Bitcoin Holds $76.8K as Ponzi Boss Gets 9 Years, Bernstein Backs Miners on AI Boom

Bitcoin News

An Ohio investment manager has been handed a nine-year federal prison sentence for orchestrating a $10 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that exploited investor appetite for Bitcoin derivatives trading. Rathnakishore Giri, 31, of New Albany, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in October 2024 after promising clients guaranteed returns and instead recycling new deposits to pay off earlier victims. Prosecutors documented a calculated facade of success, with Giri flaunting two Lamborghinis, a Tesla, an Audi R8, luxury watches, and private jet travel to convince marks he was a legitimate trader. He also received three years of supervised release on top of the prison term.

Even after admitting guilt, Giri continued soliciting fresh victims while awaiting sentencing on pretrial release, compounding harm well beyond the original scheme. The case lands amid a sharp escalation in U.S. crypto fraud losses, which exceeded $11 billion in 2025, a 22% jump from the prior year. Federal authorities have ramped up prosecutions, with recent outcomes including 16 months for two Estonian nationals tied to the $577 million HashFlare scheme and wire fraud charges against the former chief executive of Goliath Ventures over a $328 million scam. The wave of enforcement signals tighter scrutiny of unregulated investment vehicles marketed through crypto exchange channels.

On the civil litigation front, Prime Trust's post-bankruptcy trust has filed suit against Swan Bitcoin, accusing the firm of leveraging insider access to evacuate nearly $1 billion in customer assets in the days before the custodian's August 2023 collapse. Court filings allege Electric Solidus, Swan's corporate parent, received over $24.6 million in cash, 11,994 BTC worth roughly $923 million at current prices, around 5 million USDT, and smaller balances of other digital assets recorded on public blockchain ledgers. The Delaware bankruptcy court complaint frames the transfers as preferential, asserting Swan's leadership knew Prime Trust was insolvent and pulled funds ahead of customers left holding losses.

Central to the complaint is an unnamed senior Prime Trust executive who simultaneously served as a paid Swan adviser through a side arrangement dating back to July 2019. Four days before Prime Trust met Nevada regulators on May 26, 2023, that executive allegedly opened an encrypted chat with Swan chief executive Cory Klippsten using messages set to auto-delete every 24 hours, a setting flipped off the day after the meeting. Swan then withdrew more than 10,000 BTC from the custodian. The filing further claims internal staff hastily created a ledger labeled "PT FBO Swan Customers" to retroactively make the assets appear segregated and shielded from clawback in bankruptcy.

On the equities side, Bernstein analysts have laid out a constructive case for Bitcoin miners pivoting into artificial intelligence infrastructure, issuing Outperform ratings on IREN, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific while keeping MARA Holdings at Market Perform. Implied upside from Monday's close ranges from 7.8% on Riot to 98.1% on IREN, with CleanSpark at 78.5% and MARA at 88.8% despite the neutral stance. The thesis, framed under the slogan "Follow the Gigawatts," positions miners as the most credible near-term suppliers of grid-connected power to hyperscalers, neoclouds, and chip vendors racing to scale generative AI capacity at industrial volumes.

Bernstein tallies more than $90 billion in announced AI infrastructure deals covering roughly 3.7 gigawatts of compute capacity, against a backdrop where securing a single gigawatt of fresh power can take close to 50 months in constrained U.S. markets including Texas. Miners collectively control north of 27 gigawatts of planned capacity, the note adds, anchoring deals such as IREN's 5-gigawatt buildout using Nvidia's AI factory architecture and a separate $3.4 billion cloud agreement, plus Riot's 50-megawatt co-location with AMD with optionality to 200 megawatts. Permitting bottlenecks, interconnection queues, and environmental scrutiny remain the dominant risks to that bullish framing.

Spot Bitcoin trades around $76,857, essentially flat on the session with a 24-hour change near zero and roughly $20.1 billion in turnover against a $1.54 trillion market cap. Price is wedged just below immediate resistance at $77,919 and pivoting on first support at $76,885, with deeper supports at $75,047 and $72,673 if sellers regain control. RSI at 45.26 sits in neutral territory but tilts soft, mirroring the negative MACD signal and a broadly sideways trend. A reclaim of $79,427 would open the path to $82,721; a daily candlestick close below $75,047 would invalidate the setup and risk extending consolidation into bear-market territory.