US Department of Justice

US Department of Justice accused drug cartel members of buying fake passports for USDT

 According to the US Justice Department's indictment, six arrested Chinese citizens living in Latin America and the United States have laundered multimillion-dollar sums for a drug cartel for 12 years. It is assumed that they sold cocaine in parking lots and in hotels, and the money received was “sprayed” between bank accounts, and also invested in businesses and casinos.

 A special agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), working undercover, approached the criminals. He offered one of the malefactors to buy an American passport for $ 150,000, saying that he had the necessary connections with the US government. But in order to turn the deal, an advance payment of $ 10,000 was required.

 The perpetrator agreed to send an "advance" in the Tether stablecoin. According to the Ministry, to pay for forged documents, the attacker made four transactions, transferring 1000 USDT and 4000 USDT to the agent, the rest he sent in US dollars. For the sale of drugs, money laundering, bribery and an attempt to falsify documents, criminals face 10 years in prison. In addition, the court intends to recover from them at least $ 30 million.

The Block: Cryptocurrency Firms Raised $ 900M in Q3 2020

▪️ As Dantoni notes in the report, in the third quarter of this year, only 212 cryptocurrency firms received funds from venture and investment companies. The total investment amounted to $ 897.7 million. At the same time, August turned out to be the most successful in terms of investments - this month the firms received $ 367.48 million. In July, the volume of funds received amounted to $ 299.42 million, and in September - only $ 230.83 million.

▪️ Note that venture capital firms try to invest in firms in the early stages of development. During the quarter, there were 60 first-stage fundraising transactions and 59 early-stage investments. At the same time, the average size of a transaction for financing in the early stages of development was $ 7 million, and at the initial round of financing - only $ 2.1 million.

▪️ At the end of September, it was reported that the Bitpanda exchange successfully completed the Series A funding round. The platform received $ 52 million, and Valar Ventures became the leader in terms of investments.

Mizuho Bank and credit card issuer JCB to launch digital identity system on blockchain

 The organizers of the pilot project announced that companies will be able to securely exchange corporate data: names, addresses and other information about employees, which is stored on a cloud platform created by Fujitsu. The system testing will involve about 100 Fujitsu Group employees, and it will last about four months. In recent years, Fujitsu, Mizuho Bank, and JCB have started to take particular interest in the blockchain industry.

Fujitsu has been using this technology to create digital identity tools since last year. In July 2019, Fujitsu introduced digital identity exchange technology that allows businesses and individuals to authenticate other parties' data to keep transactions secure. In addition, in February 2019, Fujitsu worked with Sony to develop a blockchain-based database to combat document fraud.

The Block: Binance's Quarterly Trading Volume Reaches New Record

 The trading volume in the derivatives market on the Binance platform grew by 110% at once in the III quarter of 2020 - in the II quarter of this year this figure reached only $ 146.3 billion. The increase in trading volume is most likely associated with the influx of retail investors to the Binance exchange.

 Note that the Binance futures platform also recorded a noticeable increase in trading volume, although the dynamics here are not so impressive - the indicator grew by only 43.5% in the quarter.

 Analysts at The Block emphasized that trading fees have historically been the main source of Binance's profit, but the exchange's ecosystem has grown significantly lately. The site now offers cryptocurrency derivatives trading, lending products and P2P trading for users from China.

Binance recently held another quarterly BNB burn. The volume of destroyed coins is calculated depending on the profit received from transactions on the exchange. During the thirteenth quarterly burn, 2.2 million BNB worth $ 68 million were destroyed.