Ex-federal prosecutor and now Andreessen Horowitz partner Katie Haun has argued that the United States blocking Facebook’s Libra digital currency will have national security implications. Haun’s comments were reported in a CNBC profile published on Oct. 6. “Frankly a dangerous precedent” to shut Libra down Andreessen Horowitz is a founding member of the Libra Association, the Switzerland-headquartered nonprofit consortium established to govern the Libra token. Speaking of the planned cryptocurrency, Haun noted that the social media titan’s project was facing “the same criticisms” and misperceptions that the asset class faces more broadly. She noted: “They were just heightened and they …

Nobuaki Kobayashi, trustee of the now-defunct Bitcoin (BTC) exchange Mt. Gox, has contacted the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in search of information about Alexander Vinnik, the alleged former operator of BTC-e. News of Kobayashi’s pursuit of information from the DOJ was revealed in a statement from his office on Oct. 1. Kobayashi reaches out to DOJ According to the statement from Kobayashi’s office, as part of the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings for Mt. Gox, the trustee “has been conducting investigations into whether any BTC or fiat money has disappeared” and “the background thereto if any has disappeared.” In this …

The Federal Customs Service of the Russian Federation stopped the illegal import of four crypto mining devices from Mongolia into Russia. Crypto mining equipment confiscated On Oct. 1 Coinspot reported that a Mongolian citizen was trying to smuggle the mining devices with fans and connected microcircuits across the Russia-Mongolia border into Russian territory. The custom services explained that the smuggler was detained by Altai customs officers during a border check in Tashanta. The detainee couldn’t provide any legal documents for the crypto mining equipment, which was then confiscated by the authorities. Criminals rarely use crypto to withdraw stolen money Cointelegraph …

An employee at a nuclear research center in the closed town of Sarov in Russia was fined for illegally mining Bitcoin (BTC). Convicted to pay $7,000 fine According to a Sept. 27 article by Russian news outlet Meduza, a man was fined 450,000 rubles ($7,000) for trying to mine Bitcoin by using a petaflop-capable supercomputer at his workplace, the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute in Sarov, Russia. Sarov, about 230 miles east of Moscow is a closed town as it is the Russian center for nuclear weapons research. The court delivered the verdict on Sept. 17. The nuclear research employee was …

Russian law firm Zheleznikov and Partners has proposed legal action that should enable its lawyers to recover up to 200,000 Bitcoin (BTC) lost in the Mt. Gox fiasco. Recover losses on behalf of Mt. Gox victims On Sept. 12 in a Q&A with Andy Pag, a former BBC journalist, the Moscow-based law firm outlined its proposal to recover close to $2 billion in BTC on behalf of victims who lost funds when the now-defunct exchange was hacked. Lawyers of Zheleznikov and Partners believe that, thanks to the close cooperation with law enforcement, they can recover up to 200,000 BTC by …

Alfa-Bank and X5 Retail Group partnered to launch a blockchain liquidity management service in Russia. According to a press release published by the bank on Sept. 12, the service — dubbed Distributed Treasury and Cash Management (DTCM) — enables Alfa-Bank’s corporate clients to manage their payments, loan and deposit products, as well as liquidity pool inside the holding. A bank created for the user The service is described as a “bridge to the Bank-as-a-Service (BaaS) model for corporations.” Director of the Alfa-Bank Center for Innovations Research and Development Denis Dodon explained: “The key difference between DTCM and other offers available …

The United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore have the largest number of registered digital currency exchanges, according to data from Bitfury’s blockchain analytics platform Crystal. Crystal published its “Report on International Bitcoin Flows 2013–2019” on Sept. 9, in which it provides insight into cryptocurrency operations and Bitcoin (BTC) transactions around the world between Jan. 1, 2013, and June 30, 2019. U.K. and U.S. lead the rating The findings show that the largest number of registered crypto exchanges are in the U.K., the U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore. Countries such as Argentina, India, Mexico, Russia and Indonesia report …

The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently resolved a complaint regarding advertising of Bitcoin (BTC) from the BitMEX crypto derivatives exchange. According to the ASA, the website showed Bitcoin graphs with misleading price dynamics since January 2019. The ASA received four complaints, each accusing the platform of being misleading about Bitcoin investment profitability. The court satisfied the complaints. However, this was not the first time that a state took a tough attitude toward advertisement of cryptocurrencies. Here is an overview of how cryptocurrencies are advertised — or not — in the world right now. Ban, no freedom The first …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Russian analytical agency ICO Rating for $268,998 for violating anti-touting provisions, according to an announcement on Aug. 20. In the announcement, the SEC claimed that ICO Rating violated the anti-touting provisions of Section 17(b) of the Securities Act of 1933 by failing to disclose payments it received from initial coin offering (ICO) issuers it rated and published on its platform. Melissa Hodgman, Associate Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said: “The securities laws require promoters, including both people and entities, to disclose compensation they receive for touting investments so that …

On July 25, 2019, United States prosecutors filed a complaint against the defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e and its alleged former operator, Alexander Vinnik. The indictment was filed nearly 24 months after Vinnik was arrested in Greece while on holiday with his family and has followed numerous extradition requests from the U.S., France and Russia that have seen Vinnik’s case appear to morph from an investigation into alleged money laundering to a tug-of-war over a strategic intelligence asset between the U.S. and Russia. Vinnik’s arrest in July 2017 On July 26, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Vinnik …

S7 Airlines, a member of major global aviation alliance Oneworld, processed over $1 million through its blockchain payment system for the month of July. S7 processed nearly $4 million in payments on its blockchain platform since January 2019 According to an official press release on July 30, S7 has seen significant growth in transactions on its blockchain-powered sales network developed in partnership with Russia's largest private bank, Alfa-Bank. Nikolai Mukhanov, executive director at S7 Techlab, said that the platform has seen not only a significant increase in number of payments, which reportedly grew tenfold since January, but also in number …

United States prosecutors have filed a complaint against now-defunct crypto exchange BTC-e and its suspected operator Alexander Vinnik, according to a document filed in the Northern District of California on July 25. Per the filing, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) determined civil penalties for BTC-e and Vinnik last year, who face fines of over $88 million and $12 million, respectively. The filing states outright that BTC-e and Vinnik did not attempt to register with FinCEN, implement Anti-Money Laundering practices, or report suspicious activity generally. Alleged money laundering and lack of regulation The filing also notes that BTC-e and Vinnik …