⚔️ Crypto clash

Brought to you by:

Last week, a dinner was announced for the top 220 holders of President Donald Trump’s memecoin, TRUMP. 

The appetite for the dinner was pretty clear right after the announcement, though Kaiko data now shows that there was a 200% increase in TRUMP token transfers from the day prior. 

Kaiko expects the activity to continue through May 12 — the rules say the top 220 from April 23 to May 12 are eligible. 

I have to admit I’m extremely curious about the food served at this event, perhaps even more so than the attendee list. Will it be McDonald’s? A multi-course dinner from the White House kitchen staff? The suspense is killing me.

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s holding on to $95,000, slightly down in the last day.

• Another hidden gem in the Kaiko report shows that the options outlook could point to a “sustained” bitcoin rally heading into the summer. 

• The overall crypto market is up over 1% to $2.97 trillion, per Blockworks Research.

🕵️ Deel-ing with it

Yesterday, I reported on a court case between two crypto companies over HR/payroll compliance technology designed for our industry. 

The case, which began before the more infamous HR compliance case between Rippling and Deel, is still ongoing.

Toku has accused rival firm, Liquifi, and its general counsel, Benjamin Snipes, of stealing thousands of files containing sensitive business information after Snipes departed Toku on not-so-pleasant terms. The lawsuit claims that Snipes wanted a promotion at Toku but didn’t get it, so he quit to work for a firm outside of crypto, only to pop up at Liquifi a couple of months later.

This isn’t a coincidence, Toku argued in legal filings. Both Snipes and Liquifi allegedly came to the table to utilize the confidential information taken by Snipes to help Liquifi’s business, they claim. 

Toku is a platform built for tax and payroll compliance through a crypto lens, while Liquifi seeks to automate token vesting (in their words, building the “Carta of crypto”), so you can see where the two compete. 

These firms operate in a fairly small subsection of crypto. When I asked around, folks gave me the biggest players: Toku, Liquifi, Magna and Pulley. Then there are a few smaller firms that overlap. 

On one hand, we have Toku arguing that it investigated and found that Snipes downloaded company documents before his “heated departure.” Toku alleges that both Liquifi and Snipes have used the information for their business and engaged in “a campaign of outright lies about Toku in the marketplace.”

But then we also have the Deel of it all. In a filing last week, Toku says that Liquifi and Deel entered into a partnership last year. (Both Deel and Liquifi confirmed their partnership to me.)

Deel and Toku are unlikely competitors: competing not on the crypto level, but as employer of record service providers (which is when a service provider acts as the legal employer for a company’s employees when they’re based in a different country and the company doesn’t have a legal entity). 

Deel, according to the filings, sought to “crush” Toku. The alleged spy, Keith O’Brien, was also mentioned in the filing after reportedly applying to work at the firm four times. 

“O’Brien’s quest for a Toku position halted approximately when he began his ‘spying’ at Rippling on behalf of Deel,” the filing said. Deel declined to comment when asked if it was aware of O’Brien’s numerous applications. 

Liquifi, in its response document, didn’t dispute that Deel wanted to “crush” Toku, but noted in a footnote it didn’t mean that Liquifi would use confidential information to do so. 

On the Snipes front: A person familiar with the sector told me that Snipes applied for a demo at Magna back in September of last year, which would have been right before Snipes joined Liquifi. According to his LinkedIn, Liquifi officially onboarded Snipes in October 2024. 

Snipes confirmed the demo to me. He added that it happened before he spoke with Liquifi, explaining that he was just consulting at the time. This, according to his affidavit, occurred just after his temporary break from crypto. 

Per court documents, Snipes was “terminated” from Liquifi in the wake of the lawsuit. 

Liquifi, meanwhile, says that Toku’s “claims are all sizzle and no steak.” Instead, it claims it was once a takeover target for Toku, but the relationship soured after those talks fell through.

The case is currently in discovery, a phase when both sides exchange information. However, Toku was handed a defeat on Friday when a judge denied its motion to grant a preliminary injunction, which would have essentially handcuffed Liquifi.

Brought to you by:

Arkham is a crypto exchange and a blockchain analytics platform that lets you look inside the wallets of the best crypto traders — and then act on that information.

Arkham’s Intel Platform has a suite of features including real-time alerts, customizable dashboards, a transaction visualization tool, and advanced transaction filtering — all of which is accessible on all major blockchain networks, and completely free.

Arkham’s main product is the exchange, where users can express their trade ideas against the market.

• Mastercard is partnering with OKX to launch the “OKX card,” and the credit card company unveiled end-to-end stablecoin capabilities. 

• Miden raised $25 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. 

• The FTX estate is commencing legal action against token issuers NFT Stars and Delysium.

💼 Where we are

Here’s where the case stands now.

The two are still going toe-to-toe, and the Deel of it all remains slightly uncertain. It’s unclear if this will have an impact on Rippling’s suit against Deel or if Deel will play a bigger part in Toku’s case against Liquifi. 

But Toku’s not ready to back down. 

A Toku spokesperson told me: "The fact that LiquiFi and likely their partners at Deel are attempting to declare victory over a preliminary ruling that does not impact the material details of this case - where they stole 29,000 documents, which include customer data, personal information of our employees and customers, proprietary information, source code, and more - is absurd. 

“The true nature of their unethical and appalling actions has still not been fully uncovered. We take the protection of our trade secrets and confidentiality very seriously and are committed to pursuing the appropriate steps to deliver justice as the process moves forward,” said the spokesperson.

They added that the allegations are “disturbing” and that the information only “scratches the surface as we are in the early stages of litigation.”

Liquifi, meanwhile, said: “The court's verdict speaks loudly: It rejected outright all of the relief sought by Toku against Liquifi at this preliminary injunction stage, validating and confirming what we have always known. Liquifi has always stood for fair competition and innovation over litigation.”

Liquifi plans to move “forward” and stay “focused on our product, customers and partners.”

And, finally, Deel claimed that its mention in the suit is an attempt to “attach a months-old lawsuit to a completely unrelated news cycle,” noting that law firm Quinn Emmanuel is being used in both cases. (I’ll add here that Quinn Emmanuel is a large firm, and per the legal filings, there doesn’t look to be any overlap of lawyers.)

I’ll be keeping a close eye on developments in this case, but that’s where it stands…for now.

Not Just Online. Onchain.

From NFTs to prediction markets, loyalty engines to mobile-native wallets — Permissionless IV is where real users meet real products.

And if you’re on the AI frontier? Onchain agents, decentralized GPUs, verifiable training — it’s all here, and it’s all moving fast.

Crypto’s next big unlock isn’t technical. It’s usable. Come build it.

🎟️ Buy Your Tickets 
📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn

On my mind: Alex Mashinsky

Katherine: The DOJ wants former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky to serve a 20-year prison sentence for his role in the collapse of the crypto lender. 

Surprising? No. 

Prosecutors argue that Mashinsky’s sentencing should reflect the fact that he took “deliberate” steps to pad his own pockets, and it wasn’t due to his naïveté, bad luck or even negligence (some of the same arguments we saw pop up in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial, if you remember). 

The judge can opt to give Mashinsky a different sentence, so it’s not a done deal. Just last week, a group of former investors asked the court to consider a life sentence. Other folks have urged the judge to take it easier on Mashinsky. 

His sentencing is on May 8, so it’s just around the corner. 

I’m personally not too focused on the sentence’s length. However, I’m tuning in for the why. 

Mashinsky’s sentencing will be a good indicator of how the judge approached the case, especially since we didn’t get to see as much of that. Mashinsky, unlike Bankman-Fried, pleaded guilty rather than fight the charges at trial.