TheStreet’s Conway Gittens brings you the biggest news of the day, including what investors are watching and why FTX is suing Binance.
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00:00I'm Conway Gittins reporting from the New York Stock Exchange.
00:02Here's what we're watching on the street today.
00:04The stock market is coming off of its best week of the year and extending that rally
00:08into this new week.
00:10Bitcoin jumped above $82,000 for the first time on belief the next White House and Congress
00:15will be more favorable to digital assets.
00:18The record high also comes amid news that MicroStrategy, the biggest corporate holder
00:22of Bitcoin, recently added $2 billion worth of Bitcoin to its stake.
00:28Sticking with the world of digital assets, time has not healed the bitter feud between
00:32U.S. cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its larger rival, Binance.
00:37FTX has filed a lawsuit against Binance and former company CEO Chang Peng Zhao for roughly
00:42$1.8 billion.
00:44The lawsuit claims that through a complex transaction, Binance sold a 20% stake in FTX
00:50in 2021 by reselling those shares to FTX through funding by FTX's sister company Alameda
00:58Research.
00:58But according to the suit, quote, Alameda was insolvent at the time of the share repurchase
01:04and could not afford to fund the transaction.
01:07Therefore, the lawsuit alleges it was a, quote, fraudulent share deal.
01:12FTX CEO Sam Beckman Freed signed off on the transaction as his crypto empire was imploding,
01:18due in large part to a series of tweets made by Zhao.
01:23Binance called the allegations, quote, meritless, according to a statement emailed to CNBC.
01:29Beckman Freed was sentenced in March 2024 to a 25-year sentence for fraud and theft,
01:35responsible for spiraling his $32 billion empire into bankruptcy.
01:40In an unrelated case, Zhao and Binance pled guilty in 2023 to breaking the U.S. Bank Secrecy
01:47Act. The settlement included $4.3 billion in penalties and Zhao was forced to step down as CEO.
01:55That'll do it for your daily briefing from the New York Stock Exchange.
01:57I'm Conway Gittins with the Street.