The Celsius bankruptcy estate sued five BitMEX-linked companies, alleging fraud, market manipulation and wrongful liquidations during the March 2020 market crash. The complaint was filed on Sept. 12 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York by Celsius entities acting through estate representative Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium (BRIC). Defendants include HDR Global Trading, ABS Global Trading, Shine Effort, 100x Holdings and HDR Global Services.The estate alleged that BitMEX wrongfully liquidated and seized 1,325.84 BTC in collateral from Celsius on March 12, 2020, and 5,034.33 BTC from investment fund JST the following day. JST subsequently assigned the related claims to the estate, according to the filing. The lawsuit seeks the recovery of Bitcoin worth nearly $490 million at the time of writing, and was filed 11 days before BitMEX is scheduled to stop exchange services on Sept. 23. Cointelegraph reached out to the Celsius estate and BitMEX for comment but did not receive a response before publication. Celsius alleges BitMEX intensified 2020 sell-offThe Celsius estate alleges that BitMEX controlled the prices used to trigger liquidations, the engine that executed them and the insurance fund that received proceeds from some liquidated positions. According to the complaint, some liquidation sell orders were placed at prices more than 24% below the next-best ask available on the platform. It also alleges that Bitcoin traded at a lower price on BitMEX than on competing exchanges as the liquidation cycle intensified.The estate cites the timing of BitMEX’s March 13, 2020, service disruption as evidence for its claim that the exchange’s liquidation engine intensified the sell-off. It alleges that liquidation orders stopped when the platform became unavailable, and Bitcoin’s price then recovered, indicating, in the estate’s view, that forced selling on BitMEX had been suppressing the price.On March 16, 2020, BitMEX said it experienced two distributed denial-of-service attacks on March 13, at 02:16 UTC and 12:56 UTC.The estate is seeking actual damages of at least 6,360.16 BTC or its current value, along with the return of the Bitcoin in kind or its equivalent market value. The complaint also requests statutory damages, punitive and any applicable treble damages, profits BitMEX allegedly earned from the liquidations, and legal fees and costs. The filing does not quantify the additional claims, saying the amounts should be determined at trial.Related: BitMEX delists 65 trading pairs, derivatives in July amid exchange shutdownOn July 23, BKX Services and David Namdar filed a separate proposed class action, alleging they lost a combined 622.66 BTC through forced liquidations. That complaint alleged an internal trading desk could access private customer information and continue trading during server freezes.Responding to the July case, a BitMEX spokesperson told Cointelegraph that it was an “opportunistic claim with no basis” and said the company would vigorously defend itself. The statement concerned the July lawsuit and was not a response to the Celsius complaint.Magazine: Revolut ID thefts highlight KYC’s dangers: Here’s how to fix it

OpenAI on Wednesday disclosed another six cases of “unexpected or concerning” model behavior over the last six months.In a blog post, OpenAI said the cases illustrate a range of different behaviors it classifies as “misaligned behavior,” such as concealing information from the user and taking “unsanctioned actions” to overcome obstacles. The disclosures add to concerns among AI developers and researchers about whether safeguards are keeping pace with increasingly capable models. Last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in frontier AI development, warning that unchecked AI advancement may “outrun our ability to understand and control these systems.” OpenAI said its disclosures were made to “inaugurate” its new framework for reporting model misalignment, and the cases shouldn’t be considered reflective of how often misalignment occurs across its models. According to OpenAI, one instance saw an “unreleased research model” insert “jailbreak-like instructions” in its own task summaries (used when continuing a task in a new context window), such as ignoring developer messages or adopting an unrestricted persona. Researchers found 27 summaries containing such instructions. OpenAI also disclosed that during the training of GPT-5.6 Sol, many model instances added instructions to conceal mistakes or misaligned behavior from the user, such as inventing missing historical data without disclosing it. “In one example, an agent preparing a financial model could not find the requested historical data. Its summary proposed inventing reasonable historical values and withholding that fact unless asked,” said OpenAI. Related: AI has been a ‘net negative’ for crypto: Phemex CEOIn another case, an AI model was asked for the names of lakes larger than 5 million square meters, but because the user’s instructions required a browser citation, the agent decided to upload the file to cite it in its answer. Other cases involved models using an exposed API key without authorization before fabricating the figures it could not retrieve, using an internal software repository to exchange messages across separate training tasks, and sharing files through public hosting services despite instructions to keep the work local. In July, OpenAI disclosed that a combination of its AI models escaped their testing environment and hacked AI startup Hugging Face to cheat on a security evaluation. Magazine: Why are AI’s biggest companies suddenly asking to slow down?

US lawmakers took a step on Wednesday to put US President Donald Trump’s executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve into law. The American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 (H.R. 8957) passed the US House Committee on Financial Services in a 28-21 vote. The bill would establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate Digital Asset Stockpile within the Department of the Treasury for federally held Bitcoin and other digital assets acquired through criminal or civil forfeiture.“We cannot allow Bitcoin to be held by the federal government to languish in fragmented and inconsistent custody,” said US Representative Nicholas Begich, who introduced the bill on May 21. “It poses unacceptable cybersecurity risks and fails to give an adequate accounting of what the federal government actually owns.” The move brings Washington closer to making Bitcoin a lasting part of the federal government’s reserves.Related: CLARITY Act vote meets Fed rate hike: Five things to know in Bitcoin this weekThe US government is estimated to hold 324,527 Bitcoin, worth $24.7 billion at the time of writing, according to Arkham Intelligence. Under ARMA, Bitcoin in the federal government’s reserve would have to be held for a minimum of 20 years.The legislation requires all federal agencies to provide a full accounting of digital assets currently held or controlled by the federal government and establishes transparency measures, including quarterly “proof of reserve” reports and third-party audits. It would also direct a study of budget-neutral acquisition strategies for expanding the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and allow states to store their Bitcoin in the Federal Reserve.The bill also affirms private ownership and self-custody rights of Bitcoin, describing the control of private keys as “fundamental to the principles of financial sovereignty, privacy, and personal liberty in the digital age.” Bitcoin Policy Institute executive director Connor Brown on Wednesday called it a “genuinely historic step for Bitcoin policy.”In May, Strive CEO Matt Cole called it “the single most important crypto legislation that can come out of DC.” The committee’s approval clears a hurdle for the legislation, but it still needs to pass the full House and Senate before reaching the president’s desk. Magazine: Revolut ID thefts highlight KYC’s dangers: Here’s how to fix it

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