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Believe Founder Arrested on Strangulation Charges as Token Collapses 99%

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Believe Founder Arrested on Strangulation Charges as Token Collapses 99%

Key Takeaways:

  • Pasternak, 26, was charged with second-degree strangulation and third-degree assault over a March 31 incident; he has pleaded not guilty, with a court date set for June 11.
  • A class action complaint alleges he “ran the same play three times” across PASTERNAK, LAUNCHCOIN, and BELIEVE, extracting $54M in fees from roughly $6B in trading volume.
  • Pasternak was reportedly staying at a $2,000-per-night hotel to avoid civil lawsuit service at the time of his arrest.

Three Tokens, One Alleged Playbook

Pasternak founded Launchcoin, a Solana-based social token launchpad that allows users to launch tokens tied to online personalities and communities. The platform grew quickly, with Launchcoin’s native token reaching a peak market cap of $370 million before a forced migration reset the table for existing holders.

Image source: X

In October 2025, Pasternak announced Launchcoin would be retired and replaced with a new token called BELIEVE. The migration was mandatory, with a two-week conversion window. The swap created 333 million new tokens distributed to insider-linked wallets, shrinking existing holders’ stakes by roughly one third. Anyone who missed the October 29, 2025 deadline had their holdings permanently destroyed.

The class action complaint alleges the migration was not an upgrade but a structured reset engineered to extract fresh fees from a new base of holders. The filing states Pasternak “ran the same play three times, under three different token names,” pointing to PASTERNAK, LAUNCHCOIN, and BELIEVE as successive iterations of the same alleged scheme.

Across the full lifecycle of the platform, Believe processed roughly $6 billion in trading volume from which Pasternak allegedly extracted an estimated $54 million in fees. Consumer losses are estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The BELIEVE token now trades 99.8% below its all-time high of $0.35.

Arrest in New York as Legal Pressure Compounds

The criminal charges stem from a March 31 incident in New York. Pasternak faces one count of second-degree strangulation and two counts of third-degree assault with intent to cause physical injury. The victim has been widely identified online as Evelyn Ha, a Tiktok influencer whom Pasternak had been publicly dating since mid-2024. He has pleaded not guilty and his next court appearance is scheduled for June 11.

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According to Wu Blockchain, Pasternak was staying at a hotel charging $2,000 per night at the time of the arrest, which prosecutors allege was in part an effort to avoid being served in the ongoing civil proceedings. The arrest places Pasternak under simultaneous pressure across criminal and civil jurisdictions. No formal criminal charges tied specifically to the token allegations have been filed.

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FLOW Cryptocurrency Investor News: If You Have Suffered Losses in FLOW Cryptocurrency, You Are Encouraged to Contact The Rosen Law Firm About Your Rights

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FLOW Cryptocurrency Investor News: If You Have Suffered Losses in FLOW Cryptocurrency, You Are Encouraged to Contact The Rosen Law Firm About Your Rights

NEW YORK, April 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —

WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces an investigation of potential securities claims on behalf of investors in FLOW (FLOW-USD) cryptocurrency, resulting from allegations that Flow Foundation may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.

SO WHAT: If you purchased FLOW cryptocurrency you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement. The Rosen Law Firm is preparing a class action seeking recovery of investor losses.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the prospective class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=56767 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT: If you purchased FLOW cryptocurrency on or before December 27, 2025 and held your Flow cryptocurrency through December 29, 2025, please reach out to the firm. There are no out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

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WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources, or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm achieved, at that time, the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs’ Bar. Many of the firm’s attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.
Phillip Kim, Esq.
The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 686-1060
Toll Free: (866) 767-3653
Fax: (212) 202-3827
case@rosenlegal.com
www.rosenlegal.com

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Kazakh President presented with first cryptocurrency payment via home-made CryptoPay system

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Kazakh President presented with first cryptocurrency payment via home-made CryptoPay system

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was demonstrated the first crypto payment in Kazakhstan using the domestic CryptoPay system. 

Photo credit: Akorda

Earlier today, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev visited the Alem.ai Artificial Intelligence Center. Furthermore, he took part in the launch of several educational initiatives. The concept of the AI Research University was also presented to President Tokayev. Later, the Head of State started the countdown to the Phygital Games of the Future 2026. 

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BIS Report: Crypto Earn Products Resemble Deposits With No FDIC Protection

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BIS Report: Crypto Earn Products Resemble Deposits With No FDIC Protection

Key Takeaways:

  • The BIS Financial Stability Institute warned in April 2026 that major crypto platforms like Binance and Coinbase now operate more like banks than trading venues.
  • Celsius Network collapsed in 2022 after a USD 1.4 billion depositor run exposed maturity mismatches with no deposit insurance backstop.
  • Only 11 of 28 jurisdictions reviewed by the FSB in 2025 had a finalized regulatory framework addressing financial stability risks from crypto intermediaries.

Crypto Earn Accounts Exposed as Uninsured Deposits, BIS Research Warns

The report, authored by Denise Garcia Ocampo of the BIS and Peter Goodrich and Gian-Piero Lovicu of the Financial Stability Board, focused on what researchers call multifunction crypto asset intermediaries, or MCIs. The term covers firms like Binance, Bybit, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Kraken, MEXC and OKX.

These platforms have expanded well beyond spot trading and custody. They now offer yield-bearing earn accounts, margin lending, derivatives, and token issuance, functions typically separated across different licensed entities in traditional finance.

The total crypto asset market stood at approximately $3 trillion at the end of 2025. Centralized exchanges processed roughly $6 to $8 trillion in spot and futures volume each quarter. Binance alone held about 39% of global centralized spot trading volume. The top five MCIs collectively served an estimated 200 to 230 million users.

The paper’s central concern is the earn product. When customers deposit crypto into Binance Simple Earn or Bybit Easy Earn, terms and conditions transfer ownership of those assets to the platform. The MCI pools the funds, deploys them across lending, market-making and DeFi, and pays users a variable yield. Customers become unsecured creditors, not depositors with legal protections.

That structure creates short-term redeemable liabilities backed by longer-duration or less liquid assets. Researchers call this maturity and liquidity transformation, the same risk that bank regulators manage through capital and liquidity requirements. MCIs face it without those guardrails.

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The collapse of Celsius Network in 2022 illustrated the exposure. Celsius experienced net withdrawals of more than $1.4 billion between May and June of that year. By June 12 the platform froze withdrawals. When it filed for bankruptcy on July 12, its balance sheet showed a billion-dollar deficit. The bankruptcy court confirmed Celsius earn users were general unsecured creditors.

A flash crash on Oct. 10, 2025, reinforced the concern. Crypto asset prices fell sharply over 30 minutes, triggering cascading automated liquidations across derivatives platforms. Reported direct losses reached $19 billion the following day. Binance suffered an operational outage during the event, and three tokens used as margin collateral, including an algorithmic stablecoin, temporarily lost their pegs. Binance announced $283 million in customer compensation following the incident.

The report reviewed terms and conditions from eight major MCIs between November 2025 and March 2026 and found that most earn products grant the platform full discretion over deposited assets, commingle them with other customer funds, and reserve the right to suspend redemptions without notice.

Leverage adds further risk. Some platforms allow retail customers up to 150-to-1 margin on derivatives contracts. The paper draws a direct line from that leverage to the October 2025 liquidation cascade.

The FSB’s 2025 thematic review found that only 11 of 28 participating jurisdictions, roughly 39%, had a finalized regulatory framework addressing financial stability. Just two of those covered borrowing and lending by MCIs. Three covered earn products.

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The authors call for prudential capital and liquidity requirements, governance standards, stress testing and consolidated supervision applied at the group level. They recommend a combination of entity-based and activity-based regulation, noting that activity-based rules alone cannot address the funding and liquidity risks MCIs carry.

Cross-border cooperation remains a core gap. Many large MCIs allocate functions across dozens of jurisdictions through separate legal entities, and formal supervisory information-sharing agreements between regulators remain uncommon.

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