Does Kwon Convert Millions in Illegal Funds to BTC, Robinhood Pays $10.2M Penalty, Mt Gox Creditors Refund Window Now Open

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Legal news

• South Korean prosecutors identified $314.2 million in illegal assets linked to Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon and his associates, of which $69 million is directly linked to Kwon. However, he converted most of the illegal funds into Bitcoin using foreign crypto exchanges, KBS reported, so the assets linked to him cannot be recovered or under South Korean jurisdiction.
• Major American online trading platform Robin Hood “will pay up to $10.2 million in fines for operational and technical failures that harmed Main Street investors,” US. California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) announced. DFPI joined the multi-state settlement that followed a North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) investigation into the March 2020 platform breaches.
• The deadline for Mt Gox creditors to provide the repayment information has passed, opening the window for repayments, according to an April 7 letter from the exchange administrator. The trustee will carry out the necessary preparations to make the repayments, coordinating with several financial institutions, including crypto exchanges, which will receive and distribute the payments to the creditors. “In view of this, it is expected to take some time before repayment is commenced,” it said.

Political news

• A candidate for Thailand’s prime ministership, Srettha Thavisin, promised every citizen 10,000 Thai baht ($300) in digital currency if his party forms a government after a general election in May. According to the Bangkok Post, the property mogul promised a basic income-style economic stimulus package via “digital currency” should the Pheu Thai Party win the election.

DeFi news

• ZkSynca ZK-Rollup Layer 2 scaling solution developed by Matter Labs, so that it found “an elegant solution” to unlock the frozen contract, referring to ETH 921 stuck in a smart contract used by a team called Gemholic on its Era network, after this team reached out for support. “It will require minimal changes to the gas measurement of the protocol, but will allow full recovery of the funds,” ZkSync said, adding that the funds are safe.

Security news

• Crypto security company CertiK found that malicious actors drained $320,332,058 of value from Web3 protocols in the first quarter of this year. According to the FY23 Q1 Hack3d report, this represents over a third of the $950 million lost in Q4 last year, and a quarter of the $1.3 billion lost in Q1 2022. The $197 million-heavy Euler Finance exploitation alone represented over 60% of the value stolen in Q1 2023.
• A new report by the US Department of the Treasury “explores how illegal actors abuse what are commonly referred to as decentralized financial services (DeFi) as well as vulnerabilities unique to DeFi services.” It found that bad actors – including ransom cybercriminals, thieves, fraudsters and North Korean hackers – are using DeFi services in the process of transferring and laundering the illicit proceeds, exploiting vulnerabilities in US and foreign AML/CFT regulation, supervision and enforcement. regimes, as well as the technology underlying DeFi services. “In particular, this assessment finds that the most significant current illicit financial risk in this domain is from DeFi services that do not comply with existing AML/CFT obligations,” it said.

Mining news

• Crypto mining company Foundryowned by a contentious conglomerate Digital currency group, is going to start charging users a fee for its Bitcoin mining services. Per Bloomberg, Foundry USA will begin charging a pool fee to members between April 19 and April 22, and says it will implement tiered fees, according to a notice sent out to customers on April 6. The price levels for each quarter will be based on the previous quarter’s average hash rate, it said.