A new anti-money laundering bill introduced in the UK is set to make it easier for law enforcement to seize, freeze, and recover digital assets as part of a broader crackdown on money laundering.

Cardano’s long-awaited Vasil hard fork has gone live on the network, bringing “significant performance and capability” enhancements to the cryptocurrency’s blockchain.

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has denied it engages in proprietary trading or acts as a market maker, while implying that “many” of its competitors do. Per the firm, one of the competitive strengths of its Institutional Prime platform is that it only acts on behalf of clients.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• New UK Law Makes it Easier for Authorities to Seize, Freeze Crypto
• Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork Goes Live
• Coinbase Rejects Proprietary Trading Allegations
• Crypto Market Movers – LUNA, VGX, XRP

New UK Law Makes it Easier for Authorities to Seize, Freeze Crypto

A new anti-money laundering bill introduced in the UK is set to make it easier for law enforcement to seize, freeze, and recover digital assets as part of a broader crackdown on money laundering.

The 250-page Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency bill was introduced by the Home Office, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Serious Fraud Office and Treasury, and covers more than just crypto.

National Crime Agency Director General, Graeme Biggar, was quoted saying that criminals have “for years laundered the proceeds of their crime and corruption by abusing UK company structures and are increasingly using cryptocurrencies.” The bill, he said, will help “crack down on both.”

The bill is designed to build on an earlier act that helped regulators place sanctions against Russia and freeze relevant assets in the country. Regulators have been concerned some Russians could be using crypto to bypass sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine started.

Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork Goes Live

Cardano’s long-awaited Vasil hard fork has gone live on the network, bringing “significant performance and capability” enhancements to the cryptocurrency’s blockchain.

The hard fork’s success was announced by blockchain firm Input Output on social media, and comes after the firm stated that significant upgrades brought by the fork allow for faster block creation, and upgrade Plutus smart contracts for increased efficiency while allowing decentralized applications to deploy and run at lower costs.

New capabilities brought by Plutus script upgrades are set to become available after one epoch on the network, which lasts around five days.

 Following the upgrade, Cardano is set to keep on developing its layer-2 scaling solution, the Hydra head protocol, which processes transactions off the Cardano blockchain while taking advantage of its security.

Coinbase Rejects Proprietary Trading Allegations

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has denied it engages in proprietary trading or acts as a market maker, while implying that “many” of its competitors do. Per the firm, one of the competitive strengths of its Institutional Prime platform is that it only acts on behalf of clients.

Coinbase’s denial came after a Wall Street Journal report alleged the exchange hired traders to use the company’s funds in a bid to create a new source of revenue through trading and staking.

Per the Wall Street Journal’s report, $100 million of Coinbase funds were used in a test trade that an undisclosed number of employees reportedly called “proprietary.” In response, Coinbase denied these claims, arguing the report confused “client-driven activities” with prop trading.

The exchange noted it does occasionally buy crypto for its corporate treasury and operations, but does not see it as proprietary because “its purpose is not for Coinbase to benefit from short-term increases in value of the cryptocurrency being traded.”

Crypto Market Movers – LUNA. VGX, XRP

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Terra (LUNA) – After the collapse of Terra’s ecosystem, the community voted for governance proposal 1623, and a new chain was created. The new chain is a Cosmos chain and does have the treasury, oracle, or market modules of the original/classic chain. It does not have algorithmic stablecoins.

Voyager (VGX) - The Voyager Token is the native cryptocurrency of the Voyager cryptocurrency broker, which provides investors with secure access to cryptocurrencies with a solution that allows them to get the best price on their assets out of several cryptocurrency exchanges.

XRP (XRP) - XRP is the native token of the XRP Ledger and positions itself as a “fast and green” digital asset that was built “to be the most practical cryptocurrency for applications across the financial services space.” It offers fast transaction settlements, can handle thousands of transactions per second, and relies on hundreds of validators on its network.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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