The SEC is looking to drop its unregistered securities offering lawsuit against crypto YouTuber Ian Balina in the agency’s latest move to wind back its crypto enforcement. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed to drop another of its crypto lawsuits, this time its unregistered securities sales case against crypto influencer and YouTuber Ian Balina. The SEC said in a May 1 joint stipulation with Balina to an Austin federal court that it “believes the dismissal of this case is appropriate,” citing the work of the agency’s Crypto Task Force. The agency didn’t give a reason for wanting to dismiss its case, but said its decision “does not necessarily reflect the Commission’s position on any other case.” Read more
Sky proposed penalties on Maker tokenholders who are slow to upgrade to SKY tokens as the DeFi protocol pushes to finish its changeover. Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Sky has pitched a proposal to finalize its upgrade from Maker by replacing its governance token and enabling staking. The proposal, posted on May 1 to Sky’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) forum, would see the Sky (SKY) token take over the Maker (MKR) token as the protocol’s governance token. If the DAO accepts, the change would be slated to take place around May 15 to May 19 and downgrading from SKY to MKR would also be disabled. Read more
Kraken says a North Korean actor applied for a tech job at the crypto exchange but foiled their plan after a tip-off from industry partners. US crypto exchange Kraken has detailed a North Korean hacker’s attempt to infiltrate the organization by applying for a job interview. “What started as a routine hiring process for an engineering role quickly turned into an intelligence-gathering operation,” the company wrote in a May 1 blog post. Kraken said the applicant’s red flags appeared early on in the process when they joined an interview under a name different from what they applied with and “occasionally switched between voices,” apparently being guided through the interview. Read more