Judge finds new California election deepfake ban unconstitutional

Asset manager Teucrium Investment Advisors is set to launch the first XRP-based exchange-traded fund in the US markets, a leveraged XRP (ETF) on the NYSE Arca.The Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF will seek to offer investors two times the daily return of the XRP (XRP) token with a 1.85% management fee and annual expense ratio, according to the company’s website. The XRP-based ETF will trade under the XXRP ticker beginning April 8.”If you have a short-term high-conviction view on XRP prices, you may consider exploring the Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF,” the alternative asset manager said.XXRP currently has $2 million worth of net assets.Details of Teucrium’s soon-to-be-launched XXRP ETF. Source: TeucriumTeucrium founder and CEO Sal Gilbertie told Bloomberg on April 7 that investors had shown strong interest in an XRP ETF and hinted that it may file to list more crypto ETFs in the future.Gilbertie was also pleased that XXRP would launch during a market downturn driven largely by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.“What better time to launch a product than when prices are low?” Gilbertie told Bloomberg.Likelihood of an approved spot XRP ETF still high: AnalystBloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said it was “very odd” to see a new asset’s first ETF come in leveraged form — however, he added that the odds of a spot XRP ETF being approved remain “pretty high.”Source: Eric BalchunasSeveral spot XRP ETF applications from the likes of Grayscale, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Canary Capital and 21Shares are being reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.In February, Balchunas and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart attributed 65% approval odds to a spot XRP ETF in 2025.Predictions market Polymarket states there is currently a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot XRP ETF in 2025.Related: XRP price sell-off set to accelerate in April as inverse cup and handle hints at 25% declineUp until recently, ETF issuers would have seen a different environment for filing for XRP ETFs as Ripple Labs — the creators of the XRP token — and the SEC battled out a four-year court battle over XRP’s security status.That case came to a close last month.Teucrium has amassed over $310 million worth of assets under management since it was founded in 2010.It offers mostly agricultural commodities, such as ETFs tracking the likes of corn, soybeans, sugar and wheat.Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple and industry with no crypto legal precedent set

A Nigerian court has reportedly delayed the country’s tax evasion case against Binance until April 30 to give time for Nigeria’s tax authority to respond to a request from the crypto exchange.Reuters reported on April 7 that a lawyer for Binance, Chukwuka Ikwuazom, asked a court the same day to invalidate an order allowing for court documents to be served to the company via email.Binance doesn’t have an office in Nigeria and Ikwuazom claimed the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) didn’t get court permission to serve court documents to Binance outside the country.”On the whole the order for the substituted service as granted by the court on February 11, 2025 on Binance who is … registered under the laws of Cayman Islands and resident in Cayman Islands is improper and should be set aside,” he said.FIRS sued Binance in February, claiming the exchange owed $2 billion in back taxes and should be made to pay $79.5 billion for damages to the local economy as its its operations allegedly destabilized the country’s currency, the naira, which Binance denies.It also reportedly alleged that Binance is liable to pay corporate income tax in Nigeria, as it has a “significant economic presence” there, with FIRS requesting a court order for the exchange to pay income taxes for 2022 and 2023, plus a 10% annual penalty on unpaid amounts along with a nearly a 27% interest rate on the unpaid taxes.Nigeria’s legal history with BinanceIn February 2024, Nigeria arrested and detained Binance executives Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla on tax fraud and money laundering charges. The country dropped the tax charges against both in June and the remaining charge against Gambaryan in October.Tigran Gambaryan (right) was seen in a September video struggling to walk into a courtroom in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Source: XAnjarwalla managed to slip his guards and escape Nigerian custody to Kenya in March last year and is apparently still at large.Related: Binance exec shares details about release from Nigerian detention Gambaryan, a US citizen, returned home in October after reports suggested his health had deteriorated during his detainment with reported cases of pneumonia, malaria and a herniated spinal disc that may need surgery.Binance stopped its naira currency deposits and withdrawals in March 2024, effectively leaving the Nigerian market.Magazine: Trash collectors in Africa earn crypto to support families with ReFi 

Australia’s corporate watchdog has been given the nod to shut down 95 “hydra” companies that it suspects engaged in crypto investment and romance scams, known as “pig butchering.”The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s application to wind up the companies was approved by the Federal Court of Australia on just and equitable grounds after ASIC found that most of the companies had been incorporated with false information.Many of these companies were set up purporting to provide “genuine services” but were instead believed to be scamming their victims, ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said in an April 8 statement.“There appears to be a common pattern of scam activity in the nature of ‘pig butchering,’” Justice Angus Stewart said in an April 4 court ruling after looking at 48 “Reviews of Misconduct” from 17 companies accused of facilitating romance scams. The judgment was made on March 21.Source: Rocky PerrottaPig butchering scams involve scammers building fake relationships with victims to win their trust before convincing them to invest in a fraudulent crypto or financial scheme.The securities regulator also suspects that much of the scam activity is coming from Southeast Asia.Insolvency and restructuring advisers Catherine Conneely and Thomas Birch of Cor Cordis have been appointed as joint liquidators of the 95 companies.Related: Australian regulator’s ‘blitz’ hits crypto exchanges, money remittersNearly 1,500 claims by “investors” had been received by the provisional liquidators, amounting to total claims of over $35.8 million, according to the court order.The claimants are based in 14 countries, including Australia, the US, Cameroon, Ghana, India, Nepal, the Philippines and France.The provisional liquidators found that only three of the 95 firms had assets to their name and recommended that the other 92 companies be wound up and immediately deregistered.ASIC shutting down scam websitesASIC said it has been removing around 130 scam websites each week of late, bringing its total to over 10,000 sites, which have included over 7,200 fake investment platform scams and 1,564 phishing scams.“However, these scams are like hydras: you shut down one and two more take its place. That’s why we’re warning consumers that the threat of scams and identity fraud remains high. We remind consumers to be vigilant,” Court said.Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre recently reported a 26% fall in scam losses to $2 billion in 2024, while the number of scam reports also fell by 17.8% to 494,732.Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again