U.S. prosecutors indicated a Dutch national Thursday for allegedly spearheading a rape and child pornography website that’s made over $1.6 million worth of bitcoin selling videos since 2012. Known as “Michael R.M.,” and “Mr. Dark,” the man allegedly ran a site called “DarkScandals” that operated on the darknet, which requires special software to access, and

Bitcoin (BTC) suffered its biggest drop in seven years, as fears over the spreading coronavirus triggered a new wave of selling in everything from stocks and junk bonds to cryptocurrencies. This came despite a new European Central Bank pledge to pump more cash into panicky markets.   Prices for the largest cryptocurrency by market value plunged

The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is asking investors to watch out for coronavirus-related crypto scams. In a March 11 warning to the public, FCA, the U.K’s top financial regulator, said scammers may attempt to take advantage of the fast-spiraling global pandemic, which has infected some 460 U.K. residents and killed eight. “Watch out

Washington state resident Kenneth Warren Rhule has been charged with laundering over $140,000 in bitcoin after agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) made a series of undercover cash-for-crypto deals with the 26-year-old. Rhule faces multiple counts of operating an unlicensed bitcoin money transmitter business and laundering monetary instruments after allegedly meeting with government agents “posing

Kadena CEO Will Martino had already been considering abandoning his blockchain development company’s Brooklyn HQ before coronavirus came to New York City. The fast-spreading virus, however, recently convinced him the office had to go. On Feb. 21, he told his team to begin working from home. The New York Metropolitan area’s surging coronavirus count is

Cryptocurrency scams in 2019 were more risky for U.S. residents than fraud involving romance or payments. That’s the conclusion of a report released last week by the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a nonprofit organization focused on marketplace trust. The report found an average dollar loss in crypto-focused fraud of $3,000 for victims aged between 25

The Silicon Valley crypto startup cLabs, focused on mobile payments and the Celo blockchain project, is following another precedent from Facebook’s Libra playbook by launching an industry association through a separate Celo Foundation. Dozens of blockchain companies and investors – including Libra Association members Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, Bison Trails and Anchorage – are committing to

The fifth anti-money laundering directive (AMLD5) has unexpectedly increased institutional interest in cryptocurrencies, according to an executive at the crypto trading subsidiary of Boerse Stuttgart. Speaking at the CryptoCompare London conference Tuesday, Boerse Stuttgart’s chief digital officer, Dr. Ulli Spankowski, admitted he had been “surprised” by the positive effect 5AMLD had on attracting traditional financial

Cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb is clamping down on suspicious transactions less than a week after South Korea, its home country, moved to enact tough new laws for the virtual asset space. Bithumb announced Tuesday it had deployed Chainalysis’ “Reactor” investigations tool to get ahead of illicit activity. Reactor, used in many cryptocurrency law enforcement actions, will

Monday’s historic financial tumult reached beyond stocks, sinking commodities and even bitcoin markets. “I don’t think any asset is safe right now – except cash, U.S. dollars,” said Ali Khedery, formerly Exxon’s senior Middle East advisor and now CEO of U.S.-based strategy firm Dragoman Ventures. While bitcoin prices dropped nearly 10 percent over the weekend,

DISH Network, a major U.S. television services provider, and Kin, the payments platform built by Kik, are reportedly looking to tap up-and-coming Solana as the basis for their blockchain networks. According to a Solana pitch deck seen by CoinDesk, which indicates the company is looking to raise at least $2 and potentially up to $12

GrainChain, a commodities tracing platform that uses smart contracts to open up liquidity for low-income farmers, has raised $8.2 million in its latest funding round, the company announced Friday. Luis Macias said the money will bolster GrainChain’s burgeoning operations in Mexico, Honduras and the southwest United States. “This funding is really going to allow us

Blockchain might help major apparel brands from Nike to Macy’s better share product data across the retail supply chain, according to a white paper Auburn University’s RFID Lab published Wednesday. The study, named the “Chain Integration Project” (CHIP), saw those retailers and others run Hyperledger Fabric nodes on a slice of their mammoth supply chains.

Unstoppable Domains, a censorship-resistant web developer, has released a Google Chrome extension in its bid to open up web 3.0. The extension will give users access to .crypto domain names directly from the Chrome browser, currently the most-used web browser. Developed by Unstoppable Domains, .crypto domains are smart contracts on the Ethereum network, meaning to

Crypto software firm Zabo, which claims it can connect bank accounts directly to cryptocurrency wallets, raised $2.5 million to build out its engineering team and add new customers. The Dallas-based firm announced Thursday it had successfully completed a funding round, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, the Tezos Foundation, CoinShares and Digital Currency Group. The

BitGo, one of the largest and oldest custodians for digital assets, is joining the fast-growing business of lending out bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to big investors. The Palo Alto-based company announced Thursday it is now offering institutional digital asset lending services.  Founded in 2013 by CEO Mike Belshe, BitGo started testing the new service a

Beijing-based cryptocurrency lending startup Babel Finance said it has reached a record of $380 million in outstanding loans as of February. Flex Yang, co-founder of Babel Finance, said on Thursday the firm’s outstanding loans have grown from $52 million-worth of USDT as of Q1 2019 to $289 million as of the end of last year,

Hours before the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) also cut interest rates in hopes of curbing market reaction to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. In a meeting held on March 3, the RBA announced it would be cutting the cash rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 0.50 percent, its lowest on

As we all look ahead to Consensus 2020 and Blockchain Week NYC, we wanted to share the following updates with you regarding the recent spread of the COVID-19 virus.  As of today, CoinDesk is moving forward as planned with Consensus 2020 and Blockchain Week NYC, but we will be monitoring the situation on a daily

The Supreme Court of India has ruled against a decision imposed by the country’s central bank nearly two years ago that curbed crypto trading in Asia’s third-largest economy. According to a report from Bloomberg, a three-judge bench of the court ruled on Wednesday in favor of petitions by crypto exchanges and startups that opposed the

The computer processing power of the bitcoin network is growing again – albeit slowly – as major Chinese miner manufacturers gradually resume business after the coronavirus outbreak delayed shipments. The average hashing power on bitcoin (BTC) over the past seven days has reached a new high of around 117.5 exahashes per second (EH/s), up 5.4

Binance has launched a direct channel integration with a Turkish bank, providing clients with a gateway enabling seamless transfers between fiat currencies and digital assets. Binance said Monday that its new integration with Istanbul-based Akbank, its first-ever direct link with a bank, will allow users to seamlessly deposit Turkish lira into their exchange accounts and

Alameda Research, the owner of the Binance-backed derivatives exchange FTX, has invested more than $1 million into crypto quant trading firm Folkvang – which is one of Alameda’s competitors. Alameda confirmed Monday it had made a seven-figure investment into Folkvang, a new quant trading and liquidity provider based in Hong Kong. The first from an

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control has added 20 new bitcoin addresses associated with two individuals to its list of sanctioned individuals. According to an update to OFAC’s “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDN) list, Jiadong Li and Yinyin Tian are accused of being linked to the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime group possibly affiliated

U.S. stocks continue to reel over coronavirus-related fears, and investors are increasingly betting the Federal Reserve will slash interest rates to stabilize the economy and markets. But whether those investors turn to bitcoin (BTC) as a crisis hedge remains to be seen. Such action by the Fed could, in theory, help bitcoin prices since lower

Decentralized derivatives exchange Digitex has fallen victim to a significant data breach believed to have exposed the email addresses and possibly other information of more than 8,000 users. A former employee stole private information for more than 8,000 users, Christina Comben, who heads Digitex’s communications, said Friday. Comben told CoinDesk the exchange was “aware of

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business is set to discuss the benefits blockchain technology can bring to entrepreneurs. Slated for March 4 at 16:30 UTC, the “Building Blocks of Change: The Benefits of Blockchain Technology for Small Businesses” hearing will explore the ways in which some startups are utilizing blockchain technology to

Coinhako, a cryptocurrency exchange backed by Tim Draper, has restricted user withdrawals after falling victim to a “sophisticated attack.” The Singapore-based exchange told users Friday that account send functions for cryptocurrencies had been temporarily disabled. Although a spokesperson initially said this was for “network maintenance”, the exchange admitted Saturday it had been victim to an

An Iranian general is reportedly calling for the use of cryptocurrency to evade sanctions. Saeed Muhammad, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ “Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution” (or Sepâh for short), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, said in a speech Wednesday that Iran should look to cryptocurrencies to bolster international

The crypto industry is taking aim at one of Wall Street’s oldest redoubts: investing in the $17 trillion market for U.S. Treasury bonds.  Arca Funds, a Los Angeles-based money manager specializing in cryptocurrencies, wants to create a fund to buy U.S. Treasury bonds and then use them to back a digital token created atop the