Category: Cryptocurrency News

Cryptocurrency News and Public Mining Pools

Genesis tells clients it needs more time on financial woes after Gemini demands action

Genesis interim CEO Derar Islim has sent a second letter to clients to say the crypto lender is working on its liquidity issues resulting from the FTX collapse, but they’re not there yet.

US Congress investigations into FTX are in limbo without a House Speaker

With no leadership elected to the House of Representatives, efforts to address fraud allegations at FTX or legislate crypto may be delayed indefinitely.

Former CFO Pleads Guilty: Funds Used To Trade Crypto & Meme Stocks

With the prolonged bear market in crypto ongoing, one will think most people should be losing money. While that is true, another thing also true is the increase in crimes in the bear market. On today’s news, the ex-chief financial officer has pleaded guilty in court for embezzling more than $5 million from multiple special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) to trade meme stocks and cryptocurrencies. Going by the name Cooper Morgenthau, the former chief financial officer on Tuesday pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in the U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan federal court Former Finance Exec Allegedly Committed Crimes  According to Authorities, Morgenthau had embezzled over $1.2 million between June 2021 and August 2022 from African Gold Acquisition Corp, a blank check company, and underhanded the crime by forging its account statements, and spent or lost all of it in crypto and meme stock trading. Subsequent to that, the SEC said Morgenthau raised a total of $4.7 million from investors in SPACs, aliased as Strategic Metals Acquisition Corp, to cover his losses but lost most of the funds in trading crypto. At his scheduled April 25 sentencing, Morgenthau is said to face a likely jail sentence of about 6 to 7-1/4 years under recommended federal guidelines. Related Reading: Ex-Coinbase Manager’s Brother Pleads Guilty To Insider Trading Charge Ex-CFO Settled For An Agreement  Morgenthau settled for an agreement to forfeit $5.11 million and pay an equal amount in restitution, as well as settle related civil charges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His Background in the African Gold company seems as though the illegal embezzlement of funds has been a recurring activity from Morgenthau. African Gold, which was established to buy a gold mining business and based in New York, had raised $414 million in a Feb. 2021 initial public offering. The SEC said the company eventually laid off Morgenthau last year in August after discovering his run away with funds and vendors declining to work for the company.  According to African Gold, it terminated Morgenthau at the time after knowing about his “improper withdrawals” endeavor to conceal them. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan noted in a statement that given the pleading guilty, Morgenthau “acknowledged encroaching the trust that he owed to his public and private investors.”  Related Reading: New York Prosecutors Present Clear Legal Framework Related To Crypto Crimes Meanwhile, the crypto market still seems to be in a confused state with a small rally happening in Bitcoin and other altcoins. So far, Bitcoin has increased by 1.12% in the last 24 hours, gaining over $100 in price. As shown in the chart above, chances are we could see a retrace soon to take out the liquidity in the vector candle. As for other Altcoins, they all also seem to be following the same path as Bitcoin. At the time of writing, Ethereum is up 3% with a trading price of $1251.

Coinbase Agrees to $100 Million Settlement With New York Financial Regulator for Anti-Money Laundering Violations

Coinbase has agreed to pay a $100 million settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), according to a consent order signed by the NYDFS superintendent Adrienne Harris on Jan. 4, 2023. New York’s financial regulator said compliance problems were detected and the exchange’s anti-money laundering controls were inadequate from 2020 through 2021. […]

Cake DeFi publishes Merkle tree-based Proof of Reserves

According to Cake DeFi, users can now verify both assets and liabilities through their website.

The worst influencer and celebrity NFT cash grabs of 2022

From Donald Trump’s trading cards to Tai Lopez’s peculiar NFT collection, 2022 marked another year of poorly thought-out NFT drops by big names.

Magic Eden hosting service compromised: Nifty Newsletter, Dec 28–Jan 3

The wallet address of RTFKT’s chief operating officer got drained of its NFTs through a phishing scam.

Digital assets inflows reached $433M in 2022: Report

Bitcoin and multi-asset investment products saw inflows amounting to $287 million and $209 million last year, according to a report from Coinshares.

Bitcoin Coinbase Inflows Spike, Is This Bearish For BTC?

On-chain data shows the Bitcoin inflows to Coinbase have spiked recently, a sign that may turn out to be bearish for the crypto. Bitcoin Exchange Inflows To Coinbase Register High Values As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, a total of 20k BTC was transferred to Coinbase recently. The “exchange inflows” is an indicator that measures the total amount of Bitcoin currently being transferred to an exchange (which, in this case, is Coinbase). When this metric’s value is high, investors send many coins to the exchange right now. Since one of the main reasons holders deposit to exchanges is for selling-related purposes, this trend can have bearish implications for the price of the crypto. On the other hand, low values suggest investors aren’t making many deposits to the exchange. Such a trend could either be bullish or neutral for BTC, depending on whether the market-wide inflows are also down or not. Related Reading: Litecoin Whale Withdraws $32M In LTC From Binance, Good Sign For Rally? Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Bitcoin inflows to the crypto exchange Coinbase over the last couple of months: Looks like the value of the metric has been high on several occasions in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant As shown in the above graph, the Bitcoin exchange inflow to Coinbase has recorded many sizeable spikes in the last couple of weeks. However, as is apparent, there were no significant price moves following any of these large deposits. These spikes were not that big individually. So if the investors who made these transfers dumped their coins as soon as they completed the transactions, it would make sense that they couldn’t cause any volatility. However, the quant notes that there could be another scenario here. What if the holders responsible for these inflows haven’t pulled the trigger on the selling yet? It’s not unusual for investors to deposit their coins to exchanges in advance, waiting for the right movements in the price to exit. Related Reading: Brace For Impact? Bitcoin Open Interest RSI Forms Bearish Divergence All these transfers amounted to around 20,000 BTC entering into Coinbase’s wallets. At the current exchange rate, this stack would be worth around $336 million, which is certainly large enough to cause volatility in the crypto’s price if sold all at once. “Of course, if it were sold right after the deposit, the situation would be different, but you need to be careful if it hasn’t been sold yet,” cautions the analyst. BTC Price At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $16,800, up 1% in the last week. BTC seems to have seen a small increase in the last few days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView Featured image from Kanchanara on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com