Safemoon CEO arrested in US, Bitcoin steady at $35k

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Last Updated on 6 November 2023 by CryptoTips.eu

Just days after Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty by a New York jury, attention turns to the founders of Safemoon, a DeFi crypto project that soared in 2021 but has since collapsed. In Utah this week, 27-year-old John Karoney, CEO of Safemoon, was arrested.

The prosecutor accuses him of setting up a “multi-million dollar international fraud scheme.” Together with two associates, he bought some $200 million worth of luxury cars and real estate, all while investors in the project are facing a huge loss.

The Safemoon project was worth around $8 billion at the height of their fame.

Bitcoin meanwhile stayed steady around the $35k mark all weekend and seems poised for a very bullish end to the year.

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Safemoon

Back in 2021, the price of Bitcoin crossed the $50,000 mark for the first time and a new alt season was afoot.

This means that many smaller coins were also able to attract investors due to the popularity of digital coins as a whole. One such project was Safemoon, which immediately managed to amass a large following. This was mainly because the project was led by a group of twenty-somethings from the United States with good knowledge of social media platforms such as Reddit, Twitter and Facebook (now Meta).

They made sure that their coin was promoted by crypto influencers so that they would immediately see a strong price increase when Safemoon was launched.

They played with terminology like ‘Safemoon Shortsqueeze’ (popular at the time because of Gamestop) to find new investors, but in the end the currency collapsed like a house of cards.

“SafeMoon’s executives grew their company value to over $8 billion, but instead of rewarding their clients as promised, their insatiable greed led them to spend millions of dollars on their own lavish desires,” said Ivan Arvelo, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, in a news release.

We did not trust the matter from the start and wrote back in May 2021 that the whole thing had the look and feel of a ‘pyramid scheme’.

Now that the SEC complaint against the company shows that the company’s founders mainly enriched themselves while investors immediately had to lock up 10% of their investment in ‘Safemoon’ for a minimum of 4 years, we will probably be found right (unfortunately).

Weekend

Bitcoin took it easy this weekend, continuing to trade around $35k, near its highest point of the year. With less than two months left until the end of the year and a profit of 110% in 2023, it could be a very nice Christmas. Hopefully one with the same percentage gain as in 2017, I think, because that would mean that Bitcoin ends up around $60k. I’m probably a little too optimistic.

Jeroen Kok

Jeroen is one of the lead copywriters on Cryptotips.eu and discusses all recent events in the crypto market. This includes news updates, but also price analyzes and more. He developed his passion for cryptocurrency during the bull run in 2017. He has learned a lot since then. The combination of cryptocurrency and creative writing is perfect for Jeroen and an excellent way to share his knowledge with a wide audience. Find me on LinkedIn / [email protected]
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