their personal gain.
Avalanche Blockchain Explorer To Shut Down As Etherscan Fees Draw Controversy
SnowTrace, a well-known Blockchain explorer tool for Avalanche, will close its website on November 30, 2023. The SnowTrace team made it clear that just its explorer, which runs on Etherscan, will be shut down. One reason being cited for the shutdown is that the annual subscription fees for Etherscan’s EaaS service, which has reportedly grown to $2 million per year.
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SnowTrace announced in a notification that from October 30, 2023, users must store their backup data, including contact verification details and private name tags, by November 30, 2023.
Mikko Ohtama, co-founder of Trading Strategy, said that an annual subscription to EaaS can cost between $1 million and $2 million per year. Ohtama wrote: “Etherscan is a very good product, but smart contract verification is something that needs to be decentralised. Regulators and other are not going to be kosher with ‘how do you check this?’ ‘The source code is hosted by a private company in Malaysia’.”
According to Phillip Liu Jr, head of strategy and operations, Ava Labs, the protocol is “moving onto something better” and is “absolutely not” ending operations. Blockchains can get an application programming interface (API) and block explorer for a charge via Etherscan’s EaaS service.
Web 3.0 Gaming Investors ‘Choosier’ In Crypto Winter, Says Animoca’s Robby Yung
Investors have been more discerning when allocating capital to Web 3.0 gaming projects during crypto winter, Animoca Brands CEO Robby Yung has said.
Yung, who is also a co-founder of the well-known Metaverse platform The Sandbox, emphasised the need for more comprehensive checkboxes when thinking about investing in Web 3.0 gaming. It necessitated a higher degree of due diligence through a trying cryptocurrency bear market, he said.
He added that investment propositions involve finding a mix of passionate teams with specific skill sets who are building product ideas that have a clear market fit. “Now that we’re in a sort of crypto winter and an economic downturn, from the investor perspective, we can afford to be quite choosy because, obviously, capital is scarce,” Yung said at the European Blockchain Convention in Barcelona
