Tornado Cash Developers Arrested and Charged with Money Laundering

Tornado Cash developers arrested and charged with money laundering

The developers of Tornado Cash, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, have been apprehended and charged with money laundering and sanctions violations related to their involvement with the privacy mixer. This mixer has reportedly enabled over $1 billion in money laundering activities for North Korea's Lazarus Group. 

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) had previously imposed sanctions on the mixer due to accusations that Lazarus had used it to launder funds from various cryptocurrency hacks. On Wednesday, OFAC also sanctioned Semenov himself, as well as eight Ethereum addresses believed to be under his control.

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Moshe Hogeg engaged in $290M crypto fraud

After an extensive investigation spanning over two years, Israeli law enforcement authorities have recommended that Moshe Hogeg, a well-known entrepreneur who has been involved in numerous cryptocurrency ventures, be charged in connection with an alleged scam amounting to $290 million. According to the Times of Israel, the police assert that Hogeg deceived both Israeli citizens and international investors by soliciting funds for four distinct cryptocurrency initiatives.

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USDC launching on Polygon PoS

According to an insider, Circle Internet Financial, the exclusive entity responsible for overseeing USDC, is preparing to unveil the stablecoin's launch on six additional blockchains. These blockchains include Polygon PoS, Base, Polkadot, NEAR, Optimism, and Cosmos through the Noble network.

Recently, Circle and Coinbase made changes to their partnership in relation to USDC. As part of this restructuring process, Centre Consortium was dissolved. Centre Consortium had been responsible for governing USDC since its inception in 2018. Additionally, Coinbase acquired a stake in Circle during this transition period.

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DeFi shrinks to multi-year lows

The value of funds locked in DeFi protocols has dropped to the lowest point since February 2021, despite the rise of ETH this year. DefiLlama's data reveals a decline in the amount of money stored in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. The total value locked (TVL) has decreased to $37.5 billion, falling below the previous low point after the bull market at $38 billion in December.

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BTC price jumps after NVIDIA earnings release

On Wednesday, Bitcoin found itself carried along by the upward surge of the stock market. Investors were optimistic about Nvidia's performance and this contributed to the positive sentiment. Since January, Nvidia's stock has experienced a remarkable increase of over 200%. Prior to today's earnings call, there were signs of growth on Wall Street as the Dow Jones rose by 0.5%, the S&P 500 saw a gain of 1%, and the Nasdaq Composite jumped by an impressive 1.5%.

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Other breaking news

• Aave V3 is now available on Base L2
• Ajna launches permissionless pools on Summerfi
• Dymension Froopyland incentivized testnet is live
• Atomic Wallet faces $100 million lawsuit

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Wrapping up

That’s all for today’s edition, folks. In today's Datawallet Daily issue, we've navigated through significant events, including Tornado Cash developers' arrest, Moshe Hogeg's $290M crypto fraud allegations, USDC's expansion onto new platforms, the decline in DeFi, and Bitcoin's response to Nvidia's earnings. See you in the next edition!