Caroline Ellison is key witness against SBF while Bitvavo gets repaid by Dutch Central Bank

Bitcoin and crypto continue to have a good month of October, but the attention of the entire crypto media (as well as the traditional one) is almost entirely focused on the trial against Sam Bankman-Fried. The key witness to be heard this week is his ex-girlfriend and the former CEO of Alameda, Caroline Ellison.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, a whole series of crypto companies have won a lawsuit against the Dutch Central Bank and will now receive millions of euros back. The biggest winner is Bitvavo.

Ellison

Caroline Ellison and Sam Bankman-Fried met as young traders at Jane Street, a Wall Street brokerage firm. When Sam left to start his own company, she followed him, but just a few months later she thought she had made the biggest mistake of her life, as she later confided in her diary.

After the two had an on-again, off-again relationship, Sam entrusted her with running Alameda Research, the investment firm he founded, so he could turn his attention to crypto.

If you read this excerpt and don't recognize that Alameda was a fraud from the start, you have no business ever handling other people's money.

If you WROTE this excerpt and don't recognize that Alameda was a fraud from the start ... my god.https://t.co/4j1m5wpl6b

— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) October 4, 2023

Sam ran FTX, Caroline ran Alameda. But they lost millions from the start. Yet the investment money continued to flow in. After they hired some good engineers to write an investment algorithm, things got better.

But in 2020, both Alameda and FTX went bankrupt and Caroline expressed a willingness to cooperate with the FBI in order to obtain a reduced sentence. She thus becomes the most important witness this week.

Bitvavo versus the Dutch Central Bank

The Dutch Central Bank has invoiced some well-known crypto companies far too high amounts for the mandatory registration in the Netherlands. They will now partially reimburse those costs.

Rechter zet streep door rekeningen die DNB aan cryptobedrijven stuurde. https://t.co/cJd8uLf1Mw #FD #Crypto

— Simon Lelieveldt - [email protected] (@finhstamsterdam) October 4, 2023

In its ruling, the court in Rotterdam said that Bitvavo, virtually the most important crypto company in the Netherlands, must recover a large part of those registration costs.

The final calculation is not yet known, but since the registration costs were 1.7 million euros in 2020 for all companies together and 3.9 million euros in 2023, Bitvavo is probably entitled to a nice amount.