Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, August 28th, and today we are talking about an update in the case of Binance executive Tigran Gambarian, who has been detained in Nigeria for six months.

Before we get into that, however, if you're enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation,

come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.L.Y slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, attention is building around the case of Binance

compliance officer Tigrin Gambarian, who has been locked up in Nigeria for, like I said,

six months at this point. Gambarian is facing money laundering charges not because of his personal actions, but rather

due to the general conduct of his employer in the African nation.

His trial is set to commence next week after his lawyer's petitioned for an expedited hearing.

If you haven't been following this story, here's a quick recap to get you up to speed.

Since mid-20203, the Nigerian

Naira suffered a series of steep devaluations, losing over 70% of its value against the US dollar.

The most recent devaluation occurred in January, with the government pinning the blame squarely

on Binance facilitating currency manipulators. At the time, Binance hosted a thriving peer-to-peer

trading network in Nigeria.

The platform was processing a ton of foreign exchange volume alongside their crypto trading.

The allegations went a step further, however, alleging that fake orders were used to crash the value

of the currency. Leaving aside the veracity of those allegations, Teigran Gambarian was sent to

Nigeria in February to hold high-level meetings with

the government. Now, keep in mind that prior to becoming a top compliance officer with Binance,

Gambarian had a storied career as an IRS investigator. He was pivotal in the investigations

into dark web activity in the mid-2010s, and pioneered many of the forensic blockchain

...