New research by the cybersecurity reporters at 404 Media has uncovered a new tool named OnlyFakes that reliably generates fake IDs capable of bypassing KYC providers’ checks with relative ease.
The fake documents can be generated with or without a background, which would suggest it is a picture that was just taken by a user going through an ID verification process. Allegedly, several hundred fake documents can be produced at once using Excel batches.
OnlyFakes Claims to Be Against Illegal Activity
According to the website, its services may only be used as props in films and so on, “expressly forbidding” the use of the platform in order to pass KYC checks. Not long after the article exposing the website was published, the site’s founder – who goes by the nom-de-guerre John

Last year, the European Union unanimously voted for the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) bill, considered by most to be the first comprehensive piece of legislation addressing the crypto industry as a whole.
MiCA is, in itself, part of a larger set of financial laws known as DORA – but it has also given many crypto companies a reason to consider moving the bulk of their operations across the ocean.
Several Adjustments to The Bill
Although MiCA was published back in June 2023, there have already been two consultation sessions regarding the bill – with another due in April – before the first part of the legislation goes into effect in June 2024. The other provisions are expected to come into effect in December 2024.

🔴 #ESMA publishes 2⃣ Consultations Papers on guidelines

During the pandemic, a new mandate requiring Canadian truckers that carried out trips across the border into the United States to receive the COVID-19 vaccine was wildly unpopular, resulting in what was known as the “Freedom Convoy” protest.
Following a decision to protest the measure, truckers blocked the streets of Ottawa with their trucks and were supported in doing so by a significant amount of people both in Canada and abroad.
Turning to Crypto Funding
In order to continue their protest, the truckers needed money to pay for food, accommodation, legal fees, and the like. Supporters of the movement were eager to provide donations, but truckers quickly found their bank accounts frozen or otherwise unable to receive cash.
As a result, representatives of the protest

After Three Arrows Capital collapsed during crypto winter, founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies stuck around on Twitter, making excuses for themselves before going silent for months and resurfacing with a new crypto project – the exchange OPNX.
Later on, the pair also launched “3AC Ventures,” a new hedge fund, although public information is limited.
Run-In With Singaporean Authorities
Although the pair have so far managed to escape significant punishment, they have nonetheless been banned for several years from activities involving financial management in Singapore.
Kyle Davies – despite possibly being in contempt of court – has so far spent no time behind bars, unlike Su Zhu, who did a 3-month stint in Singaporean prison before being questioned and released.
However, this

Grok, an AI chatbot with access to tweets from all over X and programmed to be as snarky as possible, is the principal product offered by xAI.
The company is Elon Musk’s response to OpenAI – which he also co-founded. However, he later left after disagreements with Sam Altman and others over how to develop and profit from the tech that they were building.
Bid for Investment Registered Late Last Year
In early December, Elon Musk filed an SEC Form D for xAI, a document that allows for the sale of securities without full registration, on the condition that the sale remains private.
The document states that up to $1 billion worth of equity in the firm would be sold, with over $134 million already spoken for.
In spite of the controversial nature of the new AI platform – and the

Metamask launched Validator Staking support on its wallets as of January 18.
Users who wish to stake their tokens will need to have at least 32 ETH in their wallets to do so, which is the minimum requirement of the Ethereum network itself.

Introducing Validator Staking on MetaMask Portfolio.🦊
With a 32 ETH deposit, we run your very own validator node where you’re always in control.
No pooling. No hardware. Just rewards.✔️
🔗 https://t.co/rmCtgs86WO pic.twitter.com/R8VRttP2XX
— MetaMask 🦊🫰 (@MetaMask) January 18, 2024

Easy to Use
The users’ tokens will then be staked by Consensys, who, admittedly, have a stellar reputation when it comes to uptime.
When a validator breaches consensus rules, it is slashed from the network and loses some of the funds set as collateral. With

The EU Parliament and Council recently reached a provisional agreement on a list of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws. Although further deliberation on other proposed measures is yet to be had, the new measures will help streamline the efforts of the national financial agencies of EU countries in this area.
Although cryptocurrencies are not the main focus of the new laws, the industry is nonetheless explicitly targeted by several of the provisions.
Increased Reporting on Crypto Revenues
In recent years, several crypto-related companies have taken steps to move some or all of their activities to the European Union, citing a more concise regulatory framework than in the US, where the SEC is serving a slew of lawsuits and refrains from clarifying how to

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried were always close to their son. A certain amount of interest in the well-being of their son and that of his business dealings is to be expected.
However, the FTX estate, now led by bankruptcy specialist CEO John J Ray III, argues that SBF’s parents – particularly his father – had a much bigger presence in the FTX Groups’ dealings than it appears on paper.
If the allegations can be proven true, benefits derived from FTX and its former CEO could be subjected to clawbacks, in particular, a $10 million cash gift to Joseph Bankman and a luxury property in the Bahamas.
Advisory Capacity, Or Something More?
Officially, Joseph Bankman, who is a tenured Stanford law professor, never received a salary or any legally binding payments from any FTX

Celsius, the platform whose bankruptcy plan was finally approved late last year, has recently lashed out at former clients who cashed out before the company had the opportunity to freeze their funds.
Bold Propositions
The former crypto staking, lending, and exchange platform that has since shifted its focus to Bitcoin mining following the approval of the judge in its bankruptcy case was the first major player in crypto to bring up the “unsecured creditors” argument in court as a way to appropriate client funds.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that another outrageous proposal regarding bankruptcy should also come from Celsius.
According to a notice submitted by Kirkland & Ellis on behalf of their client, Celsius users who withdrew more than $100,000 from the platform in the

In January of 2023, YouTuber CoffeeZilla posted a three-part series on Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo project.
To participate in the upcoming game of the same name, customers had to purchase egg NFTs, which would then hatch, allowing the purchaser to play with and breed the animal.
Rumors of a Rugpull
However, the social media accounts associated with the platform had gone dark, and Logan Paul allegedly avoided talking about the project. After CoffeeZilla’s videos on the subject, Paul announced his plans to sue the YouTuber – and was, in turn, met with a class-action lawsuit filed by purchasers of both CryptoZoo NFTs and buyers of the related cryptocurrency $ZOO.
Several other celebrities who had also been involved in the promotion of the project were also mentioned in the

Earlier this year, the SEC’s crusade against cryptocurrencies seemed to be coming to a head after Judge Analisa Torres sided mostly in favor of Ripple, who ruled that XRP is, broadly speaking, not a security and that its purchase could only be considered an investment contract in certain circumstances.
The two parties, however, are still duking it out, with a final decision expected in early 2024.
Terraform Labs Attempted to Capitalize on Ripple’s Headwinds
Given the success of Ripple in its landmark case, Terraform Labs attempted to use a similar defense in its own legal battle. Judge Rakoff, however, was not convinced.
According to court transcripts, Judge Rakoff granted a summary judgement (one without a full trial) in favor of the SEC regarding TERRA and LUNA, both of

On the 30th of July, four Curve Finance pools were exploited due to a re-entrancy bug made possible by the Vyper programming language.
The hackers attacked four mining pools and made off with a total of $73.5 million. Almost immediately, the community sprang into action – Curve itself extended the standard olive branch, offering to treat the incident as a white hat incident in return for 90% of the stolen funds being sent back.
Meanwhile, genuine white hats also went after the hackers, managing to recover a small portion of the funds and return them to the exchange.
Total Recovery Was Impossible
Some of the attackers – particularly those involved in the breach of Metronome – took Curve up on the offer, returning 90% of the funds. Unfortunately, not all of the hackers were

Wallet drainers are a type of scam that generally operates by cloning a legitimate website, fooling the target into providing their crypto wallet credentials, and then executing a smart contract that sends the users’ funds to bad actors.

🚨1/ Alert: A ‘Wallet Drainer’ has been linked to phishing campaigns on Google search and X ads, draining approximately $58M from over 63K victims in 9 months. pic.twitter.com/ye3ob2uTtz
— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) December 21, 2023

Unlike targeted attacks on exchanges, which would involve actually breaching the security of said sites, drainer scams target either the community of a platform or whales whose internet presence has been tracked down.
Different Monetization Scheme
Generally, a portion of the funds are

Earlier this week, a BreachForums user by the name of Miembro announced the sale of access to a Binance data request portal, built and maintained to accommodate police officers and government officials worldwide in their attempts to track down cybercriminals.
The sale has since been paused, owing to a blunder involving a crypto mixer being used by a buyer to send funds to the seller turned out to be an invalid address.
Access to De-Anonymized Data
However, the sale will allegedly resume in about a week, once the mixer returns the funds.
Until then, the amount of data made available to bad actors is unclear. If the seller is to be believed – and his past ratings indicate he is a reputable one, as far as that term applies here – the emails, phone numbers, wallet IDs, and

Zcash, a privacy coin built on Bitcoin tech and one of the more popular privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, will be welcoming Josh Swihart as the new CEO of its developer, the Electric Coin Company (ECC).
Stepping Down For Self-Care
In an article posted on Zooko’s personal Medium – which is separate from the one usually used to post Zcash-related content – the former CEO stated that the eight years at the helm of the ECC had led to a certain degree of conflation between himself as a person and the company he founded and lead.
In order to prevent unfortunate circumstances from arising from this, Zooko took the decision to step down and focus on his personal life.
“For the last eight years of my life, I’ve worked continuously on Zcash. I was blessed with the best team

Gemini, the Winklevoss Twins crypto platform offering an exchange, custodian services, and – in partnership with Genesis – Earn services, has been in a bit of trouble ever since the latter filed for bankruptcy last January.
Possible Recovery Plan Waiting For Court Approval
Genesis, whose legal troubles stemmed partly from a loan to its parent company DCG that had not been repaid, has reportedly finally worked out a plan for repayment with said firm, allowing it to repay creditors – which included Gemini, given the nature of the custodial relationship between the two.
Currently, Genesis owes Gemini a total of $1.6 billion. As a result, Gemini was able to reach out to its users yesterday, offering them a possible exit from the platform, which the community would have to vote

Elon Musk – who was also one of the founders of OpenAI back in the day – has been working on xAI for a while now, a firm launching another chatbot named Grok whose selling point is being “quirky” and having access to the Twitter API in order to stay up to date with current events.

Announcing Grok!
Grok is an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!
Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use…
— xAI (@xai) November 5, 2023

Grok Is Still In Beta
For the moment, access to the chatbot is severely limited, with practically only internal testers being able to mess around with it.
However, a recent filing with the

Riot Platforms is one of the leading cryptocurrency mining companies with a steady stream of income.
A Well-Grounded Company
The company’s strength lies in the sheer scale of operations, which allows it to drive down the cost of mining Bitcoin by virtue of its immense processing power.
Although it faced a significant downturn during crypto winter – much like any other platform in its situation – the company faced no real difficulties in staying afloat, even securing an investment worth just over 10% of its value from Vanguard.
Now that the market for Bitcoin is back in vogue, Riot Platforms is looking to capitalize on these headwinds as much as possible.
Thousands of New Mining Rigs
Riot Platforms has a long-standing agreement with mining rig builder MicroBT Electronics,

On the 17th of November, an unknown individual who may have been working as part of a team targeted the dYdX exchange and its YFI token.
Allegedly, the same actor had previously tried a similar strategy on the exchange’s SUSHI market merely 2 weeks prior.
Good Trades Or Malicious Intent?
These trades, which the platform’s staff have classified as an attack, were done using a series of transactions that ultimately caused open interest on the exchange to surge by over $66 million and resulted in $9 million of its insurance fund being burned in order to keep it afloat.
Thankfully, no user funds were affected by the trade.
“Last night about $9m from the dYdX v3 insurance fund were used to fill gaps on liquidations processed in the YFI market. The v3 insurance fund remains well

New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney’s Office has filed a civil forfeiture action against Christopher Castelluzzo and two other members of an unnamed drug trafficking group based in New Jersey.
According to the filing, the other two members of the group are Luke Atwell – a friend and business partner of Castelluzzo’s who is currently serving a similar sentence – and Brian Krewson, another friend of the two who reportedly manages their estate for the time being.
Attempts to Move Crypto For Tax Avoidance
The stash was allegedly discovered after Castelluzzo – who is currently serving two concurrent 20-year sentences – attempted to communicate with members of his outfit while in prison in order to move the funds to another country in a bid to avoid taxation.
According to FBI Agent James

In spite of previous high-profile disappointments tied to the crypto industry, such as 3AC and the ill-fated investment into FTX, the Singaporean government has been approving quite a few crypto platforms during the past weeks.
The latest to get the preliminary nod is the South Korean giant – UPbit.
Spree Of Approvals
Ripple, Coinbase,  and smaller players such as Sygnum and GSR have all been awarded an MPI (Major Payment Institute) license by the Singaporean government earlier this month.
Although several more details still need to be hashed out before UPbit Singapore can begin operating at full capacity, the in-principle agreement (IPA) allows the crypto exchange to provide digital payment token services within the city-state. The full license should be granted at a

3Commas, a popular crypto trading bot, provides smart trading solutions for investors worldwide.
Unfortunately, the popularity of the tool also makes it a big glowing target for bad actors, who are sometimes successful in their attempts at getting ahold of user data – or even the bot’s API data.
Fortunately, the most recent attack was far more limited in scope.
Unauthorized Trades Reported
Towards the end of the weekend, 3Commas began receiving reports from users who saw that unauthorized trades were being made on their accounts.

Notice of Incident. We’ve identified a security incident that has come to our attention concerning the security of 3Commas accounts. 📚Learn more and stay secure:Read our Blog Post: https://t.co/sJmfzOJE49 pic.twitter.com/MRJ40D29pj
— 3Commas

September of 2023 was a great month for Bitcoin mining companies. While the crypto world has been focused on the high-profile court cases regarding SBF and Celsius’ Mashinsky, Bitcoin miners have steadily been improving their hash rates, promising a greater future supply of the first cryptocurrency.
News of record outputs from three Bitcoin mining firms coincides with reports of Kraken witnessing a 5-year ATH of BTC inflow and a 506.06M hash rate spike in mid-September, according to YCharts.
CleanSpark Celebrates Best Year on Record
CleanSpark mined 643 BTC in September, bringing its total BTC holdings to 2,240.
According to the firm’s CEO, these numbers have not only made the past few months their most profitable quarter on record – they’ve turned CleanSpark’s FY23 into

Earlier this summer, Binance was required to wind down operations in Belgium due to a warning from the FMSA, the country’s principal financial regulator.
Previous Dispute With Regulator
The FMSA’s warning was, according to the regulator, wholly unrelated to the legal dispute currently underway across the pond.
Instead, the watchdog expressed concern over Binance’s practice of offering exchange services and hosting wallets in non-EEA countries – which opens the door to money laundering and other illicit activities, according to the FMSA.
“Firms governed by the law of a country that is not a member of the European Economic Area are prohibited from offering or providing, within Belgium, by way of professional activity, […] exchange services between virtual currencies and

David Hirsch, the head of the SEC’s Crypto Assets And Cyber Unit, recently promised further enforcement actions against crypto platforms deemed to be non-compliant with the agency’s demands.
The announcement was made at the SEC’s yearly Securities Enforcement Forum Central event, which took place at the Four Seasons hotel in Chicago this year and was streamed online for those who could not attend.
DeFi Is Not A Workaround, Says Hirsch
During the event, which hosted speakers from several of the SEC’s subdivisions, Hirsch stated that his team will continue bringing lawsuits against crypto platforms that do not meet its requirements in spite of the uncertain rate of success. He also took aim at DeFi platforms that, in reality, may not be as decentralized as they claim.
“We’re

Coinbase, one of the world leaders in crypto services, is currently battling accusations of improper conduct in U.S. courts. The platform’s legal representatives have denied any wrongdoing, even going so far as to request the dismissal of the case.
In spite of the accusations, Coinbase – and the platform’s CEO, Brian Armstrong – are generally viewed as a positive force in the market by institutional investors and even policymakers. As previously reported by CryptoPotato, Armstrong met with House Representatives in order to discuss upcoming legislation regarding cryptocurrencies.
Coinbase is, however, a centralized platform and has made no claims of being decentralized. This is why Armstrong shared his thoughts on legal issues that may be faced by his decentralized peers.

With less than a month left before Sam Bankman-Fried’s court case is due to begin, DOJ officials have been rushing to put the final touches to their arguments.
Since the outcome will be decided by a jury, the DOJ has spent a while formulating questions for members of the jury to ensure that they are as free of bias as possible.
Prior Interactions With FTX, Startups, and Fraud Cases Are of Interest
According to the document containing the final list of questions for the jury, the most important one for jury members is whether they were – or still are – an investor with ties to the FTX empire. Naturally, an investor who lost funds due to SBF’s unfortunate handling of the exchange’s finances would likely be biased against SBF, which would hinder a fair trial.
Several other

Over the past year, FTX has filed numerous lawsuits against previous business partners, attempting to claw back funds allegedly spent without justification or in subprime deals.
Often, these funds were indeed spent on a whim, whether at networking parties or, presumably, gaming. However, LayerZero’s CEO Bryan Pellegrino argued that this could not be farther from the truth in this case.
Multimillion-Dollar Lawsuit
In the lawsuit filed on the 8th of September, FTX’s new leadership argues that the deals the firm made with LayerZero shortly before its collapse were unfair to it since the exchange was already insolvent at the time.However, the deals in question were made before the company officially filed for bankruptcy on the 7th of November, 2022.
According to FTX’s lawyers,

Linus Financial, a Nashville-based crypto platform, has settled its dispute with the SEC out of court. Previously, the project offered pooled crypto investment opportunities to its users in exchange for fiat.
However, the firm voluntarily winded down its operations when a similar firm got into hot water with the securities regulator over a nearly identical product.
Unregistered Securities Offering
Many of the SEC’s recent lawsuits – the most high-profile one being the case against Ripple – focused on the sale of tokens that the agency believes should be classified as securities. However, in this case, the Commission referred to the interest-garnering accounts themselves as the point of friction.
According to a press release submitted by the U.S. regulator, Linus Interest

On the 29th of August, Jeremy Allaire – the CEO of Circle, the company that mints and holds governance over USDC – announced that the popular stablecoin would be coming to Base and Optimism within a week.
The launch was part of Circle’s plan to improve the utility of USDC by bringing the stablecoin to more blockchains in a native token, eliminating the need for bridged Ethereum tokens. The decision came shortly after the announcement of a new super chain agreement with Optimism, with Circle now assuming a more active role in the Optimism collective’s day-to-day dealings.
Native Support
The two new variants of the USDC stablecoin have gone live on both mainnets earlier this morning. Both variants were built on the OP stack, and their launch is a part of Circle’s Stable