- The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned two crypto addresses that it tied to Russian weapons trafficking.
- The sanctions target Igor Vladimirovich Zimenkov, who the agency says helped sanctioned Russian defense companies access weapons, particularly high-tech equipment that OFAC has tried to block from getting to Russia.
- The two wallets — one Bitcoin and one Ethereum — are under the control of Zimenkov’s son, Jonatan, according to the Treasury Department.
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- Scammers hacked into Robinhood’s Twitter to promote fraudulent crypto project.
- Hackers touted launch of a new token $RBH on the Binance Smart Chain for $0.0005.
- Blockchain explorer data shows that less than $1,000 went into the fake crypto project.
- Agora Digital, a bitcoin mining subsidiary of Ecoark Holdings, scrapped plans for a $127 million Initial Public Offering, according to Seeking Alpha.
- Agora first filed for the IPO in Nov. 2021, with a target raise of $100 million that was later upped to $127 million.
- The scrapped IPO comes in the wake of a failed merger with blockchain technology company Humbl, which was announced in Aug. 2022 only to be cancelled a month later.
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Kyle Davies: 3AC creditors frustrated with current bankruptcy process
- Davies said creditors were annoyed by high costs and delays.
- Wants to pursue claims on a contingency basis against “Luna consortium/FTX/Genesis.”
- Claims Genesis’s collateral claim from 3AC is disputed and could be $500 million too high.
- Cipher Mining increased its hash rate by about 40% month over month in December to 2.8 EH/s.
- The company is ramping up production; expects to reach a total of 6 EH/s of self-mining in Q1.
- “This rapid progress demonstrates the expertise of our amazing deployment and operations teams,” CEO Tyler Page said.
- NOTE: Cipher closed up 2.55% on Tuesday.
- Crypto exchange operator Coinbase will shutter the bulk of its Japan operations as it rethinks investments in global expansion, according to a Bloomberg report.
- The news comes after the company announced that it would cut 20% of staff yesterday, amounting to some 950 people. It cut 1,100 jobs in June of last year.
- Nana Murugesan, vice president for business development and international at Coinbase, told Bloomberg the firm had “decided to wind down the majority of our operations in Japan, which led to eliminating most of the roles in our Japan entity.”
- Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried invested $20 million in the Paradigm One venture capital fund, which then invested in FTX, the Financial Times reported.
- The arrangement is not illegal, but it “raises eyebrows,” a legal expert told the newspaper.
- Paradigm wrote its $278 million investment in FTX down to zero in November.