From the erratic ups and downs in bitcoin and ethereum value, to the explosion in initial coin offerings, and the unstoppable demand for mining-ready GPUs, cryptocurrency has become an inescapable story. It’s also become increasingly difficult to make sense of — as the industry expands, new currencies sprout up, and companies form overnight. Check here for the complete coverage of bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, monero, Venezuela’s petro, cryptocurrencies at large, and the ways that ICOs and the underlying blockchain technology are helping shape a burgeoning industry and giving life to a new wave of startups and entrepreneurs.
Alexander Vinnik co-founded BTC-e, a now-shuttered Bitcoin exchange that criminals used to launder funds from ransomware attacks, drug trafficking, and other crimes. Vinnik was arrested in 2017 and pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2024.
Now he’s set to return to Russia after President Trump agreed to release him in exchange for US teacher Marc Fogel, according to The New York Times.
Binance and the SEC asked a judge to pause their legal battle for 60 days, saying the Trump administration’s new crypto task force “may impact and facilitate the potential resolution of this case.” The SEC sued Binance in 2023 over claims it operated an illegal exchange.
FDIC Acting Chairman Travis Hill has released dozens of documents that he says show how banks were “almost universally met with resistance” when making crypto-related requests. He added that the FDIC’s response “sent the message to banks that it would be extraordinarily difficult — if not impossible — to move forward” in the crypto space.
Though Hollywood’s newfound obsession with making horror movies revolving around killer consumer tech is getting a little tired, Cold Wallet — director Cutter Hodierne’s new thriller about a group of armed Redditors looking for revenge after losing everything in a crypto scam — looks pretty legit. The movie hits theaters and digital platforms of February 28th.
Trump Media is launching Truth.Fi as part of its “financial services and financial technology strategy,” but there still aren’t many details about what it will actually do. The company also plans to invest $250 million into customized exchange-traded funds, along with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
This comes just one day after Elon Musk’s X announced that it’s partnering with Visa to launch its X Money service this year.
Brazil’s ANPD found on Friday that Altman’s biometric data-collecting project may interfere with Brazilians’ ability to freely consent to having their biometric data processed by offering crypto in exchange for the scans, according to a Reuters report syndicated at The Economic Times.
From the announcement, using Google Translate:
...consent for the processing of sensitive personal data, such as biometric data, must be free, informed, unequivocal and provided in a specific and highlighted manner, for specific purposes.
New executive order just dropped from the crypto-owned administration. A fun little committee will decide if we should have a strategic crypto reserve. Also, the government should make it easier for crypto companies to get bank accounts — because that ended so well last time.
Something tells me he’s not going to divest himself of it.
Melania’s “Official Meme” coin debuted this afternoon, a day after Trump launched his own cryptocurrency. An appended community note warns, “buying this token is incredibly risky and will likely result in the loss of funds.”
Around the same time, Trump’s coin fell by 36 percent, according to Axios. Bitcoin exceeded $108k for a new record early Monday morning.
Update: Added Bitcoin record.
A federal grand jury indicted three Russian nationals for allegedly running Blender.io and Sinbad.io — two crypto-mixing services that make it harder to trace transactions on the blockchain.
The US already sanctioned Blender.io and seized Sinbad.io for helping the North Korean hacking group Lazarus launder millions in stolen crypto.
You wanna go down a rabbit hole? The corporate structure alone is bizarre:
Why would a Cayman Islands–registered metaverse company use a proxy to establish first an Ohio subsidiary and then a boutique record label, and then have the record label strike up a concert deal with a different subsidiary, located on an entirely different continent?
The farther you go, the more questions you have.
Kwon has been extradited to this US to face fraud charges. The charges contain a description of the overlapping network of allegedly fraudulent entities Kwon juggled before Terra / Luna came crashing to Earth.
If the phrase “Hawk Tuah girl” means nothing to you, I urge you to continue in blissful ignorance. If “Hawk Tuah shitcoin scam” resonates, you’ll enjoy Katie Baker’s rundown of what, exactly, happened.
[www.theringer.com]
Welch said as much in a post on Friday, breaking a two-week silence after she abruptly signed off an X Spaces event to address investor concerns over the abrupt implosion of her newly launched Hawk Tuah-themed meme coin, according to Rolling Stone.
Burwick Law, which filed the suit, said in a statement it’s accusing her partners of securities violations and using her fame to take advantage of investors.
Tether, one of crypto’s longstanding mysteries, is dropping more than three-quarters of a billion dollars on Rumble, the far-right video sharing platform. Do click through for the statements from both companies’ CEOs, which definitely sound like normal human speech.
As a longtime admirer of CoinDesk’s journalism and ethos, I was disgusted that their new owners, Bullish — more like Bullshit, am I right? — pulled a story about Justin Sun. Now top editorial staff have been fired.
Someone has, for some reason, launched a campaign on Enron.com claiming a “bold new vision.” However, as many have pointed out, the site’s TOS identifies its information “first amendment protected parody,” in addition to what Sean O’Kane points out about its crypto / merch pitch.
The controversial head of the SEC was targeted by Donald Trump during Trump’s presidential campaign. It is customary for the SEC chair to resign when a president from the other party is elected. That cheering you hear? It’s the crypto lobby.
During trial, prosecutors pressed Wang for creating code that allowed Alameda to have a negative balance in FTX’s database.
But the prosecution ultimately advocated for Wang during his sentencing on Wednesday, citing his cooperation in deciphering the FTX case, along with his work to create a tool to help the government to detect fraud, CNBC reports.
A new tidbit about the prediction markets startup from last week’s issue of Command Line:
Coplan recently raised, but has yet to announce, a $30 million round of funding at a $350 million valuation. And in recent conversations with investors (a surprising number of whom passed on the round, which was less than Coplan hoped to raise), I’m told he was noncommittal about whether the company would work to get the Commodity Futures Trading Commission license it needs to operate in the US.
