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Seeks

Jamie Crawley
Crypto Trends

Crypto Lender Ledn Goes Full Bitcoin Maxi as It Seeks to Reduce Client Asset Risk

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Cryptocurrency lender Ledn is removing support for ether

and will begin offering a bitcoin-only loan model starting July 1 as it looks to simplify its product and sharpen its focus around bitcoin .

The Cayman Islands-registered company may be attempting to broaden its appeal among the corners of the crypto community that say BTC is the only cryptocurrency that is needed. Such BTC advocates are often referred to as “Bitcoin Maxis.”

“With our new hyper-focus on Bitcoin-only lending, we’re going back to our roots and principles that inspired Bitcoin to begin with,” co-founder Adam Reeds said in an emailed announcement on Friday.

Ledn will also stop lending client assets to generate yield as it seeks to remove risk from its business model. Bitcoin offered to Ledn as collateral for loans will remain fully in its custody or that of its partners, Ledn said.

“Traditional finance relies on constantly reusing client assets to create leverage and, ultimately, inflation,” Reeds said. “Bitcoiners instinctively reject that model.”

Cryptocurrency lending was a major casualty of crypto winter in 2022, with the companies including BlockFi, Voyager, Celsius and Genesis going to the wall.

Ledn managed to survive and is now attempting to resurrect the BTC-backed lending sector, with its simplified product offering and helped by the friendlier regulatory approach to crypto in the U.S, co-founder Mauricio Di Bartolomeo told CoinDesk in a recent interview.



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GameFi Guides

ASIC Seeks High Court Ruling on Crypto Yield Products After Block Earner Win

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In brief

  • Australia’s corporate regulator is seeking High Court approval to appeal a ruling that favoured crypto firm Block Earner over the classification of digital asset yield products.
  • ASIC is asking the court to clarify whether interest-earning and asset conversion crypto products fall under the Corporations Act as financial products.
  • The appeal follows a Federal Court decision that found Block Earner’s fixed-yield product did not constitute a financial product under current law.

Australia’s corporate regulator is seeking special leave from the High Court to appeal a ruling in favour of crypto firm Block Earner, intensifying a legal dispute over the status of digital asset yield products.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, or ASIC, is asking the High Court to clarify how interest-earning and asset conversion products should be treated under the Corporations Act. 

“The definition of financial product was drafted in a broad and technology-neutral way, and ASIC believes it is in the public interest to clarify this,” the agency said in a statement. “This clarification is important as it applies to all financial products and services, whether they involve crypto-assets or not.”

Special leave is required to appeal to the High Court of Australia. The court grants it only in cases involving significant legal questions or matters of public interest. Appeals are not heard automatically, and ASIC, in this case, must first obtain the court’s permission.

In April, a decision by the Full Federal Court overturned earlier findings against Block Earner, which ASIC argues had offered a fixed-yield crypto product called “Earner” without a financial services licence. 

The Full Court found the offering did not constitute a financial product under existing law, a blow to ASIC’s efforts to bring crypto services under the same framework as traditional finance.

The case was brought to the court following an earlier Federal Court ruling in February 2024, which found that Block Earner had engaged in unlicensed conduct when offering the Earner product between March and November 2022.

However, the Court dismissed ASIC’s claims against Block Earner’s variable-yield product, “Access,” and in June relieved the company of penalties. 

That decision was then appealed by ASIC and counter-appealed by Block Earner, culminating in the Full Federal Court’s ruling in April 2025.

Block Earner, the trading name of Web3 Ventures Pty Ltd, has since shuttered the product and has stated it has no plans to relaunch it. 

The company argues that its offering simply allowed customers to loan crypto under fixed terms and receive interest, without pooling funds or exposing users to business risk.

“From the outset, we sought to ensure that our modern product suite could fit into a less-modern regulatory environment,” Charlie Karaboga, CEO and co-founder of Block Earner, said in April.

The High Court has not yet set a date to consider ASIC’s application.

Decrypt has approached Block Earner for comment.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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NFT Gaming

Binance Seeks Dismissal of FTX’s $1.76B Clawback Suit, Calling It ‘Legally Deficient’

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In brief

  • Binance has asked a Delaware bankruptcy judge to dismiss FTX’s $1.76B clawback lawsuit, calling it legally flawed and unsupported by facts.
  • The exchange contends that FTX’s downfall was the result of massive fraud orchestrated by its own leadership, not Binance’s actions.
  • Binance also says the court lacks jurisdiction over its foreign entities and that its 2022 tweets were neither false nor misleading.

Binance has asked a Delaware bankruptcy judge to toss out a $1.76 billion lawsuit brought by the FTX estate, saying that the defunct crypto platform is attempting to “shift the blame” for its collapse away from founder Sam Bankman-Fried and onto his competitors.

Binance Holdings Ltd. said the complaint is “legally deficient” and cannot plausibly link Binance or its former CEO Changpeng Zhao to FTX’s downfall, in a motion to dismiss filed last Friday.

“Plaintiffs are pretending that FTX did not collapse as the result of one of the most massive corporate frauds in history,” the filing said, noting that former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is now serving a 25-year prison sentence for defrauding customers, investors, and lenders.

The lawsuit, filed last November, seeks to claw back roughly $1.76 billion worth of crypto that FTX transferred to Binance in July 2021 as part of a share repurchase agreement. 

FTX had previously sold Binance a 20% equity stake in 2019, which it later bought back using a mix of BNB, BUSD, and FTT tokens.

The FTX estate claims the exchange was insolvent at the time of the 2021 deal, and that misappropriated customer funds secretly financed the repurchase. 

But Binance argues in the motion that FTX “remained a going concern for 16 months” afterward, making any claim of prior insolvency implausible.

The lawsuit also alleged that Zhao “maliciously” used Twitter to trigger a wave of customer withdrawals, posting on November 6, 2022, that Binance would liquidate its FTT holdings “due to recent revelations.” 

“The November 2022 tweets were posted in the days following a bombshell report by CoinDesk that blew the lid off of FTX’s facade, and the complaint contains no facts to suggest that the tweets were false,” Binance wrote, defending the tweets.

The exchange also said the case should be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, saying that none of the corporate defendants are based in the U.S. and did not directly engage in the transfers.

The FTX recovery trust has filed numerous clawback suits to recover assets following the platform’s collapse, which triggered one of the largest crypto bankruptcies in history and left billions in customer funds missing.

Decrypt will update the story if Binance responds to a request for comment.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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