THE CRYPTO LIFE? After a 14-month civil forfeiture case, a California court ordered the seizure of property and assets of the late Alexandre Cazes. He was infamous for allegedly running the darknet marketplace AlphaBay and was arrested on those suspicions in July of 2017. Shortly afterward he committed suicide.
Preceding his arrest the authorities found that his assets consisted of 1,605.05 bitcoins, 8,309.27 ether, 3,691.98 zcash and an unknown amount of monero, as well as four luxury vehicles including a Lamborghini Aventador— and six mansions.
Websites operating on the darknet are one of the oldest and most controversial uses cases for cryptocurrencies. Prominent figures such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and economist Paul Krugman have faulted cryptocurrency for being the go-to means of exchange for illicit transactions. Full Story
INSTITUTIONAL INTERFACE: Caspian, a project that is building an asset mangement tool targeted at crypto funds, was able to secure an investment of $16 million during a token pre-sale.
David Mills of project backer Kenetic Capital told CoinDesk that Caspian arose from the dearth of products to help a crypto trading operation manage all the different parts of its business.
The tokens, based on the ethereum ERC-20 standard, buy access to Caspian, which has plugged into 25 crypto exchanges. Full Story
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Tether's USDT is being phased out at Digifinex, a Singapore-based crypto exchange, which is replacing the controversial stablecoin with TrustToken's TrueUSD.
The exchange's co-founder, Kiana Shek, told CoinDesk, "I simply don't believe in tether but I had no choice" but to list it until recently. Billed as a compliant and third-party audited alternative, TrueUSD is one of several new stablecoins that have arrived on the scene this year.
The exchange will still offer tether trading pairs during a transitional period. Full Story | 
