Bitcoin
For defrauding numerous people out of more than 20,000 Bitcoin, a British man is to pay a record-breaking fine. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had previously moved against the British citizen Benjamin Reynolds in federal court.
The court, it has now been revealed, issued a penalty order in early March. Since it considers the guilt of the defendant as proven, this is to pay on the one hand approximately 429 million dollar (approximately 364 million euro) as punishment as well as scarcely 143 million dollar (approximately 121 million euro) as damages to 169 US customers. The number of those actually affected could be even higher.
The CFTC warns that the court's order does not automatically mean that affected parties will get their cryptoassets or their compensation payment. Because even if Reynolds can be tracked down, it may still turn out that he does not have the financial means to settle the demanded sums.
Bitcoin jumped 5% after billionaire Elon Musk announced Tesla would accept the digital asset as payment. Musk published his tweet soon after Twitter users noticed the updated bitcoin support for all models of Tesla's cars across online US stores.
The carmaker disclosed last month it invested $1.5 billion in the digital asset and said it would soon begin accepting it as payment for its products.
According to research by scientists at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Bitcoin mining consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) electricity per year in order to generate new Bitcoins and verify transactions on the blockchain.
This ranks Bitcoin’s electricity consumption above Argentina (121 TWh), the Netherlands (108.8 TWh) and the United Arab Emirates (113.20 TWh) - and it is gradually creeping up on Norway (122.20 TWh).
Bitcoin has surpassed the $50,000 mark for the first time on Tuesday, after Tesla, BNY Mellon and Mastercard showed support for the cryptocurrency and "the city of Miami’s recent moves to adopt bitcoin, and rumors of Uber and Apple jumping aboard."
Credit card company Mastercard has announced that it will enable transactions with cryptocurrencies in the future - pushing the bitcoin price, which has been rising for weeks, even higher.
Bitcoin rose to a new all-time high of $48,481. This means that bitcoin is taking aim at the round mark of 50,000 US dollars for the first time.
The company said it bought the bitcoin for "more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash," according to the filing. In addition to the purchase, Tesla said it would start accepting payments in bitcoin in exchange for its products as well.
The move raised immediate questions around CEO Elon Musk's behavior on Twitter recent weeks, where he has been credited for increasing the prices of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and dogecoin by posting positive messages about them and therefore encouraging more people to buy.
For several years, the Kempten public prosecutor's office has been sitting on more than 1700 Bitcoins. They could bring millions of euros to the state treasury.
As reported by the "Allgäuer Zeitung", the public prosecutor's office does have a digital wallet through which access to the Bitcoins would be possible. However, the former owner of the wallet refuses to reveal the password belonging to the wallet.
The case involved a total of 1800 Bitcoins, which the fraudster had obtained illegally, namely with the help of the computing power of other people's computers.
Bitcoin has surpassed the $30,000 mark, reaching a value of $33,000 on Saturday, an all-time high. The cryptocurrency has tripled in value in 2020 after plummeting to below $4,000 in march.
On Saturday, the price of the oldest and best-known cryptocurrency rose above the round mark of 25,000 US dollars (20,503.57 euros) for the first time. On the Bitstamp trading platform, a high of 25,022 dollars was reached. This is a record high. On other trading platforms, of which there are many, the record highs may differ, as there is no central Bitcoin trading.
Bitcoin has surpassed the $20,000 mark on Wednesday and continued to surge late into the evening, reaching $22,192 on 2 am EST. Bitcoin’s market cap has reached $384 billion.
One of the most valuable Bitcoin wallets on the planet containing Bitcoins worth almost $1 billion dollars has been emptied on Tuesday.
U.S. Attorney David Anderson has stated that the money came from "criminal proceeds" linked to "the successful prosecution of Silk Road's founder in 2015" adding that "Silk Road was the most notorious online criminal marketplace of its day".
Bitcoin rose on Wednesday by up to four percent to 14,274.53 dollars and was thus as expensive as last time during the hype at the turn of the year 2017/2018. In June, the Bitcoin supply has also been reduced by the so-called "halving" - for the third time in the history of the digital currency.
New Zealand Police has frozen $90 million from a New Zealand based company belonging to Alexander Vinnik who had been arrested in July 2017 while on a family vacation in Greece. The Russian IT expert has an open extradition warrant from the United States and France where the authorities accuse him of money laundering, identity theft, drug trafficking and computer hacking. The authorities also accuse him that he has operated BTC-e, a cryptocurrency exchange that allegedly enabled money-laundering. The Greek legal team of Vinnik denies that he ran the exchange and says he was an employee.