Bitcoin Forum

And probably this is the negative news that affected the market today.

There was a press conference at noon US time lead  by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. of the Justice Department's criminal division, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace of the Eastern District of New York, the FBI's associate deputy director, Brian Turner, and Treasury Department Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo about this case,

Here is the official documents from the Justice department.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/founder-and-majority-owner-bitzlato-cryptocurrency-exchange-charged-unlicensed-money#:~:text=%E2%80%9COvernight%2C%20the%20Department%20worked%20with,founder%2C%20Russian%20national%20Anatoly%20Legkodymov.


Bitzlato, is a Hong Kong-based platform crypto platform, however, as per US DoJ it's founder Anatoly Legkodymov has been catering to criminals from Russia to do money laundering through his exchange.

The bad thing is that with over 20k sh*tcoins, it's going to be hard for people to disassociate Bitcoin from the rest in their minds. It's clear to us, but there have been so many shady cases lately. Aside from the fact that on those exchanges, like FTX, Bitcoin is also bought and sold. So popularly people put it all in the same bag. Let's hope that the legislators understand it better and end up defining it as a commodity.

Interesting name of the company, because the word "zlato" means gold in some languages in the Balkans, so I wouldn't be surprised if the arms of this crypto octopus extend much further than Russia. There are a lot of criminals, and all of them would like to launder their money.

However, some company based in HK, which most of us have never heard of, will hardly be the reason why the price of BTC is not in the green today, but rather the fact that the media reported on how some technology companies from the US are planning to lay off tens of thousands of the employee.

They bother to publish a report of an unknown exchange. I don't know if anyone actually cares about Bitzlato, it would probably have an impact if they have seized Yobit at least because this exchange has probably more than the new exchanges today.

Recently there were reports that Hongkong will be open to Cryptocurrency (https://www.reuters.com/technology/hong-kong-set-shortlist-crypto-tokens-retail-trading-2023-01-11/), now the federal court in Brooklyn trying to extend thier reach to Hongkong with the help of FBI because the exchange caters US citizens. It's a long shot but sure why not.

I belive US has decided to come down heavily on the decentralised or non-kyc exchanges. That's quite unfortunate! Cryptocurrency is definitely being used by criminals and if US has done it against some irrefutable proof, that's fine!

Eventually the NFT platforms will suffer the similar fate because that's mostly the playground for money launderers. No one of us like KYC but if that particular matter is allowing criminals to freely transfer value, that's not good for the market either.

Or they are doing witch hunting, as they are going after the Russian and it's supposedly money laundering scheme which involves this exchanges.

So we shouldn't be surprised specially that the war is still ongoing and US trying to put down everything that support the war in favor of the Russians including Russian citizens and supposedly criminals hiding on the coat tail of this shady exchange or it's founder and owner.

That's what surprises me! When US wages war against oil rich countries, it's for saving the mankind against the terrorism. And when Russia goes on war to not allow NATO forces to reach their border, that's a war! How hilarious is that!

War is bad in any shape or form. But the motives behind it needs to be re-justified in future by the US government when another super power will be ready to challenge their dominance. Having one super power is not too democratic.