Analysis News TheBitTimes.com

The leading cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin (BTC) has made impressive strides when it comes to adoption. Whereas in 2024, BTC is available via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), serves as a store of value and hedge against inflation, and enjoys widespread mainstream popularity, in the last decade, it was quite obscure. Though unsavory, Bitcoin’s utility as a means of transfer for nefarious purposes is well-documented. This fact has been used (with little success) as an argument against the pioneering digital asset — but BTC has, in fact, been used for everything from the international drug trade to contract killings. A major blow against such unethical and illegal uses was made on November 3, 2020, when the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) unit seized 69,370 Bitcoins associated with the dark web marketplace Silk Road. As an interesting aside, one of the IRS agents presiding over the case was Tigran Gamba...

Malicious actors have started targeting crypto victims on Telegram, luring them to believe they’re dealing with venture capital investors. Crypto scammers are distributing a malicious software impersonating legitimate venture capital (VC) investors on Telegram. In an X post on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023, Alexandre Masmejean, CEO of Showtime, a crypto marketplace for creators, said he was contacted by FBI agents from the Los Angeles department by phone, who strongly encouraged him to “turn off my WiFi, rotate my wallets, change all my passwords, move my files to a hard drive and entirely wipe out my compromised MacBook.” My experience with the FBI: a wake-up call to public-facing crypto people. “Hey, are you Alexandre Masmejean, CEO of Showtime Technologies, Inc? This is the FBI calling in from Los Angeles.” Last week I had a very strange call that surprised me so much I didn’t know whether I… pic.twitter.com/5TgkCcKfgr — Alex Masmej 🪙 (@AlexMasmej) December ...