The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has entered consent orders in its civil cases against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang. The orders, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, require both former executives to keep cooperating with the agency and impose a five-year trading ban on each of them. Ellison also received a 10-year registration ban, while Wang was barred from registration for eight years. CFTC enforcement director David Miller said Ellison and Wang were senior executives who committed fraud at Alameda and FTX, but said their sanctions reflected their material assistance in the commission’s FTX-related investigations. The consent orders close out the agency’s enforcement actions against the pair, who were named in the original December 2022 complaint alongside former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried. The agency also noted that FTX and Alameda agreed in August 2024 to pay $12.7 billion in disgorgement and restitution to affected users. Ellison, Wang and former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh were later charged with fraud and testified against Bankman-Fried at trial over the misuse of customer funds at the now-defunct exchange. Bankman-Fried was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years. Ellison received a two-year sentence and was released early in January, while Singh and Wang received time served.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on its website that the Southern District of New York has entered supplemental consent orders against Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda, and Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX. Ellison received a five-year trading ban and a 10-year registration ban, while Wang was barred from trading for five years and from registration for eight years. Both must continue cooperating with the CFTC’s investigation. The agency said it is not seeking disgorgement, restitution or civil monetary penalties at this time, citing their substantial cooperation and a criminal forfeiture order of $11.02 billion in the related criminal case. The article is for market information only and does not constitute investment advice.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are asking a court to deny former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky’s attempt to vacate his conviction and 12-year prison sentence, arguing that his claims lack merit and do not justify a hearing. In a Friday filing, SDNY Attorney James McDonald and Assistant US Attorney Allison Nichols pushed back on Mashinsky’s allegations, including his claim that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. Mashinsky, who told the court in May that he would proceed pro se, has been trying to overturn the conviction tied to fraud and market manipulation at the now-bankrupt crypto lender Celsius. Mashinsky was sentenced in May 2025 to 144 months in prison after pleading guilty to commodities fraud and securities fraud involving what prosecutors described as manipulative and deceptive conduct at Celsius. His former colleague, ex-chief revenue officer Roni Cohen-Pavon, was sentenced to time served after providing what the government called substantial assistance. Mashinsky was also ordered to forfeit $48 million and agreed to pay $10 million in a separate settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission. Separate regulatory matters remain active: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission permanently banned him from covered commodities markets in June, while the Securities and Exchange Commission said on July 30 that settlement talks in its civil case against him were ongoing.

VanEck said eight of its 12 Bitcoin capitulation signals are currently flashing, according to a post shared by Bitcoin News on X. The asset manager also said that all 12 indicators have entered capitulation territory at some point over the past three months. Even so, VanEck expects the current Bitcoin pullback to be shallower than past bear-market declines of 78% to 94%. It attributed that view to spot ETF demand, a broader base of institutional holders, and the absence of major failures like Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, and FTX. Bitcoin is currently down 49% from its peak.

a16z crypto used a recent conversation between firm co-founder Marc Andreessen and a16z crypto founder Chris Dixon to argue that the US needs the CLARITY Act without delay. Their case is built on a simple point: crypto is already a large financial market, with stablecoins handling trillions of dollars in annual transaction volume and major banks and payment companies building blockchain-based products, yet the federal rulebook for much of the market is still unfinished. In their view, the bill would create a durable structure for digital asset markets by dividing responsibilities between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, setting disclosure and conduct rules, and bringing trading venues and other intermediaries into a framework closer to traditional financial markets. Andreessen and Dixon also said the bill would raise consumer protections through registration, audits, custody standards and anti-fraud rules, while reducing the advantage currently enjoyed by offshore firms that avoid compliance costs. The discussion also covered sanctions enforcement, the difference between privacy and concealment on public blockchains, limits on developer liability for open-source software, the treatment of tokenized securities, restrictions on stablecoin yield-style products, and the risk that regulatory uncertainty will continue pushing businesses outside the US if Congress does not act.

Situational Awareness LP, the fund run by Leopold Aschenbrenner, has disclosed its quarterly 13F filing for positions held as of June 30, offering the clearest view yet into the portfolio that preceded its recent collapse. The filing shows a nominal portfolio worth about $20.24 billion spread across 26 positions, but the diversification was mostly superficial: the fund had concentrated more than half of its disclosed exposure in SanDisk and Micron, with much of the rest tied to the same broad thesis around AI infrastructure, including power, advanced manufacturing, cloud compute, data centers, and related capacity buildout. The report also highlights a decisive shift from the prior quarter. In Q1, the fund had held more than $8 billion in put options tied to major chip and storage names and related vehicles, including SMH, NVDA, ORCL, AVGO, AMD, and ASML. By Q2, those downside hedges were gone. At the same time, Micron and SanDisk call options were closed and replaced with large outright equity stakes. According to Odaily, that move turned what had been a hedged structure into an effectively unprotected long book just before a broad selloff in AI and storage names. Weeks earlier, the fund had already suffered major losses as AI-linked stocks retreated and leverage amplified the drawdown, forcing large-scale liquidation of public-market holdings. Odaily said most of the stock portfolio was later sold at a discount to Citadel, the firm founded by Ken Griffin.

A MarsBit analysis uses Homer’s Odyssey to frame five practical lessons for traders: strategy beats brute force, self-control works better when rules are set in advance, survivable losses matter more than perfect outcomes, strategies must adapt when market conditions shift, and long-term performance says more than any single trade. The piece argues that traders cannot control the market any more than Odysseus could control the sea, the gods or his crew. What they can control is position sizing, entry and exit rules, stop-loss discipline and how they respond when a thesis breaks down. The article links several episodes from the epic to trading behavior. Odysseus’s escape from the Cyclops is presented as a model for preplanned execution rather than raw conviction. His decision to be tied to the mast before hearing the Sirens becomes an example of commitment mechanisms, including preset TP/SL levels and defined loss limits. The choice between Scylla and Charybdis is used to explain why avoiding catastrophic drawdowns matters more than chasing ideal outcomes. MarsBit also cites a Journal of Finance study on 66,465 brokerage accounts and a BIS study on crypto trading behavior after the Terra and FTX collapses, arguing that overtrading and emotion-driven decisions often damage results. In the end, the report says a trading system is judged over a long sample, not by one winning screenshot.

Netflix said on Aug. 14 that "The Altruists," a scripted series inspired by the rise and fall of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, will debut on Nov. 19. The company also released first-look images for the show. The series will run for eight episodes, with Anthony Boyle playing SBF and Julia Garner portraying Ellison. In Netflix’s synopsis, the story follows two young idealists trying to remake the global financial system at high speed, only to later face accusations of stealing $8 billion and fall from the top of financial power. The project was created by Graham Moore and draws inspiration from reporting by New York magazine journalists Kevin T. Dugan and Jen Wieczner. Former U.S. President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama are also listed as executive producers.