News Roundup — Judge rules XRP is not a security in SEC's case against Ripple

Major news stories this week;

1. Breaking: Judge rules XRP is not a security in SEC’s case against Ripple
2. Silk Road Advisor Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison While a Rogue Double-Agent Eludes Capture
3. Brazil’s CBDC pilot contains code that can freeze or reduce funds, dev claims
4. Egypt Struggles With Skyrocketing Inflation and Depreciating Currency, While Bitcoin Nears Record High in the Country
5. Circle, Tether freezes over $65M in assets transferred from Multichain

Story Summaries;

1. Ripple Labs scored a victory in the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York on July 13 as Judge Analisa Torres ruled partially in favor of the company in a case brought forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission dating back to 2020.
   According to documents filed on July 13, Judge Torres has granted summary judgment in favor of Ripple Labs, ruling that the XRP token is not a security, but only in regards to programmatic sales on digital asset exchanges.
2. On Tuesday, July 11, 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, led by attorney Damian Williams, announced a 20-year prison sentence for Roger Clark. Clark was allegedly the senior advisor to the original Silk Road, an infamous darknet marketplace that operated from 2011 until 2013. Prosecutors from the office reported that Clark provided comprehensive advice to Silk Road’s founder, Ross Ulbricht, on “all aspects of the enterprise.”
3. A blockchain developer who claims to have reverse-engineered the source code of Brazil’s pilot central bank digital currency (CBDC) has discovered functions in the code that would allow a central authority to freeze funds or reduce balances. He has since argued, however, that there might be situations that such functions could be beneficial.
   On July 6, the source code of the digital Brazilian real pilot project was posted on GitHub portal by Brazil’s central bank. It was explained at the time that the pilot project is intended for use only in a test environment and that the “presented architecture” may be subject to additional changes.
4. According to the Egyptian Statistics Bureau, Egypt’s annual inflation rate hit 36.8% in June, a staggering 33.7% increase from May’s inflation rate, breaking records. Egypt, the world’s 14th most populous country, grapples with soaring prices for goods and services across the region. Additionally, the bitcoin exchange rate in Egypt is approaching the record high set in November 2021.
5. Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen over $65 million in assets tied to the suspected exploit of cross-chain router protocol Multichain. The move follows unexplained large outflows from the Multichain MPC bridge on July 6.
   According to the knowledge graph protocol 0xScope, three addresses that received at least $63.2 million in USD Coin from Multichain are now frozen. Another report from the Fantom Foundation notes that more than $2.5 million in Tether had also been frozen from two addresses listed by Etherscan as “Multichain Suspicious Addresses.“

And that’s all for last week’s news! Wishing you a great week ahead!

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