The Prison Life of Sam Bankman-Fried, the Tornado Cash Troubles, and a $3 Billion BTC Whale: Hodler's Digest, August 20-26

Featured this week Tornado Cash co-founders charged with money laundering and sanctions violations

US officials, August 23. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov have both been charged with conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transfer business. Storm was arrested and Semenov was added to the US list of Specially Designated Nationals and Stranded Persons. Together, the charges carry a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison. Tornado Cash's third co-founder, Alexey Pertsev, was arrested in the Netherlands for money laundering in August 2022. The police action is a continuation of the US government's crackdown on Tornado Cash that began the year latter because of its alleged role in money laundering. fund of the Lazarus group, a hacker collective linked to North Korea. Tornado Cash has also been implicated in several other hacks. In total, the mixer laundered more than $1 billion in ill-gotten gains, the US Department of Justice claims.

Sam Bankman-Fried runs out of meds and lives in jail on $3 worth of peanut butter

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried only eats bread with peanut butter to fit his vegan diet while depleting his supply of prescription drugs. At the same hearing in which Bankman-Fried was charged with seven fraud charges, his attorneys argued for the former FTX CEO to receive better treatment at Brooklyn's notorious Metropolitan Detention Center. Also this week, Bankman-Fried and his legal team walked out of jail on 48 hours' notice. Each day, he will have approximately seven hours to prepare for his next trial, which is expected to begin in October.

Mystery Solved: Bitcoin Wallet Generating $3 Billion in 3 Months Identified

The mysterious bitcoin wallet that rose through the ranks to become the world's third-largest bitcoin holder in just over three months, . Blockchain intelligence platform Arkham Intelligence has dubbed Robinhood's wallet: Jump Trading Custody. According to data from the crypto statistics platform BitInfoCharts, the wallet address first received Bitcoin on March 8. Over the next three months and two weeks, the wallet accumulated a staggering 118,000 BTC, worth $3.08 billion at current prices. According to BitInfoCharts, the largest Bitcoin wallets in the world are currently owned by Binance and Bitfinex, known as Bitcoin cold wallets.

Parent company Prime Trust lost $8 million investing in TerraUSD

The parent company of cryptocurrency custodian Prime Trust — currently embroiled in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings — into customer funds and cash through TerraUSD investments, likely when the algorithmic stablecoin crashed. collapsed in May 2022. The company described the investment as well as a surge. spending in October and November 2022 – amid FTX's collapse – as contributing to its bankruptcy filing. Court documents show that 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 companies including FTX, BlockFi, Celsius Network, and Voyager Digital.

The PEPE whale takes the opportunity to dive and buys tokens worth $529,000

A Pepe holder is valued at $529,000 after the price of the frog-themed memecoin fell around 15% due to recent changes to a multisig wallet and concerns over potential manipulation developers. According to on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain, the whale bought PEPE at an average price of $0.000001163. The value of the once-popular memecoin plunged after changes related to the number of signatures required to sign transactions, raising concerns of a potential "rug pull", which happened later. p>