Crypto Ethone

  A Richardson man who calls himself "Doctor Bitcoin" has pleaded guilty to illegally operating a cash-to-cryptocurrency conversion business, announced Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Prerak Shah. According to the North Texas U.S. Attorney's office, 42-year-old Mark Alexander Hopkins, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business. Hopkins was charged on March 26, 2021, the North Texas U.S. Attorney's office said. "This defendant ignored federal law and allowed fraudsters to use Bitcoin to operate under the radar of law enforcement," Acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah said. "We are determined to rid the Bitcoin marketplace of anyone who knowingly helps criminal actors stash illegal profits inside crypto wallets ." Source: nbcdfw.com

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's financial market watchdog BaFin on Monday granted the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase permission to provide crypto custody services and proprietary trading, the first licence it has issued for such business in Germany. The licence allows Coinbase Germany GmbH to conduct proprietary trading of crypto assets, BaFin added. Coinbase, which went public earlier this year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Jan Harvey) Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters .

FCA also issues consumer alert against sprawling cryptocurrency group. The UK’s financial watchdog has ordered Binance to stop all regulated activities in Britain and imposed stringent requirements in a stinging rebuke of one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges.  The intervention by the Financial Conduct Authority in recent days is one of the most significant moves any global regulator has made against Binance , a sprawling digital asset firm with subsidiaries around the world.  The exchange has until Wednesday evening to confirm it has complied with the watchdog’s demands.  The intervention is a sign of how regulators are cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry over concerns relating to its potential role in illicit activities such as money laundering and fraud, and over often weak consumer protection.  The FCA also this weekend issued a consumer warning against both the Cayman Islands-registered Binance holdings company and Binance Markets Limited , a London-based

Cryptocurrency investors in South Africa may have lost nearly $3.6 billion in Bitcoin following the disappearance of two brothers associated with one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.  According to   Bloomberg , a law firm in Cape Town says it can’t locate Ameer and Raees Cajee, the founders of Africrypt.  In April, the exchange told its investors it was the victim of a hack and asked them not to report the incident to the authorities on account it would “slow down” the process of recovering their missing money. Some of those involved in the exchange hired Hanekom Attorneys, the law firm that said it couldn’t find the two brothers, to investigate the incident.  It found that someone had withdrawn Africrypt’s pooled funds from the local accounts and client wallets where the coins were stored originally and put them through tumblers and mixers, making it difficult (though not impossible) to trace the money.  “Africrypt employees lost access to the back-end platforms seve

The software magnate and crypto investor had been facing extradition to the U.S. on fraud ch arges. John McAfee, the controversial software magnate and crypto booster, has died in what’s preliminarily being called a suicide in a prison in Barcelona. El Pais was first to report the news. Prison sources tell CoinDesk an autopsy is being planned. McAfee was awaiting extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on charges of tax fraud, which the Spanish High Court authorized just this morning. “Everything indicates that it could be a death by suicide,” the Catalan Department of Justice said in a statement. When reached by phone by CoinDesk, a prison staffer said: “For information about John McAfee, you may call tomorrow at 9 a.m. local time.” According to an October 2020 indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), “McAfee earned millions in income from promoting cryptocurrencies , consulting work, speaking engagements, and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary.” During

  ‘Up until yesterday, I had been a millionaire’ Glauber Contessoto says that he invested over $250,000 in dogecoin on Feb. 5 with a belief that he’d become a millionaire — and on April 15, he did. But on Monday, the top cryptocurrencies by market value — including bitcoin, ether and dogecoin — started to crash following news of a crackdown in China, CNBC reported. With losses extending on Tuesday, Contessoto’s portfolio, which contains only dogecoin, was hit. His holdings are down over $167,000 on Tuesday alone, he tells CNBC Make It, and his portfolio was worth $831,538.88 as of Tuesday at 4:40 p.m. EST, he says. “Up until yesterday, I had been a millionaire,” Contessoto, 33, says. “If bitcoin and ethereum weren’t also hit, I’d be worried.” Four months ago, when he bought in, dogecoin was priced at about 4.5 cents. On May 8, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency, which was created as a joke in 2013 based on the “Doge” meme of a shiba inu dog, hit an all-time high of about 73 cents, and t

Two weeks after announcing a debt offering to fund the investment, business analytics firm MicroStrategy, which owns more bitcoin than any other corporation in the world, has spent nearly $500 million to acquire more of the world’s largest cryptocurrency —taking advantage of crashing prices Monday morning despite warning of a significant loss to come as a result of bitcoin’s tanking value.  Virginia-based MicroStrategy announced Monday morning that it used approximately $489 million in cash raised last week to buy about 13,005 bitcoins at an average price of roughly $37,617. With the new investment, MicroStrategy owns about 105,085 bitcoins, worth approximately $3.4 billion as prices tumble nearly 10% from a Sunday afternoon high. Helmed by billionaire bitcoin bull  Michael Saylor,  the firm has so far spent more than $2.7 billion buying bitcoin at an average price of $26,080—about 15% below current prices of $32,000. MicroStrategy shares plunged 7% in premarket trading and are now dow

It seems the wave of regulations around  cryptocurrencies  is shifting in the industry’s favour in some ways. After El Salvador approved Bitcoin as legal tender and Paraguay announcing plans to make favourable regulations, the Central Bank of Portugal — Banco de Portugal — has now issued operating licenses to two  cryptocurrency  exchanges in the country. This is the first time the country’s central bank has made such a move. “Banco de Portugal’s supervision regarding virtual assets service providers, as determined by Law No 83/2017 of 18 August 2017, is limited to AML/CFT purposes, and does not extend to other areas of a prudential, market conduct or any other nature,” the bank  said  in a statement, announcing that it had recognized Criptoloja and Mind The Coin, two  crypto exchanges , as official “virtual asset providers”. The bank also detailed what kind of services fall under its purview in the same statement. This includes exchange services between one or more virtual assets and

Chinese authorities continue to crack down on cryptocurrency mining as a city in Sichuan province has reportedly halted local Bitcoin ( BTC ) mining farms. Authorities in Ya’an City, a prefecture-level city in the western part of Sichuan province, have ordered local Bitcoin mining operations to shut down for examination, Chinese financial publication Sina Finance reported Friday. Citing an anonymous source from Chinese news agency PA News, the report said that it is unclear when or whether miners will restart mining operations.  According to Chinese crypto blogger Colin Wu, the latest decision will impact major Bitcoin mining farms in Sichuan, which is China’s biggest hydropower producer. Wu said Sichuan issued a document ordering power generation companies to immediately stop supplying power to any virtual currency mining operations. According to Wu, the document identified 26 large mining projects and required them to be examined and shut down. He suggested that the latest move wil

Kraken, one of the world’s largest exchanges for trading cryptocurrencies, could go public in 12 to 18 months, according to its chief executive officer. Jesse Powell, who founded the San Francisco-based exchange in 2011, told Bloomberg TV the firm is “doing all the prep work” to become a public company, though he declined to give a target valuation. “We’re on a mission to bring crypto to the world , and our valuation hopefully will be a reflection of our success in achieving that mission,” he said in the interview. Kraken was recently in talks to raise new funding that would value it at more than $10 billion and could surpass $20 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Tribe Capital co-founder and partner Arjun Sethi also recently joined Kraken’s board in a sign of its mounting ambitions. Kraken has more than 6 million clients in almost 190 countries, making it the world’s fourth-largest crypto exchange by trading volume according to coinmarketcap.com. Kraken’s larger ri

ABU DHABI: Dubai-based cryptocurrency platform BitOasis has gained regulatory approval from the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) as it prepares to launch the first licensed crypto exchange in the Middle East. BitOasis is now authorized to operate a regulated multilateral trading facility and custody platform for virtual assets on the ADGM that will allow retail investors and institutions to trade cryptocurrencies with local currencies, it said in an emailed press release. BitOasis, which currently offers all its services through its website, said it will eventually migrate its operations to ADGM. The company launched in 2015. “ADGM has been instrumental in our journey, having granted the first In Principal Approval (IPA) for BitOasis in April 2019, and we look forward to launching under our regulatory licenses in due course subject to further regulatory approvals from the FSRA,” said Ola Doudin, CEO and co-founder of BitOasis . Source: arabnews.com

The platform has already generated significant levels of interest from the cryptocurrency & Forex community because of a large discrepancy between what the traders want and what they get from other trading platforms in terms of functionality and advanced features. Over 5000 eager new users have joined the platform’s waitlist in anticipation of accessing the platform’s leverage trading functionality. At launch, Fibido will offer an impressive suite of features such as: — 1000x Leverage Fibido offers margin trading with up to 1000x leverage for all available digital assets, such as Bitcoin , Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple Forex, and Metals, and others, meaning a user can multiply their earnings by up to 1000 times their original investment. To explain this simply: a $100 position with 1000x leverage becomes as powerful and as profitable as a $10,0000 position. So if the market positively turned just 1%, a trader would double their $100 position instantly (with 1% of $10,000 being $100).

The bank plans to offer options and futures trading in Ether, the coin that fuels the Ethereum network, in the coming months, according to Mathew McDermott, head of digital assets at Goldman Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is moving beyond the world of Bitcoin and expanding into Ether. The bank plans to offer options and futures trading in Ether, the coin that fuels the Ethereum network, in the coming months, according to Mathew McDermott, head of digital assets at Goldman. It’s the latest step in the Wall Street giant’s crypto ambitions after Goldman restarted a trading desk this year to help clients deal in publicly traded futures tied to Bitcoin. McDermott said the bank also plans to facilitate trades via exchange-traded notes tracking Bitcoin. Despite all the warnings from regulators about the risks posed by crypto’s extreme volatility and role in money laundering, investment banks are stepping up to offer Bitcoin services to their big clients. Even after prices plummeted in May, falling

  Elon Musk did it again!  Bitcoin price climbed above $39,000 after Tesla chief executive had indicated that electric carmaker will resume transaction with cryptocurrency. In a reply to an article which criticises the celebrity CEO for ‘manipulating Bitcoin price’, Musk mentioned Tesla will resume transactions with the cryptocurrency when mining is done with more clean energy. “When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions," the celebrity CEO tweeted after Sygnia chief executive had criticised Musk for ‘manipulating bitcoin price," Elon Musk said in a tweet. Tesla chief also said that Tesla sold about 10% of holdings to confirm bitcoin could be liquidated easily without moving market. Following Tesla’s future plan, Bitcoin rose nearly 10% on a day to $39,021.54 at 0800 hours IST on Monday on coinmarketcap.com Index. It was the largest one-day percentage gain since June

  Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has  asked  his government to start working on a framework to regulate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin . He believes that clear communication about the laws and rules will help discourage dishonourable  crypto  businesses, who've had a free run so far. This comes even as the country imposed a blanket ban on bitcoin mining this year for four months due to electricity shortage. He also warned retail investors to be careful of "unprofessional" businesses currently operating in the space. Rouhani told the Economic Coordination Board that monitoring is critical for the safe acceptance of crypto at a larger scale. "For legalizing the activity of  cryptocurrencies  and protecting people's capital in this area, we must think of a solution as soon as possible and lay down and communicate the necessary laws and instructions," Rouhani remarked at the Economic Coordination Board meeting. Why is Iran opening up to cryptocurrencies? The Ce