Source: the SEC is investigating whether Yuga Labs, creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, violated securities laws by selling its NFTs and ApeCoins (Matt Robinson/Bloomberg)

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:
The SEC charges ex-Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and ex-FTX CTO Gary Wang for their role in defrauding FTX’s investors at SBF’s direction between 2019 and 2022  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and Zixiao (Gary) …

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta updates Stars on Facebook including testing automatic onboarding for creators, bringing Stars to images and text, and Stars Party to Facebook Reels  —  Meta announced today that’s introducing a number of new creator updates across Instagram and Facebook.

Lydia Beyoud / Bloomberg:
The Bahamas Securities Commission freezes the assets of FTX Digital Markets and “related parties” and appoints an attorney as a provisional liquidator  —  The Bahamas Securities Commission has frozen the assets of FTX Digital Markets “and related parties.”

Wall Street Journal:
Speaking hours after Ethereum’s Merge update, SEC Chair Gary Gensler says cryptocurrencies that let holders stake coins may be subject to US securities laws  —  SEC chairman says system used by ether following software update could trigger securities laws  —  WASHINGTON—Ethereum’s big software update …

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:
The SEC charges Sam Bankman-Fried with defrauding investors and concealing diverting FTX customer funds to Alameda while raising over $1.8B  —  Defendant concealed his diversion of FTX customers’ funds to crypto trading firm Alameda Research while raising more than $1.8 billion from investors

Christiana Loureiro / The Block:
Report: several US states are investigating Genesis Global as part of an inquiry into interconnectedness of crypto firms, securities laws violations, and more  —  – States including Alabama are looking into crypto firms and whether they violated securities laws.