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SEC Charges Three Persons in Digital Asset Frauds of Over $11 Million

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] has charged three individuals on the 1st of February with defrauding hundreds of retail investors of $11.4 million via the 2018 B2G token offering advocated by Hollywood actor Steven Seagal.

The accused were involved with the now-defunct crypto projects called Bitcoiin2Gen which was the 2018 initial coin offering for the Steven Seagal-promoted altcoin and Start Options.

Kristina Littman, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber Unit was quoted saying,

“The conduct alleged in this action was a blatant attempt to victimize those interested in digital asset technology and these defendants should be held accountable. In reality, we allege, these ventures were fraudulent enterprises aimed simply at misappropriating funds from investors.”

According to SEC’s complaint, Kristijan Krstic, the founder of Start Options and Bitcoiin2Gen, and John DeMarr, the primary U.S.-based promoter for these firms, fraudulently persuaded the investors to purchase digital asset securities from approximately December 2017 through May 2018.

The US watchdogs further alleged that Krstic and DeMarr also claimed Start Options’ purported digital asset mining and trading platform from December 2017 through late January 2018.

The SEC further noted that the two individuals in question allegedly went on to assert that that Start Options was “the largest Bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity” among other claims and also promoted Bitcoiin2Gen’s unregistered initial coin offering [ICO] of digital asset securities known as B2G tokens.

The third individual in the SEC’s complaint was Robin Enos who worked with DeMarr and was accused of drafting sham promotional materials that Enos had known would be circulated to the investors. It further noted that the fraudulent materials included several fake statements including that the B2G tokens would be deliverable on the Ethereum blockchain, that the invested funds would be utilized to develop a cryptocurrency that was “mineable,” and that the tokens would be tradeable on a proprietary digital asset trading platform at the platform’s supposed ‘launch’ in early April 2018.

“In reality, the complaint alleges, these claims about the B2G tokens were false, Bitcoiin2Gen was a sham, and Krstic and DeMarr allegedly misappropriated millions of dollars of investor funds for their own personal benefit.”

Binance Coin [BNB] Retraces To $50 As Bears Make A Brief Stop In Its Market

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The crypto market was back in business with its market cap hitting $1 trillion again. Binance Coin [BNB], Cardano [ADA] as well as Ethereum [ETH] were seen on the top in terms of price change. Ethereum was seen trying to push past its all-time high once again, while ADA seemed to be aiming for $1 with its 17% surge in the last 24-hours. XRP and Dogecoin [DOGE] were seen stepping down from the top as both these assets were enduring major losses, especially in the last 24-hours. Bitcoin [BTC] was seen on the sidelines with a dainty price change of 1%. The price of the king coin, at press time, was noted at $34,207.47.

Binance Coin [BNB], during press time, was priced at $50.75 with an 11.39% surge over the past 24-hours. Earlier today, BNB hit an all-time high of $52.14. The altcoin was seen finding its way back into the top ten. BNB was standing as the tenth-largest coin with a market cap of $7.7 billion.

Binance Coin [BNB] One-Hour Price Chart

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Binance Coin [BNB] Retraces To $50 As Bears Make A Brief Stop In Its Market 3

BNB was on a roll. The asset hit its all-time high and was seen retracing. In the one-hour price chart of BNB, the bears were seen stopping for a bit. The Parabolic SAR indicator formed dotted lines above the candlesticks and restricted any short term surges in the upward direction. The Awesome Oscillator also exhibited a similar notion as it laid out strong red closing bars. The MACD line had undergone a bearish crossover.

All the indicators used in the coin’s short term chart suggested that BNB was bound to fall.

Binance Coin [BNB] Short Term Price Chart

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Binance Coin [BNB] Retraces To $50 As Bears Make A Brief Stop In Its Market 4

The volume on BNB’s one hour price chart had subsided over time. The asset was seen depleting from the overbought zone. Despite this fall, a buyers’ sentiment was intact in the BNB market, the Relative Strength Index indicator suggested,

Bitcoin Cash [BCH] Could Sprint Towards $460

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Bitcoin Cash [BCH] came no where close to its all-time high of $4,355.62 that it achieved three years ago. While Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH] and several other coins surged past their all-time highs, BCH, XRP along with many others failed to do so. XRP’s squabble with the SEC pushed the coin to a critical point. The altcoin, at press time, was trading for a low of $0.25. All the new coins like Polkadot and Chainlink prevailed during this crypto rally.

Bitcoin Cash, went up to a high of $629.80 in the last 30 days. But it wasn’t very hard for the coin to plummet down to a low of $331.91 either. At the time of writing. BCH was trading for $396 with a dainty surge of 1% in the last 24-hours. Over the last week, BCH had suffered losses of over 14%. The trading volume in the BCH market was seen soaring by 3.47% and was at $5.7 billion.

Bitcoin Cash [BCH] One-Hour Price Chart

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Bitcoin Cash [BCH] Could Sprint Towards $460 7

After witnessing a steep fall from $460, BCH was finally seen getting back on track. The Money Flow Index was recovering from its journey to the oversold zone on the one-hour price chart. The MFI marker was just above 50 median, which revealed that BCH was revealing a buyers’ sentiment. The Chaikin Money Flow indicator opened the gates for the bulls as the marker pushed past zero.

Bitcoin Cash [BCH] On Binance

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Bitcoin Cash [BCH] Could Sprint Towards $460 8

The bulls were dancing around the BCH market. The Parabolic SAR indicator formed dotted lines below the candlesticks. This stood as a barricade against any possible downtrend. The Awesome Oscillator indicator laid out green closing bars which is considered to be bullish. The MACD indicator was in sync with the other indicators. Just today, the MACD line took over the signal line formulating a bullish crossover.

This bullish notion in the BCH market could fuel the altcoin’s journey back to $460. The prolongation of this trend could push BCH beyond $500.

Canadian Investment Firm Raises $180M For A Bitcoin Trust In An IPO

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Initial public offerings [IPO] have taken place under the crypto spotlight. Canadian investment platform, Ninepoint Partners is the latest to jump the bandwagon. The platform broke the record for raising the highest amount for a Bitcoin Trust in the country. Ninepoint Partners LP got its Bitcoin trust listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

A whopping $230 million Canadian dollars was raised in the initial public offering. The money raised in the IPO would be accessible in the form of units 7,318,276 Class A Units; 2,865,314 Class F Units; and 7,806,901 Class S Units. The Class A units will be out and about in Canadian dollars as well as USD on the Toronto Stick Exchange. The aforementioned units would be available under the symbols BITC.U and BITC.UN. With this fund, the platform hopes to provide holders of Units of the Fund with Bitcoin. Ninepoint would reportedly operate as a trustee as well as the manager of the Fund.

John Wilson, the Managing Partner and the Co-CEO of the Toronto-based firm revealed that the company was “delighted” with the accomplishment of the listing.

Several platforms including, Gemini and Coinbase have been revealing their intentions of going public. While Coinbase has already commenced working towards it, Gemini’s IPO is still under the wraps.

James Fox, Co-CEO and Managing Partner of Ninepoint, also commented on the firm’s latest move and said,

“We believe our institutional quality trust structure and lowest management fee of any listed bitcoin investment fund in Canada will be a winning combination for continued investor interest. With this initial offering, we are laying the foundation for the success and growth of our Digital Asset Group. We would like to thank all of our partners and in particular Canaccord Genuity Corp. and INFOR Financial Inc. for their part in executing our first bitcoin offering.”

Last year, 3iQ rolled out a trust fund and became the first to do so in the country. Recently, the 3iQ raised about $75 million and launched an Ethereum fund.

Another Bitcoin Whale With 100k+ Tokens Emerge

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Despite Bitcoin’s rather weak price movement, another whale address has emerged that has 100K+ Bitcoin tokens held in it. This was reported by the crypto-analytic Santiment which tweeted,

“For the first time since June 24th, Bitcoin has a 2nd whale address with 100k+ $BTC tokens held. There are also now 233 new addresses with 1,000+ $BTC in them, a clear All-Time High”

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Another Bitcoin Whale With 100k+ Tokens Emerge 11

Bitcoin made a swift recovery after falling below $30k on Wednesday. By the looks of it, whales have tried to buy the level to avert a further breakdown after reclaiming it.

Bitcoin’s Growing Accumulation: a mega bullish trend

So far, the world’s premier crypto-asset has managed to retain its fort above the aforementioned support level. Thanks to rapid upswings, data shows that the coin’s retail and institutional investors have escalated the accumulation.

Another crypto analytics and research platform, Bloqport revealed data compiled by Glassnode wherein it mentioned that 140 new Bitcoin addresses with 1,000+ BTC were created during the last 28 days alone. It was found that the number of Bitcoin whale addresses has risen significantly since the start of 2020.

Besides, a total of 2,450 Bitcoin addresses were now holding a minimum of 1,000 BTC, a new all-time high.

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Another Bitcoin Whale With 100k+ Tokens Emerge 12

Its tweet further stated that the recent trends of increase in whale addresses suggested that large entities may be expecting a significant price rise for BTC in the near future.

Besides, the number of whale addresses holding 10,000+ ETH also climbed to the highest level in 13 months as 35 new Ethereum whale addresses were found to have been created since the beginning of the year.

Further indicating confidence in the ongoing bull market was the movement of these whales especially during dips. The abrupt sell-off this week was driven by massive selling in the spot market.

This was further accompanied by astonishing trading volumes. The market-wide rout has so far failed to deter the optimism of big players from accumulating the crypto-asset. Moreover, these large bag holders expect the pullbacks to be short-lived.

DeFi’s Appeal Still Strong; TVL Nears $29 Billion Before Tumbling

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Coins powering major decentralized finance [DeFi] protocols saw some strongest gains as the market hinted at a recovery earlier this week. This, in turn, prompted the total value locked [TVL] in DeFi to touch an all-time high of nearly $30 billion. on the 27th of January.

However, as Bitcoin’s price briefly slid below the support line of $30k on late Wednesday, DeFi’s TVL figures has since cooled off as it fell back below $24 billion.

DeFi Coins Caught In Hot Price Action

As for the DeFi coins’ value, except for Wrapped Bitcoin [WBTC], other top tokens have had a prolific week amassing double-digit gains.

Over the last 7-days, leading DEX Uniswap’s UNI token has recorded the most gains of nearly 80% and was valued at $14.17. TWJ had earlier reported that the protocol’s native token saw a ballistic rise in its price this bull run and emerged as one of the best-performing digital tokens in the world.

Open-source non-custodial platform Aave’s native token has also been on a bull run for the past several weeks and was priced at $279.02, at the time of writing. Its price made a run for $290 before losing steam. Despite the retracement, Aave noted a 7-day gains of 61.38%.

Compound’s governance token, COMP was the third-best performing token this week amassing gains of 23.77% over the same period of time.

DeFi Trends

According to a recent report by the blockchain company ConsenSys revealed that “the breadth of invention and adoption of DeFi kept pace in Q4 of 2020″ even as ” DeFi summer cooled off”.

There was certainly the rise of decentralized exchanges or DEXs in the last quarter of the year. The report stated that the total trade volume on DEXs in Q4 crossed a whopping $60 billion, and one of the main drivers of this activity is because Wrapped Ethereum [WETH] made it simple to swap ETH for any other ERC-20 token.

The last quarter also witnessed an increased demand from institutions and
other blockchain-based protocols to access the liquidity and economic activity on Ethereum. This can be attributed to the fact that despite its scalability issues Ethereum has managed to attract and accommodate digital assets from other blockchain protocols.

Undoubtedly, the appeal of DeFi has grown substantially despite Bitcoin’s price grabbing mainstream headlines. Many industry players are keen that the ecosystem’s adoption and utility permeating will be the main trends throughout 2021.

CFTC Charges NY-based Crypto Trader ‘Coin Signals’ With $5M Fraud

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The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] filed a civil enforcement action on the 26th of January against New York-based crypto trader Jeremy Spence alleging fraud for operating a Ponzi scheme involving digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

CFTC Unveils Civil Fraud Charges

CFTC’s complaint alleged that Spence fraudulently solicited more than $5 million of investments from individuals in a cryptocurrency investment scheme. Acting Director of Enforcement Vincent McGonagle stated,

“Fraudulent schemes, like that alleged in this case, undermine the integrity and development of digital asset markets and cheat customers out of their hard-earned money. We will continue to work to protect participants in our markets from fraudulent practices and hold fraudsters accountable.”

The 24-year old cryptocurrency trader was arrested by the FBI in Rhode Island on Tuesday morning on charges of wire fraud as well as commodities fraud that have maximum sentences of up to 30 years combined.

According to prosecutors and the CFTC, Spence’s trading allegedly led to massive trading losses for his investors and his payouts of what was supposed to be the profits of the clients were, in fact, misappropriated funds of other customers.

The complaint also stated that Spence had previously reported false account balances to his investors in a bid to thwart redemptions. And in a classic Ponzi-like fashion, used money from new investors to pay back his earlier investors.

In addition, Spence allegedly engaged in numerous efforts to hide his misconduct, including misrepresenting his trading profitability and the number of assets he had under management, misappropriating customer funds, and issuing fictitious performance statements.

As per CFTC’s complaint, Spence admitted to his customers that he had been involved in ‘lies and deceit.’

Back in 2018, a Florida-based law firm called Silver Miller had filed a class-action lawsuit against Spence who was operating under the moniker ‘Coin Signals’.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, in an official statement, alleged that Spence lured investors to his cryptocurrency investment scam by claiming returns of up to 148% which resulted in a $5 million void in his customer’s accounts. Strauss further added,

“Spence’s alleged conduct should strongly signal would-be investors to thoroughly educate themselves in the cryptocurrency ecosystem before falling prey to investment scams promising huge returns for small investments that are indeed too good to be true.”

Binance Smart Chain Transaction Volume Reaches Nearly 45% of ETH Network

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Transaction volume on Binance-owned public chain called Binance Smart Chain [BSC] has surpassed its previous ATH and climbed to 532,654 transactions on the 26th of January.

The last high was recorded back on the 23rd of December when the daily transaction figures rose sharply to 473,760 according to BSC Scan’s chart.

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Binance Smart Chain Transaction Volume Reaches Nearly 45% of ETH Network 15

Milestones for Binance Smart Chain

With the latest peak the transaction volume on Binance Smart Chain reached almost 45% of the Ethereum network.

Moreover, unique address count on Binance Smart Chain has also been on a steady uptrend and currently stood at a total of 895,854, with a daily increase of nearly 7,000 distinct address. This evidenced the growing usage of the network.

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Binance Smart Chain Transaction Volume Reaches Nearly 45% of ETH Network 16

BSC has grown rapidly since its launch last September and is currently home to over 100 projects. Around 60 of the total projects execute large numbers of users and transaction volumes. Some of the most prominent projects already on the Binance Smart Chain are BurgerSwap, ForTube, Injective Protocol, Cream Finance, Chiliz, and PARSIQ.

Ethereum Killer?

Since Binance was one of the largest centralized exchanges, its aggressive expansion in the DeFi ecosystem resulted in many arguing that BSC was an attempt to become an Ethereum killer.

CZ had previously dismissed those claims and asserted that the main reason objective behind the creation of the parallel chain was for the platform to join the ongoing DeFi revolution by offering protocols that serve as an alternative to the Ethereum blockchain.

The DeFi hysteria in mid-2020 opened up Ethereum’s previous woes with regards to the network’s perennial scalability problems of high transaction fees and congestion.

In a bid to accommodate the high amount of transactions that the decentralised hysteria had created both users and DeFi, protocol operators looked for several alternatives.

Besides, the latest development of transaction volume hitting a fresh high coincided with the Lagrange upgrade announcement according to which the Binance Chain Mainnet is expected to have a scheduled hard fork upgrade at block height 146,060,000.

This hard fork aims to bring in new features such as the introduction of BEP82 to allow token ownership change and BEP84 to enable a simplified token binding process.

Chainlink [LINK] Could Retrace Below $20 If Bears Continue Grazing In Its Market

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All the new cryptocurrencies emerged this year. Chainlink [LINK] and Polkadot [DOT] climbed up the crypto ladder in terms of market cap as well as price. While BTC slumped down to $31,734, ETH and other coins followed suit. XRP, made way for DOT as its market cap preceded to $15 million. XRP during the time of writing was down to $0.26. ETH and DOT were dipping down by 10% in the last 24-hours. The overall market cap of the crypto-verse was also on a downhill journey as it was seen at $931.44 billion from a high of $1.6 trillion.

Chainlink [LINK], at the time of writing, was depleting down to $22.28 with a 24-hour price change of a negative 9.11%. The market cap of the seventh-largest coin was at $8.99 billion, ahead of prominent cryptocurrencies like Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash as well as Binance Coin.

Chainlink [LINK] One-Hour Price Chart

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Chainlink [LINK] Could Retrace Below $20 If Bears Continue Grazing In Its Market 19

The one-hour price chart of Chainlink on Binance affirmed that the bulls were still in its market. While the volume in the LINK market was mediocre, the daily moving average indicator formed a bullish crossover. The 50 daily moving average [blue] was above the 100 daily moving average [red].

This was quite surprising as the other indicators were revealing contradicting sentiments.

Chainlink [LINK] Price Chart With Indicators

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Chainlink [LINK] Could Retrace Below $20 If Bears Continue Grazing In Its Market 20

The bears had infiltrated the LINK market. The Parabolic SAR indicator had been exhibiting a bearish sentiment for quite a while now, with an array of fluctuations. The indicator had set up dotted lines above the candlesticks with hindering the chances of an upward breakout. The MACD indicator had undergone a bearish crossover. Earlier today, the signal line took over the MACD line demonstrating a bearish sentiment.

The Money Flow Index indicator revealed that the LINK market was in the oversold zone. If the bears continue to reign the LINK market, the asset could drop down below $20.

Sharia-Compliant Digital Asset Exchange Sees The Light Of Day In Bahrain

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Cryptocurrencies have had to fend off several obstacles before their big break. Religion was also a major hurdle. While every religion follows certain rules, compliance of Muslims with the Sharia is mandatory. Those who follow the Islamic religion are required to make sure that their ventures or activities are acquiescent with the Sharia. Keeping all this in mind, a Middle Eastern country is all set to roll out a crypto exchange.

Sharia-Compliant Platform To List BTC, ETH, LTC And Other Assets

Muslims are quite often governed by the code called Sharia. With the cryptocurrency industry taking off in full force, the Islamic religion did not want to fall back or miss out on this train. Bahrain, a country of the Middle East is all set to have a cryptocurrency exchange. It was recently revealed that CoinMENA had acquired the Crypto Assets Services Company License. This license acted as a ticket for the platform to set up its headquarters in Bahrain.

CoinMENA had previously sought a license from the Central Bank of Bahrain [CBB]. The license allows CoinMENA to function as a completely regulated digital asset exchange in the country. It was also affirmed that CoinMENA was given a thumbs up by the Shariyah Review Bureau which makes it easier for the platform to operate in other Islamic countries including United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman as well as Kuwait.

The Co-founder and Managing Director of CoinMENA, Dina Sam’an elaborated on the same and said,

“Obtaining the license from the Central Bank of Bahrain allows us to operate under one of the most robust and globally-renowned digital assets regulatory frameworks where governance, security, and customer protection are central to all our operations. As CoinMENA grows, we will be providing access to additional digital assets and expanding the jurisdictions we operate in, with the view of becoming one of the leading digital assets exchanges on a global scale.”

The platform will start off with popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin [BTC], XRP, Litecoin [LTC], Bitcoin Cash [BCH] along with Ethereum [ETH].