New Report: Terra Founder Do Kwon Sent Millions of Dollars to Law Firm Before Collapse of Terra – Here's What You Need to Know

🇰🇷 Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon sent millions in funds to a local law firm in South Korea just before the implosion of the Terra ecosystem.

👁‍🗨 Kwon sent 9 billion won ($7 million) to lawyers at Kim & Chang, the largest law firm in South Korea, just before the collapse of the firm’s algorithmic stablecoin UST and its sister cryptocurrency Luna, South Korean media KBS News reported last week.

✨ In a Monday text message, the prosecutors’ office in Seoul confirmed the report, claiming that the revelation “isn’t false." The KBS report speculated that Kwon's move to send money to lawyers suggested that he was aware that he would face legal problems following the collapse of his crypto empire.

💪 Lawyers from Kim & Chang left for Montenegro a few days ago to meet with Kwon and Terraform’s former chief financial officer, the report added.Subsequently, South Korean police said that the identity of the suspect arrested in Montenegro had been confirmed as Kwon after his fingerprints matched the information held by the country's National Police Agency (KNPA).

Mysterious Hack Drains $10 Million from Crypto Whales and Early Crypto Investors – What's Going On?

🦊 A mysterious hack has drained more than $10 million worth of ETH and other tokens from a large number of crypto whales. The theft was first reported by a developer for the popular browser-based wallet MetaMask known as Tay, who wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that “Its rekt my friends & OGs who are reasonably secure.”


📍The MetaMask developer further explained that the hack involves more than 5,000 ETH, as well as an unknown number of other tokens and NFTs on several different blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The 5,000 ETH tokens alone are worth close to $10 million by today’s exchange rate.


📍As indicated by Tay in the original tweet, information on how the hack was carried out remains scarce at this point, but all of the victims appear to have in common that their wallets were created between 2014 and 2022. “This is NOT a low-brow phishing site or a random scammer. It has NOT rekt a single noob. It ONLY rekts OGs,” Tay wrote, using an acronym for the slang term ‘original gangster’ in crypto.

❎ “Users of *all* wallets, even those created on a hardware wallet or generated for the Ethereum presale, have been impacted by this,” Tay wrote, while noting that hackers have always exchanged the stolen funds to bitcoin which are then sent through a coin mixer to cover any traces.

Interpol Red Notice Leads to Arrest of Crypto Exchange CEO – Here's What You Need to Know

📌 The founder and former CEO of a now-defunct crypto exchange, Thodex, has been extradited to Turkey and was detained by police upon arrival in Istanbul.

🟣 Faruk Fatih Ozer, who founded Thodex in 2017, was arrested in Albania last year after an Interpol red notice against him, according to a Thursday report by state media AAcom.

🟣 The report detailed that the plane carrying Ozer took off from the Albanian capital of Tirana in the morning and landed at Istanbul Airport, where the Istanbul Airport Police Department took custody of Ozer.

📌 Abdullah Usame Ceran, the lawyer who filed a criminal complaint against the platform’s founder, said Thodex had 400,000 members at the time, of which 390,000 were active

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao Leads Praise for EU's New Crypto Regulation, MiCA

🚩 The European Union Parliament has passed a bill into law to combat its long-standing battle against the crypto market. For a long time, the crypto industry has gone without regulations and has been a concern for several regulatory bodies.

💎 In a bid to curb this menace, several regulatory bodies across the EU, the UK, and the US have since continued to clamp down on crypto exchanges and services.The MiCA regulations should come as a welcome development to many, especially investors, as the law would ensure crypto exchanges are made liable for losses accrued on their platforms.

🔶 According to CZ, as he is fondly called, this new bill from the European bloc creates tailored regulations that would better protect investors instead of outrightly witch-hunting facilitators in the burgeoning industry.

Crypto Exchange Coinbase Sues the SEC, Demands Court Compel Response to Rulemaking Petition – Here's the Latest

💰 Coinbase has asked a court to compel the Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to its July 2022 petition that asked for clearer crypto regulation guidelines.

1️⃣ On Monday, the company filed a lawsuit with a federal appellate court in Philadelphia, arguing that the SEC hasn’t been reasonable or prompt in providing a response.

2️⃣ The lawsuit alleged that "the SEC refuses to address Coinbase’s rulemaking petition" even as the agency expresses intentions to initiate enforcement proceedings against Coinbase for listing allegedly unregistered securities.

3️⃣ In July last year, Coinbase filed a petition with the SEC to write regulations explaining how securities laws apply to cryptocurrency and to engage in a formal notice-and-comment process to allow the public to weigh in.

🗣️ The largest crypto exchange also submitted a comment to the agency last month, asking for more clarity on the SEC’s views on staking services, which is when users lock crypto assets for a set period of time to help support the operation of a blockchain and earn rewards in return.

Hong Kong Regulators Set to Reveal Crypto Exchange License Guidelines in May

🇨🇳 Hong Kong's Securities Futures Commission (SFC) will release guidelines on the licensing regime for cryptocurrency exchanges by next month. SFC CEO Julia Leung announced the plan during an event, noting that the city will unveil its new cryptocurrency framework in May, according to a Thursday report by Bloomberg.


🌩 Back in February, the SFC published a consultation paper on its proposed regulatory regime for crypto trading platforms. As per the Bloomberg report, the consultation paper has garnered more than 150 responses.

🟥 Furthermore, in a new licensing regime for crypto platforms set to come into effect starting in June, the SFC will allow retail investors to trade certain digital currencies, the agency said earlier this year.

The regulator detailed that retail investors would be allowed to trade certain “large-cap tokens” on licensed exchanges, given that safeguards such as knowledge tests, risk profiles, and reasonable limits on exposure are put in place.

XRP Crypto Scam Prevented as YouTube Assists in Recovering Hacked Channel

▶️ YouTube has intervened to prevent an XRP cryptocurrency scam from being promoted on the hacked popular YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming.

🌟 Last week, the team behind DidYouKnowGaming warned on Twitter that they have lost access to their YouTube channel, which has 2.4 million subscribers, after their Google account was hacked.

🎞 YouTube was quick to act, asking the YouTuber for certain information in a bid to help them regain access to their account.

☀️ "We'll need to get some quick info from you & then we'll connect you w/ a specialist team who helps restore account access," the official Twitter account of YouTube said in response to DidYouKnowGaming.

Three Arrows Capital Founders Face Dubai Regulator's Scrutiny Over New Unregulated Exchange OPNX

🇦🇪 Dubai regulators are scrutinizing the co-founders of now-defunct crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital over their new unregulated digital asset exchange, OPNX.

🟢On April 18, Su Zhu and Kyle Davies received a written reprimand from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for promoting OPNX without the necessary local license, Bloomberg reported, citing a statement from the regulator.

🟢The other co-founders, Mark Lamb, and Sudhu Arumugam, as well as OPNX's CEO Leslie Lamb, also received reprimands.

🐈‍⬛ VARA became aware in February that OPNX was soliciting customers for its yet-to-be-launched platform, collecting personal data, and marketing the exchange without restrictions for UAE/Dubai residents, the report said.

Binance Addresses Compliance Concerns, Claims Robust Measures in Place to Prevent Terrorism Financing

🔸 Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has responded to a Reuters report that raised questions about its compliance policies for preventing and tackling cryptocurrency-based financing of terrorism.

🟣 The exchange said it takes the issue very seriously and is not aware of any exchange, or other financial institution, that does more today to keep bad actors off their platform than Binance, the platform said in a Friday blog post.

🟣 Binance claimed that its policies and processes comply with AMLD5/6 anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing requirements and it has a robust compliance program that incorporates sophisticated anti-money laundering.

🆒 The exchange also said it has tools to detect and address suspicious activity and even has specialists on its team who have focused their entire careers on counter-terrorism.

Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey's Crypto Firm Partners with Paxful's Ray Youssef for P2P Marketplace Venture

🎚 Jack Dorsey's crypto firm TBD has partnered with Paxful co-founder Ray Youssef to launch a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto trading platform.

🔹 The new venture, called Civilization Kit (Civ Kit), will be built on Nostr, a decentralized network protocol for distributed and free social networking systems, according to the project's white paper released last month.

🔹 The launch of Civ Kit comes shortly after Youssef's P2P bitcoin marketplace, Paxful, which was popular in countries such as Nigeria and Kenya, shut down amidst regulatory pressure and internal conflicts.

✅ Civ Kit intends to create a network of decentralized, non-custodial bitcoin marketplaces, which could reach thousands, Youssef said during a recent episode of The Scoop, a weekly interview podcast by crypto media The Block.

American Crypto Exchange Bittrex Declares Bankruptcy Amid SEC Scrutiny – is Binance US Next?

🇺🇸 Bittrex US has filed for bankruptcy in a federal court in Delaware less than a month after the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused the crypto platform of running an unregistered securities exchange.

⏺ On Monday, the US arm of cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company announced in an official press release.

🚫 The exchange noted that the bankruptcy filing would not impact Bittrex Global, which serves customers outside the United States. The exchange will continue operations "as normal" for customers outside the US.

Ethereum Bot Operated by Jaredfromsubway.eth Bags More Than $40 Million in Three Months

🔷 An Ethereum bot run by pseudonymous crypto user Jaredfromsubway.eth has made $40 million in just three months by using a technique known as "sandwiching" on decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

🔼 The bot operated by Jaredfromsubway eth is a so-called MEV bot designed to use “sandwiching” techniques – essentially front-running other traders – on DEXs where popular meme coins such as Pepe Coin (PEPE) are traded.

🔽 MEV is short for maximal extractable value, and represents the maximum value validators can extract from a block on the Ethereum blockchain by reordering, inserting or censoring transactions within blocks.

🛍 According to a report by EigenPhi, a site that analyzes the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, jaredfromsubway’s bot earned a total of $40 million over the course of the 3 months through a combination of front-running and holding on to the right tokens.

Pepe Coin Price Pumps 33% – AiDoge.com and $SPONGE Next Meme Coins to Explode?

👩‍🚀 Pepe coin price is pumping 33% at $0.000001644, as the weekend market flashes green, especially where meme coins are concerned, as with $SPONGE and AiDoge com also climbing.

🟢 Only a month old Pepe has delivered a 2,777% return for its early investors.

🟢 A swooning bitcoin price has impacted sentiment and prices over the past couple of days, but anyone zooming out from the near-term noise will have noticed that the leading crypto is still up 61% and above its all-important 200-day moving average.

💲 Meme coins are of course far more erratic than bitcoin due to the red hot speculative price action that surrounds the sector, so technical analysis can be far less important than momentum and sentiment.

SEC to Judge: Deny Coinbase's Call for Cryptocurrency Rule Explanation

🇺🇸 The US Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a judge to reject Coinbase’s request to compel the commission to respond to a rule-making petition that asked for clearer crypto regulation guidelines.

🔹 In a court filing Monday, the SEC said it is not mandated to meet the requirements outlined by Coinbase outlined in the petition, while also arguing that the firm has called for a complex set of reforms and rule-making in an unreasonably short amount of time.

🔹 As reported, Coinbase filed a lawsuit with a federal appellate court in Philadelphia last month, alleging that "the SEC refuses to address Coinbase’s rulemaking petition" even as the agency aims to initiate enforcement actions against the firm for listing unregistered securities.

💰 In July last year, Coinbase filed a petition with the SEC to write regulations explaining how securities laws apply to cryptocurrency and to engage in a formal notice-and-comment process to allow the public to weigh in.

Voyager Digital to Start Repaying Frozen Crypto Funds After Court Approval

🔶 Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital has won court approval to self-liquidate assets and start repaying customers a portion of their frozen funds. On Wednesday, US Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles approved Voyager's liquidation plan at a court hearing in Manhattan months after deals to sell the crypto lender to FTX or Binance US fell apart.

🔸 Users are expected to get about 36% of what they’re owed, far lower than the 72-73% estimated recovery rate they would have received if the Binance US acquisition plans had gone through. However, the recovery rate could increase if defunct crypto trading firm Alameda Research is unsuccessful in attempting to claw back $446 million from Voyager's estate.

🔸 Voyager's lawyers are also withholding further funds, including $259.6 million for litigation costs, administrative claims, and other holdbacks. Customers who have any of the 67 supported tokens, including Bitcoin and Ether, stuck on the platform will be able to withdraw the allowable percentage directly.

⚠️ However, a number of digital assets on the platform that cannot be withdrawn will be liquidated and returned to customers, which include major cryptocurrencies like Algorand (ALGO), Celo (CELO), and Avalanche (AVAX).

Hardware Wallet Rivals Offer Discounts in Wake of Ledger New Product Controversy

🖱 Amidst the recent controversy surrounding Ledger, a leading hardware wallet specialist, competitors are seizing the opportunity to address the concerns expressed by some users.

⚫️ One of these competitors is Trezor, a hardware producer, who aims to capitalize on Ledger's troubles by offering a discount to buyers.

⚫️ Trezor's website boldly promotes "Open Source security you can verify" and provides customers with a 15% discount until May 21. The company currently offers two hardware products: Trezor Model One and Trezor Model T, priced at $58 and $186 respectively after applying the latest discount.

❕ “Ledger Recover is an ID-based key recovery service that provides a backup for your Secret Recovery Phrase. If you lose or don't have access to your Secret Recovery Phrase, the service allows you to securely restore your private keys using a Ledger device,” according to the company.

Biden: I'm Not Willing to Strike a Deal With 'Crypto Traders'

🇺🇸 US President Joe Biden has said he is not willing to ink a debt ceiling agreement that would benefit crypto traders. During the final day of G7 talks in Japan, Biden addressed the budget negotiations, claiming that the proposed terms by Republican leaders are "unacceptable."

🔘Essentially, the investor is taking advantage of the downward trend in the crypto market to strategically sell assets at a loss, reducing the amount of taxes they owe.

🟣Involves selling cryptocurrencies that have experienced a decline in value in order to offset capital gains taxes on other investments. The capital losses that result from the sale of these cryptocurrencies can be used to offset capital gains or even reduce ordinary income taxes up to $3,000 per year.

👏 “I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects wealth tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for nearly 1 million Americans.”