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Mexico Senator Proposes Bitcoin Legal Tender Bill—But It’s Unlikely to Pass

Even though the odds are stacked against her, Indira Kempis, a senator from Mexico’s state of Nuevo Leon, wants to make her country the second in the world to embrace Bitcoin as legal cash.

The legislator complimented Bitcoin’s features as an inclusive currency that assists the unbanked in an interview with Diario El Salvador. She claims she has been talking with experts on the commodity and now wants to utilize her political clout to promote Bitcoin’s usability throughout Mexico. 

“We need bitcoin to be a legal tender in Mexico, because if not if we don’t make that decision as El Salvador did, it will be very difficult to concretize further actions,” she said, adding that her style was to create laws that “anticipate the future” rather than simply fix the past.

For a long time, Kempis has been leaning toward Bitcoin. Following President Nayib Bukele’s announcement that Bitcoin would be approved as legal tender in El Salvador, the lawmaker was among a handful of politicians that added laser eyes to their profile images to express their pro-cryptocurrency beliefs.

She’s been working on a proposal for a crypto-friendly legal structure since then. But the road to making Mexico a crypto-nation isn’t all roses.

In a news conference in October, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated unequivocally that his government has no interest in accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment, much less declaring it legal tender. Instead, he is concentrating on bolstering the country’s financial system by combating tax evasion.

“We think that we must maintain orthodoxy in the management of finances and try not to innovate too much in financial management,” He said.

The tenure of López Obrador expires in 2024, thus Kempis’ idea will have to wait at least two years. Even if that weren’t the case, Kempis would still be up against it, as she is a member of Movimiento Ciudadano, the third-largest opposition group. For the bill to pass, it would need widespread support from outside the senator’s own party.

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Crypto Exchange BitMEX Releases Litepaper on Eve of BMEX Token Launch

BitMEX, a cryptocurrency exchange, released the light paper for its native token, BMEX, ahead of its launch.

BMEX was airdropped earlier this month, with the welcome campaign giving both new and existing verified clients the opportunity to get the airdrop by subscribing to BitMEX EARN, the platform’s passive earning product. Trading activities and inviting other users are two more ways to obtain the BMEX token. However, this is a short opportunity, as the token airdrop’s Phase 1 will run from now through early Q2 2022.

Users can now stake BMEX, and spot trading of BMEX tokens will begin in early Q2 after the exchange’s launch.

BMEX was first announced by BitMEX in December of last year. It now joins the ranks of numerous other cryptocurrency exchanges that provide native tokens, including Binance, FTX, and Crypto.com.

The BMEX Token, according to BitMEX, will be at the heart of the BitMEX ecosystem, with BMEX holders receiving a range of perks.

“Crypto investors demand convenience, performance, and the freedom to choose a platform that best suits their needs,” reads the litepaper breaking down the purpose of the token.

BitMEX is “pursuing an ambitious expansion plan that will see us [BitMEX] offer a range of additional goods and capabilities” to meet market demand, according to the exchange.

BMEX tokenomics

The BMEX token, an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token will have a maximum supply of 450 million vested over five years.

Five percent of the tokens are set aside for future airdrops, twenty percent for liquidity when BMEX spot trading launches, twenty percent for BitMEX staff incentives and performance rewards, thirty percent for marketing and affiliate rewards, and twenty-five percent as a long-term reserve.

During the first phase of the launch, BitMEX users will not be able to withdraw the token, according to the exchange.

BMEX holders will be eligible for savings on trading fees and preferential rates on BitMEX derivatives and spot exchange.

Furthermore, the token will provide enhanced staking rewards on BitMEX EARN deposits, as well as early access to new products and participation in Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs) (IEOs).

“We’re establishing a true crypto investing environment,” BitMEX said, adding that “crypto is still expanding, and much of the infrastructure that will enable it to be all-encompassing, democratic, and more user-friendly has yet to be constructed.”

BitMEX revealed plans to purchase Bankhaus von der Heydt, a 268-year-old German bank, last month in an effort to gain a regulatory foothold in Europe.

While Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has yet to approve the agreement, the exchange is already previewing new items it wants to introduce in the near future.

These include an over-the-counter trading desk (OTC) and banking bridges, in addition to a spot trading exchange, to facilitate the movement of assets into crypto. Later on, BitMEX plans to establish a separate platform to engage with and invest in sporting clubs, social groups, Web3 initiatives, and metaverses, with the goal of expanding its product portfolio and increasing BMEX token acceptance.

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$200 Billion Wiped From Crypto Market Cap Following Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Can bitcoin still be used as a hedge despite the global market and cryptocurrency selloff?

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the global stock market collapsed, and the crypto market followed suit. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has depleted the market value of cryptocurrency by about $200 billion, with Bitcoin falling below $40,000 for the first time. While the broader selloff is a reaction to the market reaction, which saw futures fall after the attack in Ukraine began early in the morning.

According to CoinMarketCap, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is currently about $1.56 trillion, down from a high of $1.77 trillion just 24 hours ago. Many of the crypto industry’s most well-known and well-known cryptocurrencies are also in the red.

Bitcoin is currently trading at little over $35,400, down over 18% in the last week and 9% in the last 24 hours.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is currently trading at $2,370, down over 12% on the day and 22% in the last week.

In the midst of Russia’s military incursion against Ukraine, the crypto market has fallen in lockstep with the wider financial market.

Russian stocks have lost more than $250 billion in value as the country’s economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions.

Following the ruble’s plunge to lows not seen since 2016, the Bank of Russia has decided to engage in the foreign exchange market to help stabilize the Russian economy, according to a statement from the central bank.

The Bank of Russia will provide 1 trillion rubles ($11.5 billion) in liquidity to the country’s banks as part of its broader operations.

According to Bloomberg, the MOEX Russia Index, the Russian stock market’s major ruble-denominated benchmark, has likewise plunged around 50% from its record high in October of last year.

Global markets have been affected as well; the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 in the United States are down 1.8 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.

Gold hit a high of $1,942 per ounce this morning, indicating that money is flowing into classic safe havens.

This is a nearly 2% gain over the previous day, and the highest level since late 2020.

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Business

Worldspark Studios Raises $3M for NFT Games From Riot, Bungie Veterans

Worldspark Studios, a game production business, has just announced the closing of a $3 million seed investment.

Animoca Brands and Shima Capital led the round, which also included Alameda Ventures, Jump Capital, AAG Ventures, Sfermion, and YGGSEA, the sub-DAO of Yield Guild Games, a crypto gaming guild.

The studio wants to use the funds to incorporate NFT elements into Edenbrawl, its first game. It’s a combat-focused online multiplayer battle arena game comparable to League of Legends and Dota 2.

Chandler Thomlison, the creator and CEO of Worldspark, claimed the game was developed over a few years by an army of 240 contractors who built out the basic playable game.

Former Riot Games developers, as well as Bungie and Blizzard employees, make up the startup’s core crew.

With the new investment, Thomlison has enlisted the help of industry veterans to improve the gaming experience and incorporate NFT features in order to create a tokenized economy around Edenbrawl and its companion games. The game development team will also be working on games that utilize blockchain networks.

Edenbrawl will not include any play-to-earn aspects, unlike other blockchain games. The NFTs in the game are simply decorative. Character and weapon skins, as well as unique character animations and monster mounts, will be available for purchase and can be resold or traded.

“Most MOBAs in the blockchain space right now—for lack of a better term, they’re a little ‘pay-to-win,’ and that kind of ruins the competitiveness of it, – We absolutely cannot do that if we want to be in this long-term, sustainable, competitive game. The only thing NFTs can be in Edenbrawl is cosmetics.” Thomlison stated.

The NFTs, on the other hand, will enable actual player ownership of in-game things as well as the possibility of interoperability with other games.

Beyond Edenbrawl, Worldspark Studios wants to grow its presence in the blockchain gaming space. The company intends to construct an NFT-driven hub world where users can purchase and customize NFT land for use as dwellings, guild halls, social clubs, and other purposes.

While traditional game publishers are receiving blowback for entering the blockchain gaming industry, Thomlison noted that blockchain is a minor priority for Worldspark in comparison to the studio’s requirement to create an enjoyable game.

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The Most Expensive NFTs Ever Sold

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are altering our perceptions of art, and investors are taking notice. NFTs have exploded into the crypto scene in recent years. Artists have taken advantage of the technology’s ability to generate real-world scarcity for digital things using cryptographically unique tokens.

The NFT market boomed in 2021, generating more than $25 billion in trade volume, and it hasn’t slowed down so far this year. This list compiles the top most expensive single-NFT sales to date (in US dollars), ranging from Beeple’s limited-edition items to a variety of CryptoPunks avatars all of which occurred in the past year.

EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS
Everydays: The First 5000 Days holds the record for the most expensive NFT ever sold (and one of the most expensive artworks ever sold). The piece was made by renowned digital artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann and sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s, marking the first time the historic auction house has ever sold a fully digital piece.

The NFT is a collage of 5,000 of Beeple’s earlier pieces that shows his growth as an artist over the course of his career. Vignesh “Metakovan” Sundaresan, who stayed anonymous at first but subsequently disclosed his true identity, purchased it. “The aim was to demonstrate to Indians and people of color that they, too, could be patrons,” Metakovan added. “Crypto was an equalizing power between the West and the Rest, and that the global south was rising.”

Justin Sun, the CEO and founder of Tron, was the second-highest bidder on the piece, bidding $60.2 million before being outbid at the last second by Sundaresan.

Clock
This is an NFT built by artist Pak, who is recognized for fueling his successful NFT projects with new token models and gamification. It has a monetary value of 52.7 million dollars.

The dynamic NFT depicts the total number of days Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been detained. AssangeDAO, which was established to gather funds for his legal defense, raised and bid little over 16,593 ETH ($52.7 million) to buy the NFT. Pak then donated the money to the Wau Holland Stiftung Moral Courage Project, which will help Assange defend himself.

Pak also made a major statement in December 2021 when it launched Merge, an NFT project that raised $91.8 million during its selling period—despite the fact that it’s not a single NFT. Almost 29,000 purchasers received a dynamic NFT based on the number of “mass units” they purchased, which they can combine by purchasing additional NFTs from the project.


HUMAN ONE
Although Beeple is at the top of our list, he is far from a one-hit wonder in the world of NFT. HUMAN ONE, a sculpture with digital screens on all sides depicting a human in a spacesuit wandering through an ever-changing environment, was unveiled in late 2021. It’s a physical/digital hybrid piece that shows Beeple’s expanding artistic goals beyond the solely digital canvas, and it also includes an NFT deed of ownership. At the Christie’s auction in November 2021, HUMAN ONE fetched a hammer price of $25 million, but with fees, the final price was $28.9 million. The winning bidder was Ryan Zurrer, a former Polychain Capital venture partner.

CryptoPunks 

The CryptoPunks account for a sizable portion of the entries on this list. Larva Labs, a pair of Canadian engineers, created 10,000 Ethereum-based avatars in 2017 and gave them away for free.

They’ve become the O.G. of NFT profile photo initiatives, generating an entire industry of followers, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club.. Along the way, they’ve generated over $2 billion in trading volume and hundreds of million-dollar sales, the most notable of which being this one. In February 2022, CryptoPunk #5822 was sold for $23.7 million in ETH. Only nine alien avatars exist in the entire collection, and this one was sold to Deepak Thapliyal, CEO of the cloud blockchain infrastructure business Chain.

Until recently, this CryptoPunks NFT was higher on our ranking, with the aforementioned Punk sale more than double the previous project record. CryptoPunk #7523 is also an uncommon extraterrestrial. Its medical mask attribute offers it a particular topicality in these COVID-influenced times, which is one reason why it was purchased for a dazzling $11.8 million by DraftKings’ largest shareholder, Shalom Meckenzie, at Sotheby’s “Natively Digital” auction.

“This particular CryptoPunk was something I truly desired,” Meckenzie said. “It’s from the extraterrestrial collection, and it’s the rarest of the punks, as well as the only one with a mask.” It seemed to me to be emblematic of Covid and the widespread adoption of NFTs.”

TPunks #3442

The popularity of CryptoPunks has spawned a slew of knockoffs, with versions of Punks available on nearly every blockchain platform that supports NFTs, from Solana to Stacks, Algorand, and beyond.

Even Tron has its own CryptoPunks clone, and while TPunks NFTs don’t sell for much, the cheapest is about $130 (as of the date this writing) and, this one in particular sold for a killing. In August, Tron co-founder Justin Sun purchased TPunk #3442 for 120 million TRX, or $10.5 million.


Was it really necessary for him to spend $10.5 million on this TPunk? Probably not, given the prices of the others. However, the man is swimming in TRX, and it looks like he intended to make a statement in the midst of the soaring NFT market. And that’s exactly what he did. Sun said he contributed the NFT to APENFT, a Tron-based project that uses the blockchain to tokenize artwork.


CryptoPunk #4156
Beyond the eye-popping sale price for CryptoPunk #4156, which changed hands in December 2021, there’s an even more intriguing angle: it was sold by someone who rose to fame in the crypto realm under a pseudonym, but subsequently abandoned his NFT moniker.

Punk #4156 rose to prominence in the nascent NFT sector after purchasing the NFT in February 2021 for a then-record-breaking $1.25 million in ETH—Beeple even utilized the picture in a piece of art. However, #4156 rose to prominence after establishing itself as a thought leader in the field and eventually launched Nouns, an NFT project dedicated to the development of open-source IP.

Due to the developers’ handling of commercialization rights and attempts to suffocate derivative projects, #4156 felt disillusioned with CryptoPunks over the course of the year. #4156 eventually moved on, selling the NFT for around 8 times its USD worth in less than a year. It is priced at 10.26 million

CryptoPunk #5577

The selling of CryptoPunk #5577 for 2,501 ETH, worth $7.7 million at the time, was the second-highest CryptoPunks ape sale, which occurred in February 2022. Robert Leshner, the CEO of Compound Finance, is thought to have purchased this ape, who wears a cowboy hat.

 CryptoPunk #7804

The fifth-most expensive NFT in history, CryptoPunk #7804, was sold by Dylan Field, the CEO of design software business Figma. In March 2021, the NFT was sold for a cool 4,200 ETH, which was valued little over $7.5 million at the time.

It comes with three accessories: a front cap, shades, and a pipe, making it one of only nine extraterrestrial CryptoPunks. It is, in fact, the only CryptoPunk alien with a pipe or a forward cap.

CryptoPunk #3100

When we mentioned that there are a lot of CryptoPunks on this list, we weren’t joking. CryptoPunk #3100, a headband-wearing alien Punk, sold for 4,200 ETH ($7.51 million) in March 2021.

Ringers

Art Blocks, an Ethereum-based generative art project, experienced a speculative frenzy in the late summer and early fall of 2021, with some pieces selling for millions of dollars each as people recognized the collection’s fine art potential. Along with Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza line, artist Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers has been one of the most valuable ventures of the bunch. Ringers #109, which was purchased for 2,100 ETH ($7.12 million) in early October 2021, was the highest Art Blocks sale to date. Three Arrows Capital and pseudonymous collector Vincent Van Dough co-founded Starry Night Capital, a $100 million NFT investment vehicle.

According to his SuperRare description, XCOPY’s work “explores death, dystopia, and indifference through warped visual loops,” but it also occasionally mirrors the NFT scene and the artist’s 1:1 animated pieces have become holy grails for dedicated collectors.

Right Click and Save As 

Right Click and Save As guy uses a pulsating, glitchy avatar that you can simply assume is someone whining about NFTs on social media to address a common criticism of NFT artwork that anyone can easily save a copy of a picture. In December 2021, it sold for roughly $7.1 million, up from a previous sale price of $174,000 in February of the same year.

The NFT was purchased by Cozomo de’ Medici, who has been identified as rapper Snoop Dogg’s pseudonymous NFT-collecting alter ego. Cozomo already paid $3.9 million for another XCOPY piece in September 2021.

CROSSROAD

Beeple, a well-known digital artist, designed the NFT CROSSROAD. It has anti-Trump messaging on it, as well as an oversized Donald Trump-like figure laying in a defeated heap with profanities scrawled across his nude torso. The artwork was supposed to alter depending on the outcome of the 2020 election, so it didn’t always look like that. It would have showed Trump donning a crown and striding through flames if he had won.

The NFT was sold for $6.66 million through Nifty Gateway, a popular marketplace for digital artifacts, between its original owner (Twitter user Pablorfraile) and an unnamed buyer.

The NFT was sold for about 10 times its original price barely four months after it was purchased.

CryptoPunk #8857

Another CryptoPunks NFT that just barely made the cut in September 2021, with a sale price of $6.63 million (or 2,000 ETH). In May 2018, CryptoPunk #8857, a zombie avatar with 3D red-and-blue glasses, was sold for merely $1,717.

Another expensive XCOPY with a label that fits right along with the crypto industry. Just a few months after its previous sale for $2.9 million, this pulsing animated artwork sold for approximately $6.2 million (1,630 ETH) in January 2022 (then 1,000 ETH).

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‘Hey Jude’ NFT auctioned for $77k

During the media preview of part of Julien’s Auctions’ “Lennon Connection: The NFT Collection” auction featuring prized Beatles and John Lennon memorabilia from Julian Lennon’s private collection, on Jan 25, 2022, an NFT (non-fungible token) of John Lennon’s “Magical Mystery Tour” Afghan coat and a print of Paul McCartney’s “Hey Jude” notes are seen.

The latest hammer price success for NFTs was a virtual reproduction of the handwritten notes for the tune “Hey Jude” that sold for approximately $77,000 (2.5 million baht) at an auction in California.

The Fab Four’s hit, originally named “Hey Jules,” was composed by Paul McCartney in 1968 to console a young Julian Lennon during his father John’s split from his mother, Cynthia.

The NFT version of the notes was presented as an animation with voice commentary by John Lennon junior, in which the words were gradually imprinted on the paper.

“For me, just looking at a picture is not enough if I was a buyer,” Lennon earlier told AFP in Los Angeles.

“So I wanted to add something a little more personal. And for me, that was writing and narrating a little bit of story that would be behind the images.”

Julien’s Auctions also sold an NFT of his father’s Afghan coat used on the set of “Magical Mystery Tour,” which sold for $22,400.

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are one-of-a-kind digital items that impart ownership.

While their content is easily copied, the NFT is “the original,” similar to how there are numerous prints of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” but only the Louvre museum holds the original.

In recent months, investors and affluent collectors have flocked to the latest digital fad, which is based on the same blockchain technology as cryptocurrencies and cannot be falsified or otherwise manipulated.

NFTs have fetched record-breaking prices at recent auctions, including $69.3 million for a digital work by artist Beeple at Christie’s.

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Meet the crypto ‘Bonnie and Clyde’: A TikTok rapper who calls herself the ‘Crocodile of Wall Street’ and her husband ‘Dutch’.

We’ve all heard of Bonnie and Clyde, the notorious American criminal couple that roamed the country in the early 1900s robbing restaurants, gas stations, and small banks. They have been reborn as a renowned Tiktok couple accused of trying to launder about 120,000 bitcoin worth $4.5 billion from the BitFinex hack in 2016.

This week, Ilya Lichtenstein, a Russian-American known as “Dutch,” and his American-born wife Heather Morgan were detained in Manhattan. The US Department of Justice seized $3.6 billion in bitcoin, recouping the majority of the funds stolen in the cyberattack.

Morgan dubbed the “Crocodile of Wall Street,” raps under the name Razzlekhan on TikTok and is a (now-former) Forbes contributor who formerly authored an essay on how organizations should protect themselves against cybercriminals.

Web3 and bitcoin are frequently mentioned on Lichtenstein’s assumed Twitter account, and his LinkedIn profile includes roles as a blockchain advisor and an investor in comparable initiatives.

Where are the couple accused of laundering money from?

In August 2016, Hong Kong-based Bitfinex said that hackers had stolen 120,000 bitcoins, valued at almost $70 million at the time.

The invader, according to US investigators, carried out over 2,000 fraudulent transactions before sending the bitcoin acquired to a wallet owned by Lichtenstein. The couple has not been charged with carrying out the cyberattack.

According to court documents, about 25,000 bitcoins were transferred out of Lichtenstein’s wallet, some to accounts maintained by him and his wife. The remaining 94,000 coins were kept in the wallet that had been used before the attack.

Discovery of alleged trail

Special agents who had search warrants for the couple’s online accounts obtained files from a Lichtenstein-controlled account that contained the original wallet’s private keys.

A vital step was locating the keys. It may have revealed the recipient’s wallet address, assisting detectives in their investigation of the money laundering scam. They were able to recover 94,000 bitcoins as a result of this.

The couple allegedly engaged in a variety of virtual-currency transactions, including NFT purchases, according to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). Their OpenSea accounts, on the other hand, appear to have been removed.

How did the duo allegedly launder bitcoin?

The authorities claim that Lichtenstein and Morgan utilized a variety of sophisticated approaches.

According to the DOJ’s accusations, the pair constructed bogus accounts and employed automated computer programs to carry out many transactions, placing the monies with several crypto exchanges to make them difficult to monitor. It was also claimed that they used accounts based in the United States to make their operations appear authentic.

According to a fresh 34-page court statement filed on Thursday, the pair attempted to disguise their role in bitcoin laundering by assuming new identities.

Prosecutors claimed Lichtenstein and Morgan spent a month in Ukraine in 2019, where their actions “at times looked to be plucked from the pages of a spy book.” Morgan is reported to have been learning the Russian language as they prepared for life in Russia.

The prosecutors further  said a search of the couple’s New York apartment on January 5 turned up $40,000 in cash, more than 50 electronic gadgets, two hollowed-out books, and a bag labeled “burner phone.”

Lichtenstein’s cloud storage account is believed to have been accessed by the government. There’s a database of several accounts in the encrypted files, as well as extra wallets that the authorities haven’t been able to collect lawfully. “Several of these files have names that include versions of the word ‘dirty,’ such as ‘dirty wallet.dat,'” according to the lawsuit.

Another find was a file called “passport ideas,” which contained links to darknet vendor accounts selling passports and ID cards.

Lichtenstein and Morgan are accused of conspiring to launder money and defraud the United States government, accusations that carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. They [were] held in custody until their trial on February 14th.

The couple’s lawyers, Anirudh Bansal and Sam Enzer, did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.

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Top NFT exchange OpenSea launches venture capital arm, following in footsteps of crypto firms FTX and Alchemy

OpenSea, the market leader in irreplaceable tokens, will create an investment sector, marking the company’s first move into venture capital.

OpenSea Ventures is a company that invests in the crypto decentralized ocean. Focused on investing in issues such as blockchain technology, social and gaming initiatives that promote NFT delivery, and “NFT aggregators and analytics emergencies” that support the NFT marketplace, led by OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah. Guess. Friday is the day for a blog post.

OpenSea’s strategic partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Standard Crypto are available to potential portfolio businesses.

Ecosystem Grants were designed in collaboration with OpenSea Ventures. Its goal is to help the Web3 community “launch community ideas and give continuing financial support.”

OpenSea has collected $300 million in investment rounds to develop venture capital and grant programs with an 800 percent success rate. To a total of $ 13.3 billion.

Last year, the market for NFTs surged to $ 41 billion, and OpenSea is riding that wave. This tendency is expected to continue this year. Over $ 5 billion in digital assets were in the hands of OpenSea in January alone.

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Coinbase, Polygon Studios Join Jambo’s $7.5 Million Seed Round

Coinbase Ventures, Polygon Studios, Delphi Ventures, 3 Arrows Capital, Alameda Research, AllianceDAO, Tiger Global, DeFiance Capital, Hashed, UOB, Signum Capital, BH Digital, Yield Guild Games, and others have all contributed to the $7.5 million seed round funding for Jambo, a Web3 banking app for the African continent. Jambo now has a market capitalization of $50 million dollars.

Jambo counts Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon, and Polygon CEO Sandeep Nailwal among its early investors and advisors, in addition to the aforementioned seed investment investors.

Jambo aspires to be an all-in-one program for Africans, allowing users to use the blockchain to bank, access crypto via decentralized exchanges and play blockchain games. It is a “super app,” according to co-founder and CEO James Zhang. Jambo is focusing on educating kids on a continent where 60% of the population is under the age of 24 in addition to its crypto banking ambitions.

To aid in the onboarding of new users to Web3, the company has developed an ambassadors program and the JamboAcademy. As of last week, Jambo had over 50 ambassadors scattered across 15 African countries, as well as over 12,000 students enrolled in its educational program, which teaches adolescents about play-to-earn games and Web3 technology.

The business now wants to deploy services in 14 of Africa’s 54 countries. Africa will continue to be a leading market for mobile app developers aiming to tap into Web3 with almost half a billion people now utilizing mobile services and a predicted 30 million using 5G networks by 2025.

And, with this latest investment, Jambo hopes to capitalize on this trend as well.

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Indian Authorities Crack $5.4 Million Crypto Scam, Arrest 11

Indian police busted a $5.4 million crypto fraud operation and detained 11 people in the process. The police in Nagpur detained 11 persons in connection with a crypto scam that garnered $5.4 million during a police raid. The Indian police have detained 11 persons in connection with a high-profile cryptocurrency scam that defrauded investors out of $5.36 million.

According to the Times of India, four people were arrested in Lonavala where gold as well as expensive automobiles worth $134,000, laptops, cell phones, guns, and $25,000 in cash, were seized. Nishid Wasnik and Pragati, husband and wife, Sandesh Lanjewar, and Gajanan Mungune were the four people arrested.

According to local media, seven additional people were arrested in connection with the case the next day. The arrestees were charged under the Indian Penal Code, the Maharashtra Protection of Depositors’ Interest Act, and provisions of the Information Technology Act. Wasnik and his wife, together with Lanjewar, have been on the run for the past year, suspected of defrauding investors in a scam that dates back to 2017, involving investors who were meant to buy ETH using the website ZebPay and transmit it to Wasnik’s website.

According to Commissioner of Police Amitesh Kumar, the gang protected a benefit for each investor on the website but drained their Ethers to enrich Wasnik and his aides: 

“Wasnik and his gang seemed to have transferred huge numbers of Ethers to some other site or monetized them to support his lavish lifestyle.”

In total, authorities identified around 170 investors who lost less than $500,000, but they are also probing other shady digital currency transactions worth over $5.4 million. Madhav Pawar, an accomplice of the group, was kidnapped and shot a year ago, and he was slain for failing to give a password for a key transaction. The gang fled into hiding, but their online actions led to their discovery. The arrest was announced as the Indian government and central bank battled over the legitimacy of cryptocurrency.

While the country’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, said that crypto income will be taxed at 30% with no exclusions or deductions, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das maintained a harsh stance on the subject. Private crypto, according to Das, is a threat to macroeconomic and financial stability. Despite the regulatory uncertainties, India’s crypto investments increased from $923 million in 2020 to almost $6.6 billion in 2021, creating a fertile ground for scams.