“Digital Currency”

The US Department of Justice has revealed it seized $3.36bn (£2.9bn) of Bitcoin last year which was stolen from an infamous darknet website.

The stash of 50,676 Bitcoin was found hidden on various devices in a hacker’s home in an underfloor safe and inside a popcorn tin.

James Zhong has pleaded guilty to hacking the funds in 2012 from the illegal Silk Road marketplace.

US authorities say the seizure is the second largest in history.

Kim Kardashian settles with SEC over crypto promotion

Kim Kardashian has agreed to pay $1.26 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that she promoted a cryptocurrency on Instagram without disclosing she’d been paid $250,000 to do so.

The SEC said Monday that the reality TV star and entrepreneur has agreed to cooperate with its ongoing investigation.

You deserve your pain

Two McLarens, two BMWs and a Lamborghini make up just a few of the $2 million worth of assets seized from a 23-year-old from Whitby, Ont., as his investors try to recoup millions of dollars they handed over to the self-described “Crypto King.”

But so far, Aiden Pleterski’s assets fall far short of what his investors claim they’re owed.

Creditors are working to unravel where at least $35 million provided to Pleterski and his company AP Private Equity Limited for cryptocurrency and foreign exchange investments ended up, according to a fraud recovery lawyer and documents filed in two separate actions reviewed by CBC Toronto.

I’m curious to see if the Crypto King’s ‘I’m just a 20 something kid’ defense holds up in court.

This is almost painful to read.

Investing in cryptocurrencies was the get-rich craze of the pandemic. Then came the $2 trillion crash. Was it a giant Ponzi scheme all along?

The reality finally hit Fynn Weisgerber, 17, when he was driving home from football practice in May. He pulled over and cried.

“I was having a mental breakdown,” he recalls. “I had just watched $1 million disappear before my eyes in, like, hours. It was crazy how fast it happened.”

Authorities are moving in on the industry

This week, it was revealed that the crypto exchange Coinbase is facing an investigation from the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over allowing its users to speculate on unregistered securities. Reports claimed that regulatory officials began taking a “closer look” at Coinbase when it enabled trading of an additional 100 tokens on its platform. How this was the first red flag to provoke a serious examination remains a mystery to outside observers.

The ‘cryptopocalypse’ shines a light on a murky world that has lost punters billions

Alex Mashinsky sat po-faced in a suit and tie – a stark change from his typical T-shirts emblazoned with “banks are not your friends”. It was the millionaire’s first public appearance since his cryptocurrency company froze the accounts of 1.7m customers in June – and he was watching its bankruptcy hearing last week.

The collapse of Celsius, which was valued at $3bn (£2.5bn) with $25bn in assets, has been described as cryptocurrency’s “Lehman moment”.

Other lenders and exchanges are still grappling with what Mashinsky calls a “cryptopocalypse”, desperately trying to borrow their way out of a market rout that has wiped trillions from the value of digital coins. A string of bankruptcies has shone a light on the murky world of cryptocurrency lending that has so far cost investors billions of pounds.

Has anyone else noticed how news on the cryptocollapse has been strangely muted these last weeks?

An ex-Canadian government IT worker has admitted to being a high-level hacker with a Russian cyber-crime group.

Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, from Quebec, Canada, has agreed to plead guilty in a Florida court.

The 34-year-old was affiliated to the NetWalker ransomware crew, which has attacked companies, municipalities, hospitals, schools and universities.

When he was arrested, police discovered he was in possession of $27m (£22.2m) in Bitcoin.

Richard Heart spooned a dollop of $600-an-ounce albino sturgeon caviar out of its gold tin and shovelled it into his mouth. “In honour of the bear market, I am eating what might be the world’s most expensive caviar,” he said in a video posted to his Twitter account last week. “It actually tastes pretty nice. It’s like eating the tears of my haters.”

With investors worldwide looking at a collective $1.5tn in recent cryptocurrency losses, a blizzard of class-action lawsuits are being prepared. One big question is: who, if anyone, is to blame – and who could be held to account?

With inflation and interest rates rising, the best-known cryptocurrencies have been hit with heavy and continuing losses: Bitcoin has lost more than 50% of its value this year; Ethereum, its largest rival, is down 65%; and the total value of crypto assets has dropped to less than $1tn from its November 2021 peak of $3tn. US federal regulators say 46,000 people have reported losing $1bn in crypto to scams since January 2021.

LONDON (AP) — The price of bitcoin fell below $20,000 for the first time since late 2020 on Saturday, in a fresh sign that the selloff in cryptocurrencies is deepening.

Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, fell below the psychologically important threshold, dropping as much as 9% to less than $19,000, according to CoinDesk.

The last time bitcoin was at this level was November 2020, when it was on its way up to its all-time high of nearly $69,000.

Bitcoin has now lost more than 70 percent of its value since reaching that peak.

Bill Gates is not a fan of cryptocurrencies or non-fungible tokens.

Speaking at a TechCrunch talk on climate change Tuesday, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder described the phenomenon as something that’s “100% based on greater fool theory,” referring to the idea that overvalued assets will go up in price when there are enough investors willing to pay more for them.

Gates joked that “expensive digital images of monkeys” would “improve the world immensely,” referring to the much-hyped Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection.

Not a fan of Gates but he is likely right on this one. To me NFT’s were a sick joke from the word go. Digital currency may yet work out the kinks but for now I have to agree with Gates.