Between July 2014 and December 2017, Helix processed a reported 354,468 BTC for drug vendors on Alphabay and other marketplaces. At the time of transaction, this sum was worth over $311 million. At today’s prices, Helix processed over $16 billion worth of bitcoin. 

Harmon was arrested in Ohio in February 2020, and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitter business and money transmission without a license. Last October, Harmon was ordered to pay a $60 million civil penalty. 

The case against Harmon was the first time the Department of Justice (DOJ) and associated financial watchdogs like the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) called bitcoin mixing services illegal.

In a press statement after Harmon’s arrest, Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski wrote: “This indictment underscores that seeking to obscure virtual currency transactions in this way is a crime.”

Many in the crypto community have expressed concern that Harmon’s arrest set a precedent where creating a bitcoin mixer is considered unlawful and any service that uses obfuscation tactics to conceal bitcoin’s publicly accessible path could face legal pushback. There are multiple technologies for “mixing” bitcoin payments, however. Some are clearly illegal, but with others, the matter is murky.

While pleading guilty, Harmon’s lawyer clarified that Helix’s double-blind nature meant that Harmon did not know the number or value of the transactions he processed.

The prosecution described Harmon’s plea deal as “lenient” due to an unspecified “cooperation agreement.” 

However, Ari Redbord, head of legal and government affairs at TRM Labs, a firm that detects crypto fraud and crime, said Harmon is not getting off lightly.

“Quite the opposite. He pled guilty to the lead charge in the indictment – money laundering conspiracy – which carries a 20-year maximum sentence and his sentencing guideline range is life in prison,” Redbord said. “He now has to provide valuable information to the government in order for them to seek a downward departure from the court. The result makes sense for both sides.”

Harmon, who remains on release pending sentencing, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison as well as what his lawyer describes as “a large and lengthy forfeiture agreement.”

UPDATE (Aug. 18, 2021, 15:35 UTC): Adds additional comment.

Between July 2014 and December 2017, Helix processed a reported 354,468 BTC for drug vendors on Alphabay and other marketplaces. At the time of transaction, this sum was worth over $311 million. At today’s prices, Helix processed over $16 billion worth of bitcoin. 

Harmon was arrested in Ohio in February 2020, and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitter business and money transmission without a license. Last October, Harmon was ordered to pay a $60 million civil penalty. 

The case against Harmon was the first time the Department of Justice (DOJ) and associated financial watchdogs like the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) called bitcoin mixing services illegal.

In a press statement after Harmon’s arrest, Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski wrote: “This indictment underscores that seeking to obscure virtual currency transactions in this way is a crime.”

Many in the crypto community have expressed concern that Harmon’s arrest set a precedent where creating a bitcoin mixer is considered unlawful and any service that uses obfuscation tactics to conceal bitcoin’s publicly accessible path could face legal pushback. There are multiple technologies for “mixing” bitcoin payments, however. Some are clearly illegal, but with others, the matter is murky.

While pleading guilty, Harmon’s lawyer clarified that Helix’s double-blind nature meant that Harmon did not know the number or value of the transactions he processed.

The prosecution described Harmon’s plea deal as “lenient” due to an unspecified “cooperation agreement.” 

However, Ari Redbord, head of legal and government affairs at TRM Labs, a firm that detects crypto fraud and crime, said Harmon is not getting off lightly.

“Quite the opposite. He pled guilty to the lead charge in the indictment – money laundering conspiracy – which carries a 20-year maximum sentence and his sentencing guideline range is life in prison,” Redbord said. “He now has to provide valuable information to the government in order for them to seek a downward departure from the court. The result makes sense for both sides.”

Harmon, who remains on release pending sentencing, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison as well as what his lawyer describes as “a large and lengthy forfeiture agreement.”

UPDATE (Aug. 18, 2021, 15:35 UTC): Adds additional comment.

Blockstream Mining provides bitcoin mining equipment to institutional and enterprise customers. It also offers hosting services where it deploys mining equipment and then turns over full control of the rigs to the customer. 

Blockstream Energy utilizes modular mining units (MMUs), which are essentially independent mining facilities that can be operated remotely. Power producers like turbine or nuclear power plant owners can sell energy to the operators of these MMUs that otherwise would have gone unused.

“For the first time, energy producers can control and scale demand to meet their supply.  This incredibly powerful tool can be used to make existing electrical grids far more efficient while also significantly improving the economics of renewable energy projects,” said Chris Cook, CIO and head of mining at Blockstream.

Energy producers can use Blockstream MMUs for a variety of purposes including balancing electric grids and improving carbon trading strategies. Since MMUs can be shipped globally and are plug-and-play, many renewable energy mixes can fuel them. Blockstream deploys these MMUs to energy production sites in order to enable scalable and dynamically adjustable energy demand.

“Much of the world’s usable renewable sources are concentrated in remote locations where there is little local demand and not much surrounding infrastructure,” said Adam Back, chief executive officer at Blockstream.

The global Blockstream Satellite network can connect to MMUs anywhere in the world and allow their operators to manage them remotely, opening up the potential for them to situate their operations at sites isolated from high-demand civilian or commercial power infrastructures. Renewable energy generation facilities, therefore, can locate in a variety of locations, such as near isolated waterfalls or volcanos, and take advantage of profitable energy sources that might otherwise be inaccessible. 

Recently, Blockstream has come out with a series of announcements pursuing renewable energy in bitcoin mining. In March, it announced a partnership with energy infrastructure company Aker and a $5 million open source deal with Square.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value was up 1.5% over a 24-hour period by press time and is currently changing hands for around $46,100.

Bitcoin is beginning to edge closer toward analyst’s projected $50,000 price tag, as CoinDesk reported Thursday.

“We were seeing many investors taking advantage of recent market movements by taking profits,” said Asher Tan, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange CoinJar. “There’s a trend of conservatism among users who jumped into crypto around similar price levels earlier in the year, with users slightly trimming their holdings.”

Indeed, bitcoin’s total daily volume across major exchanges, including Bitstamp, remains flat when compared to previous months, particularly towards the end of May.

“While the recent price movements have seen an increased amount of activity in the markets, trading volumes globally are nowhere near where they were the last time the price was at $45,000 – they’re much lower,” said Janine Grainger, co-founder of Australia-based exchange Easy Crypto.

The co-founder points toward new investors remaining cautious ever since they had a taste of the crypto market’s volatility when the sell-off in May saw bitcoin prices drop 50% from $56,700 to around $30,000 in a little over a week.

Yet seasoned investors, Grainger argues, are increasingly active with data hinting at a strong uptake in altcoins, beginning Aug. 9. “In particular, ether has picked up significantly against bitcoin and that is starting to trend again as of today,” she said.

“Some folks are worried we’re about to repeat history with this year’s $60,000-$30,000-$45,000, but this time it really is different,” BCB Group CEO Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie told CoinDesk via Telegram on Friday. “There is a ton of institutional money in the system, which behaves very differently from retail money; the ecosystem has evolved significantly with hundreds of thousands of man hours of innovation; and regulation has gained much greater definition.”

Ether isn’t the only crypto trending higher on the day with cardano, stellar and solana posting the highest gains. Zooming out to a seven-day period, most altcoins in the top 20 by market cap are outperforming bitcoin while most decentralized finance (DeFi) cryptos are trending higher in the green, up between 6%-90% over the same period.

“In terms of altcoins, many cryptocurrencies, especially DeFi coins, have been lagging in comparison to bitcoin and ether,” said Tan. “However, we’re starting to see a trend of users swapping bitcoin for DeFi coins, which has been a catalyst for the recent appreciation in their price.”

Despite cooler – but still high – inflation data in July and the U.S. Senate’s passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that could impose certain taxes and restrictions on the cryptocurrency sector, bitcoin’s price climbed to $46,502 on Wednesday, its highest level since mid-May, with retail investors returning to the market. The cryptocurrency was trading at $46,433 as of press time, up 2.45% on the day. 

“The market isn’t expecting the language in the Senate bill to progress as is through the House and into law, which I also agree with,”  Jeffery Wang, head of Americas at crypto services Amber Group, wrote to CoinDesk in an email. “I think once all is said and done, we will have more palatable rules for the crypto industry.”

Cryptocurrencies:

Traditional markets:

“Bitcoin has taken a major leg up in the last few weeks. In our past notes we had anticipated a rally till mid of August,” Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta exchange, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

“We believe that the market should take a breather here. We expect the price to consolidate for some time in the $40K-$45K range before taking decisive action toward the end of August, early September,” Balani wrote. “The volatility continues to trade rich and there is interest to write the upside beyond 50K for Aug and September.”

Meanwhile, the total cryptocurrency market cap has topped $2 trillion for the first time since May, according to CoinGecko.

The U.S. Senate’s passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill this week with measures considered onerous for the cryptocurrency industry has done little to halt bitcoin’s nearly 60% price rally over the past few weeks.

Maybe that’s because the latest moves by lawmakers in the world’s largest economy illustrate how little appetite there is among top officials to curb the elevated spending that has fueled a run-up in U.S. government debt to unprecedented levels of over $28 trillion.

Crypto traders might be betting that the extra spending could spur inflation, potentially bolstering bitcoin’s appeal as a bulwark against dollar debasement. The Federal Reserve has created trillions of dollars in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic to help absorb the additional U.S. Treasury borrowing; the central bank’s holdings of Treasury bonds has increased by about $3 trillion since early 2020, to $5.3 trillion as of last week.

And despite speculation that the Fed might move to taper its bond purchases of $120 billion per month later this year (including $80 billion a month of U.S. Treasuries), the central bank may need to finance additional government borrowing. The Congressional Budget Office projected in July that budget deficits over the next decade could total $12 trillion, pushing the government’s debt load, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product, to 106%, by 2031. A decade ago, that ratio stood at just 63%.

The CBO has said that the bipartisan infrastructure bill could swell projected deficits over the next decade by an additional $256 billion. That’s equivalent to another four months of Fed Treasury purchases at the current pace.

And there may be additional upward pressure on budget deficits after the Democratic-led Senate on Wednesday approved a $3.5 trillion budget framework with provisions for extra spending on family services, health and environment programs. According to the New York Times, the effort could “create the largest expansion of the federal safety net in nearly six decades.”

Much of that has been in the works for a while. Last year, bitcoin’s price quadrupled as then- presidential candidate Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in a Democratic government takeover billed as the “Blue wave.” But there’s a growing sense now that U.S. finances might be reaching a point of no return.

“You’re putting in motion a government that nobody’s grandchild can ever afford to pay,” said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, according to the New York Times.

Based on the recent years’ trend, the Federal Reserve might end up paying for a lot of it by printing money.

The U.S. consumer price index jumped by 5.4% in the 12 months through July, the same pace as June and slightly exceeding the 5.3% increase expected by economists, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

Despite the latest 12-month increase being on par with the fastest inflation in more than a decade, some analysts saw the stabilization as a sign that price pressures from the economy’s reopening might be easing.

“While I don’t think a small decline is a game changer, as far as monetary policy is concerned, it may have been had we continued to see an acceleration, or evidence of more worrying price pressures. Instead, we can all breathe a little easier,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst for the brokerage firm Oanda, wrote in an email.

The July CPI report isn’t likely to have a major influence on the Federal Reserve’s high-level discussions over when and how quickly to start tapering its unprecedented monetary stimulus. In last month’s Federal Market Open Committee (FOMC) press conference, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell noted that the central bank is aiming to make gains in its goal to reach maximum employment before tapering.

Many bitcoin traders closely track headline inflation numbers in the event that the digital asset becomes a hedge against inflation because of its limited supply cap at a time when the dollar might be losing some of its purchasing power.

An address associated with the hacker who drained Poly Network of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on Tuesday has started to return the funds, CoinDesk’s Eliza Gkritsi reports.

The transfers came after Poly Network first agitated for the blacklisting of the exploiter’s wallet addresses and then set up multi-signature addresses to receive any returned funds.  

One surprise is that the news of the exploit didn’t rattle digital-asset markets too much. 

“Reports late last night of a $600m hack have done nothing to shake sentiment in the cryptocurrency space, despite it being the largest hack in history,” Oanda’s Erlam wrote. “While a massive story, it seems traders aren’t concerned, something that perhaps we wouldn’t have seen a few years ago.”

The blockchain research firm Chainalysis published its own analysis: “While we certainly don’t expect every cryptocurrency hack to end with the attacker returning the stolen funds, in this case, it appears Poly Network will get its money back and has also learned about an important vulnerability its team can now patch up. Ultimately, the ecosystem will be stronger for this,” the report said.    

Cake Wallet Enables Readable Usernames: Unstoppable Domains, a blockchain domain provider, now allows Cake Wallet users to create custom user names for their wallet addresses. Launched in 2018 as the first free and open-source wallet for the privacy coin monero on IOS, Cake Wallet has expanded to include android applications and support for bitcoin, litecoin, ether and Cardano’s ADA. The wallet maintains some of the fundamental features of traditional wallets such as a built-in exchange and support for “fiat view.” Rather than use a 32-bit ambiguous string (on the visible layer at least), Cake Wallet’s 150,000 users will be able to create usernames under the “[NAME].crypto” format.

Ghana to Test CBDC With German Banknote Printer: The Bank of Ghana plans to test a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in partnership with German banknote printer Giesecke & Devrient. The central bank said Wednesday that Giesecke & Devrient will be providing the technology for the currency, the digital cedi. Munich-based Giesecke & Devrient provides banknote and securities printing services as well as cash-handling systems.

Most digital assets on CoinDesk 20 ended up higher on Wednesday. In fact everything was in the green except for dollar-linked stablecoins.

Notable winners of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

xrp (XRP) +30.4%

polygon (MATIC) +21.9%

cardano (ADA) +17.6%