Litecoin (LTC) has relaunched its MimbleWimble testnet — a protocol designed to enhance privacy and obfuscate the traceability of distributed ledger transactions. MimbleWimble is a modified implementation of the proof-of-work algorithm underpinning Bitcoin (BTC) in which blocks appear as a single large transaction, preventing the individual inputs and outputs relating to the transactions from being identified. David Burkett, the lead developer of the MimbleWimble protocol for Litecoin, will now focus making it easier for “non-technical Litecoin users” to begin testing to functionality, in addition to ironing out aspects of the code that are “fragile.” Burkett is targeting full activation of …

In a recent investigation, European police busted a major illegal online streaming business that had reportedly been running for the past five years. Bloomberg reported that the police conducted 15 house searches, arresting 11 people and successfully taking down 50 servers across nine countries. The European law enforcement agency Europol claimed to have found cryptocurrencies, property, jewelry, luxury cars, and cash worth $5.4 million from the business owners. An additional $1.25 million were frozen in several bank accounts, Europol stated. Making $17 million in five years The streaming ring, which mainly operated out of Spain, was a highly organized illegal …

The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) released its 2019 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) report. Crypto exchanges continue to be a magnet for hackers On Oct. 9, Europol presented its IOCTA report of the cybercrime threat landscape. According to the EU-focused law-enforcement organization, cybercrime must be approached in a holistic sense, saying: “Countering cybercrime is as much about its present forms as it is about future projections. New threats do not only arise from new technologies but, as is often demonstrated, come from known vulnerabilities in existing technologies.” Europol's fifth edition of its IOCTA report paints …

Europol — the law enforcement agency of the European Union — is hosting its sixth cryptocurrency conference, with over 300 crypto experts from law enforcement and the private sector reportedly in attendance. The news was revealed in a Europol press release published on June 14. The conference — organized by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and hosted June 12-14 at the Europol headquarters in the Hague, Netherlands — is allegedly the largest law enforcement crypto event in Europe. Per the press release, the conference focused on opportunities to strengthen cooperation between law enforcement agencies and the private sector in a …

On May 22, 2019, cryptocurrency mixers (also called tumblers) were front and center on the news cycle, following reports of European authorities shutting down one such service. Law enforcement officials involved said the action was necessitated by reports on Bestmixer.io — i.e., the platform in question that was being used to funnel dirty money via cryptocurrencies. Stakeholders in the crypto industry decried the action, calling it a gross overreach by government agents. They also declared that it set a dangerous precedent, one that could be inimical to cryptography as a whole. In the wake of the shutdown, Vitalik Buterin, the …

Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Copyright Registrations Do Not Recognize Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto Although self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, filed United States copyright registrations for the bitcoin white paper and the bitcoin (BTC) source code, that does not mean that the U.S. Copyright Office recognized Wright as Nakamoto. A spokesperson for Wright had …

Dutch, Luxembourg authorities and Europol have shut down one of the three largest cryptocurrency tumblers, Europol reported on May 22. A cryptocurrency tumbler, also known as a cryptocurrency mixing service, is an anonymity tool that claims to transform transactions of non-private coins to private ones by mixing crypto funds with others, which makes it difficult to track the funds’ original source. According to the report, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) has now seized six servers of major crypto tumbler Bestmixer.io, which had a reported turnover of at least $200 million since its launch in May 2018. The …

German police, along with Europol, have shut down servers of a dark web marketplace and seized six figures in crypto from the arrested suspects, Europol announced on May 3. The Wall Street Market, reportedly the world’s second-largest dark web market, has been shut down by the German Federal Criminal Police under the authority of the German Public Prosecutor’s office. According to the report, German authorities arrested three suspects and seized over 550,000 euros ($615,000) in cash along with bitcoin (BTC) and monero (XMR) in six figure amounts (actual value unspecified) as well as several cars, computers, hard drives and other …