Author: Coindesk
The cartels “are increasingly purchasing fentanyl precursor chemicals and manufacturing equipment” from China-based suppliers and paying in tokens including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), monero (XMR), and tether (USDT) “among others,” according to an updated FinCEN advisory to alert U.S. financial firms about the network of criminal organizations producing the dangerous narcotic. Read the full article here
It’s important to note the latest survey only spans May 30, 2023, to Oct. 6, 2023, missing a critical year-end period during which bitcoin rose from approximately $28,000 to $42,300, driven largely by anticipation of the SEC’s approval of spot bitcoin ETFs which occurred later, in January of 2024. Perceptions have likely evolved meaningfully since the start of 2024 following crypto’s market capitalization climbing above $2.5 trillion, Bitcoin surging to nearly $74,000, and the SEC’s approval of bitcoin and soon Ether spot ETFs. Read the full article here
June 20: Farworld Labs, the Farcaster-native gaming company, has closed its $1.75 million pre-seed funding round, co-led by Lemniscap and Variant. According to the team: “The funding will enable Farworld Labs to expedite the rollout of upcoming Q3 releases, including the highly anticipated launch of the Farcade platform in conjunction with top-tier studios and developers. Built on decentralized social media protocols, the Farcade is a platform and suite of tools for developers to build crypto-native games that integrate with onchain social, making games instantly playable within social media feeds with just a single click.” Read the full article here
Recently, it became more than that for on-chain traders. A new generation of Telegram trading bots changed crypto UX forever, and perhaps changed on-chain trading forever. Buying/selling, setting limit orders, scanning new projects, sniping new launches, and copy trading “smart money,” all became simple with a single command. Read the full article here
“When you’re sitting at a board meeting and the CEO says, ‘I’ve got this idea we should tokenize assets, or we should get into crypto and payments in USDC,’ the first person to knock on the table during that board meeting was a CFO saying they don’t know how to handle these kind of assets,” Zackon said in an interview. “Well now it’s easy for them. Everything they are used to from the Web2 world exists exactly like it’s built for the CFO that maybe doesn’t even have any connection to digitalizing crypto beforehand.” Read the full article here
Led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, the company as of the end of April held 214,400 bitcoins. This latest acquisition brings the company’s total holdings to 226,331 tokens worth just under $15 billion at bitcoin’s current price of roughly $66,000. The company’s bitcoins were purchased at an average price of $36,798 each, or roughly $8.33 billion. Read the full article here
Exaion, which helps industries with digital transformation by focusing on addressing the energy efficiency of data centers, joins a pool of 32 validators on Cronos’ open-source Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) protocol. Cronos EVM interoperates with Ethereum and the Cosmos network and uses a proof-of-authority consensus mechanism. Read the full article here
“When the price of Bitcoin falls, memecoins tend not only to follow, but to lose an even greater share of their value,” shared Neil Roarty, analyst at investment platform Stocklytics, in a Thursday email to CoinDesk. “Any plans for a memecoin summer may have to be put on hold.” Read the full article here
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Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been fined approximately $2.2 million (18.82 crore INR) for providing services to Indian clients without adhering to the nation’s anti-money laundering rules, India’s anti-money laundering unit announced Thursday. Read the full article here