The FBI arrested a husband and wife on Tuesday morning, alleging they conspired to launder cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hack of virtual currency exchange Bitfinex, and said law enforcement has already seized over $3.6bn in cryptocurrency tied to the hack. The action represents the United States Department of Justice’s largest-ever financial seizure, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said, adding in a statement that it shows cryptocurrency is “not a safe haven for criminals”. Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, both of Manhattan, are scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court Tuesday at 3pm (20:00 GMT) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The case was filed in a federal court in Washington, DC. The pair is accused of conspiring to launder 119,754 Bitcoin that was stolen after a hacker attacked Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,0000 unauthorised transactions. Justice Department officials said the transactions at the time were valued at $71m in Bitcoin, but with the rise in the currency’s value, it is now valued at over $4.5bn. “As the complaint alleges, the FBI and federal prosecutors were able to trace the movement of Bitcoin from this hack,” said Matthew Graves, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. He added that the money moved through a major darknet exchange tied to a host of crimes, as well as cryptocurrency addresses tied to child sexual abuse materials. Tuesday’s criminal complaint came more than four months after Monaco announced the department […]

Bitcoin rose for a fifth consecutive day, the longest winning streak since September, as investors begin to re-embrace risk assets across global markets. The largest cryptocurrency by market value gained as much as 5.8% to $44,110. XRP jumped as much as 17% to around 78 cents as so-called alt coins rallied more. Shiba Inu led memecoins higher, surging around 50% to around 0.000034 cents, according to CoinMarketCap. Global markets have been whipsawed in recent weeks as investors contemplate the prospects of rapid monetary tightening. After reaching a record high of almost $69,000 in early November, Bitcoin lost as much as 50% of its value in what has been called a “crypto winter.” The break above $43,000 could cause the current up move to target toward the $45,000 level, according to Nathan Batchelor, lead Bitcoin analyst for SIMETRI Research. “People are starting to feel a little more comfortable dipping their toes back into some of these riskier asset classes after the pullback,” Lindsey Bell, chief markets and money strategist at Ally Financial Inc., said. However, Bell says the market in general isn’t necessarily out of the water yet with lingering uncertainty on multiple fronts, including the speed at which the Federal Reserve and central banks could act to quell rising inflation. A strengthening relationship between Bitcoin and the stock indices has emerged in recent months, particularly with the technology heavy Nasdaq 100 index. The correlation between the Nasdaq and Bitcoin currently stands at 0.43. Gritt Trakulhoon, an investment analyst at Titan […]

Bitcoin gained the most in more than three months as investors show signs of renewed risk appetite following a volatile week across financial markets. The largest cryptocurrency by market value jumped as much as 9.4% to $40,426, the most since Oct. 15. It hasn’t been above $40,000 in more than two weeks. Ether climbed as much as 11%. Even SOL, the native currency of the Solana blockchain that has tumbled in the wake of the Wormhole project hack, surged about 10%. The top cryptocurrencies began to rally in overnight trading after strong earnings from Amazon.com Inc. bolstered confidence in technology stocks, which digital tokens have largely tracked over the past months. Meanwhile, a report showed U.S. employers extended a hiring spree last month despite a record spike in Covid-19 infections and related business closures, with surging wages adding further pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. “The fact that AMZN’s earnings went the way of AAPL, MSFT and GOOGL — and not the way of FB — has given investors more confidence to reengage with the risk-on trade,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co., said. Stephane Ouellette, chief executive and co-founder of institutional crypto-platform FRNT Financial, said Bitcoin seems to be consolidating in a similar way to equities around the 200-day moving average. Over the last two days, Bitcoin correlated to Facebook declines, and on Friday to Amazon gains, according to Ouellette. “In spite of today’s move from a technical perspective I don’t […]

Beijing, China – In December 2020, Shen Xue, retired Chinese pair skater and 2010 Olympic champion, appeared on Chinese television as the first person to use the country’s official digital currency to buy a Beijing Subway pass. With a swipe on the turnstile using ski gloves fitted with the latest digital yuan wallet, Shen marked the launch of China’s campaign to promote its central bank digital currencies overseas during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics was originally planned as a splashy debut for the e-CNY, introducing the digital form of China’s sovereign currency to millions of global visitors. Foreign visitors will be able to use e-CNY to buy items during the games, which officially commence on Friday, without a domestic bank account. Those plans went sideways with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the Chinese capital has been largely closed to the world. Under a “zero COVID” policy aimed at halting any transmission of the virus, Beijing has adopted a “closed loop system” for the games under which the 11,000 participants are sealed off from the general public. “The Olympic Games would have been the first real chance for tourists and Chinese nationals alike to familiarise themselves with the digital yuan,” Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, DC-based think-tank, told Al Jazeera. However, that door slammed shut when Beijing decided to cut the games off from local spectators and overseas visitors, Singleton said. A frontrunner in the development […]

New Delhi, India – Legal or not? While the status of cryptocurrencies in India is far from clear after the country’s annual budget, investors see hopeful signs that New Delhi is tentatively moving towards greater acceptance of the digital assets. Narendra Modi’s government said during the budget announcement on Tuesday that it will launch an official digital currency and begin taxing profits earned on cryptocurrencies from the financial year 2022-2023. After sending crypto investors in a tailspin in November by proposing a ban on virtual currencies, New Delhi has shifted gears from prohibiting the technology to jumping on the bandwagon. Even as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman insisted cryptos could not be considered “currencies”, she unveiled a virtual currency that will be introduced by India’s central bank next year. The central bank digital currency (CBDC), or digital rupee, will create a more “efficient and cheaper currency management system” in a country that still largely depends on cash, Sitharaman said. Meanwhile, “virtual digital assets” will attract a flat 30-percent tax, she said. For some industry watchers, the moves are seen as the first step towards legitimising cryptocurrencies, which are largely unregulated in India. Gursimran Jit Oberoi, a crypto investor and author in Gurgaon, described the move to tax digital currencies as a net positive. “I was already paying 30 percent tax on crypto profits each year under the head [category] ‘income from other sources,’” Oberoi told Al Jazeera. “So, nothing changes for me.” New Delhi proposed a new digital currency issued and regulated […]

Bitcoin is closing out a rough month, with January declines putting the digital coin on pace for its worst start to a year since the dawn of the 2018 “crypto winter.” The largest cryptocurrency by market value has notched only 11 up days this month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, meaning that it’s spent 65% of the month mired in a decline. Other digital assets have also suffered, with No. 2 token Ether down roughly 30% since the end of December. Bitcoin dipped to as low as $33,000 in January from a record of almost $69,000 less than three months ago amid a broader selloff in risk assets on growing conviction that the Federal Reserve will soon raise rates as it ratchets back its ultra-accommodative policy settings. The plunge has hit all corners of the crypto ecosystem, from Bitcoin and memecoins to publicly-listed crypto exchanges and miners. “Crypto is a very volatile asset class — and I hope that everyone participating in that market is aware of the volatility potential,” Troy Gayeski, chief market strategist at FS Investments, said by phone. “It’s a much trickier environment than it was six months ago, 12 months ago, 18 months ago where it was ‘green-light go.’ Now it’s ‘yellow-light caution.’” On Monday, Bitcoin fell as much as 2.9% to trade at around $36,680 before recouping losses. Its monthly decline now stands at more than 18%, the worst start to a year since 2018’s 29% decline and a grim follow-up to December’s 19% […]