Month: January 2023

Philippine Authorities Rescue Alleged Victims of ‘Crypto Trafficking Ring’ – Featured Bitcoin News

boss

Philippine authorities say that they have rescued alleged victims of a “crypto trafficking ring” who were recruited to work in a call center in Cambodia and scam people out of their cryptocurrencies. The authorities are also investigating government employees who may have assisted crypto trafficking syndicates. Alleged Victims of ‘Crypto Trafficking Ring’ Rescued The Philippine Bureau of Immigration (BI)’s travel control and enforcement unit (TCEU) announced Friday that it has rescued six alleged victims of a “cryptocurrency trafficking ring,” the Philippine government-owned news agency reported. Bureau of Immigration Commissioner Norman…

Binance Says Signature Bank Won’t Support Transactions for Crypto Exchange Customers of Less Than $100K

Nearly a quarter of the New York-based bank’s $103 billion in total deposits, or roughly 23.5%, came from the crypto industry as of September 2022. But given the recent “issues” in the space, Signature will reduce that amount to under 20% and potentially under 15% eventually, Signature CEO DePaolo said at a New York conference hosted by investment bank Goldman Sachs. Source

Former SEC chief blasts ‘bogus’ catchphrase: ‘Regulation by Enforcement’

boss

A former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official has slammed “cryptocurrency lobbyists” for labeling SEC enforcement actions as “regulation by enforcement” — calling the term a “Bogus Big Crypto Catch Phrase.” John Reed Stark, a former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission Office of Internet Enforcement and a crypto skeptic, opined in a Jan. 22 post that the argument is “sorely misguided” as it was just how securities regulations worked. “Litigation and SEC enforcement are actually how securities regulation works,” he argued. “The flexibility of SEC statutory weaponry is an…

Bitcoin Bulls Keeps Pushing, Why BTC Price Increase Isn’t Over Yet

Bitcoin price gained pace and traded above $23,000. BTC is consolidating gains and might start another increase towards $23,500. Bitcoin traded to a new yearly high at $23,428 before it started a downside correction. The price is trading above $22,000 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. There is a major bullish trend line forming with support near $22,000 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken). The pair could start a fresh increase if it stays above the $22,000 support zone. Bitcoin Price Eyes Additional…

Vitalik Buterin divulges the ‘largest remaining challenge’ in Ethereum

boss

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared a possible solution to what he describes as the “largest remaining challenge” on Ethereum — privacy. In a blog post on Jan. 20, Buterin acknowledged the need to come up with a privacy solution because by default, all information that goes onto a “public blockchain” is public too. He then arrived at the concept of “stealth addresses” — which he said can potentially anonymize peer-to-peer transactions, nonfungible token (NFT) transfers, and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) registrations, protecting users.  An incomplete guide to stealth addresses:https://t.co/21Q18BrD30…

Chinese blockchain firm launches the ‘SWIFT’ of stablecoins and CBDCs at Davos

A Hong Kong-based blockchain company has launched a digital payments system aimed at bridging the gap between stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Red Date Technology, the blockchain infrastructure firm which is also leading one of China’s blockchain efforts, launched the Universal Digital Payment Network (UDPN) on Jan. 19 during the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 meeting in Davos, Switzerland. According to its whitepaper, the UDPN is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform that would serve a similar purpose to what the SWIFT network does for banks, but for stablecoins…

FBI Seizes Bitcoin From Overseas Scammers Who Posed as US Law Enforcement Officials – Featured Bitcoin News

boss

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says it has seized bitcoin worth millions of dollars from overseas scammers targeting the elderly. The scammers posed as members of U.S. law enforcement agencies and tricked the victims into transferring money to them for “safekeeping.” FBI Says It Has Seized Bitcoin From Scammers Overseas The U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut and the Acting Special Agent in Charge of the New Haven Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced Friday that bitcoin and other digital assets have been seized in…

Bitcoin Surges Past $23K Before Retreating

The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading above $22,750, roughly flat for the last 24 hours but up more than 8% during the past week. Bitcoin has risen roughly 37% this year as investors dismiss various crypto industry headwinds, most recently Genesis Global Holdco LLC filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, although in an email to CoinDesk, Joe DiPasquale, CEO of crypto fund manager BitBull Capital, said that the rise was typical for first quarters and noted “a long consolidation period that saw shorts accumlating.” Source