According to a press release published this week, Morgan Rockcoons of Las Vegas, Nevada, has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for wire fraud and operating a bitcoin exchange without registering with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The press release states that Rockcoons advertised his exchange services on LocalBitcoins.com and conducted more than 1,000 bitcoin trades with more than 644 people. Late last week, the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental organization, announced plans to finalize new global standards that aim to intensify anti-money laundering regulations of cryptocurrencies. Among other things, these regulations would require cryptocurrency exchanges to comply with the "travel rule" for funds transmittal by identifying and recording parties to virtual asset transactions, just as other financial institutions do with wire transfers.
According to a recent report, LocalBitcoins, a Helsinki-based peer-to-peer exchange, has shut off service for Iran-based users. The exchange did not publicly state a reason for the change, but most agree that U.S. sanctions were at the root of the decision. LocalBitcoins has been one of the most popular bitcoin trading websites among Iranian cryptocurrency users. The exchange did not require international credit card information, and allowed users to pay with their local bank accounts.
In what appears to be a first-of-its-kind event, two Bitcoin Cash mining pools recently carried out a "51% attack" on the blockchain in order to thwart another miner's attempt to steal coins in the wake of a planned hard fork that occurred May 15. A 51% attack entails one group with a majority of the hash rate executing commands they are normally precluded from carrying out, such as rewriting the network's transaction history. While the 51% attack is usually considered something done by wrongdoers, here it was apparently undertaken to do something beneficial.
To read more about the topics covered in this week's post, see the following:
- Man Sentenced for Fraud and Operating Unlicensed Money Transmitting Business
- FATF Pushing to Strengthen Regulations on Virtual Assets
- LocalBitcoins Bans Bitcoin Buying in Iran in Blow to Rising Crypto Commerce
- Bitcoin Cash Miners Undo Attacker's Transactions With '51% Attack'
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