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Eclipse Day happened once again in generations, but the degens want to know whether any altcoins reached the moon. It was very close to us, man! A judge during the preliminary trials of the trader who crashed Mango even promised to switch off the lights for the jurors to have an eclipse moment. Apparently, the jurors were not very happy to be in court during the generational event.
Related: #PoliFi Memecoins: The Impact of Political Events on Cryptocurrency Market
But like Peter Degen who spends most of his time looking at charts so as not to miss the moon candle, you’ll see the eclipse again in 2-decades.
Our News for Today is Eisenberg”s $110 Million Fraud Trial
Eisenberg will go down in the books of history as the first man to face trial on a trade gone wrong. Well, the trade did go well for him but in the face of victims and public prosecutors, Avi Eisenberg represents Defi’s emerging criminals.
The trial for the cryptocurrency trader opened on Tuesday following a preliminary sitting between the judge and a 15-member jury panel. According to court filings, the trial will run for two weeks to determine whether Eisenberg broke financial regulations after employing a self-constructed trading strategy that brought Mango Markets to its knees.
The charges on fraud and manipulation represent an evolution in financial regulators’ intervention in decentralized finance crimes, a sector that has always been driven by the notion that “code is low”. Unlike cryptocurrency platforms like Binance or Coinbase which are controlled by counterparties, Mango Markets is completely decentralized and operates by executing smart contracts.
Eisenberg allegedly manipulated a smart contract while trading futures contracts on the platform, then went on to siphon $110 million by borrowing against his position. This led to the loss of customer deposits, as well as Mango Markets funds. Later on, the trader voted with a portion of the amount on the platform’s DAO to block investors from prosecuting him.
The Ongoing Negotiations Between Both Sides
On Monday, the defense and prosecutors tipped off the public about the proceedings where they highlighted that Mango founder Dafydd Durairaj spoke to a ransomware negotiator for help after Eisenberg’s trade. If this happened, the jury might term the negotiations as a hostage situation that could ultimately implode.
Hence, Judge Arun Subramian said the defense should not bring up the negotiator unless they want the prosecutors to understand the negotiations are not at arm’s length.
Meanwhile, the parties clashed over terms like “manipulation” and “obliged”, their potential placement in internet documentation, and when operating websites like the Mango Markets. Terminology and jargon arguments like this have often introduced complexities to cryptocurrency trials, often resulting in the portrayal of crypto misdeeds as charges of fraud. A good example is the landmark trial and sentencing of FTX founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-fried.
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Nonetheless, Eisenberg’s charges are more about trading on permissionless decentralized finance protocols. The trial is the first of its kind to accuse a DEFI trader of violating U.S regulations.
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