The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Chief Compliance Officer of Coinbase has resigned. Chief Compliance Officer Martine Niejadlik resigned Coinbase after spending a bit more than a year with the organization. The Free Beacon notes that recently investors and regulators have been critical of Coinbase's "outreach" efforts where Coinbase has noted that Bitcoin does not respect international sanctions as well as Coinbase's failure to definitively achieve licensing in every US state it claims to operate.
Australian Drug Trafficker Sentenced To 12 Years Prison
An Australian man who late last month plead guilty to drug trafficking charges in relation to the importation of MDMA, cocaine and amphetamines into Australia was yesterday sentenced to 12 and a half years prison. Continue reading
Amid Decision To Close, AllCrypt.com Reports Hot Wallet Theft
Off the back of an announcement that the AllCrypt.com bitcoin/altcoin exchange would be going offline as of the 31st of March due to low trading volume, the site now reports that its hot wallet has been emptied to the tune of about 42 BTC 37 BTC1 The alleged theft comes just one month after AltCrypt.com's twitter account claimed that its users bitcoins were safe due to the site being "too small and insignificant" to matter. Continue reading
It was at first claimed on the AllCrypt.com website that the theft totalled 42 BTC – 12 BTC owned by the site and 30 BTC owned by users. The AllCrypt.com twitter account claims different figures. ↩
Mycelium's Entropy To Begin Shipping
Mycelium has announced that their frauduct known as Entropy will begin shipping out to customers as of this coming Monday. Mycelium's Entropy, which was Indiegogo'd to the tune of $31,271 back in June through August last year, was originally slated to ship in October of 2014 but was delayed due to manufacturing issues as well as a decision to change the design of the case.
Sold under the pretence of being the safest way to generate a paper wallet, pre-orders for the first batch of units quickly sold out. The Indiegogo page for Entropy describes the unit as: Continue reading
Polish Bitcoin Embassy Closed
According to a post on a Polish language Bitcoin forum the Polish "Bitcoin Embassy" has closed. The operators report physical assault on at least one person affiliated with their effort along with a number of threatening communications directed at the embassy. The original announcement: Continue reading
Silk Road Moderator Pleads Guilty, Faces Life Imprisonment
A 42 year old man who waived his extradition rights and was subsequently extradited from Australia to the United States last November today plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit narcotics trafficking and money laundering for his role as a moderator of the Silk Road forum. Continue reading
Latest Ransomware Targets Game Files & Related Applications
Bromium Labs reports that a new variant of CryptoLocker has been spotted and that it is designed so as to specifically target gamers rather than taking the broad approach previously seen in earlier versions of 'the popular to edit so as to make your own' ransomware.
The latest variant reportedly targets 185 file extensions including ones associated with popular online games such as World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Starcraft 2 and Day Z. Additionally, the ransomware seeks out file extensions associated with programs such as Unity 3D in what is likely to be an assumption by the malware creator that these files are valued much more so by its owner than that of saved game files. Continue reading
Winner Of 27K Bitcoins Purchased At USMS Auction Revealed
To date, the United States Marshal Service has allegedly held three auctions for a portion of the 144,000 bitcoins confiscated in the wake of the October 2013 Silk Road bust. These auctions are claimed by Qntra to have allegedly occurred due to the continued refusal by the USG to respond to FOIA requests for further information on the alleged winners of the Bitcoin auctions. To that end, Qntra conducted and has now concluded its own investigation into the identity of the winner of the largest sum of bitcoins in the auction held by the USMS on the 5th of March 2015. That person's identity can now be revealed as real estate advisor, property manager, investor and entrepreneur Larry Dean Silvey. Continue reading
Blythe Masters To Head Wall Street Invasion
In what seems like a Wall Street invasion of Bitcoin, it was announced today Blythe Masters of precious metal price suppression infamy has accepted the position of Chief Executive of Digital Asset Holdings LLC. The company will build software to build a platform for trading "digitized versions of traditional financial intruments" such as CDOs or Options.
The Wall Street Journal which detailed the announcement in a recent article quoted Masters: Continue reading
Czech Ministry Fingers Heist Suspect
Czech Republic based Bitcoin exchange Bitcash.cz was allegedly hacked on November 11, 2013 and approximately 4000 bitcoins were stolen. The operator or operators almost succeeded in their efforts to remain anonymous with impunity, were it not for disgruntled users that named some suspected perpetrators in online forums. According to the 2014 yearly report of the analytics departmentt of the Czech Ministry of Finance, one of the named persons opened new bank account (in a Czech bank) and immediately transferred to there non-trivial amounts from an EU Bitcoin exchange, thus prompting a closer look from the Department. It concluded with a money laundering criminal complaint, which is currently waiting for court proceedings.