Stablecoins are the perfect trojan horse for Bitcoin, says Tether CTO

As one of a number of Cointelegraph representatives attending the Paris Blockchain Week Summit (PBWS) at the historic Palais Brongniart — a neoclassical building previously serving as the headquarters for the Parisian stock exchange from 1826 to 1987 — European news reporter, Joe Hall sat down for an in-depth interview with the Chief technology officer of Bitfinex and Tether, Paolo Ardoino. Previously ranked 88th in Cointelegraph’s prestigious Top 100 2021 for his influential impact on the growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, Ardoino spoke on an array of topics…

Read More

Making sense of the Bitfinex Bitcoin billions

[ad_1] It’s the Netflix script that wrote itself. A story so outlandish, it’s stunned the crypto community; an industry accustomed to apparent suicides in Spanish jail cells and nonfungible token auctions for dead rappers. The plot involves the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), a crypto exchange with a checkered history, a rapper-cum-Forbes magazine writer, a voucher to buy a new PlayStation, an occasional magician and $4 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC). The alleged Bitfinex hack money launderers have kept the internet enraptured since the larger-than-life story emerged last week.…

Read More

Seizure of Bitfinex funds is a reminder that crypto is no good for money launderers

[ad_1] As public understanding of how digital assets work becomes more nuanced along with the mainstreaming of crypto, the language of Bitcoin’s (BTC) “anonymity” gradually becomes a thing of the past. High-profile law enforcement operations such as the one that recently led to the U.S. government seizing some $3.6 billion worth of crypto are particularly instrumental in driving home the idea that assets whose transaction history is recorded on an open, distributed ledger are better described as “pseudonymous,” and that such a design is not particularly favorable for those wishing…

Read More

Bitfinex paid a colossal $23M fee to send $100K of USDT

[ad_1] Crypto exchange Bitfinex completed a highly consequential transaction on Sept. 27 when sending $100,000 of the stablecoin Tether (USDT) to the layer-2 subsidiary platform DeversiFi. For reasons unknown, the exchange paid 7,676 ETH, equivalent to $23.7 million, marking quite possibly the largest gas fee ever recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.  According to blockchain data from EtherScan, the deposit transaction was initiated at 11:10 UTC this morning from Bitfinex’s second-largest wallet, via a second address, to the wallet of DeversiFi. The transaction carried an “erroneously high gas fee”, even though DeversiFi…

Read More

Bad call? Bitfinex bears closed a block of Bitcoin shorts before the drop below $32K

[ad_1] Bitcoin price is still in a rut, trading near $33,000 and trapped in a downtrend that just seems to get worse with the passing of each day. As the price slumps, analysts have consulted with several technical and on-chain metrics to explain the price collapse, but none of these have picked up on the exact reason.  One area of interest has been the sharp rise in short positions at Bitfinex in the past week. Traders are placing exaggerated importance on these Bitcoin (BTC) margin shorts as if they are…

Read More