“US authorities secured several criminal convictions and gathered another $15 million in proceeds from North Korean crypto heists, the Justice Department said.”, — write: www.coindesk.com
The five guilty pleas announced by the DOJ were connected to individuals that aided North Korea in getting US jobs for fraudulent information-technology workers, obtaining stolen US identities for the workers and helping mask their geographic origin as the IT employees pulled down paychecks from dozens of US businesses. Probes conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation “continue to expose the North Korean government’s relentless campaign to evade US sanctions and generate millions of dollars to fund its authoritarian regime and weapons programs,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, in a statement. He urged companies to improve their vetting of remote workers to counter this trend.
The authorities have also been steadily seizing crypto assets from bad actors around the world, marking another $15 million in Tether’s USDT from North Korean sources on Friday. The assets are associated with cyber heists tied to the group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 38, which is allegedly connected to the North Korean military.Read More: North Korean Hackers Were Behind Crypto’s Largest ‘Theft of All Time’
Earlier this week, the DOJ and other federal agencies also announced a Scam Center Strike Force to target the centers of so-called pig-butchering scams, typically clustered in Southeast Asia and run by Chinese criminal organizations. The authorities said they’d seized another $80 million in stolen funds in that pursuit. Victims will be compensated from seized money, according to the DOJ.
What’s not yet clear is how much of these seized crypto funds will end up in the reserves President Donald Trump has sought to establish as a long-term investment for the US government. His administration has been working to stand up a so-called bitcoin strategic reserve to hold all BTC taken in during criminal and civil forfeitures, and Trump also directed the creation of a separate reserve to hold all other digital assets. However, officials working on those reserves have suggested congressional action may be required to formally institute the plan.
Read More: No US Bitcoin Reserve Plans as White House Touts Crypto Report
Stablecoin payment volumes have grown to $19.4B year-to-date in 2025. OwlTing aims to capture this market by developing payment infrastructure that processes transactions in seconds for fractions of a cent.
View Full Report
The Monetary Authority of Singapore sees a wholesale CBDC as an anchor for a system in which private settlement assets are used for different market needs.
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore plans to trial tokenized bills settled with wholesale CBDC.
- The Singapore central bank is also preparing draft legislation for a stablecoin regulatory regime.
- The MAS sees a wholesale CBDC as an anchor for a system in which private settlement assets are used for different market needs.
Read full story