Cryptocurrency
SEC Exposes Massive Crypto Market Manipulation Scheme

U.S. authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Justice (DOJ), have charged Gotbit and four other crypto firms with widespread market manipulation.
The charges also roped in several individuals who worked for the offending organizations.
Market Makers Accused of Running Wash Trading Scheme
According to a statement the SEC issued on October 9, Gotbit, ZM Quant, CLS Global, and MyTrade MM used bots to inflate trading volumes on centralized exchanges (CEXs) through wash trading.
A parallel statement from the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office included popular meme coin projects Saitama and Robo Inu among those with complaints issued against them.
The SEC claims that the named companies engaged in “pump and dump” schemes, where they misrepresented the value of certain tokens, prompting new investors to buy in only to cash out at inflated prices.
In total, law enforcement officials seized $25 million in cryptocurrency. Furthermore, they deactivated bots responsible for millions of fraudulent transactions across 60 different crypto assets.
Saitama Employees Named in Complaint
Prominent names fingered in the investigations include Russell Armand, Maxwell Hernandez, and Manpreet Kohli. They and fellow Saitama employees Nam Tran and Vy Pham are accused of using Gotbit and ZM Quant to provide market manipulation services, including generating fake trading volumes for assorted cryptocurrencies.
Kohli and Tran face additional charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and running an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Armand and Hernandez have already pleaded guilty to the exact charges as those leveled against Kohli and Tran. In addition, California-based Pham also confessed to being involved in unlawful conduct at Saitama and another unnamed crypto company.
Others indicted in the U.S. District Court in Boston include Gotbit’s Aleksei Andriunin, Fedor Kedrov, and Qawi Jalili, as well as Riqui Liu and Baijun Ou of ZM Quant.
The investigation, which began in 2017, uncovered that the suspects used bots to create quadrillions of fake transactions, amounting to billions in artificial trading volume daily. These activities caused unsuspecting retail investors to buy tokens at inflated prices, only to suffer massive losses when Gotbit and its co-accused firms dumped their holdings.
A crucial turning point in the investigation came when the FBI created a cryptocurrency called NexFundAI to gain access to the inner workings of the market-making firms.
NexFundAI, which was still actively trading at the time of this writing, with a market cap of around $237,000, was designed to appear as a legitimate project linking crypto and AI. It seemed to have worked as intended, attracting the market manipulators who believed they could exploit it.
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Cryptocurrency
Avail Goes Full Stack to Capture $300bn Global Blockchain Infra Market

[PRESS RELEASE – Dubai, UAE, June 17th, 2025]
The only stack that delivers horizontal scalability, cross-chain connectivity, and unified liquidity, without compromising on decentralization.
Avail, backed by Founders Fund, Dragonfly, and other top VCs, is powering some of Web3’s most forward-looking projects, including Lens, Sophon, Space & Time, Lumia, Skate, and leading institutional tokenization platforms. The rollout of the full Avail Stack enables seamless connections between chains to build a scalable and interoperable blockchain in the future.
Avail is focused on building an interconnected Web3 that allows networks to move assets and communicate while abstracting away user complexities to create a unified in-app experience. The Avail Stack, a full-scale blockchain infrastructure solution, comprises Avail Nexus, Avail Fusion and Avail DA as well as a suite of products and functionality upgrades, including Turbo DA, Enigma DA upgrade, Light Clients, catering to a range of audiences; both Web3 native startups and traditional Web2 giants.
Blockchain Infrastructure: A $300B Market
According to Grand View Research, the global blockchain market is projected to grow from $31.3 billion in 2024 to $1.43 trillion by 2030, with infrastructure alone expected to reach $306 billion, driven by modularity, institutional demand, scalable tech, and tokenization.
When Avail launched its purpose-built data availability (DA) layer on mainnet in July 2024, it set out to revamp the concept of blockchain scalability. The founding team was clear in its vision of broadening the scope of functionality so that blockchain could reach mass adoption.
As Ethereum doubled down on its rollup-centric roadmap, the limitations of the current blockchain models became clear; bridges were brittle, liquidity fragmented, and developers faced friction rewriting logic across chains. Innovation slowed, and VC investment declined, as noted in S&P Global’s 2024 report.
Despite market headwinds, Avail raised $75 million in 2024 from top investors under the leadership of Anurag Arjun (former Polygon co-founder) and Prabal Banerjee (former Polygon research lead), to build their vision of how blockchain experiences should be.
The Avail Stack
The Avail Stack comprises Avail DA for scalable, verifiable data availability, including Turbo DA, Enigma Upgrade, Avail Light Clients, and Avail’s 10 GB Infinity Blocks. Avail supports any execution environment with native ZK verification on the base layer. However, the most powerful upgrade is Avail Nexus.
The Avail Nexus upgrade is a permissionless crosschain layer enabling connectivity between different chains. Avail Nexus unlocks liquidity and user access with a seamless in-app experience across multiple ecosystems, enabling a true crosschain economy. No network switches, no bridges, no leaving the app. Nexus fully abstracts convoluted flows and back-end processes, delivering a simplified, intuitive experience. With Nexus, the typical 12+ click, crosschain process is reduced to just a couple of simple approvals, all behind the scenes, allowing users to stay in the app.
If one chain in the Avail Stack has access to key infrastructure, for example, Uniswap or Aave, every other connected chain can use it too, without needing to redeploy it. This borrowed infrastructure model allows new chains to bootstrap with shared liquidity and shared apps, accelerating ecosystem growth.
For developers, Nexus unlocks a powerful new era of multichain applications that coordinate state and logic across environments without replicating contracts. Connectors for EVM, ZK, Optimistic, and sovereign chains make integration seamless for any environment. To complement this is the Avail Fusion upgrade that creates a diverse security model. Apps gain access to pooled crypto-economic security while maintaining decentralization.
“With Avail, we were clear that developers no longer rebuild core infrastructure per chain. We wanted to give one integration that connects logic, assets, and users across all ecosystems. This is the foundation of Avail’s horizontal scalability vision: modular infrastructure, interoperable chains, and unified UX.” – Prabal Banerjee, co‑founder, Avail.
Confidence in Avail’s capability is reflected in the top-tier integrations. Lens Protocol, with over 650K user profiles and 28M+ social connections, launched Lens Chain using Avail DA. Sophon, a zk-validium, raised $60M in a node sale supported via Avail Light Clients. Space & Time, which has partnered with Microsoft and Google Cloud BigQuery, will use Avail to anchor ZK query proofs. Leading players in tokenization and RWAs like Lumia and rootVX are on the Avail testnet. Other projects powered by Avail include Rooch, Odysphere, and Eternal, with 50 more partnerships in the pipeline.
“We built Avail for a world where new chains can launch fast, can communicate and scale instantly. That’s the promise of horizontal scalability, and it’s how blockchain technology can reach population scale.” – Anurag Arjun, co-founder, Avail.
Avail is building the foundation for a crosschain economy, shared liquidity, and composability, all while staying true to the core principles of decentralization and permissionlessness.
About Avail
Avail is designed to connect and scale blockchains with the Avail Stack. Avail Nexus connects and powers crosschain messaging. Avail DA foundation powers horizontal scalability with its 10GB infinity blocks roadmap and functionality upgrades, while Avail Fusion will enable crypto-economic security for the Avail economy. With Avail Stack, developers get a future-proof foundation where apps and assets move freely across chains.
Users can learn more about Avail on Discord, Twitter, Blog
Media Contact:
Shailey Singh shailey@availproject.org
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Cryptocurrency
Ripple (XRP) Rocketed to All-Time High Levels Last Time This Happened: Will History Repeat?

TL;DR
- XRP’s Bollinger Bands have tightened recently, which may be a precursor to a significant price swing in either direction.
- Investor behavior appears bullish, with more XRP being moved to self-custody and active addresses reaching a multi-month high of over 1.12 million, suggesting a potential move to the upside.
The Calm Before the Storm?
The price of Ripple’s cross-border token is currently far from the peak level of almost $3.40 witnessed in January, and over the past month, it has been hovering in the $2.08-$2.47 range. Currently, it trades at roughly $2.22 (according to CoinGecko’s data), but the tightening Bollinger Bands imply that a significant move could be on the way, as xoom recently posted about.
XRP Bollinger bands tightening.
Every time we’ve seen this happen, you know what happens next 😉 pic.twitter.com/1wzH9Kc9rp
— xoom (@Mr_Xoom) June 16, 2025
Developed by John Bollinger in the 1980s, the technical tool helps identify overbought or oversold conditions, indicating possible trend reversals. When the bands tighten, it signals low volatility – a sign that a big move may be approaching soon.
As CryptoPotato reported, the bands squeezed substantially towards the end of 2024 when XRP was worth approximately $2.10. In the weeks ahead, the token experienced a major bull run, almost matching its all-time high.
The bands tightened again in April this year when Ripple’s native cryptocurrency was trading at around $2.13. Several days later, the price soared above $2.60.
However, the indicator isn’t a guaranteed signal for a rally – at times, the price may stay flat or even drop sharply. On that note, some users on X speculated in the comments whether a pullback to $2 could be next.
Something Entirely for the Bulls
CoinGlass’ data shows that it has been rare for exchange inflows to surpass outflows over the past several weeks. This suggests that many investors have opted to move their holdings off centralized platforms toward self-custody methods, which reduces the immediate selling pressure.
Another element that could be seen as a positive sign from the bulls is the increasing number of active XRP addresses. Earlier this week, the popular X user Ali Martinez revealed that the figure jumped to a multi-month high of over 1.12 million, which reflects increased adoption or utility of the network.
Meanwhile, if you want to explore some optimistic price predictions involving Ripple’s cryptocurrency, feel free to take a look at our dedicated article here.
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Cryptocurrency
Whales Move Big: Binance Sees 4,500 BTC Withdrawn and $400M Stablecoin Inflows

The Bitcoin and broader crypto markets are facing another decline as Middle East tensions rise. This follows President Trump’s abrupt departure from the annual G7 meeting in Canada and a warning aimed at Tehran.
Despite this, a shift in market behavior has been detected on Binance, which points to a potential return of bullish sentiment, especially among large investors.
Imminent Bitcoin Breakout
On June 16, Binance recorded a single-day outflow of nearly 4,500 BTC, which, according to CryptoQuant, is one of the largest such events this month. Historically, such large-scale withdrawals are interpreted as a sign of accumulation, which often preceded upward price movement due to reduced supply pressure on exchanges.
At the same time, Binance witnessed two major stablecoin inflows – each exceeding $400 million – on June 13 and June 15. These back-to-back capital movements are among the strongest inflow surges seen in recent months.
Large stablecoin deposits are commonly viewed as a precursor to market activity and imply that significant capital is being positioned for potential asset purchases. In this context, the synchronized timing of stablecoin inflows with the large Bitcoin withdrawal points to strategic buy-side readiness among whales or institutional players.
The combined behavior creates a notable on-chain pattern: while Bitcoin is being pulled from circulation on exchanges, the influx of stablecoins reflects growing liquidity aimed at entering the market. This divergence between diminishing sell-side pressure and increasing buy-side potential establishes a bullish supply-demand setup.
If historical trends hold, this positioning could serve as a catalyst for a fresh price breakout in Bitcoin. The aggressive movement of capital suggests renewed risk appetite and a broader market optimism heading into the second half of June.
While on-chain data signals accumulation, derivatives market trends point to rising bearish exposure, which has created conditions ripe for a sharp reversal if sentiment shifts.
BTC’s Two Key Pressure-Release Valves
Crypto analytics firm, Swissblock, pointed to two potential catalysts that could trigger a sharp move in Bitcoin’s price: a de-escalation of geopolitical tensions and a dovish outcome from Wednesday’s FOMC meeting.
The firm noted that the BTC perpetual futures funding rate has turned negative, which means that short sellers are currently paying to maintain their positions. This is an imbalance that indicates bearish overcrowding. This setup raises the risk of a short squeeze if sentiment shifts.
According to Swissblock, even a single positive geopolitical headline could cause BTC to rally quickly, targeting bear liquidation zones.
Should Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell deliver a dovish message midweek, it would add bullish momentum. With funding deeply negative and short positions piling up, the market appears to be primed for a sharp reversal if either of these pressure-release valves is triggered.
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