Peter Todd named Satoshi on HBO, Mt. Gox repayment plan deadline postponed, and more: Hodler’s Digest, Oct. 6

Top Stories of The Week

Mt. Gox pushes repayment plan deadline to October 2025

Defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox has postponed the deadline to repay its creditors by a year, pushing the due date to return funds to Oct. 31, 2025.

According to an official announcement, “many rehabilitation creditors still have not received” their repayments after not completing the required procedures.

The platform was one of the earliest crypto exchanges in the world and, at one point, handled about 70% of all global Bitcoin transactions. It faced a series of security breaches and unnoticed hacks that led to a halt in withdrawals and its eventual collapse in 2014, locking the funds of about 127,000 users.

Nigerian court denies bail for Binance exec despite health concerns

A Nigerian court has rejected a bail application by Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan, which cited health concerns. The court instructed the prison to refer him to a hospital for treatment.

Judge Emeka Nwite of Nigeria’s Federal High Court in Abuja denied Gambaryan’s bail application on Oct. 11, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Nwite reportedly ruled that the Binance executive should remain in prison despite his worsening health, as such a condition “does not entitle them [prisoners] to leave custody.”

The judge reportedly said that Gambaryan would be allowed to leave only if the “continuous stay of the detainee possesses a harm to others and quarantine isn’t available.”

Ex-FTX exec scheduled to report to prison after judge denies request

After several legal attempts to delay reporting to prison for a seven-and-a-half-year sentence, former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame will likely be behind bars by the end of the day on Oct. 11.

In an Oct. 10 filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Salame’s request to begin serving his sentence on Dec. 7 rather than in October.

The former FTX executive claimed there were medical reasons for him to remain a free man for two additional months, but Judge Kaplan cited previous attempts at delays and Salame’s recent behavior.

US Attorneys argued that the former FTX executive “appeared physically recovered” during a Sept. 12 hearing and took the time to appear on the online talk show The Tucker Carlson Show for an interview.

Vitalik Buterin seen as dark horse for 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics

Economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, creators of the blog Marginal Revolution, recently made their picks for who might win the upcoming 2024 Nobel Prize for economics.

The discussion came during an Oct. 8 episode of the duo’s Marginal Revolution podcast.

In what he referred to as an “unusual pick,” Cowen said, given the opportunity, he’d pick Ethereum co-founder and computer scientist Vitalik Buterin.

While he and co-host Tabarrok discussed their views on the merits of theoretical economics, the duo agreed that Buterin deserved the award because “he actually did something in monetary economics.”

Per Cowen:

“Vitalik built a platform, created a currency, you could say, refuted Mises’ regression theorem in the process, obviously following in the footsteps of Satoshi, but my goodness, what does someone have to do to get a Nobel Prize?”

Peter Todd named Satoshi Nakamoto in HBO documentary

HBO’s documentary aimed at outing Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, identified Canadian Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd as the cryptocurrency’s inventor.

Cullen Hobak — producer of HBO’s Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery documentary — confronted Todd and Blockstream CEO Adam Back with the evidence he had stitched together to conclude that Todd was Nakamoto.

The documentary’s finale ends with Todd saying: “Well yeah, I’m Satoshi Nakamoto,” in response to a confrontational question from Hoback.

Still, this “admission” doesn’t necessarily prove that Todd is Bitcoin’s inventor. He is well-known for invoking the phrase “I am Satoshi” to support the real creator’s right to privacy.

Todd publicly denied being Bitcoin’s creator ahead of the documentary’s debut and questioned Hoback’s conclusion after clips from the documentary leaked online ahead of its debut.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $62,754, Ether (ETH) at $2,440 and XRP at $0.54. The total market cap is at $2.19 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are First Neiro On Ethereum (NEIRO) at 65.79%, dogwifhat (WIF) at 20.29% and Uniswap (UNI) at 17.92%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Stacks (STX) at 10.74%, Beam (BEAM) at 9.44% and Aptos (APT) at 9.21%. For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“Looking ahead, we are poised to return 100% of bankruptcy claim amounts plus interest for non-governmental creditors through what will be the largest and most complex bankruptcy estate asset distribution in history.”

John J. Ray III, CEO and chief restructuring officer at FTX

“With no founder type of figure involved, it helps it feel more like a discovery than a startup or an invention. Right. So, I think that’s good for the concept of Bitcoin as a commodity.”

Adam Back, CEO and co-founder of Blockstream

“If you resort to promoting new low cap memecoins every few days to followers as a large account it’s [because] you have no edge and have to use your followers instead.”

ZachXBT, blockchain investigator

“Investors demand a new price range to re-awaken supply.”

James Check, lead analyst at Glassnode

“The application of traditional investment strategies can generate much higher returns in crypto given the market is less efficient.”

Edward Chin, CEO and co-founder of Parataxis Capital Management

“One of the many unfortunate things about the current regulatory regime is, it’s not only have they gone after the good actors, I would argue that the scams and bad actors are at an all-time high. […] They just ignored those.”

Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Prediction of The Week

US election outcome won’t stop Bitcoin from hitting $100K: Dan Tapiero

The United States election outcome won’t change the bullish trajectory of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which will likely tap $100,000 per coin regardless of which presidential candidate prevails, Dan Tapiero, founder of 10T Holdings, said on Oct. 10.

FUD of The Week

86-year-old to pay $14M after admitting to running crypto Ponzi scheme

An 86-year-old former California attorney was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay almost $14 million after admitting to carrying out a multimillion-dollar crypto Ponzi scheme.

In an Oct. 8 judgment filed by Las Vegas Federal Court Judge Gloria Navarro, David Kagel was sentenced on one count of conspiracy to commit commodity fraud after pleading guilty in May.

Kagel is currently in hospice care at a seniors facility in Las Vegas due to ailing health. He will serve out his probation there unless he is able to leave, in which case he will be required to wear a monitoring device.

Government prosecutors who charged Kagel last year said that from December 2017 to around June 2022, Kagel and two accomplices lured victims into investing in a fraudulent crypto bot trading scheme, promising high returns and no risk.

FBI accused of violating MIT License in smart contract code usage

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been criticized for allegedly violating the terms of the MIT License in its smart contracts.

On Oct. 10, X user 0xCygaar, a purported AbstractChain contributor, publicly accused the agency of using OpenZeppelin’s libraries — an open-source code resource — without properly including the required license attribution.

If confirmed, this omission could constitute a breach of copyright law, as the MIT License explicitly mandates that any substantial use or modification of its code include the original license.

The X user claimed they had alerted the FBI to “take the necessary steps against the […] FBI.”

Alleged crypto fraudster on the run after tampering ankle bracelet

A man doing home detention for his alleged involvement in a $180 million cryptocurrency fraud scheme is apparently on the run after he tampered with his ankle braclet monitor, New York prosecutors said.

Horst Jicha, the former CEO of purported crypto mining and trading firm USI-Tech, is believed to have “tampered with his ankle bracelet” on Oct. 4 and “absconded in violation of his pretrial conditions,” an Oct. 10 court filing states.

Pretrial Services alerted the government approximately 12 hours after Jicha’s bracelet stopped working, nearly immediately seeking an arrest warrant against the fugitive.

Jicha, a German national, was arrested on Dec. 23, 2023, in Miami, Florida, after entering the United States for the first time in more than five years, to vacation there.