Crypto Shake

2022-10-19 21:00:03 ​​US Treasury’s OFAC and FinCEN announce $29M in enforcement actions again Bittrex.

Bittrex agreed to pay more than $29 million in a settlement with FinCEN, but the regulator said it will credit a $24-million payment “to settle its potential liability with OFAC.”

The United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network took enforcement actions against crypto exchange Bittrex for allegedly violating sanctions programs as well as reporting requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act, or BSA.

In an Oct. 11 announcement, the U.S. Treasury said Bittrex had agreed to a more than $24-million settlement with OFAC for violations of “multiple sanctions programs” by failing to prevent individuals based in the Crimea region, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria from conducting roughly $263 million in crypto transactions between 2014 and 2017. According to the Treasury Department, Bittrex did not screen users based on accessible location information in the sanctioned countries using internet protocol addresses.

“When virtual currency firms fail to implement effective sanctions compliance controls, including screening customers located in sanctioned jurisdictions, they can become a vehicle for illicit actors that threaten U.S national security,” said Andrea Gacki, director of OFAC. “Virtual currency exchanges operating worldwide should understand both who — and where — their customers are.”

In addition, FinCEN announced parallel enforcement actions in which Bittrex agreed to pay more than $29 million. However, the financial regulator said it will credit Bittrex’s $24-million payment “to settle its potential liability with OFAC.”

According to FinCEN, the crypto exchange “failed to maintain an effective AML program” from 2014 to 2018, “resulting in significant exposure to illicit finance” through privacy coins. The regulator further alleged that Bittrex failed to document many transactions in sanctioned jurisdictions from 2014 to 2017 through suspicious activity reports.

Acting Director of FinCEN Himamauli Das added:

“Virtual asset service providers are on notice that they must implement robust risk-based compliance programs and meet their BSA reporting requirements. FinCEN will not hesitate to act when it identifies willful violations of the BSA.” Open / Comment

2022-10-17 19:21:23 ​​ Brazilian bank Bradesco admits reluctance to work with cryptocurrencies

Octavio de Lazari Junior, CEO of one of Latin America's largest banks, Bradesco, said that he and his bank are not personally attracted to the digital asset market.

The cryptocurrency market is still not big enough and is quite dangerous for investors interested in it:

"Cryptocurrencies are investments that are intangible and more risky, and people are aware of the risk they are taking. To me, it's a very small market."

Nevertheless, the banker did not deny that the situation may change in the future and Bradesco will become interested in the cryptocurrency market.

The CEO also reminded that the bank has an investment unit Agora, which is already involved in cryptocurrency trading and provides some services in this industry.

For the bank, according to de Lazari, digital currencies themselves are one of several pillars of the crypto industry. Even though investments in this part of the crypto market won't be very large, the businessman argues, the other pillars may be more attractive for investment.

One of them is tokenized assets. The bank is now working on debt tokenization projects. The third pillar, according to the businessman, is central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

In April of this year, Roberto Campos Neto, head of Brazil's central bank, announced the trial launch of a digital real, the implementation of smart contracts and DeFi on the regulator's own platform. Open / Comment

2022-10-14 19:30:00 ​​ Head of Euro Pacific Capital predicts bitcoin to fall to $10,000

What happened? Peter Schiff, head of brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital, believes that the bitcoin rate will not be able to reach new highs, and will probably continue to fall to the $10,000 mark and below.

In his opinion, the current growth of the crypto market, including Ethereum's 70% rise in price, is not sustainable. Schiff said this in an interview with Kitco News.

Interview with Kitco News

What else is Schiff talking about? He added that the market will continue to fall, so investors should take advantage of the rally they have now. Schiff noted that there is a bubble in the crypto market, even though bitcoin is down about 65% from its all-time high (ATH).

"A lot of people are still in profit in these tokens. Someone bought bitcoin four, five, six years ago and it's in good profit. It's the same with Ethereum. People have to go because otherwise the market will take those profits," Schiff stressed.

He also believes the sell-off in the crypto market in 2022 reflects the massive use of the Pump & Dump ("pump and dump") scheme. The broker referred to the fact that many celebrities actively promoted various coins to their subscribers. "It was massive pumping, but people overlooked dumping," Schiff added.

As of Aug. 13 10:20 a.m. Moscow time, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is $1.219 trillion, having added 6.18 percent over the week. BTC trades at $24,674 and ETH at $2006, with the assets adding 6.46% and 16.5% in value respectively during the week, according to Binance.

Schiff also believes shares of analytics software developer MicroStrategy are overvalued. MicroStrategy is the largest bitcoin holder among public companies. Schiff noted that its losses from its BTC investments due to the asset's decline are about $1 billion - the company has 129,699 coins on its balance sheet, purchased for just under $4 billion. "Ultimately, MicroStrategy's share price will collapse well below the level when it first started buying bitcoin," the broker concluded.

The company's securities are traded on the Nasdaq U.S. Stock Exchange under the ticker MSTR. As of Aug. 13, the share price stands at $352.84, having added 4.7% overnight, according to Investing.cöm.

What is known about Euro Pacific Capital? The company was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Westport, Connecticut. It is a registered broker-dealer specializing in foreign securities markets. Euro Pacific Asset Management, founded in 2009, has $1.2 billion in assets under management.

On May 8, Peter Schiff already speculated that the price of bitcoin could drop below $10,000 if the rate continues to decline past the $30,000 mark. And in June he said he expects the cryptocurrency market to fall further. Open / Comment

2022-10-14 13:16:36 Bestarz is an NFT play-to-earn fantasy football platform based on the real-world results, in which players create a team, collect unique player cards, and participate in weekly matches concurrent to weekly football events.

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2022-10-09 14:07:56 ​US State Issues Order Freezing Crypto at Exchanges in Pig Butchering Scam Crackdown

The Delaware Department of Justice’s Investor Protection Unit has issued a cease and desist order against 23 entities and individuals involved in a popular cryptocurrency scam known as “pig butchering.” The order also freezes the accounts allegedly holding cryptocurrencies belonging to the victims.

The attorney general of the U.S. state of Delaware, Kathy Jennings, announced Wednesday that the Investor Protection Unit of the state’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has “issued a summary order to cease and desist against 23 entities and individuals involved in a cryptocurrency scam known as the ‘pig butchering scam.'”

Pig butchering crypto scams have recently become alarmingly popular. Victims of this type of scam “are groomed over time to make investments using cryptocurrency, only to find that what they thought was a safe investment was a scam,” the Delaware DOJ detailed. “The moniker stems from the scammers’ practice of ‘fattening’ the victims before absconding with their assets (‘butchering’).”

Attorney General Jennings stressed, “When victims lose money through cryptocurrency scams, including the pig butchering scam, it can be difficult to recover those funds,” adding:

Today’s order takes a first step toward protecting Delaware investors from the pig butchering scam by freezing funds at risk from further transfer by the wrongdoers.

The announcement details that the Investor Protection Unit received complaints from residents in the state. They explained that they were contacted online by unknown persons who urged them to invest in cryptocurrency. The scammers then encouraged them to invest more after showing large returns on initial investments.

However, the Delaware DOJ warned: “Ultimately, they were never able to withdraw the funds and their cryptocurrency disappeared. It is estimated that this international scam involves thousands of victims across the country with losses into the billions of dollars.”

Working with a data analytics company, the Investor Protection Unit traced cryptocurrency belonging to two Delaware complainants to a number of wallets on various crypto exchanges, the authority described.

The cease and desist order prohibits anyone or any entities affiliated with the wallets from withdrawing or transferring assets owned by the complainants, the Delaware Justice Department noted, elaborating:

This, in turn, prevents the exchanges holding the wallets from permitting parties to move the fraudulently obtained crypto, thus effectively freezing the accounts holding assets belonging to the Delaware victims. Open / Comment

2022-10-07 12:00:07 ​Latin Grammy Awards signs 3-year contract for award show NFTs.

The Latin Grammy Awards is stepping into Web3 through its first NFT collection in collaboration with the OneOf Web3 music platform.

This year’s 64th Latin Grammy Awards will have its first-ever nonfungible token collection after the Latin Recording Academy signed a three-year contract for award show-related NFTs.

The aforementioned partnership is between the Latin Recording Academy, which is behind the Latin Grammys, and OneOf, a Web3 music platform. Each collection, which will lead up to that year’s award show, will include drops highlighting Latin music.

According to Manuel Abud, CEO of the Latin Recording Academy, this is a new form of musical innovation and a way for fans to “own a piece of the Latin GRAMMYs”:

“The Latin Recording Academy is committed to exploring innovative, new ways to celebrate excellence in Latin music and to connect music to other art forms in our culture, including visual and digital arts.”

The Latin Grammy Awards NFTs will drop throughout October in the lead-up to the award show on Nov. 18.

This comes after OneOf’s partnership with the Grammy Awards, in which it also planned a three-year NFT release plan. The first collection was released coinciding with the 64th Grammys, for which Binance was the official crypto exchange partner. Open / Comment

2022-10-06 19:30:01 Aequinox Dex is a community-driven decentralized exchange that supports multi-token and weighted pools, automated portfolio management and liquidity deepening. Aequinox aims to become the predominant decentralized exchange on Binance Smart Chain that can support large swaps for stablecoins and commonly traded pairs with very low slippage and fees.

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2022-10-05 16:00:07 ​​Index Africa announces blockchain philanthropy initiative

Index Africa says it is using part of the proceeds of the fees and indexing rewards earned from being a blockchain node operator on The Graph network to finance philanthropic initiatives in rural areas across the continent.

According to an announcement issued on Tuesday, Index Africa’s charity work is based on the decentralized philanthropy (DePhi) concept promoted by Silicon Kruger, a South Africa-based innovation hub that aims to foster web3 innovation in the region. Index Africa donates a percentage of its earnings from The Graph to the Good Work Foundation (GWF).

GWF, a nonprofit organization, has been advancing digital literacy and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning in rural Africa for over 15 years. Index Africa pans to cover the tuition fees of 350 students in these digital literacy and STEM courses.

For Index Africa and Silicon Kruger, the DePhi initiative is part of their shared efforts to accelerate foundational web3 learning in Africa via The Graph network, a blockchain indexing protocol.

Index Africa is the first African node operator on The Graph and is one of the portfolio organizations under the Silicon Kruger umbrella. Open / Comment

2022-10-03 14:00:06 ​​OpenSea Recorded $144.5M in Revenue in Q3, With Creators Benefitting 76% of Funds

OpenSea earned $144.5 million in fees from users, with most of the money going to creators, according to Token Terminal.

In a tweet, Token Terminal disclosed that only $35 million went to OpenSea LLC. This means 76% of the fees went to creators. This isn’t surprising since the NFT marketplace only collects 2.5% of the sale as fees, while creators can set the fees on a collection up to 10%.

With OpenSea controlling about 90% of the NFT marketplace, trends in the marketplace usually mirror the overall market performance. Over the year, the sales volume has declined, dropping from $5.2 billion in January to around 349 million in September.

The drop in sales volume would have also influenced the fees paid by users and the revenue accrued to the protocol.

The decline in sales volume is due to several factors, such as the bear market, reduced interest in NFTs, and the macroeconomic conditions that have limited the liquidity in the market.

NFT sales volume in September $1.26 billion
In September, the overall NFT sales volume was $1.26 billion, according to Dune Analytics. That’s a drop of 24.4% compared to August.

Most of the volume from September till came from Ethereum with 88%, but Solana appears to be gaining market share. Its share of NFT sales volume rose by 91% in September to reach 10%, while Ethereum fell from 95%.

The overall number of users grew by 0.5% to over 569k in September. But it is Solana that recorded most of the gain. Its users grew by 41% in the month and are now 155k which is 27% of all NFT users. By comparison, ETH users fell by 9.5% to 393k. Open / Comment