Author: Coindesk
U.S. law enforcement agencies seized almost $30 million worth of crypto related to NetWalker ransomware in January 2021, according to blockchain research firm Chainalysis. The seizure is the largest ever related to ransomware, Chainalysis said. Law enforcers seized just under 720 bitcoins and 15.7 monero (XMR), equating to over $29.4 million at today’s prices. NetWalker attackers extorted tens of millions of dollars from businesses and governments in 2020, burrowing into and encrypting victims’ computer networks. It followed a ransomware-as-a-service model whereby individual hackers conducted the attacks and then shared the profits with NetWalker. One such hacker was Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins whom Chainalysis said had netted…
Fidelity International is listing its first bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) on the Deutsche Börse in Frankfurt and SIX Swiss Exchange in Zurich. The Physical Bitcoin ETP tracks the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value and is being made available to Fidelity International’s professional and institutional clients in Europe. Fidelity Digital Assets will act as the product’s custodian. The ETP lists on the Deutsche Börse Xetra today and will become available on the SIX Swiss Exchange in the coming weeks, Fidelity International said in an email Tuesday. Trading under the ticker FBTC, the ETP will charge a fee…
When is DeFi truly decentralized? That question could soon be at the center of an SEC investigation. One of the strangest stories in the history of decentralized finance (DeFi) may soon also count among the most legally significant, experts told CoinDesk in a series of interviews. According to multiple legal professionals, recent events could provide the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other agencies a long-awaited foothold in the largely unregulated, $211 billion DeFi sector. In late January, noted on-chain sleuth ZachXBT revealed that the treasury manager for Wonderland, a popular DeFi protocol, was in fact Michael Patryn, a convicted felon and the…
All of South Korea’s presidential candidates have announced crypto-friendly stances in a bid to win over young voters ahead of the election next month. Real estate is the biggest issue on voters’ minds in South Korea now as young people under the age of 24 earn salaries of around KRW 2.6 million (US$2,176) a month, face expensive Seoul rent and have no hope of buying an apartment. Many of them have turned to stocks and crypto. According to Edward Hong, head of platform at crypto venture capital firm Hashed, there are more than 5 million individual crypto accounts across the country’s top…
If it somehow feels as if cryptocurrency markets are relatively quiet, that’s because they are. That is, trading volumes as a percentage of market cap in many of the major cryptocurrencies are lower compared with previous months. The end result is that it may take smaller amounts of capital to move the markets wildly. Just a year ago — Feb. 13, 2021 — bitcoin was trading at around $47,000. The day’s trading volume on centralized and decentralized exchanges taken together was nearly $62 billion and the market cap was just shy of $840 billion, according to data from CoinGecko. Thus,…
Wyoming-based crypto bank Avanti is one step closer to potentially acquiring a master account with the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank. Avanti Bank now has a routing number issued by the American Bankers Association (ABA), a key milestone in the process to receive a Fed account. Routing numbers are used to identify banks for checks and other transactional purposes, and are only issued to federal or state-chartered financial institutions that are also eligible to have a Fed account, according to the ABA’s website. CoinDesk confirmed that a routing number was issued on the ABA website. An ABA spokesperson did not immediately…
Ratings agency Fitch has downgraded El Salvador’s long term foreign currency issuer default rating (IDR) to ‘CCC’ from ‘B-’ weeks before the country starts issuing its bitcoin bond. The downgrade reflects “heightened risk stemming from increased reliance on short-term debt, limited scope for additional local market financing, uncertain access to additional multilateral funding and external market financing given high borrowing costs” Fitch said in a report on Wednesday. The South American nation faces close to $1.2 billion in external debt amortizations in 2023, with $800 million due in January, Fitch noted. Fitch also said that the country faces a financing gap…
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is preparing to offer a cryptocurrency trading service to its investor clients, according to three people with knowledge of the plans. The New York-based company, which manages over $10 trillion in assets for institutions, plans to enter the cryptocurrency space with “client support trading and then with their own credit facility,” one of the people said. In other words, clients would be able to borrow from BlackRock by pledging crypto assets as collateral. One of the people said BlackRock will allow its clients – which include public pension schemes, endowments and sovereign wealth funds – to…
Canadian crypto trading platform Newton has raised a $20 million Series B funding round at a valuation of around $200 million. The Series B was led by partners from DV Chain, Newton said on Wednesday. Asset manager CI Financial also participated in the round, along with Singh Capital Partners, Anthony Pompliano, Tiny Capital and Snowdevil Capital (founded by Shopify co-founder Tobias Lutke). Newton is a crypto platform that offers over 60 crypto assets to traders in Canada. It has filed an application for registration as a restricted dealer with the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) and the securities regulatory authorities in…
If recent headlines are to be taken at face value, the European Union (EU) could be on its way to banning crypto mining because of energy concerns. The call for a ban on crypto mining across the EU’s 27 member nations is mainly coming from regulators in Sweden, who are concerned about renewable energy being used to mine cryptocurrencies like bitcoin instead of being channeled for public use. Politicians in Germany, Spain and Norway are supporting the call. On Thursday, EU Parliament member Stefan Berger, who is responsible for the upcoming regulatory package for controlling crypto assets in the union, called a potential ban…