Category: Crypto

On Aug. 15, crypto compliance and research firm Chainalysis released the first part of its 2024 crypto crime report. The firm revealed that aggregate illicit activity on-chain has dropped by 19.6% year-to-date, down from $20.9 billion to $16.7 billion. It added that this demonstrates “that legitimate activity is growing more quickly than illicit activity.” Part 1 of our mid-year #cryptocrime update is here! Illicit on-chain activity dropped by nearly 20% YTD, but stolen fund activity is surging and ransomware payments are breaking records. Read our blog for a detailed analysis.…

Former Yuga Labs creative director for Bored Apes Yacht Club Jeff Nicholas will be joining Meta’s Reality Labs as an executive producer for mixed reality entertainment experiences. Nicholas announced the move on X and LinkedIn, stating that he’ll begin his new position in September. Source: Jeff Nicholas. He also added that he’d be working specifically on virtual reality products: “And I’m equally excited to dive back into VR with the amazing team at Meta Reality Labs as we explore the future of entertainment experiences.” Big tech Judging by Nicholas’ LinkedIn…

Bitcoin’s price is consolidating in a tight range as market participants are uncertain about the future direction of the price. Technical Analysis By TradingRage The Daily Chart On the daily chart, the price has recently rebounded from the $50K area, following the significant drop below the 200-day moving average. Currently, the market is consolidating below the moving average, which is located around the $63K mark, failing to climb back above. Meanwhile, the $56K support level currently holds the market, preventing the price from dropping further. Therefore, a breakout from either…

An analyst has claimed that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s significant increase in indirect Bitcoin exposure, now valued at over $144 million, may not have been a deliberate strategy. “The growth likely originates from pre-determined algo-based sector weighting and risk diversification, it’s unlikely to stem from an intentional choice to amass exposure,” K33 Research senior analyst Vetle Lunde explained in an Aug. 14 X post, following the release of the fund’s first half of 2024 financial report. Deliberate Bitcoin exposure would be more obvious Lunde explained that if it were…

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has released information regarding North Korean developers who allegedly stole $1.3 million from a project’s treasury. The theft was carried out when the devs, who had been hired using fake identities, injected malicious code into the system, which allowed the unauthorized transfer of funds. ZachXBT Uncovers Crypto Workers Scheme ZachXBT explained on X that the stolen funds were initially sent to a theft address and bridged from Solana to Ethereum through the deBridge platform. The funds, 50.2 ETH, were deposited into Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer that…

Lawyers representing Roman Sterlingov, the founder of cryptocurrency mixer Bitcoin Fog, have argued against a “lengthy” sentence following his conviction on money laundering charges. In an Aug. 15 filing in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Sterlingov’s legal team did not seem to make a specific sentencing recommendation in response to prosecutors’ petition he should serve between 20 and 30 years in prison. Lawyers for the Bitcoin Fog founder claimed that the government’s recommendations were “unwarranted” based on sentencing in comparable cases. Source: Courtlistener In March,…

Gas fees on the Ethereum network have been declining since March 2024, but last week, they hit a level not seen in the past five years. Data on the crypto analytics platform Dune shows that the median Ethereum gas fee fell below 2 gwei last week for the first time since 2020. Median Ethereum Fees Plummet Since August 3, the median Ethereum gas fee has been falling below 2 gwei. Although the figure has recorded subsequent spikes, those upticks have only been momentary as the fees eventually return below 10…

The need for seamless asset transfers across different networks has long challenged the blockchain landscape. The BitTorrent Chain (BTTC) attempts to provide a scalable, high-throughput, and low-fee interoperability layer between Tron and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-based chains. Cointelegraph Research recently released a report that explores BTTC as an interoperability layer and surveys the broader BitTorrent ecosystem. BitTorrent’s evolution: From P2P file sharing to blockchain innovation Launched in 2001, BitTorrent was a game-changer in the world of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and accounted for one-third of all internet traffic within a…

TL;DR Ripple was fined $125 million by the SEC, significantly less than the initial $2 billion demand. The company sees this as a victory, confident even if the regulator appeals. What Could be Next? The legal battle between Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which dates back to late 2020, recently witnessed a major development. This happened at the start of August, when Judge Torres ruled that the company must pay a $125 million fine for violating certain securities laws. The sum represents a 94% deduction from…

The creators of the Bitcoin scaling solution Bitcoin Virtual Machine (BitVM) have floated the second iteration of their sidechain, dubbed “BitVM2,” and the BitVM Bridge, which they say now offers “major improvements” to the original system.  In an Aug. 15 post to X, BitVM co-founder Alexei Zamyatin shared an overview of a new whitepaper that introduces a new framework for how BitVM2 and the BitVM Bridge would function. ZeroSync project lead and BitVM creator Robin Linus first unveiled BitVM in October last year in a bid to bring off-chain smart…