Blockchain

British Hacker Joseph O’Connor, also known online as PlugwalkJoe, has been sentenced to five years in U.S. prison for his role in stealing $794,000 worth of cryptocurrency via a SIM swap attack on a crypto exchange executive back in April 2019. O’Connor was initially arrested in Spain in July 2021 and was extradited to the

Creditors of bankrupt cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius have alleged that crypto market maker Wintermute assisted Celsius executives in manipulating the prices of CEL (CEL) through the use of “wash trading.” According to a June 23 Bloomberg report, citing a recent court filing, Celsius creditors have now amended their lawsuit in the United States District Court

After a grand opening in March, Australian fast-food diner Shiba Wings has seen plenty of customers walking through the doors for their fried delectables.  Their appetite, however, hasn’t translated to crypto payments. The Shiba Inu (SHIB) themed diner first opened its doors in Australia’s beachside city Surfers Paradise on March 18, 2023. Speaking to Cointelegraph,

Recently renewed optimism for an approved Bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) is igniting “The Great Accumulation Race” for Bitcoin, according to industry pundits. Over the past week, Fidelity, Invesco, Wisdom Tree and Valkyrie have followed investment giant BlackRock in applying for a Bitcoin spot ETF with the United States Securities Exchange Commission, which some

HSBC files metaverse and NFT patents British banking institution HSBC filed a series of metaverse and nonfungible token (NFT)-related trademark applications.  A June 12 filing to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) show the bank’s trademarks including metaverse banking, consulting, and financial services, along with virtual credit cards that point to a potential

Bitcoin (BTC) dominance, the measure of how much Bitcoin makes up of the total crypto market cap, has breached the 50% mark. On June 19 at 6 pm UTC, Bitcoin dominance hit just above 50% and has since settled to 49.9% at the time of publication, according to data from TradingView. This means that Bitcoin

Twitter has suspended the account of the popular memecoin-linked artificial intelligence-powered bot “Explain This Bob” after Elon Musk alleged it was a “scam crypto account.” Musk alleged the account was a scam in a tweet on June 18 in areply to the bot, the account was seemingly suspended soon after. This sure looks like a

Top Stories This Week US lawmakers file ‘SEC Stabilization Act’ to fire Gary Gensler United States Representative Warren Davidson has introduced the “SEC Stabilization Act” into the House of Representatives. One of the bill’s main provisions is to fire Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler. The bill would remove Gensler from office and

Footwear and apparel giant Nike has hinted that it may soon drop a collection of sneaker nonfungible tokens in Epic Games’ widely popular online game Fortnite. The move would mark a potentially huge opportunity for Web3 adoption by traditional gamers, given that Fortnite has had more than 242.9 million active players over the past 30

Hong Kong lays out the red carpet for crypto exchanges While some jurisdictions (cough: America) have adopted a regulation-by-enforcement approach toward crypto, others are doing the opposite. According to a June 15 report from The Financial Times, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is pressuring major financial institutions to accept crypto clients. But it’s not just

Progress can have its drawbacks, as the French stock market regulator, the nongovernmental Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), has noticed. According to the AMF ombudsman, digital asset-related mediations rose sharply in 2022, as did the number of registered digital asset service providers (DASPs). In its newly released 2022 annual report, the AMF ombudsman included a

What makes a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) a DAO? In practice, the democratic structure of these organizations has been compromised because a number of self-purporting DAOs are operating like traditional corporations. With this in mind, developers at Delphi Labs proposed an alternative framework, incorporating so-called BORGs (Cybernetic Organizations) into governance structures to automate decision-making so

United States-based crypto exchange Binance.US has reportedly hired a former enforcement official from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of the legal team to defend itself against allegations of operating as an unregistered securities exchange. According to a June 12 report from Bloomberg, Binance.US has hired former SEC enforcement co-director George Canellos with

Altcoin prices crumbled after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase at the start of the week. Apart from the action against the two biggest crypto exchanges, investors seem to be nervous because the SEC labeled 23 cryptocurrencies as securities in the two lawsuits. That brings the total

Top Stories This Week U.S. SEC sues Binance and Coinbase amidst crypto crackdown Binance and Coinbase have been targeted in a new round of lawsuits by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against crypto businesses. The regulator pressed 13 charges against Binance on June 5, including those involving unregistered offerings and sales of tokens,

Cryptocurrency and stock trading app Robinhood announced it will be ending support for Cardano, Polygon and Solana — all tokens labeled as unregistered securities by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its recent legal actions against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase.  In a June 9 update, Robinhood said it will end support for

Wallet infrastructure provider and digital asset custodian BitGo have signed a non-binding letter of intent to acquire fintech infrastructure provider Prime Trust, according to an announcement on June 8.  The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. If the deal goes through, BitGo will acquire Prime Trust’s payment rails and cryptocurrency IRA fund and increase its wealth

Fintech giant Intuit, whose product offerings include TurboTax, Mint, Credit Karma, Mailchimp and QuickBooks, recently expanded its software services platform to include GenOS, an operating system for generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.  According to Intuit, the new operating system will come with a suite of tools, including a developer studio, UX library, runtime layer and