The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under the United States Department of the Treasury has included a crypto wallet allegedly linked to a major international crime syndicate in its list of Specially Designated Nationals. The US Treasury has sanctioned 10 individuals, including those associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, with Mexican national Mario Alberto Jimenez Castro being added to the list through an Ethereum wallet. <br>

Decentralized operating system Cartesi launched its first DApp Honeypot on the Ethereum mainnet. The design of this DApp is to allow developers and hackers to challenge the code security of the Cartesi protocol in exchange for bounty rewards. The Honeypot DApp will be used to stress test the basic code of Cartesi on its mainnet, allowing Cartesi's technology to launch and subsequently be used for other DApps. The first person to crack the Honeypot will receive approximately 1,772,889 Cartesi tokens (about $265,000) with no additional conditions. In the backend code of the Honeypot DApp, there is an algorithm that only allows depositors' accounts of the Cartesi Foundation to withdraw funds. Participants face the challenge of cracking the password and withdrawing funds to their own accounts.

Blockchain analysts have identified several transactions from a wallet linked to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in September 2023, totaling over $3.9 million. One transaction worth an estimated $632,000 was sent from Buterin's wallet to Coinbase. Buterin has reportedly deposited a total of 2,421 ETH, valued at $3.94 million, to various centralized exchanges over the past 10 days. The source of a transfer of 2,000 ETH worth $4.9 million to the address associated with Buterin's transactions is a better-known address belonging to Buterin than the middle address that has been transferring funds to exchanges.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has deposited 400 ETH (equivalent to $0.63 million) into Coinbase, sparking speculation about his intentions and strategies in the volatile cryptocurrency market. Recent transactions involving his ETH holdings have added to the intrigue surrounding his movements.

September 25th, according to Glassnode data, the balance of Ethereum on trading platforms reached 14,551,400.379, hitting a new low in nearly 5 years.

Balancer, an Ethereum-based automated market maker, has suffered a frontend compromise on its website due to a social engineering attack on its DNS service provider, EuroDNS. The attack led to the theft of an estimated $238,000 in crypto. Balancer's decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) worked to recover the Balancer UI and secured the domain, but the company is exploring deprecating the .fi TLD and suggests other projects using the same top-level domain should consider moving to a more secure registrar. The attacker employed Angel Drainer phishing contracts and SlowMist and CertiK reported that the hacker may be related to Russia.

Bitcoin's price surged past resistance at $27,000 on Monday, boosting sentiment for most cryptocurrencies. Ethereum also saw gains, reaching above $1,600 but stalling at $1,650. Other altcoins such as XRP, Cardano, and Toncoin also performed well, with gains ranging from 2.5% to 4.5%. The total market capitalization increased by 1.4% to $1.1 trillion, indicating a bullish trend. However, if Bitcoin fails to break through the $27,000 resistance, it may revisit the next major support area at $25,000.

Raoul Pal, a former Goldman Sachs executive, has named Solana (SOL) as one of his top altcoin picks and believes it could be the most promising project outside of Ethereum (ETH). Pal praises Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko for his thought leadership and ability to build bridges within the crypto space.

Major cryptocurrencies saw positive performance on Monday, September 18, with investors regaining confidence in digital currencies. Bitcoin's price rose 0.15% to $26,585.27 over the last 24 hours, while Ethereum's price remained flat at $1,629.15. XRP's price increased by 0.11% to $0.4973, and Litecoin's price added 1.06% to trade at $64.63.

Ethereum executed the beacon chain merge on September 15th, 2022, and today marks the one-year anniversary of the merge. According to on-chain data provider Ultrasound.money, the Ethereum supply has decreased by 299,722.81 ETH since the merge, keeping Ethereum in a state of deflation. In addition, the amount of ETH burned since the merge has reached 981,698.48, worth approximately $1,655,780,441.