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FTX has recovered $5B in liquid assets, bankruptcy lawyer says

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has recovered upwards of $5 billion in liquid assets, an attorney for the failed platform told a judge Wednesday.

FTX logo

The FTX Arena name is still visible where the Miami Heat basketball team plays in Miami on Nov. 12, 2022. Lawyers for FTX disclosed Wednesday that more than $5 billion in liquid assets have been recovered so far. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier / AP Newsroom)

That figure includes cash, liquid digital assets and investments securities, the lawyer said.

FTX BUSINESS SALES DRAW OVER 100 EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

The revelation comes as FTX’s new leadership, led by current chief executive John J. Ray III, try to recover what they can of customers’ and investors’ funds following the firm’s collapse under previous CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

FTX CEO John Ray III testifies before the House Financial Services Committee

John Ray, CEO of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing investigating the collapse of FTX in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13, 2022. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Prior to its downfall, FTX was the world’s second-largest crypto exchange and was once valued at an estimated $32 billion.

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Celsius Executives Cashed Out Shortly Before Bankruptcy

Two executives of beleaguered cryptocurrency lender Celsius appear to have withdrawn millions of their own investments before the company suspended withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy, new court filings show.

According to a statement of financial affairs filed in New York bankruptcy court late Wednesday, former CEO Alex Mashinsky and former chief strategy officer Daniel Leon made multiple withdrawals from their cryptocurrency accounts in May, days before the company halted all such transactions.

Mashinsky and related parties withdrew approximately $10 million worth of bitcoin, ether, USD coin and Celsius’ CEL token, according to the documents. Leon may have withdrawn between $2 and $7 million.

Forbes previously reported that CTO Nuke Goldstein also made withdrawals.

His lawyers, however, disputed this interpretation of the transactions listed in the filings. “The reality is that Mr. Goldstein did not withdraw even one dollar in the four weeks prior to the pause—to the contrary, he deposited over $90,000 in CEL tokens in late May, just three weeks before the pause,” wrote Avi Weitzman and Leo Tsao of the Paul

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In all Trump’s legal wars and woes, one lawyer’s influence still holds sway : NPR

Attorney Roy Cohn, left, confers with red-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisc., during Senate hearings in 1954.

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Attorney Roy Cohn, left, confers with red-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisc., during Senate hearings in 1954.

Keystone/Hulton Archives/Getty Images

In March of 2017, as clashes with the FBI director and attorney general were erupting just weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump was asking out loud: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

In December of 2020, with just weeks left in his term, Trump still had not had his question answered.

He was surrounded by lawyers. But none could play the role — or take the place — of the controversial counselor who decades earlier had changed his life.

Cohn was already a legend when Trump met him in 1973. Cohn had been in the news for decades, prosecuting nuclear espionage or searching for communists or defending celebrity clients. Among those he represented were Cardinal Francis Spellman, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and the New York crime bosses Carmine Galante and John Gotti.

Trump met him in the high-fashion Manhattan bar called Le Club and was soon relying on him for advice in dealing with lawsuits

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Biden signs gun safety bill into law : NPR

President Biden signs into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gun safety bill, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Saturday as first lady Jill Biden looks on.

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President Biden signs into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gun safety bill, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Saturday as first lady Jill Biden looks on.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

President Biden on Saturday signed into law the first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in nearly 30 years.

The signing comes just over a month after the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school killed 19 children and two adults. That attack came 10 days after a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket killed 10 Black people.

“While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives,” Biden said just before signing the measure.

“Today, we say more than enough. We say more than enough,” he added. “At a time when it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing something consequential.”

The legislation, which passed the House

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Hollywood, law firms battling to hire Camille Vasquez after Johnny Depp trial

Johnny Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez has been flooded with offers from Hollywood and is at the center of an ongoing bidding war between law firms that want her on their team following her victorious performance in the actor’s trial, sources told The Post.

The tough-as-nails attorney, 37, became a star in her own right in the drawn-out defamation trial — sparring with Amber Heard during intense and sometimes vicious cross-examination and becoming a darling among Depp fans.

Industry sources say doors are opening for Vasquez — it’s just a matter of which one she chooses.

“Talent agents are circling Camille because they recognize that she is the unicorn — a smart, savvy, poised attorney whose impactful performance during the trial propelled her to a rare level of visibility,” a source said. “And the fact that she is a woman of color is an added bonus.” 

Vasquez and her colleagues successfully convinced the jury that Heard defamed Depp on all three counts brought against the actress for writing in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed that she was “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Camille Vasquez
Camille Vasquez is an associate at high-profile law firm Brown Rudnick.
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Since the trial

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