The US Department of Justice has convicted a Bulgarian national for laundering nearly $5 million in Bitcoin from a cyber crime syndicate. A Bulgarian national has been convicted of laundering nearly $5 million worth of Bitcoin through his cryptocurrency exchange, which served as a front for a Romanian criminal syndicate that defrauded Americans via online auctions.

The United States Department of Justice announced the news this week, with the 53-year-old Rossen Iossifov of Kentucky, formerly of Bulgaria, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit racketeering and another count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The trial lasted two weeks, with sentencing scheduled for January 2021.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43276/bitcoin-exchange-front-for-romanian-mob-feds-say

With Uniswap’s high volumes and Ethereum 2.0 just around the corner, Kadenaswap has its work cut out. A team of former executives from crypto startup Block.one—the company that famously raised a purported $4 billion in an ICO to launch Ethereum competitor EOS—today launched a new decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that wants to change the way blockchain networks reward the people who secure them.

And, with a focus on DeFi, the newly released StrongBlock protocol will set its sights on improving Ethereum—not EOS.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43246/former-block-one-execs-launch-strongblock-ethereum-secure

The EY OpsChain Network Procurement is offering business solutions on the Ethereum blockchain. Accounting firm EY yesterday announced the release of the EY OpsChain Network Procurement (ONP) solution. This is EY’s first business application for the public Ethereum blockchain. The solution enables two companies to agree contracts on the blockchain while keeping sensitive information private.

The OpsChain Network Procurement gives companies the chance to use the Ethereum blockchain network to synchronize business agreements using smart contract technology. This is a major step in the growing relationship between traditional financial institutions and blockchain technology.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43115/ey-releases-first-business-application-on-ethereum-blockchain

Bitcoin miners have created over 88% of the total BTC supply—but it will still take over a century to produce all 21 million.
The total number of mined Bitcoin (BTC) in circulation has reached over 18.5 million—out of a maximum of 21 million—over the past weekend, according to block explorer Blockchain.com.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43106/the-18-5-millionth-bitcoin-has-now-been-mined

After last week’s market turmoil over the Trump transition, new revelations about the President’s debt are worrying Wall Street. Over the weekend, market watchers turned their collective eye towards Donald Trump’s tax returns. According to a New York Times investigation, the President paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017, and no income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years.

While markets were closed for the weekend, gold’s price has been slipping in early trading. The investigation also highlighted Trump is responsible for $421 million of loans, which are due to be repaid in the next four years.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43085/donald-trumps-taxes-investors-bitcoin-ethereum-markets

SparkPool, one of the largest Ethereum mining pools in China, developed GasNow, a tool that predicts gas prices on the network. And more, in this week's da bing. We've all been there. Scratching our heads, we repeatedly check Etherscan or ETH gas station to calculate the optimal gas fees to farm that tasty food token. Sometimes we get lucky. Other times, we have to come back later and try again.

Getting the gas price right is a daily headache for DeFi farmers. One product that has won many Chinese farmers’ hearts is GasNow, an ETH GasPrice forecast system developed by SparkPool, one of the largest Ethereum mining pools based in China. This week’s da bing takes a look at GasNow and how a Chinese mining pool came to develop such a tool.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43046/gasnow-the-hot-new-tool-that-predicts-ethereum-gas-prices

A letter from the SEC has added new clarification on how custodial broker-dealers like Coinbase can swap customer assets.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43037/the-sec-just-reduced-risk-for-broker-dealers-like-coinbase

As the team releases more information about yesterday's hack, it's clear that the damage is worse than initially thought. When cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin was hacked yesterday, reports circulated that hackers drained $150 million worth of cryptocurrency from its exchange. Today, KuCoin posted more “suspicious addresses.”

Should its hunches about those “suspicious addresses” check out, the damage so far is closer to $200 million. Here’s the breakdown:

$153 million of ETH and ERC-20 tokens.
Source: https://decrypt.co/43036/kucoin-hack-closer-to-200-million-as-team-releases-more-suspicious-addresses