Mornin’ Coinheads… we’ve got some interesting short shots of news this morning, with Microstrategy Bitcoin champion Michael Saylor stepping aside, and those wags over at Robinhood are deep in the doo-doo again, this time copping a crypto fine.

But first, some numbers:

The crypto market softened a little in the past 24 hours, with BTC and the rest of the Big Name cohort down around 1.0% overnight, which is a better result than yesterday.

Big movers in the past 24 hours were Lido DAO (LDO), up 9.2%/24 hours, and Cronos (CRO) up 6.7%/24hrs, but both have dipped sharply this morning.

Biggest downers were Theta Network (THETA) (-13.4%/24hrs) and Yearn Network (YFI)(-9.0%/24hrs).

BTC is currently hovering just under the US$29,000 mark, and ETH is treading water, just above US$1,600, but showing losses: BTC (-1.6%), ETH (-1.6%), BNB (-0.8%), XRP (-2.9%) and ADA (-3.55%).

Now, grab a styrofoam cup of International Roast and pull up a folding chair, because here’s the news…

 

Microstrategy’s Saylor steps down after Not Great Q2 report

The head of US-based cloud computing company Microstrategy, Michael Saylor, has stepped down as CEO, to transition into an executive chairman role after more than 30 years at the top.

Saylor says he’s making the move in order to spend more time with … *checks notes* … Bitcoin.

Huh. We were sure he was going to say something like “family”, but there ya go… the man sure does love his Bitcoin.

“My focus is Bitcoin advocacy and education, like with the Bitcoin Mining Council, and being spokesperson and envoy to the global Bitcoin community,” Saylor explains, just in the nick of time, because that was starting to get a little weird.

As one of Bitcoin’s most visible and vocal advocates, Saylor has overseen a sizeable investment in the cryptocurrency, which left Microstrategy with an eye-watering US$917 million impairment charge in Q2 2022, Decrypt reports.

An impairment charge describes a drastic reduction or loss in the recoverable value of an asset, in this instance, the catastrophic loss of value Bitcoin saw in the so-called Crypto Winter.

“Chief financial officer Andrew Kang said that 14,000 Bitcoin are being held by MicroStrategy’s parent company, with the remaining 115 Bitcoin held by subsidiary MacroStrategy. Of those, 85,000 Bitcoin are unpledged and unencumbered,” Decrypt says.

“We have more than sufficient collateral for any price volatility,” Kang said.

 

Robinhood in even more trouble. What a shock.

Trading platform Robinhood is in the headlines again, this time with the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) handing down a US$30 million fine over some questionable actions by the company.

In a press release issued overnight, NYDFS superintendent Adrienne Harris said Robinhood Crypto will pay a $30 million penalty “for significant failures in the areas of bank secrecy act/anti-money laundering obligations” – and for falling foul of New York’s cybersecurity regulations.

We are all Jack’s complete and utter lack of surprise.

“As its business grew, Robinhood Crypto failed to invest the proper resources and attention to develop and maintain a culture of compliance,” said Harris. “All virtual currency companies licensed in New York State are subject to the same anti-money laundering, consumer protection, and cybersecurity regulations as traditional financial services companies.”

Robinhood’s crypto unit will also be forced to bring in some independent consultants to babysit keep tabs on the company’s compliance and remediation efforts. Ouchies.

 

Kim Kardashian still in trouble for EthereumMax debacle

Inexplicably famous person Kim Kardashian is in trouble for pumping and dumping. We’ve all seen the video. It’s… not pleasant, according to The Entire Interent.

The former Mrs Kanye West is also still deeply entangled in a messy lawsuit over her role in the EthereumMax pump-and-dump disaster, and her lawyers are trying to have a lawsuit against her dismissed, reports CoinTelegraph.

In a nutshell, here’s a quick catch-up: EthereumMAX was launched as a means for punters to buy tickets to a boxing match between a former World Champion and a Youtuber, and its creators got a bunch of other famous people (including the aforementioned Kardashian) to go on Instagram to spruik it but once the boxing match was over the value of the coin plummeted and a bunch of idio… sorry, investors lost their money so now they’re suing the rich people who told them to buy what was clearly a s..tcoin from day one.

It truly doesn’t get more “2021” than that.

Floyd Mayweather is also on the hook for this one, and it’s not his first shady crypto rodeo – he and Hot Ones Mega-Wimp DJ Khaled got into hot water over the fraudulent Centra Tech initial coin offering the pair helped to promote in 2017.

 

Zipmex flags limited resumption of Z Wallet withdrawals

And finally, beleaguered Singapore-based exchange Zipmex has announced a gradual resumption of withdrawals for Z Wallet customers, but there are limits as to what’s available, Cryptoslate reports.

“Starting Aug 2, Zipmex will release all Solana (SOL) tokens and debit them from the Z wallets of users and credit them into the respective Trade wallets. Once credited to the Trade wallets, users can withdraw their tokens,” the report says.

Zipmex had slammed on the brakes in the wake of the Celsius meltdown, which had left Zipmex heavily exposed and in terrible financial shape.

However, remediation efforts by Zipmex seem to have stabilised the situation somewhat, allowing for resumption of withdrawals from customers’ trade wallets on 22 July, followed by Z wallet transactions to be rolled out over the coming weeks.

 

Disclaimer: The author has a crypto account with about $50 in it, with investment decisions made using pure guesswork, and the occasional detailed study of chicken entrails.