Cryptocurrency

Sam Bankman-Fried’s life in jail, Tornado Cash’s turmoil, and a $3B BTC whale: Hodler’s Digest, Aug. 20-26

Published

2 years ago

August 27, 2023

Tornado Cash co-founders charged with money laundering, sanctions violations

United States officials pressed charges against the co-founders of crypto mixer Tornado Cash on Aug. 23. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov were both charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Storm was arrested and released on bail a few days later, while Semenov was added to the U.S. list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons. Combined, the charges carry a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison. The third Tornado Cash co-founder, Alexey Pertsev, was arrested in the Netherlands on money laundering charges in August 2022. The law enforcement actions are a continuation of a U.S. government crackdown on Tornado Cash that began last year due to its alleged role in laundering funds of the Lazarus Group, a North Korean-linked hacking collective. Tornado Cash has been implicated in several other hacks as well. All told, the mixer has laundered over $1 billion in ill-gotten gains, the U.S. Department of Justice alleges.

Sam Bankman-Fried is low on meds, living on $3 peanut butter in prison

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried appears to be having a tough time behind bars, eating only bread with peanut butter to accommodate his vegan diet while exhausting his supply of prescription medication. In the same hearing where Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to seven fraud-related charges, his lawyers pleaded for the former FTX CEO to receive better treatment inside Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center. Also this week, Bankman-Fried was granted permission to meet with his legal team outside of jail with 48 hours’ notice. Every day, he will have roughly seven hours to prepare for his upcoming trial expected to begin in October.

Mystery solved: Bitcoin wallet accruing $3B in 3 months is identified

The mysterious Bitcoin wallet that surged up the ranks to become the third-largest holder of Bitcoin in the world in just over three months, has been identified. Blockchain intelligence platform Arkham Intelligence labeled the wallet as Robinhood: Jump Trading Custody. According to data from crypto statistics platform BitInfoCharts, the wallet address first received Bitcoin on March 8. Over the course of the next three months and two weeks, the wallet had accrued a staggering 118,000 BTC — worth $3.08 billion at current prices. The current largest Bitcoin wallets in the world, according to BitInfoCharts, are reportedly owned by Binance and Bitfinex — as Bitcoin cold wallets.

Prime Trust parent company lost $8M investing in TerraUSD

The parent company of crypto custodian Prime Trust — currently involved in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings — has reported losing roughly $8 million in client and treasury funds through TerraUSD investments, presumably when the algorithmic stablecoin collapsed in May 2022. The company described the investment as well as a ramping up of spending in October and November 2022 — in the midst of FTX’s collapse — as contributing to its bankruptcy filing. Court documents show Prime Trust owed more than $85 million in fiat and $69.5 million in crypto to its clients. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem triggered a major market crash in 2022, affecting several firms including FTX, BlockFi, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.

PEPE whale seizes dip opportunity, buys $529K worth of tokens

A Pepe holder bought 640 billion Pepe tokens for 320 Ether valued at $529,000 after the price of the frog-themed memecoin dropped by approximately 15% due to recent changes to a multisig wallet and concerns about potential developer manipulation. According to on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain, the whale purchased PEPE at an average price of $0.000001163. The value of the once-popular memecoin plunged after changes related to the amount of signatures required to sign transactions led to worries about a potential “rug pull,” which was later confirmed by one of the project’s co-founders.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $26,040, Ether (ETH) at $1,653 and XRP at $0.52. The total market cap is at $1.05 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) at 18.58%, Sui (SUI) at 12.86% and Toncoin (TON) at 11.97%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Pepe (PEPE) at -21.07%, XDC Network (XDC) at -9.62% and ApeCoin (APE) at -8.35%.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“If history were to repeat itself, the next halving would see bitcoin rising to $35k before the halving and $148k after.”

Pantera Capital

“A new computing era has begun. Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI.”

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA

“Some of the people who currently think that there should not be effective law enforcement on-chain would feel differently if they got hacked, defrauded, or lost their private keys.”

Mike Kanovitz, CEO of Jurat

“You could never underestimate the damage the SEC’s lawsuit has caused – not only against Ripple – but #XRP. Three years of adoption – that’s what it’s caused.”

John Deaton, pro-XRP lawyer

“AI will never replace human creativity because it will always lack the essential spark that drives the most talented artists to do their best work, which is intention.”

Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube

“Blockchain and AI can certainly co-exist — they’re both pillars of Web3.”

Aydin Kilic, CEO of Hive Digital Technologies

Prediction of the Week

Bitcoin ‘overconfidence reigns’ but bulls must reclaim $27.8K — Trader

Bitcoin needs to reclaim one key moving average to “regain its bullish status,” argues popular pseudonymous analyst CryptoCon, warning that bulls remained too optimistic about the $26,000 BTC price support holding.

For CryptoCon, the 20-week exponential moving average (EMA), now at $27,750, must be won back as support in order for the uptrend to be safe. “I have been covering this moving average a lot recently, but I believe it is critical for Bitcoin to regain its bullish status,” he wrote.

The analysis compared current BTC price action to its rebound from 2018 cycle lows. “It is very important that Bitcoin both rises above and retests the 20 Week EMA as support,” CryptoCon noted with a chart showing the similarities between 2019 and 2023, with the retest and subsequent successful EMA reclaim circled.

FUD of the Week

Chinese official sentenced to life in prison for Bitcoin mining, corruption

A Chinese government official has been sentenced to life in prison for illegitimate business operations related to running a 2.4 billion Chinese yuan ($329 million) Bitcoin mining enterprise and for unrelated charges of corruption. Prosecutors say Xiao Yi — a former member of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference Party Group — “covered up” the mining operation by instructing relevant departments to fabricate statistical reports and adjust the classification of electricity consumption. From 2017 to 2020, his facility’s electricity consumption accounted for 10% of the city of Fuzhou’s total electricity consumption.

FBI flags 6 Bitcoin wallets linked to North Korea, urges vigilance in crypto firms

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has flagged six Bitcoin wallets linked to North Korean state-backed hacking group Lazarus. The six wallets contain 1,580 BTC worth $40 million believed to be hoarded from various cryptocurrency hacks over the past year. The FBI in its investigation found that Lazarus Group moved approximately 1,580 BTC linked with several crypto exploits. The hacking group has been actively involved in multiple crypto-linked exploits over the years and are believed to have stolen nearly $2 billion in crypto since 2018.

OpenSea manager accused of insider trading sentenced to 3 months in prison, $50K fine

A federal judge has sentenced former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain to three months in prison for wire fraud and money laundering related to insider trading on the platform. He was accused of using insider information in his position at OpenSea to profit off the trading of NFTs. In his position as product manager, he had the authority to choose which NFTs would be featured on the OpenSea website. He purchased 45 NFTs prior to them being featured and then resold them.

Recursive inscriptions: Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming soon

Some believe that Ordinals and recursive inscriptions could supercharge the Bitcoin network as a viable competitor to smart contract platforms. It’s not going to be easy, though.

AI Eye: Get better results being nice to ChatGPT, AI fake child porn debate, Amazon’s AI reviews

Being nice to ChatGPT gets better results, Wired’s weird child porn debate and the end of CATPCHAs.

NFT Collector: Giant Swan’s gothic VR dreamscapes… royalty nightmare on OpenSea

From crying in his car to putting the first 3D object onchain — the story of Giant Swan. Plus royalties race to the bottom accelerates due to OpenSea.

Editorial Staff

Cointelegraph Magazine writers and reporters contributed to this article.

Cryptocurrency

Arthur Hayes Is Selling: Here Are the Altcoins He’s Ditching

Published

10 hours ago

August 2, 2025

The cryptocurrency market reached new heights in July as the total cap exceeded $4 trillion for the first time ever, led by bitcoin’s new peak above $123,000 and several altcoins’ rallies to ATHs, such as XRP and BNB.

The past few days, though, have gone in the opposite direction, with many altcoins charting double-digit price declines, while BTC plunged to a three-week low of under $113,000.

During these turbulent times of uncertainty, perhaps prompted by Trump’s latest tariffs and the movement of US nuclear submarines close to strategic Russian locations, prominent industry names, such as Arthur Hayes, have started to sell off. Here’s which altcoins the BitMEX co-founder sold in the past 24 hours.

ETH, ENA, PEPE Being Sold

As the data shared by the analytics resource Lookonchain points out, Hayes has used one of his known addresses to dispose of over $8 million worth of ETH, $4.6 million in ENA, and $414,700 worth of the third-largest meme coin by market cap – PEPE.

Later, the Maelstrom exec clarified that the reason for his sales is mostly related to Trump’s tariffs, many of which are set to be implemented starting from August 1. He believes BTC and ETH will retrace, as the former would retest the $100,000 resistance, while the latter will head toward $3,000.

Y? US Tariff bill coming due in 3q … at least the mrkt believes that after NFP print. No major econ is creating enough credit fast enough to boost nominal gdp. So $BTC tests $100k, $ETH tests $3k. Come see my @WebX_Asia Tokyo keynote Aug 25 for more info. Back to the beach. https://t.co/zuHlwgQKC7
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) August 2, 2025

Hayes is far from the only larger crypto investor turning to a sell-off strategy amid this market uncertainty. Lookonchain identified an unknown whale that had deposited over $90 million worth of ETH to several exchanges within a span of just two days.

Not SharpLink, Though

While some whales and Hayes are rushing to sell ETH, the second-largest ether holder, SharpLink, has taken the opportunity to increase its impressive stash.

SharpLink(@SharpLinkGaming) spent another 108.57M $USDC to buy $ETH in the past 9 hours and received 14,933 $ETH($52.56M) 3 hours ago.
SharpLink now holds a total of 464,209 $ETH($1.63B).https://t.co/cW8EvzSFxt https://t.co/7wH1lpRocu pic.twitter.com/weDyfVzm1J
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 2, 2025

After accumulating another 14,933 ETH, the company now owns over $1.6 billion worth of Ethereum’s underlying asset (464,209 ETH), according to Lookonchain. Data from CoinGecko and strategicethreserve shows that SharpLink’s Ethereum fortune is second only to Bitmine’s 566,766 ETH.

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Cryptocurrency

XRP, TON Defy Market Correction as BTC, Alts Continue to Melt Down: Weekend Watch

Published

10 hours ago

August 2, 2025

Bitcoin’s adverse price movements that started on Thursday continued in the past 24 hours, with the asset sliding to a new multi-week low of under $113,000.

With multiple altcoins in the red as well, including a new all-time low for Pi, it’s no wonder that the total crypto market cap has dumped by nearly $250 billion in a few days.

BTC Keeps Dropping

The primary cryptocurrency experienced a brief retracement at the end of the previous business week when it dipped from $119,000 to under $115,000 amid substantial sell-offs by Galaxy Digital on behalf of a client. However, once the sale was completed, BTC recovered most losses and even headed toward $120,000 after the weekend.

The bears were quick to intercept the move and didn’t allow another price jump. Bitcoin remained calm until Wednesday, when the latest FOMC meeting was scheduled to take place. Despite the positive US GDP data for Q2 and Trump’s continued pleas for rate reduction, Powell and company left them unchanged for a fifth consecutive time.

BTC reacted with an immediate price slip to under $116,000 but bounced off and challenged $119,000 on Thursday morning. However, more Trump-induced volatility followed amid new tariff developments and nuclear sub movements, and bitcoin plunged below $113,000 on Friday evening for the first time since July 10.

It has recovered around a grand since then, but it’s still 1% in the red daily and 3% down weekly. Its market cap is down to $2.260 trillion, while its dominance stands tall at 60%.

XRP Fares Well

Most larger-cap alts have followed BTC on the way south, with even bigger price declines. ETH has slipped below $3,500 after a 4% daily drop, SOL is below $165, while DOGE, HYPE, LINNK, BCH, and HBAR have retraced by around 3-4%.

Pi Network’s native token dumped to another all-time low earlier today, while ENA has plunged by 7%. There are a few exceptions from the larger-cap alts, including XRP and LTC, which are slightly in the green. TON has risen by over 3.5% to almost $3.6.

The total crypto market cap has dumped to $3.750 trillion on CG. This means that the metric has lost roughly $250 billion since Thursday’s peak.

Cryptocurrency Market Overview. Source: QuantifyCrypto

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Cryptocurrency

Coinbase Tanks 11% Pre-Market After $1.5B Q2 Revenue Miss

Published

22 hours ago

August 2, 2025

Coinbase shares fell sharply after the company reported second-quarter earnings that missed expectations. Total revenue for the quarter came in at $1.5 billion, representing a 26% decline from the previous quarter.

The shortfall was largely driven by weaker-than-expected transaction revenue, which fell 39% quarter-over-quarter to $764 million.

Missing Expectations

In the official release, Coinbase revealed that its subscription and services revenue also declined 6% to $656 million. Despite efforts to reduce variable costs, operating expenses climbed 15% to $1.5 billion. Coinbase attributed this largely to the $307 million hit related to the data breach disclosed in May.

The crypto exchange recorded a net income of $1.4 billion, but this figure included $1.5 billion in pre-tax unrealized gains from strategic investments, including in Circle, as well as a $362 million pre-tax gain from its crypto investment portfolio. On an adjusted basis, net income stood at just $33 million, with adjusted EBITDA reaching $512 million.

Coinbase’s trading activity also underperformed the broader crypto spot market, as global and US crypto spot volumes declined 31% and 32% respectively. Meanwhile, its total trading volume fell 40% to $237 billion, and the consumer segment witnessed a 45% drop to $43 billion.

Consumer transaction revenue plunged 41% to $650 million, as volume shifted toward Simple trades amid low volatility. Institutional transaction revenue also saw a similar pattern, down 38% in both volume and revenue.

While Base Chain activity grew, other transaction revenue dropped 21% as average revenue per transaction declined.

As of the close on the previous trading day, Coinbase (COIN) shares were priced at $377.76, up slightly by $0.28. However, pre-market trading shows a sharp decline, with the stock down $42.30 (-11.20%) to $335.46. This steep drop suggests a strong negative reaction from investors, likely in response to recent earnings results.

Despite grappling with declining revenues and rising costs, Coinbase is doubling down on product innovation.

“Everything App”

Earlier this month, Coinbase rebranded its Wallet as the Base app, launching a crypto-focused “everything app” that merges trading, social media, USDC payments, mini-apps, and tokenized posts.

Announced at its “A New Day One” conference, the app runs on Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 network and integrates Farcaster for social feeds, Zora for post tokenization, and encrypted XMTP chat. Users can earn from tips, interact with AI agents, and make one-tap payments.

The platform also introduced Base Pay for Shopify merchants and plans 1% USDC cashback in the US. The app is in beta, while a full public release and developer tools are expected soon.

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