Today in Crypto: Pentagon Hires Inca Digital
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has hired Inca Digital, a provider of digital assets and analytics, to look at cryptocurrency risks to national security.
DARPA, the research and development agency of the US Department of Defense, will look into activity related to the economic applications of distributed ledgers, CoinDesk reported on Friday (September 23).
The agency awarded Inca Digital a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) for the issue, for which Inca will develop a crypto ecosystem mapping tool to analyze risks from crypto.
It will help both the US government and the private sector understand how crypto can be linked to crimes such as money laundering, terrorist financing and sanctions evasion. It will also look at how crypto affects traditional financial systems and vice versa, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Brazilian federal police have begun raids on six crypto exchanges.
While the names of the exchanges were not listed, CoinDesk wrote Friday, the investigation is looking at tax evasion and money laundering where crypto was involved. Operation Colossus, which was carried out together with the Brazilian tax authority, will execute 101 warrants from a criminal court in São Paulo.
Police have also ordered the freezing of about $238 million in assets and securities held by those under investigation, and the report noted that there were 28 exchanges under investigation that contained an undisclosed number of virtual assets.
Further, bitcoin and various other cryptocurrencies fell in value on Friday, with investors still falling as the Federal Reserve has vowed to stay aggressive against inflation.
Bitcoin fell 3.7% during the session, and ether, the second largest, was down 4.7%, Bloomberg reported. The mood has been bad for some time now as the Fed and various other central banks around the world have raised interest rates to try to combat price increases.
Finally, JP Morgan’s North American equities team has lowered its price target for Coinbase Global shares from $78 to $60 for December.
The crypto exchange derives most of its revenue from US crypto trading levels, which means its third and fourth quarter earnings depend on crypto trading interest.
“We believe pressure on Coinbase revenue from falling cryptocurrency markets will pressure the stock price,” JP Morgan analysts wrote, according to a Yahoo Finance report.
According to analysts, Coinbase is likely to see low trading volume from US crypto investors in detail in December, but it could pick up in the first quarter of next year.
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