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Former New York governor advised OKX over $505M federal probe: Report
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
Source: Linda Lacewell
Related: New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pulls
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
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Alon Cohen, co-founder of the Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, is set to bring back live streaming on the platform — five months after suspending the feature after several incidents involving harmful content. Posting on X on April 4, Cohen said the feature has returned with “industry standard moderation systems in place and transparent guidelines.” He said it had been rolled out to just 5% of users. Source: Alon Cohen Pump.fun’s website describes the purpose of its new live-streaming moderation policy as being “to cultivate a social environment on pump fun that preserves creativity and freedom of expression and encourages meaningful engagement amongst users, free of illegal, harmful, and negative interactions.” Breaches of the moderation policy could see creators having their livestreams and Pump.fun accounts terminated. The policy prohibits certain types of content, including violence, animal abuse, pornography and youth endangerment. However, it also creates ambiguity by claiming that “pump fun does not intend to universally define what content is ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate.’” “There is an implicit assumption that some content — perhaps much content — generally defined as NSFW will in fact appear on pump fun,” Pump.fun’s moderation policy states. The platform added it reserves the right to “unilaterally determine the appropriateness of content where necessary and to moderate it accordingly.” Pump.fun removed its live-streaming feature last November after it became awash with extreme content as memecoin creators turned to increasingly shocking tactics to promote their tokens. Some users were allegedly threatening violence or self-harm if a token didn’t reach a price goal. The platform said its unprecedented growth had put a strain on its moderators, and that it would pause the live-streaming functionality indefinitely to ensure the safety of its users “until the moderation infrastructure is ready to deal with the heightened levels of activity.” At the time, Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of algorithmic trading firm Trading Strategy, said that if Pump.fun continued to allow live-streaming without appropriate moderation, it would quickly be shut down once a mainstream audience became aware of what was going on. “I advocate for freedom of speech, but these streams are causing practical issues where people are breaking the law in live broadcasts. This will trigger a shutdown when the mainstream media catches a wind on this,” Ohtamaa said. Pump.fun’s decision to reintroduce its live-streaming feature comes as interest in memecoins has been down significantly following a series of high-profile rug pulls such as Libra (LIBRA) and Melania Meme (MELANIA). That’s coupled with the poor price performance of tokens like Trump (TRUMP) — which, according to CoinGecko, is now down over 90% from its January highs. Related: Libra founder: Memecoin critics only ‘bitch’ when left out of insider deals Data from Dune Analytics showed in March that the graduation rate for tokens launched on Pump.fun — that is, the percentage of tokens that achieve a large enough market cap to become tradable on a regular decentralized exchange — had fallen to under 1%, down from highs of around 1.67%. Combined with a sharp drop in the number of tokens being launched on the platform, this has seen the total number of tokens graduating from highs of around 5,400 per week in January to under 1,500 in March. The number of tokens launched on the Solana network has also fallen dramatically overall. Only 31,651 launched on April 5, according to Solscan, less than one-third of the 95,578 created at the peak of the memecoin frenzy on Jan. 26. Magazine: New ‘MemeStrategy’ Bitcoin firm by 9GAG Stablecoins are the single best tool for the United States government to maintain the US dollar’s hegemony in global financial markets, according to LayerZero Labs CEO and founder Bryan Pellegrino. In an interview with Cointelegraph, the CEO of LayerZero Labs, which created the LayerZero interoperability protocol recently chosen by Wyoming to be the distribution partner for the Wyoming stablecoin, said that the cross-border accessibility of dollar-pegged tokens makes them an obvious choice to drive US dollar demand. Pellegrino added: “Stablecoins for the US dollar are the single best tool — the last Trojan Horse or vampire attack on every single other currency in the world — whether it is Argentina, whether it is Venezuela, whether it is all of the countries that have massive inflation.” The CEO said he expects support for stablecoins on both the federal and state levels to grow because of the obvious boost stablecoins give to the US dollar in foreign exchange markets and the financial moat stablecoin-driven demand will create around the US dollar’s global reserve currency status. Stablecoin market overview. Source: RWA.XYZ Related: Certain stablecoins aren’t securities, SEC says in new guidance Pellegrino cited Tether’s emerging role as one of the largest buyers of US Treasury bills in the world as evidence of the demand for US debt instruments from stablecoin issuers. Tether recently became the seventh-largest holder of US Treasuries, beating out Canada, Germany, Norway, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia. Speaking at the White House Crypto Summit on March 7, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration would leverage stablecoins to extend US dollar hegemony and indicated this would be a top priority for officials in 2025. According to a 2023 report from Chainalysis, over 50% of all the digital asset value transferred to countries in the Latin American region, including Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Venezuela was denominated in stablecoins. The low transaction fees, relative stability, and near-instant settlement times for dollar-pegged stablecoins make these real-world tokenized assets ideal for remittances and stores of value for residents in developing countries suffering from high inflation and capital controls. Magazine: Bitcoin payments are being undermined by centralized stablecoins Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges (DEXs) continue to challenge the dominance of centralized platforms, even as a recent $6.2 million exploit on Hyperliquid highlights risks in DEX infrastructure. A cryptocurrency whale made at least $6.26 million profit on the Jelly my Jelly (JELLY) memecoin by exploiting the liquidation parameters on Hyperliquid, Cointelegraph reported on March 27. The exploit was the second major incident on the platform in March, noted CoinGecko co-founder Bobby Ong. “$JELLYJELLY was the more notable attack where we saw Binance and OKX listing perps, drawing accusations of coordinating an attack against Hyperliquid,” Ong said in an April 3 X post, adding: “It’s clear that CEXes are feeling threatened by DEXes, and are not going to see their market share erode without putting on a fight.” Hyperliquid is the eighth-largest perpetual futures exchange by volume across both centralized and decentralized exchanges. This puts it “ahead of some notable OGs such as HTX, Kraken and BitMEX,” Ong noted, citing an April 4 research report. Related: Bitcoin to $110K next, Hyperliquid whale bags $6.2M ‘short’ exploit: Finance Redefined Hyperliquid’s growing trading volume is starting to cut into the market share of other centralized exchanges. Top derivative exchanges by open interest. Source: CoinGecko Hyperliquid is the 12th-largest derivatives exchange, with an over $3 billion 24-hour open interest — though it still trails Binance’s $19.5 billion by a wide margin, CoinGecko data shows. According to Bitget Research analyst Ryan Lee, the incident may harm user confidence in emerging decentralized platforms, especially if actions taken post-exploit appear overly centralized. “Hyperliquid’s intervention — criticized as centralized despite its decentralized ethos — may make investors wary of similar platforms,” Lee said. The unknown Hyperliquid whale managed to exploit Hyperliquid’s liquidation parameters by deploying millions of dollars worth of trading positions. The whale opened two long positions of $2.15 million and $1.9 million, and a $4.1 million short position that effectively offset the longs, according to a postmortem by blockchain analytics firm Arkham. Hyperliquid exploiter, transactions. Source: Arkham When the price of JELLY rose by 400%, the $4 million short position wasn’t immediately liquidated due to its size. Instead, it was absorbed into the Hyperliquidity Provider Vault (HLP), which is designed to liquidate large positions. Related: Polymarket faces scrutiny over $7M Ukraine mineral deal bet As of March 27, the unknown whale still held 10% of the memecoin’s total supply, worth nearly $2 million, despite Hyperliquid freezing and delisting the memecoin, citing “evidence of suspicious market activity” involving trading instruments. The Hyperliquid exploit occurred two weeks after a Wolf of Wall Street-inspired memecoin — launched by the Official Melania Meme (MELANIA) and Libra (LIBRA) token co-creator Hayden Davis — crashed over 99% after launching with an 80% insider supply. Magazine: Memecoins are ded — But Solana ‘100x better’ despite revenue plunge Arthur Hayes, Murad’s Prediction For Meme Coins, AI & DeFi Coins For 2025 Expert Sees Bitcoin Dipping To $50K While Bullish Signs Persist Aptos Leverages Chainlink To Enhance Scalability and Data Access Bitcoin Could Rally to $80,000 on the Eve of US Elections Sonic Now ‘Golden Standard’ of Layer-2s After Scaling Transactions to 16,000+ per Second, Says Andre Cronje Institutional Investors Go All In on Crypto as 57% Plan to Boost Allocations as Bull Run Heats Up, Sygnum Survey Reveals Crypto’s Big Trump Gamble Is Risky Ripple-SEC Case Ends, But These 3 Rivals Could Jump 500x
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Live-streaming return comes as memecoin market crumbles
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US government looks to stablecoins to protect US dollar
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DEX growth reshapes derivatives market
Whale exploits Hyperliquid’s trading logic
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