A Russian national who was charged for his role in a crypto market manipulation scheme will give up his access to millions worth of assets after striking a plea deal with US prosecutors.

In November, the U.S. Justice Department filed charges against the crypto market maker Gotbit’s CEO and founder Aleksei Andriunin for providing services that artificially inflated the trading volume of crypto assets on behalf of client companies, including those located in the United States.

According to a letter representing his plea agreement with the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, Andriunin will plead guilty to three counts charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and market manipulation as well as wire fraud.

In exchange, prosecutors will recommend a reduced prison time not exceeding two years and three years of supervised release. They will also file a civil forfeiture action against $22,893,675 in USDT and USDC that are stored in four different crypto wallets.

The assets are owned by Gotbit but are solely controlled by Andriunin on behalf of the company.

“Gotbit has admitted that these assets are subject to forfeiture because they (1) constitute, or are derived from, proceeds of the offenses and/or (2) were involved in a transaction or attempted transaction in violation of one or more specified statutory offenses.”

Andriunin was arrested in Portugal in October and was extradited to the US in February.

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The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, BaFin, has ordered Ethena GmbH to stop all public sales of its stablecoin USDe.

This comes after the German financial markets regulator found serious flaws in Ethena GmbH’s USDe approval process.

Per the BaFin announcement on March 21, 2025, the public sales of Ethena (ENA)’s synthetic dollar Ethena USDe violates the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Asset Registration rules.

With stablecoin regulation being one of the EU’s major enforcement priorities, a lack of MiCAR compliance has become a key obstacle for stablecoin issuers.

“The BaFin also has reasonable grounds to suspect that Ethena GmbH in Germany sells securities in the form of sUSDe tokens from Ethena OpCo. Ltd. without the required prospectus,” the regulator said.

BaFin has therefore ordered Ethena to immediately cease any sales to the public.

Enforcement measures

The enforcement measures include a freeze on USDe reserves held by Ethena’s custodian. Additionally, Ethena GmbH is required to shut down its website portal and stop registering new customers.

While Ethena GmbH has been prohibited from selling USDe, the order only applies to primary sales. In this case, BaFin’s order does not affect secondary sales. Ethena Labs issued a statement on X following the news.

“We were informed today that Ethena GmbH’s application under the MiCAR regulatory framework will not be approved. While we are disappointed by this decision, we will continue to evaluate alternative frameworks.”

According to the crypto platform, BaFin’s order doesn’t affect the stablecoin’s listing.

The decision will also not affect minting and redemption through Ethena Limited, the company’s entity registered in the British Virgin Islands, which handles the majority of USDe minting.

“USDe remains fully backed [and] no assets have been “frozen”” Ethena noted.