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Cointime News Wrapup-Afternoon: CEX Trading Volumes Decline in April After Months of Growth
To smooth and facilitate the reading experience for all users, we hereby compose this wrapup, especially for users who cannot check out what’s going on in a timely manner.
On Tuesday, a Dutch judge ruled that Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was guilty of money laundering. The court sentenced Pertsev to 64 months in prison. In August 2022, Tornado Cash was blacklisted by the US government, and this is the first time the developer has been sentenced to prison in the Netherlands. At the time, the US Treasury Department claimed that Tornado Cash was a key tool for the North Korean hacker group Lazarus. The Lazarus group is linked to the $625 million hack of Axie Infinity's Ronin Network and other major cryptocurrency thefts.
A Dutch court composed of three judges has ruled that Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev committed the crime of laundering $1.2 billion in illegal assets on a cryptocurrency mixing platform. It is expected that the panel will also sentence 31-year-old Russian resident Alexey Pertsev on Tuesday, and Pertsev's lawyer will have 14 days to appeal the judge's ruling. Experts say that this ruling will reshape the privacy protection process in the decentralized finance field and have a "chilling effect" on the development of open-source software that provides financial privacy protection tools for users.
The Hong Kong Police Commercial Crime Bureau locked onto a cross-border money laundering group in November 2023. The investigation found that the group recruited mainlanders to open puppet bank accounts in Hong Kong from September 2023 to March 2024. They used various types of fraud, such as telephone scams, nude chat scams, investment scams, and job scams to defraud victims. The victims were instructed by the fraudsters to deposit the stolen money into the puppet accounts controlled by the criminal group. The group would then withdraw the stolen money from the puppet accounts in cash and buy cryptocurrencies on the over-the-counter (OTC) market. They would also open accounts on overseas cryptocurrency platforms with false identities and deposit the cryptocurrencies purchased with the stolen money before transferring them to multiple cryptocurrency wallets to launder the criminal proceeds. The police also pointed out that the group used 72 local puppet bank accounts to launder more than HKD 88 million in criminal proceeds, of which HKD 6.7 million was related to 48 fraud cases. As of yesterday, the police arrested 7 men and 1 woman aged between 26 and 51 for conspiring to launder black money. They claimed to be a lifeguard, photographer, telephone programmer, salesperson, and unemployed. Six of them were core members, and two were puppet account holders.
New York-based venture capital firm Sharp Alpha Advisors has secured $25 million for its second fund, which will primarily invest in early stage software companies in the sports, gaming, and entertainment sectors. The fund aims to invest between $1 million and $2 million in 15 startups that fall under the category of "competitive entertainment," such as technology firms catering to sports betting, fantasy sports, streaming platforms, and video games. Sharp Alpha has already invested in London-based technology startup C15 Studio, which operates and distributes streaming channels for Formula 1 and One Championship, and plans to make further investments over the next three to five years. Additionally, the firm has a sidecar vehicle for limited partners to invest more money in individual companies within the fund.
Russian authorities have proposed imposing huge fines on cryptocurrency miners suspected of operating in residential properties. The authorities may also consider revising the Code of Administrative Offenses to hold those who abuse electricity accountable.
On May 14th, TheoriqAI, a modular AI agent infrastructure, announced on X platform that it has completed a $6.2 million Super-Seed round of financing. Hack VC led the investment, with participation from Foresight Ventures, HTX Ventures, Figment Capital, HASH CIB, Inception Capital, Antalpha Ventures, NewTribe Capital, Stateless Ventures, Bitscale Capital, Construct Ventures, Hypersphere, IOSG Ventures, LongHash Ventures, HashKey Capital, SNZ Holding, Chainlink.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's governing body, the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), has delayed the compliance deadline for new rules on bank crypto assets by one year. The latest date for the project has been changed to January 1, 2026.
LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino stated on social media that up to 100,000 addresses have been identified as witches. Previously reported on May 4th, LayerZero officials stated that all witch users were given a chance to self-report within the next 14 days and those who did would receive an expected distribution of 15%.
According to data monitored by Arkham, Grayscale transferred about 1202 BTC to Coinbase and Coinbase Prime this morning. The data shows that Grayscale transferred about 1050 BTC to Coinbase about 9 hours ago, worth about $66.96 million, and then transferred about 151.416 BTC to Coinbase Prime about 7 hours ago, worth about $9.76 million.
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