A cofounder of the collapsed crypto exchange, FTX, has avoided jail after cooperating with authorities during the investigation into the firm’s fraudulent activities.

A judge in the US spared Gary Wang prison time “after his swift co-operation with prosecutors helped seal the criminal conviction of the crypto exchange’s other founder Sam Bankman-Fried,” reported the FT.

Wang was in the Bahamas in 2022 when FTX collapsed. He returned to the US and started cooperating with the authorities, and judge Lewis Kaplan has now said that was “the right thing to do.”

But the former FTX cofounder will have to forfeit his gains from the $11 billion dollars the collapsed firm earned through illicit activities. He has also been sentenced to time served.

Wang, a Chinese born US technology graduate had already pleaded guilty in 2022 and had testified in court that FTX was stealing funds from customers as early as in 2019.

Jail term for Helix founder

But another US-based crypto entrepreneur ran out of luck with the authorities and has been given a three year prison sentence for “laundering customers’ bitcoin.”

Larry Dean Harmon received the sentence from a federal court in Washington, DC, on Friday. He “ran the cryptocurrency mixer Helix and a darknet search engine called Grams,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Harmon was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and to forfeit cryptocurrency, real estate and other assets worth more than $400m,” the report adds.

His lawyer said Harmon was ‘pleased’ with the lighter sentence and had already shut down Helix and Grams long before his arrest. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in 2021.

Couple jailed for crypto hack

In a separate case, a hacker who broke into Bitfinex’s network to steal bitcoin in 2016 has been sentenced to five years in prison, according to a press release by the US Department of Justice last week.

Ilya Lichtenstein received the sentence “for his involvement in a money laundering conspiracy arising from the hack and theft of approximately 120,000 bitcoin from Bitfinex, a global cryptocurrency exchange,” the press release added.

The 35-year-old hacker used advanced skills to access the network and “fraudulently authorized more than 2,000 transactions transferring 119,754 bitcoin from Bitfinex to a cryptocurrency wallet in Lichtenstein’s control,” court documents have revealed.

He later involved his wife, Heather Morgan, in multiple attempts to launder the money they made from the hack. Both pleaded guilty in August last year. His wife has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, according to separate reports.

A $6m dollar banana

A Chinese crypto investor has bought a banana duck-taped to a wall for more than $6m in an auction in New York. The figure is four times above the presale estimates for the fruit considered by many as ‘contemporary artwork.’

The New York Times has reported that the banana has become “arguably the most expensive fruit in the world – though it will likely be tossed in a couple days.”

You might wonder how it generates and keeps that sort of value. Well, because “It comes with a certificate of authenticity and installation instructions for owners to replace the banana – if they wish – whenever it rots,” the report says.

Named the ‘Comedian’, the banana is a conceptual artwork by the well-known prankster Maurizio Cattelan, and first made headlines back in 2019.

Its latest owner, Justin Sun, was competing against six other potential buyers in a a bidding which experts have called a ‘spectacle’.

This is, perhaps, a latest sign of the growing confidence among the crypto industry in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential race that development of the sector will not be subject to any slip-ups.

Trump in talks to buy Bakkt

Speaking of Donald Trump, reports have emerged that his social media company is in ‘advanced talks’ to buy Bakkt, a cryptocurrency venue belonging to the Intercontinental Exchange.

People familiar with the matter have told the FT that Trump Media and Technology Group wants an all-share purchase of the crypto exchange, which has a market capitalisation of around $150m.

Trump has previously also supported other crypto ventures, such as World Liberty Financial, which was set up by some of his business partners and involves his family members too.

A successful purchase of Bakkt will further deepen his involvement the crypto industry, which has seen a significant rise in value in the aftermath of his election victory, according to the report.

The FT says its reporting of the story led to Bakkt’s shares soaring by 162%, and those of Trump Media and Telecommunication Group were also up by 16.7%.

Microstrategy’s bitcoin spree

And finally, Microstrategy’s push to buy bitcoin has reached new heights as the software provider continues to invest billions of dollars in the crypto currency.

According to reports, the firm’s fundraising has reached $7 billion after it “raised the size of a convertible bond offering from $1.75 billion to $2.6 billion” on Wednesday.

The move saw a 15% jump in the firms shares on Wednesday to a record high, “and are up nearly 900 per cent in the past year,” as reported by the FT.

Mark Palmer, a senior equity analyst with the Benchmark Company told the paper: “I think it reflects not only the market’s embrace of the company’s approach, but also the mood of the moment: that MicroStrategy has really the right strategy at the right time given the anticipated support of bitcoin and crypto by the Trump administration.”