Blockchain intelligence platform TRM Labs has secured $14 million in Series A funding from venture funds across the crypto and technology sectors, sending a strong signal that major investors are backing digital-asset projects with ever-growing conviction. The venture capital arms of PayPal and Salesforce contributed to the raise, which was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, a VC with 130 IPOs under its belt. The full list of investors includes Initialized Capital, Jump Capital, Operator Partners, Blockchain Capital and executives from Google-parent Alphabet Inc. Ethan Kuzweil, a partner at Bessemer and new TRM board member, explained his firm’s rationale for leading …

Coinseed, a crypto platform that enabled micro-investing in cryptocurrency assets for its users, has shut down its operations. Delgerdalai Davaasambuu, founder and CEO of Coinseed, announced the decision via a statement published on the platform’s website. Detailing his decision to shutter the business, Davaasambuu wrote: “It is with an incredibly heavy heart, today I’m announcing that I am winding down the business due to a lawsuit from the NYAG (New York Attorney General).” As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the Office of the New York State Attorney General brought fraud charges against Coinseed back in February. At the time, the NYAG …

Powers On... is a monthly opinion column from Marc Powers, who spent much of his 40-year legal career working with complex securities-related cases in the United States after a stint with the SEC. He is now an Adjunct Professor at Florida International University School of Law, where he teaches a course on 'Blockchain, Crypto and Regulatory Considerations.' I was downstairs at a bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that Thursday evening, December 11, 2008, playing a friendly game of Texas Hold ‘em when the calls began. One after the other they came, and they continued at the office …

It is a pivotal moment in the development of the new digital economy. Interest in all things crypto keeps growing exponentially, and investment follows closely. There has arguably never been so much money poured into a product class that was so poorly understood, both by the wider public and by most investors. In lieu of actual understanding, stakeholders in the crypto space have to operate on reputation and trust instead. This necessity has given rise to a dangerous new con. Unlike blatant scams like OneCoin or Bitconnect, today’s blockchain opportunists and confidence tricksters often play the faux science card. “Read …

Following the arrests of several employees at Turkey-based crypto exchanges Thodex and Vebitcoin last week, government officials are reportedly planning to establish a central bank authority that could custody digital assets. According to a Bloomberg report, an unnamed senior official in the Turkish government said local authorities may be creating a central custodian bank aimed at eliminating counterparty risk for dealing in cryptocurrencies. The same source claimed that the government was also looking at instituting a capital threshold for exchanges and requiring executives at crypto firms to have a certain foundational knowledge of digital currencies. The report comes as Thodex …

A 24-year-old New York resident has pleaded guilty to acquiring more than $7 million in COVID-19 relief through fraudulent loan applications and misleading investors in a fraudulent initial coin offering during 2018. According to a Tuesday announcement from the United States Department of Justice, Taiwanese national, Justin Cheng — also known as “Justin Jung” — submitted a series of online loan applications accompanied by forged tax and payroll records between May and August of last year. Cheng’s applications featured fraudulent Internal Revenue Service tax and payroll records purporting to document the names of 200 employees earning $1.5 million in monthly …

The United Kingdom Crown Prosecution Service expects to see an increase in the number of Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency-related scams in the coming years but admits they are still rather infrequent for the time being. The CPS estimates that 86% of reported fraud is now cyber-related — a situation exacerbated in the past year by the outbreak of COVID-19, which pushed more people online, reports the Financial Times. City of London police statistics show that 27,187 reports of cybercrime were made across the U.K. and Northern Ireland between 2019 and 2020. Of that figure, 5,581 involved reports relating to cryptocurrency …

A scam cryptocurrency app on Apple’s app distribution service App Store has reportedly stolen $600,000 Bitcoin (BTC) from one iOS user. Cryptocurrency holder Phillipe Christodoulou fell victim to a scam app on the App Store, losing nearly all his life savings to a fake crypto wallet application, The Washington Post reports Tuesday. Christodoulou went on the App Store last month to search for a mobile Trezor app to check his Bitcoin balance via phone. Unaware that Trezor does not currently provide an iOS app, Christodoulou downloaded a doppelgänger Trezor application that boasted close to five stars, giving the impression that …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has announced charges against California resident James Roland Jones in the first-ever enforcement action from the commission to target securities fraud on the darknet. According to the March 18 complaint, Jones is accused of accessing a darknet-based insider trading forum in late 2016 to seek material non-public information, or MNPI, on which to trade securities. He was unsuccessful in obtaining any useful MNPI from the forum, but in the spring of 2017, Jones allegedly began selling insider stock tips himself under the false pretext he was privy to MNPI obtained both from the forum …

Texas regulators have, for some time now, viewed cryptocurrency investment schemes as a risk to Main Street investors and have continued to issue public warnings against possible crypto-related scams during the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest move from the Texas State Securities Board, or TSSB, is action, not words: an emergency cease and desist order against an entity misappropriating the Binance name. According to an announcement on Monday, the target of the order is a business claiming to operate from the United Kingdom, which has previously been subject to an advisory warning from securities regulators in the Philippines. They had already …

A blockchain protocol says its goal is to significantly increase engagement for video publishers — and deliver a much-needed boost to their advertising revenues. Verasity’s proof-of-view protocol, which has been rewarded with a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (#10956931), ensures that views recorded on video platforms are genuine — delivering “accurate, secure, real and transparent” audience metrics recorded on the blockchain. The project’s quest against “fake views” aims to tackle concerns that viewership figures are often inflated, meaning advertisers end up paying for publicity they didn’t actually receive. Some estimates suggest that over 50% of the cash …

Sohrab Sharma, the co-founder of the notorious celebrity-spruiked initial coin offering of 2017, Centra Tech, has been sentenced to eight years in prison for his leading role in the fraudulent scheme that duped investors out of more than $25 million. Shama had previously pled guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and mail fraud for material misrepresentations made by him and his co-conspirators to solicit investors to participate in the scheme. United States attorney, Ilan Graff, described Sharma as having “led a scheme to deceive investors by falsely claiming that the start-up he co-founded had developed fully functioning, …