Larry Dean Harmon has pleaded guilty to laundering more than $300 million while operating the Darknet-based Bitcoin (BTC) mixing service Helix. On Thursday, The United States Department of Justice announced that the 38-year-old pleaded guilty to laundering more than 350,000 BTC through Helix from 2014 through 2017. Bitcoin mixers are used to help people anonymize their Bitcoin. In the past, this has helped people cover their tracks on the Bitcoin ledger since all transactions are recorded and immutable on the blockchain. As a result, mixers have become a go-to place for criminals. Harmon admitted in court that he knew that …

Tether Holdings Ltd, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, Tether (USDT), reported that its total market capitalization had crossed $64 billion for the first time in history. The company called the event a “milestone,” adding that it is another indication of the cryptocurrency market’s “continued trust and confidence” in its stablecoin. Tether’s $USDt market cap hits $64B! A new milestone reached and another indication of the market’s continued trust and confidence in #Tether ! pic.twitter.com/t85i6e6UQt — Tether (@Tether_to) August 16, 2021 In detail, Tether’s business model revolves around providing digitized dollars to cryptocurrency traders and investors. In doing so, the …

Bitcoin (BTC) is replacing gold even as United States’ regulators attempt to disrupt its advance, said Mike McGlone of Bloomberg Intelligence on Monday. The senior commodity market strategist credited the “digitization of money and finance” behind the Bitcoin market’s superior growth against gold, noting that the same factors helped the U.S. dollar gain dominance “rapidly and organically” over the precious metal. McGlone’s comments appeared as takeaways from a recent three-day conference at New Hampshire’s Bretton Woods hotel, which was attended by economists, macro analysts and investors, including Fidelity Investment’s Jurrien Timmer and Morgan Stanley’s Amy Oldenburg, among others. Bretton Woods …

The United States Treasury Department is reportedly seeking to clarify the definition of brokers in the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the Senate last week, offering cautious reassurance that the new legislation won’t impact innovation and growth in the blockchain industry. As reported by Bloomberg, the Treasury Department is preparing guidance on what types of crypto companies will be required to comply with new Internal Revenue Service reporting requirements. The report indicated that the definition of “broker” could be narrowed from what many fear would include protocol developers and wallet providers that currently operate in the cryptocurrency industry. A Treasury …

Bitcoin (BTC) rewards company GoSats has launched a new cashback rewards card for customers in India, potentially setting the stage for wider mainstream adoption of digital assets in the world’s second-most populated country. The new product is being introduced in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India, also known as NPCI, which is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting digital payments and settlement systems across the country. The organization was founded in December 2008 and is an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India. The GoSats rewards card, which is accessible through mobile app and browser extension, allows users …

XRP price almost surged to its three-month high following a strong uptrend continuation on Aug. 14. Nevertheless, its wild weekly run-up triggered overvaluation risks, thus raising possibilities of an imminent price pullback. In detail, the XRP/USD exchange popped 11.78% higher to reach $1.20 for the first time since May 22. The pair's gains appeared as a part of a prevailing bullish trend that started July 20 when it was trading for as low as $0.154 — a 134% upside retracement on the whole. On a week-to-date timeframe, the XRP/USD rates were up circa 54%. XRP overbought The latest bullish moves …

United States Senators have cast their votes, and the contentious HR 3684 infrastructure bill cleared in the upper Congress chamber. Now, the gigantic document of over 2,700 pages and amounting to almost $1 trillion is heading to the House of Representatives, including the provisions expanding the definition of a cryptocurrency broker, designed to beef up crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) tax compliance. The $1 trillion can’t come out of thin air, right? While the bill in effect simply follows Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines, doomsayers are already declaring the end is nigh, haunted by visions of the dreaded Internal …

Due to their anonymity or pseudonymity, digital assets are perceived as entailing the risks of money laundering and financing terrorism. In October 2018, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) adopted changes to its recommendations on financial activities involving digital assets, adding the definitions “virtual asset” (VA) and “virtual asset service provider” (VASP). Since then, the FATF has adopted a risk-based approach to VA activities or operations and VASPs. This new approach includes the supervision of VASPs to ensure compliance in the areas of licensing and registration and preventive measures such as customer due diligence, transaction reporting and record-keeping. It also …

Though Okcoin chief compliance officer Megan Monroe said that there are still certain grey areas over cryptocurrencies in the United States, further regulation may not be the best solution. In a statement to Cointelegraph, Monroe said current U.S. regulations are sufficient to police cryptocurrency exchanges, token issuers and custody wallet providers, but “jurisdictional boundaries of these federal financial regulators are neither clear nor collaborative.” Rather, she advocated for a framework with greater clarity to determine which crypto firms should be subject to regulation and let investors know which protections are available. “A clear regulatory framework with established jurisdictional boundaries, flexible …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s chairperson Gary Gensler announced this month that the crypto industry should not escape the purview of the regulator. He highlighted that decentralized finance (DeFi) trading and lending protocols need particular attention when it comes to investor protections. Regulation can extend into a menu of options that covers custody, reporting, counterparty verification and asset classification and issuance. Reports are surfacing that people are waiting with bated breath on how the SEC will regulate the DeFi industry, but Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, also known as BaFin, has found a way to apply existing securities …

Coinbase stock rebounded during the early U.S. trading hours on Aug.11 after it beat Wall Street forecasts for sales and revenues in the second quarter. The cost to purchase one COIN share surged 4.7% to $282.34 at the New York opening bell. Later, bids for COIN rose to as high as $294 before pulling back to the current price at $279.72. Strong Q2 earnings for Coinbase Coinbase reported better-than-expected earnings in the second quarter of 2021and a net revenue of $2.3 billion. That came out to be 27% higher than the previous quarter and 1,042% up on a year-over-year basis. …

United States lawmakers will soon destroy a massive opportunity for job creation and a diverse workforce in blockchain technology if they do not amend infrastructure bill HR 3684, which would require blockchain developers to attain broker status on U.S. soil. HR 3684 does not recognize the taxonomy of the asset class. Not every crypto asset falls under the definition of security — many are transactional tokens and used as consensus mechanisms essential to distributed ledger technology. Requiring broker status for every blockchain developer indicates that U.S. lawmakers have yet to understand blockchain technology or cryptocurrency’s complex and diverse set of …