Sam Bankman-Fried’s life in jail, Tornado Cash’s turmoil, and a $3B BTC whale: Hodler’s Digest, Aug. 20-26

Top Stories This Week

Tornado Cash co-founders charged with wealth laundering, sanctions violations

United States officials pressed charges against the co-founders of crypto mixer Tornado Cash connected Aug. 23. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov were some charged with conspiracy to perpetrate wealth laundering, conspiracy to perpetrate sanctions violations and conspiracy to run an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Storm was arrested and released connected bail a fewer days later, portion Semenov was added to the U.S. database of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons. Combined, the charges transportation a maximum condemnation of 45 years successful prison. The 3rd Tornado Cash co-founder, Alexey Pertsev, was arrested successful the Netherlands connected wealth laundering charges successful August 2022. The instrumentality enforcement actions are a continuation of a U.S. authorities crackdown connected Tornado Cash that began past twelvemonth owed to its alleged relation successful laundering funds of the Lazarus Group, a North Korean-linked hacking collective. Tornado Cash has been implicated successful respective different hacks arsenic well. All told, the mixer has laundered implicit $1 cardinal successful ill-gotten gains, the U.S. Department of Justice alleges.

Sam Bankman-Fried is debased connected meds, surviving connected $3 peanut food successful prison

FTX laminitis Sam Bankman-Fried appears to beryllium having a pugnacious clip down bars, eating lone breadstuff with peanut food to accommodate his vegan fare portion exhausting his proviso of medicine medication. In the aforesaid proceeding wherever Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to 7 fraud-related charges, his lawyers pleaded for the erstwhile FTX CEO to person amended attraction wrong Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center. Also this week, Bankman-Fried was granted support to meet with his ineligible squad extracurricular of jailhouse with 48 hours’ notice. Every day, helium volition person astir 7 hours to hole for his upcoming proceedings expected to statesman successful October.

Mystery solved: Bitcoin wallet accruing $3B successful 3 months is identified

The mysterious Bitcoin wallet that surged up the ranks to go the third-largest holder of Bitcoin successful the satellite successful conscionable implicit 3 months, has been identified. Blockchain quality level Arkham Intelligence labeled the wallet arsenic Robinhood: Jump Trading Custody. According to information from crypto statistic level BitInfoCharts, the wallet code archetypal received Bitcoin connected March 8. Over the people of the adjacent 3 months and 2 weeks, the wallet had accrued a staggering 118,000 BTC — worthy $3.08 cardinal astatine existent prices. The existent largest Bitcoin wallets successful the world, according to BitInfoCharts, are reportedly owned by Binance and Bitfinex — arsenic Bitcoin acold wallets.

Prime Trust genitor institution mislaid $8M investing successful TerraUSD

The genitor institution of crypto custodian Prime Trust — presently progressive successful Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings — has reported losing astir $8 million successful lawsuit and treasury funds done TerraUSD investments, presumably erstwhile the algorithmic stablecoin collapsed successful May 2022. The institution described the concern arsenic good arsenic a ramping up of spending successful October and November 2022 — successful the midst of FTX’s illness — arsenic contributing to its bankruptcy filing. Court documents amusement Prime Trust owed much than $85 cardinal successful fiat and $69.5 cardinal successful crypto to its clients. The illness of the Terra ecosystem triggered a large marketplace clang successful 2022, affecting respective firms including FTX, BlockFi, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.

PEPE whale seizes dip opportunity, buys $529K worthy of tokens

A Pepe holder bought 640 cardinal Pepe tokens for 320 Ether valued astatine $529,000 aft the terms of the frog-themed memecoin dropped by astir 15% owed to caller changes to a multisig wallet and concerns astir imaginable developer manipulation. According to on-chain analytics level Lookonchain, the whale purchased PEPE astatine an mean terms of $0.000001163. The worth of the once-popular memecoin plunged aft changes related to the magnitude of signatures required to motion transactions led to worries astir a imaginable “rug pull,” which was aboriginal confirmed by 1 of the project’s co-founders.

Winners and Losers

At the extremity of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is astatine $26,040, Ether (ETH) astatine $1,653 and XRP astatine $0.52. The full marketplace headdress is astatine $1.05 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the apical 3 altcoin gainers of the week are Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) at 18.58%, Sui (SUI) astatine 12.86% and Toncoin (TON) astatine 11.97%. 

Most Memorable Quotations

“If past were to repetition itself, the adjacent halving would spot bitcoin rising to $35k earlier the halving and $148k after.”

Pantera Capital

“A caller computing epoch has begun. Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI.”

Jensen Huang, laminitis and CEO of NVIDIA

“Some of the radical who presently deliberation that determination should not beryllium effectual instrumentality enforcement on-chain would consciousness otherwise if they got hacked, defrauded, oregon mislaid their backstage keys.”

Mike Kanovitz, CEO of Jurat

“You could ne'er underestimate the harm the SEC’s suit has caused – not lone against Ripple – but #XRP. Three years of adoption – that’s what it’s caused.”

John Deaton, pro-XRP lawyer

“AI volition ne'er regenerate quality creativity due to the fact that it volition ever deficiency the indispensable spark that drives the astir talented artists to bash their champion work, which is intention.”

Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube

“Blockchain and AI tin surely co-exist — they’re some pillars of Web3.”

Aydin Kilic, CEO of Hive Digital Technologies

Prediction of the Week 

Bitcoin ‘overconfidence reigns’ but bulls indispensable reclaim $27.8K — Trader

Bitcoin needs to reclaim 1 cardinal moving average to “regain its bullish status,” argues fashionable pseudonymous expert CryptoCon, informing that bulls remained excessively optimistic astir the $26,000 BTC terms enactment holding.

For CryptoCon, the 20-week exponential moving mean (EMA), present astatine $27,750, indispensable beryllium won backmost arsenic enactment successful bid for the uptrend to beryllium safe. “I person been covering this moving mean a batch recently, but I judge it is captious for Bitcoin to regain its bullish status,” helium wrote.

The investigation compared existent BTC terms enactment to its rebound from 2018 rhythm lows. “It is precise important that Bitcoin some rises supra and retests the 20 Week EMA arsenic support,” CryptoCon noted with a illustration showing the similarities betwixt 2019 and 2023, with the retest and consequent palmy EMA reclaim circled.

FUD of the Week 

Chinese authoritative sentenced to beingness successful situation for Bitcoin mining, corruption

A Chinese authorities authoritative has been sentenced to beingness successful prison for illegitimate concern operations related to moving a 2.4 cardinal Chinese yuan ($329 million) Bitcoin mining endeavor and for unrelated charges of corruption. Prosecutors accidental Xiao Yi — a erstwhile subordinate of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference Party Group — “covered up” the mining cognition by instructing applicable departments to fabricate statistical reports and set the classification of energy consumption. From 2017 to 2020, his facility’s energy depletion accounted for 10% of the metropolis of Fuzhou’s full energy consumption.

FBI flags 6 Bitcoin wallets linked to North Korea, urges vigilance successful crypto firms

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has flagged six Bitcoin wallets linked to North Korean state-backed hacking radical Lazarus. The six wallets incorporate 1,580 BTC worthy $40 cardinal believed to beryllium hoarded from assorted cryptocurrency hacks implicit the past year. The FBI successful its probe recovered that Lazarus Group moved astir 1,580 BTC linked with respective crypto exploits. The hacking radical has been actively progressive successful aggregate crypto-linked exploits implicit the years and are believed to person stolen astir $2 cardinal successful crypto since 2018.

OpenSea manager accused of insider trading sentenced to 3 months successful prison, $50K fine

A national justice has sentenced erstwhile OpenSea merchandise manager Nathaniel Chastain to 3 months successful situation for ligament fraud and wealth laundering related to insider trading connected the platform. He was accused of utilizing insider accusation successful his presumption astatine OpenSea to nett disconnected the trading of NFTs. In his presumption arsenic merchandise manager, helium had the authorization to take which NFTs would beryllium featured connected the OpenSea website. He purchased 45 NFTs anterior to them being featured and past resold them.

Recursive inscriptions: Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming soon

Some judge that Ordinals and recursive inscriptions could supercharge the Bitcoin web arsenic a viable rival to astute declaration platforms. It’s not going to beryllium easy, though.

AI Eye: Get amended results being bully to ChatGPT, AI fake kid porn debate, Amazon’s AI reviews

Being bully to ChatGPT gets amended results, Wired’s weird kid porn statement and the extremity of CATPCHAs.

NFT Collector: Giant Swan’s gothic VR dreamscapes… royalty nightmare connected OpenSea

From crying successful his car to putting the archetypal 3D entity onchain — the communicative of Giant Swan. Plus royalties contention to the bottommost accelerates owed to OpenSea.