A man from Northborough, Mass., has pleaded guilty to involvement in scams that reaped over $600,000 by targeting the elderly and vulnerable.

Making the plea at the federal court in Worcester, Mass., Austin Nedved also acknowledged laundering the proceeds of such schemes via peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchanges, and other crimes.


In a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Massachusetts Attorney's Office said Nedved admitted running a business buying and selling cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin (BTC, -12.04%), on LocalBitcoins.com and Paxful.com.


From around 2017 to 2019, he worked for romance and lottery scams targeting "vulnerable victims."


"Despite knowing or being willfully blind to the fact that his customers were fraud victims, Nedved sold bitcoin to them so that they could send money overseas to the fraudsters," according to the release.


In romance schemes, victims are persuaded to send money abroad to individuals that purport to be romantic interests, while lottery schemes trick victims into thinking they can obtain lottery winnings or government grants by sending funds for administrative fees or expenses.


In one case, Nedved helped a 78-year-old victim send bitcoin to a fake marriage prospect going by the name “Jonathan G.” who said his oil business needed money amid a crisis.


On June 25, 2018, the victim met Nedved in a parking lot and gave him a cashier’s check to purchase around $100,000 in bitcoin. Days later, Nedved and a co-conspirator took another $40,000 from the victim.


In total, Nedved and his co-conspirators converted over $630,000 of victims' cash into bitcoin, knowing that the funds were the proceeds of scams and other unlawful activities, per the DOJ release.


While in some cases bitcoin was returned to the providers of the cash, in others it was sent on to "unidentified third parties."


Nedved was charged with aiding and abetting wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy, both of which bring maximum sentences of 20 years in prison, plus fines.


The case is another reminder to take extreme care and carry out due diligence when handing over funds for cryptocurrency purchases or investments.

Privacy-focused messaging app Signal takes the lead after being endorsed by Elon Musk, Edward Snowden, and other famous figures.

A recent endorsement by Tesla CEO Elon Musk has propelled privacy-focused messaging app Signal to the very top of major app charts—partly thanks to WhatsApp’s recent controversial announcement.

“Use Signal,” Musk tweeted on January 7—a day after Facebook-owned WhatsApp, one of Signal’s competitors, began pressuring its users to share their personal data with its parent social media.

According to app analytics platform App Annie, Signal is currently the most popular free app on both AppStore and Google Play. WhatsApp, on the other hand, is ranked 13 on iOS and 27 on Android.

Signal is known for using an end-to-end encryption (E2EE) protocol. In cryptography, this method is used to establish a communication channel between two parties that is impossible to “eavesdrop” on.

In E2EE, special encryption keys are created on a sender’s device, which only the recipient is able to decode. This means that data is protected not only from hackers and other malicious actors but from the Internet, server, and service providers as well. While the message itself can be intercepted and copied, it cannot be decoded without the appropriate keys.

“I trust Signal because it’s well built, but more importantly, because of how it’s built: open source, peer reviewed, and funded entirely by grants and donations. A refreshing model for how critical services should be built,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in the past.

After WhatsApp’s announcement, Edward Snowden, America’s most notorious whistleblower, also confessed that he is using Signal every day—and still hasn't died from it.

“Here's a reason: I use it every day and I'm not dead yet,” Snowden said in a reply to a user asking whether Signal can really be trusted.

As Decrypt reported, demand for Signal exploded following the surge of protests in the US this summer. At the time, the app just entered into the top 10 apps in the “Social Networking” category on iOS.

Today, it’s the number one overall.

Bitcoin bulls were celebrating its surge past $40,000 when the inevitable happened.

After reaching all-time high after all-time high, Bitcoin’s price was in dire need of a correction.

“Bitcoin’s parabolic rise is unsustainable in the near term. Vulnerable to setback,” tweeted Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer at investment giant Guggenheim Partners, at about 5am UTC on Monday morning, as Bitcoin’s price began to fall.

He wasn’t wrong.

Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin’s price fell $9,000, hitting a low of $32,000. At one point, its price fell $3,000 in under two hours. This extreme price volatility upturned a lot of futures traders, liquidating $1.1 billion in long positions. And in real dollar terms, today’s losses represent the biggest Bitcoin crash ever. But what caused this sudden downturn? And what will happen next?

A sudden market correction
Price corrections have simply been part and parcel of bull runs in the past, and today’s price action is no different.

“This Bitcoin price drop should not seem unusual to anybody who has been following the space since the 2017 boom,” Dmitrii Ushakov, chief commercial officer at BitRiver, told Decrypt.

During 2017’s Christmas bull run, Bitcoin reached what was then an all-time high. On the way, we saw dips similar to what has happened today. For example, between November 9, 2017 and November 13, 2017, Bitcoin’s price dropped 20% between $7,459 and $5,950.

Jason Deane, Bitcoin analyst at Quantum Economics, told Decrypt that price corrections are “a healthy part of a bull market and allow traders to regroup and catch their breath before embarking on new price discovery,”

Deane added that, “In times of emotionally fuelled trading, like the 2017/18 boom, these corrections can be large and unpredictable.”

But knowing that price corrections happen hasn’t stopped some Bitcoin holders from selling their assets.

Small investors selling their Bitcoin
Despite many in the crypto industry calling for calm, Bitcoin’s decreasing price has led to small holders selling off their Bitcoin.

This can be explained, in part, by small holders searching for short-term profit, or cutting their losses before witnessing what they might expect to be an even greater market crash.

“Profit-taking once Bitcoin passed $40,000 triggered small investors who are, understandably, more prone to panic (and excitement) and resort to selling faster,” Antoni Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, told Decrypt.

Kain Warick, founder at derivatives liquidity protocol Synthetix, addressed those who might be looking to sell their Bitcoin for fear of a greater price drop in the near future.

While smaller Bitcoin holders might be more prone to react to the market, those holding large amounts of Bitcoin are more willing to hold on to their assets in the long term.

Intercontinental Exchange-backed Bakkt will go public around three years after it was first launched.

Bitcoin custodian Bakkt will become a publicly traded company, according to an announcement today. The company will be valued at $2.1 billion.

Bakkt is merging with VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings in a deal that will result in a combined company called Bakkt Holdings, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company also stated that it is already working with Starbucks to enable customers to reload their Starbucks Cards. Bakkt currently supports over 30 loyalty program sponsors and over 200 gift card merchants. The firm plans to widely roll out the Bakkt App in March.

Bakkt hires new CEO
Gavin Michael, former head of technology at Citi’s Global Consumer Bank, also joined Bakkt as CEO today.

Michael succeeds David Clifton, who served as Bakkt’s interim CEO and who will now join the combined company’s board of directors. Michael also headed the digital team for Chase, and served as chief technology innovation officer at Accenture.

“I’m excited to join the management team of a company, at this important time in its expansion, whose vision is to bring trust and transparency to digital assets through innovation and technology,” Michael said.

Messaging app Telegram has seen a massive surge in new users, largely by those concerned about their privacy.



Messaging app Telegram has seen an additional 25 million new users sign up to use the platform in the last 72 hours, according to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. The app, which is widely used by many in the cryptocurrency space, doesn't share personal data and offers encrypted chats.

The influx of new users appears to be a result of rival messaging app WhatsApp changing its privacy policy. This update required its users to share their data with Facebook, or stop using the service. This prompted concerns from users that they will be sharing more data with Facebook than they are comfortable with. And many decided to leave.

“In the first week of January, Telegram surpassed 500 million monthly active users,” said Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, in his personal Telegram channel, adding, “After that it kept growing: 25 million new users joined Telegram in the last 72 hours alone.”

As Decrypt reported, the move away from WhatsApp helped push Signal to the top of the app stores. Although this was helped by a big endorsement from Elon Musk, who simply tweeted "Use Signal."

These new users are spread out across all parts of the world, with the majority—38%—coming from Asia. A further 27% and 21% have come from Europe and Latin America respectively. A final 8% have come from the MENA region.

“We’ve had surges of downloads before, throughout our 7-year history of protecting user privacy. But this time is different,” Durov added. The Telegram CEO also went on to say that individuals no longer want to trade their privacy for free services.

Telegram made an attempt to get further into the cryptocurrency world when it tried to launch its own cryptocurrency, called TON. However, the SEC prevented it from occuring, forcing Telegram to return $1.2 billion to investors and pay a penalty of $18.5 million to the SEC.

The Grayscale fund temporarily stopped onboarding new investors before the new year.


Digital asset investment company Grayscale has re-opened its doors to new investors for the majority of its digital asset trusts.

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust applies periodic pauses on new investors. On December 21, the fund put a pause on new investors. It's significant because the fund is one of the few places where institutional investors in the US are able to get exposure to Bitcoin. During this time, however, existing investors were still able to buy shares in the trust.

Investing in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust requires a six-month lock up period. In other words, new investors cannot sell their shares on the secondary market for the first six months.

As of yesterday, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust held about $20 billion in assets under management.

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is not the only investment product on offer. Grayscale also provides investment opportunities for other major cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum and Litecoin.

At the time of writing, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust—which is yet to reopen—and the Grayscale Litecoin Trust hold $3 billion and $158 million in assets under management respectively.

Yesterday, Bitcoin dropped to $30,000 from a high of $41,000. But today, Bitcoin’s price appears to have levelled out to about $35,000, after recovering from lows of $30,000.

Hal Finney was the first-ever recipient of Bitcoin—a historic event that proved the network did work in reality.


Today marks the twelfth anniversary of the first-ever Bitcoin transaction sent from one person to another. At the receiving end was computer scientist Hal Finney, who got the 10 Bitcoin from Satoshi Nakamoto, the network’s mysterious, pseudonymous creator.

The transaction on the now-historic date proved that Bitcoin—as a money network—did indeed work in reality and set the foundation for its future growth. It came a week after Nakamoto started running the Bitcoin network on their computing system.

Apart from receiving the first Bitcoin transaction, Finney, known for his work in advanced cryptography systems before succumbing to a rare disease in 2014, was also the second person to run Bitcoin. Some even conspire that he was Nakamoto—a theory that does the rounds even today.

“I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test,” Finney wrote in a Bitcointalk forum post in 2009. The amount was worth next to nothing at the time, but at today’s market prices, it is worth over $353,000.

Finney was also one of the first individuals to put out a price prediction on Bitcoin. He estimated in a mail (which was initially lost but later recovered) to Nakamoto in 2009 that extrapolated the total worldwide household wealth—considering it to be between $100-300 trillion—with Bitcoin’s 21 million supply: Giving each coin a value of $10 million.

And as if those firsts weren’t enough, Finney also holds the distinction of making the first-ever tweet referring to Bitcoin. It just said, “running bitcoin,” and twelve years on, the network’s still going strong.

The business intelligence giant is hosting a free online course on Bitcoin. But can it convince the corporations?


Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy is offering a free, online course in Bitcoin strategy on February 3 and 4, 2021.

The firm was one of the first to put large amounts of Bitcoin on its balance sheet and may have partially triggered Bitcoin’s latest rally. Other firms have also done so, with Square putting $50 million into Bitcoin. But can MicroStrategy convince even more companies to follow suit?

“On February 3 and 4, MicroStrategy will host Bitcoin for Corporations,” tweeted MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor today.

MicroStrategy propelled itself into the Bitcoin world when it announced a combined investment of $425 million in Bitcoin between August and September 2020. After additional Bitcoin purchases and an increase in Bitcon’s price, MicroStrategy now holds about $2.3 billion worth of Bitcoin.

The first day focuses on how Bitcoin can be adopted by corporations. “Our first day agenda provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of the topics corporations need to address as they develop and implement their Bitcoin strategy,” MicroStrategy said.

On this first day, Saylor will give two talks himself. One on Bitcoin Macro Strategy, which will offer a review of Bitcoin as a treasure reserve asset, as well as address macroeconomic factors driving Bitcoin’s institutional adoption.

The second talk will be on Bitcoin Corporate Strategy, which will review the ways in which corporations can integrate with Bitcoin. Other talks due to feature on both days include topics such as financial and legal considerations about Bitcoin.

On the second day, MicroStrategy will provide an “overview of strategic vendors and offerings in the Bitcoin marketplace.” On this day, several presentations will be given by major cryptocurrency companies like Binance, Coinbase and Fidelity.

But the question is, will Elon Musk be attending?

Bitcoin (BTC) is becoming a challenger to gold’s standing as the one supra-currency, the thing to own when fiat currencies are kerplunked, Jonathan Ruffer, Chairman of UK-based Ruffer Investment Company, said, explaining their underlying reasoning for investing in BTC.


"We have done much work on assessing the danger that bitcoin is a wrong’un. We have been watching it for a longish time, and our judgement is that it is a unique beast as an emerging store of value, blending some of the benefits of technology and gold," Ruffer said in his latest Investment Review. As reported, the company invested GBP 550m (USD 748m), or around 2.5% of its assets in BTC.



The Chairman admitted that BTC "is a seemingly non-sensical asset,"

"But one that makes absolute sense for how we see the world," he added.



This is how he described the current investment environment:

"We see inflation – biggish inflation – ahead."

"The world’s currencies are in danger of being compromised by the issuance of more money."

"The growth companies – too big, too dominant – are unlikely to be able to grow their profits fast enough to compensate for what will happen when long-term yields rise – their ratings will fall as investors become less willing to pay such high multiples for the future earnings."

Meanwhile, an important question for the company was when to invest in BTC.


"We took the view that last November was not too soon, and if we left it any longer, subsequent price performance might make it feel too late. So we made an allocation," the Chairman said.


According to him, at the time of writing, the entry price looks to have been favourable, "but that’s not really the point."


"We are in the business of keeping clients safe, and we are nervously satisfied that bitcoin has a small part to play in the pudding," Ruffer concluded.


At pixel time (12:43 PM UTC), BTC trades at USD 35,192 and is up by almost 1% in a day and 11% in a week. It rallied by 85% in a month and 340% in a year.