On October 20, 2020, the amount of Bitcoin (BTC) held at major exchanges fell below 2.5 million BTC for the first time in two years. Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev opined to Cointelegraph that this trend is driven by the world finally realizing that only Bitcoin offers sound monetary policy: “[People are] slowly are realizing what some of us have known for a while — BTC is the only sound monetary policy right now and you cannot afford to depart from the best performing asset of the decade.” He also noted that the community is resorting more to self-custody solutions, including …

Bitcoin (BTC) exchange reserves are continuously plummeting as analysts pinpoint the trend to a shortage of sellers. Since the March crash, the reserves on exchanges rapidly fell from 2,950,000 BTC to 2,700,000 BTC. Within merely seven months, a 250,000 BTC fall in exchange reserves signifies a $2.85 billion decline. Behind the steep trend could be two major factors: a decline in sellers and lower trust toward exchanges. Bitcoin reserves on exchanges. Source: Glassnode Is the number of Bitcoin sellers dropping amidst an accumulation phase? Analysts mainly attribute the sustained drop in Bitcoin exchange reserves to an overall shortage of sellers …

United States Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce — better known as “Crypto Mom” — believes the recent action against BitMEX may be a wake up call for crypto firms. In an interview with “Unchained Podcast” on Oct. 13, Peirce told host Laura Shin that the recent charges laid against BitMEX by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has put the international crypto industry on notice about U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) regulations. “I think that the message has been coming to the industry fairly loud and clear on …

At the start of October, the crypto market was faced with extremely tumultuous financial conditions, thanks in large part to the recent filings against BitMEX, which saw the company’s top brass being indicted by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission on several charges. Not only that, but just a few days before the BitMEX scandal came to light, cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin was hacked to the tune of over $275 million on Sept. 26. In the midst of all this, the crypto derivatives market also witnessed a major development in the form of Binance overtaking Huobi and OKEx to become …

The operator of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX, 100x Group, has hired a seasoned Anti-Money Laundering (AML) specialist, Malcolm Wright, as its chief compliance officer. In an announcement on Oct. 12, the 100x emphasized Wright's profile as the current chairman of the Advisory Council and AML Working Group at Global Digital Finance, and as a speaker covering key topics that include the Financial Action Task Force's Recommendations for Virtual Asset Service Providers. 100X Group had last week reshuffled its top leadership, removing BitMEX's co-founders Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed and Ben Delo from executive roles. Hayes, Reed and Delo were all charged …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's note Historians typically date the birth of international policing as we know it today to the 1800s, a response to the explosion in nationalist movements and non-governmental political radicalism in Europe. Just as new linking technologies like the telegraph and the steam engine aided and abetted new networks of political deplorables and any number of Sherlock Holmes plots, the explosion of communications tech of the last quarter-century has brought about new forms of crime. Which is, y’know, something everyone passively …

BitMEX's co-founder and former chief technical officer, Samuel Reed, has signed a $5 million unsecured appearance bond for his release from custody pending court proceedings. Reed had been arrested by the United States Department of Justice in Massachusetts on Oct. 1 for flouting money laundering rules in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, as well as illegally offering derivatives trading to U.S. retail customers. Reed's fellow co-founders and colleagues, Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Gregory Dwyer, all indicted with the same charges, remain "at large," according to the DoJ. According to the court documents, which were approved on Oct. 1, …

Cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX has not played ball by U.S. regulatory rules, which hurts the crypto industry as a whole, according to David Carman, a former veteran Chicago Board Options Exchange trader. Carman currently helps head up a Chicago-based global crypto regulatory association, seeking to bring regulatory clarity to the industry. "If they're not going to behave, they're just going to hurt the industry and drag it down," Carman told Cointelegraph regarding BitMEX. "What's BitMEX thinking of? What are any of these companies thinking of that they can operate like this and not be above board and be honest and …

The EU decided to remove Cayman Islands from its blacklist of tax heavens on Tuesday. The Cayman Islands is a popular jurisdiction for crypto businesses. It was added to the EU's blacklist in February of this year, so it has spent fewer than six months on the list. In 2019, the six exchanges domiciled there were responsible for over $1.5 billion in international Bitcoin (BTC) transactions. Though these numbers pale in comparison to the global leader — the Seychelles, whose 12 exchanges were responsible for $36 billion, the Seychelles remain on the blacklist and are categorized as a nation that …

Recent years have seen the crypto industry mature across the global economic landscape, but it still runs into high-profile snags. On Oct. 1, the United States Department of Justice filed criminal charges against four executives of the BitMEX trading platform — including its founder, Arthur Hayes — for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. One of the executives in question has been arrested, according to a DOJ statement. Furthermore, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a civil enforcement action against BitMEX and three of its executives for violating Anti-Money Laundering regulations. The regulatory body claimed that BitMEX and its top …

For BitMEX, 2020 has been quite a rough year and from the look of things it’s only set to get worse. The popular derivatives exchange is no longer as relevant and impactful on crypto market price action as it was 2 years ago, but a significant short-term price correlation among top exchanges has been proven repeatedly. A well-documented case occurred in May 2019, when a large sell order on Bitstamp caused a cascading $250 million liquidation on BitMEX. The following month, a Coinbase exchange outage triggered a $1,400 Bitcoin (BTC) price nosedive, as reported by Cointelegraph. A well circulated report …

On the morning of Oct. 1, the United States government authorities in New York issued indictments for four of the senior team of BitMEX, the famed “wild card” exchange based in Hong Kong. Despite that, the crypto exchange still continues to operate its services. BitMEX is one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges and has a reputation for being notoriously “relaxed” on Know Your Customer and ID procedures for its users — at least until mid-August of this year. Additionally, users are allowed a high withdrawal limit with little to no KYC. After doing some research, it is clear that …