Alphabay arrest

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February 13, 2020 CURRENCY SCRAMBLING: Ohio resident Larry Dean Harmon has been charged with laundering more than $300 million in bitcoin for darknet marketplace AlphaBay. Prosecutors said Harmon played a major role in scrambling illicit cryptocurrency transactions for the darknet marketplace. Full story SAFER MARGIN? Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., is getting back into the business of lending money to traders. The exchange said Wednesday its new margin trading feature provides leverage for individual investors in 23 U.S. states. Full story 'OPPORTUNISTIC' RAISE: Fresh on the heels of an $18.3 million Series A funding round in August, crypto lending startup BlockFi has secured a $30 million Series B led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures. “We decided to opportunistically raise the Series B to expand the balance sheet and give ourselves the ability to invest in the things we’re doing this year,” Zac Prince, BlockFi CEO, said. Full story BANK BACKING: Banking giant Wells Fargo is backing blockchain forensics firm Elliptic. Announced Thursday, the fresh $5 million from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital brings Elliptic’s Series B up to a total of $28 million. Full story CODE SCHOOL: Developer John Newbery's weekly Bitcoin Core review club, which teaches students how to inspect the bitcoin source code, will take a look at the next major code update, Taproot/Schnorr. Started last year, the club meets Wednesdays on the old-school chatting service Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Full story NEW SERIES: CoinDesk Research has launched Monthly Reviews, which feature a series of charts that reveal insight into institutional participation in crypto assets and adoption of fundamental user narratives. Download January’s for free here. TOUGH CEILING: Bitcoin’s bulls have failed three times in the last 24 hours to cut through the resistance at $10,500, justifying the overbought signal from a key technical indicator. The cryptocurrency is now vulnerable to a pullback to support of $9,800. If resistance at $10,500 is scaled, more buyers may join the market and push prices toward the next resistance above $10,900. Full story   TIPPING POINT: In a conversation with Michael Casey at the World Economic Forum, Brian Behlendorf of Hyperledger said, blockchain’s potential is “hitting a tipping point.” The executive director thinks that 2019's period of "careful, prosaic BUIDLing" has given way to an ecosystem that will have a net benefit for the world. Watch here WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER   Copyright © 2020 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.  Our mailing address is:  250 Park Avenue South New York, NY, 10003, US  Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list