Meme Coins POPCAT, WIF Among Worst Performers in Top 100

In a District Court filing, the US government called Bitfinex the “sole victim” eligible for restitution after the famous 2016 hack. Defrauded Bitfinex users are encouraged to file claims with the exchange.

The government has recovered billions of dollars from this hack. However, due to a surge of private claimants, these funds have yet to be allotted.

Bitfinex’s Hack Fallout

The US Government claimed today that Bitfinex exchange is the “sole victim” eligible for restitution, according to the Crime Victim’s Rights Act (CVRA) and Mandatory Victim Restitution Act (MVRA). This claim was made in a filing from the US District Court of Washington, DC.

In other words, the federal government singled Bitfinex out as the primary conduit for former exchange users to get their funds back. In 2022, the Department of Justice seized over $3.6 billion of stolen assets, and a huge number of claimants came forward. Hence, sorting through legitimate and fraudulent claims became a particular challenge for law enforcement.

Bitfinex, for its part, has been closely cooperating with the authorities to get their customers’ money back. In 2023, the firm announced that the government returned over $312,000 in cash and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) but no other assets. Its 2023 restitution plan involved making payouts to Bitfinex’s LEO token owners, and LEO spiked 40% since today’s filing.

The filing was very explicit about the intended path for defrauded users to get their money back. The government will only make recovery payouts to Bitfinex, so all private claims should go through this exchange.

Many XRP holders expect the altcoin to break $1 soon. XRP has traded around $0.50 for a while despite lingering pressure in the crypto market. Some analysts recently predicted that XRP’s long-awaited bull run will commence as Bitcoin’s dominance declines.

XRP Price Forecast: Positive Signs Ahead?

The current price projections for XRP from CoinCheckup suggest a bullish trajectory. Analysts anticipate a 14% increase in the altcoin over the next three months, despite the fact that it is currently trading 18.77% below the estimate for the following month.

This modest ascent can be a precursor of a sustainable rally, which will present traders with steady increases. XRP is seen climbing 150% in the next half-year period and 125% by 2025. The positive forecasts for this coin, therefore, suggest that this is the beginning of a strong price growth phase, courtesy of increased consumer confidence and broader adoption.

Ripple has excited the XRP community by a massive RLUSD burn performed on Wednesday. It was the first large token burn after the company had minted a mammoth 42 million stablecoins recently.

This was done as part of the continuous private beta RLUSD has been in since the beginning of August. As two million Ripple-made stablecoins got locked in an unspendable blockchain wallet, the XRP community responded with a wave of comments, showing their enthusiasm and encouraging Ripple to continue testing their new asset.

Ripple burns 2 million stablecoins

According to the Ripple Stablecoin Tracker account on the X platform, a mammoth chunk of 2,000,000 RLUSD stablecoins were burned at the RLUSD Treasury less than 24 hours ago.

Earlier this week, the Treasury burned less than half a million Ripple USD stablecoins in approximately four small chunks. Prior to start this circle of token burns, Ripple had issued several batches of RLUSD, comprising 42 million coins.

The largest of them constituted 10 million RLUSD and the others contained slightly more than 6 million stablecoins each.

Huge burn. Finally kicked it into 5th gear!— Devin (@Dev_Dimmadome) October 9, 2024

Recently, the official Ripple account warned the XRP community to stay vigil against scammers who claim that RLUSD is already available, offering to buy it or link their wallets to a website where it can be done.

RLUSD is still in a private beta, the company reminded the XRP army.

193 million XRP on the move

According to the prominent blockchain sleuth Whale Alert, over the past 48 hours, an impressive amount of XRP has been transferred – close to 193 million XRP, moved in several large transactions.

The aforementioned source spotted four large XRP transfers in the past 48 hours. 21,160,000 and 19,070,000 XRP chunks were transferred to centralized exchanges Bitso and Bitstamp. Those XPR batches were worth $11,052,822 and $10,107,880, respectively.

A whopping 100,000,000 XRP valued at $53,057,020 at the time of the initiated transaction were transferred from one anonymous wallet to another. Finally, earlier today, 52,000,000 XRP (the equivalent of $27,373,243) mysteriously left the Bybit crypto exchange.

These large XRP transfers indicative of an increased whale activity have taken place while the seventh largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization size, XPR, has been trading sideways over the past week, moving in the $0.52 range since October 3.

Bitcoin’s price troubles continued in the past 24 hours as the asset dropped toward $60,000 for the first time in about a week.

Most altcoins have followed suit, with ETH, BNB, SOL, XRP, DOGE, TON, and many others declining by about 2% daily.BTC Slipped Toward $60K

The primary cryptocurrency bottomed last Thursday with a price slumped to just under $60,000. The bulls stepped up at this point and propelled an impressive rally that culminated on Monday morning with a surge to a multi-week peak of $64,500.

This came after a positive end to the previous business week and a rather quiet weekend. However, the asset couldn’t keep the momentum going at this point and started to lose value gradually.

By Tuesday and Wednesday, it had lost about three grand andstruggled to remainabove $62,000. The bears intensified the pressure earlier this morning when they drove bitcoin to a weekly low of $60,250.

As of now, BTC has managed to defend the coveted $60,000 level and sits close to $61,000. Still, it’s 2% down on the day, and its market cap has dumped to $1.2 trillion. Its dominance over the alts, though, stands tall at just over 54%.APT Dumps Hard

The altcoins have mimicked BTC’s performance in the past day, which means that red dominates the charts. The larger-cap alts, such as ETH, BNB, SOL, XRP, DOGE, TON, ADA, AVAX, LINK, and BCH, have produced losses of about 2%.

Shiba Inu and SUI have dropped by over 3%, while NEAR has slumped by almost 6%. WIF has dumped by a similar percentage, while APT has nosedived by 9% in a day. As a result, the asset now struggles below $8.4.

Uniswap’s native token is among the few exceptions in the green today. UNI has risen by almost 7% and trades above $7.6.

Nevertheless, the total crypto market cap is down by about $50 billion overnight and to $2.225 trillion on CG.

Married couples in South Korea can now divide cryptocurrency holdings during divorce proceedings, according to a law firm specializing in the country’s legal system.

South Korean law firm IPG Legal clarified the law of the land regarding the consideration of cryptocurrencies in marital assets during divorce cases. Responding to common questions from clients, the firm explained that under South Korean law, both tangible and intangible assets can be divided during a divorce:

The firm pointed to a 2018 ruling by South Korea’s Supreme Court, which confirmed that cryptocurrency and virtual assets are considered property due to their economic value as intangible assets.

South Korea considers crypto as an intangible asset

As a result, any cryptocurrencies acquired during the marriage can be considered part of the Korean marital estate. Spouses who are aware of their partner’s crypto exchange wallets can have courts issue a “fact-finding investigation” to ascertain the value of their holdings.

Tracking crypto investments is easier than traditional cash, considering that blockchain technology preserves all transactions and does not allow external factors to modify or delete entries.

Bank withdrawal records and other forensic investigations also allow for the discovery of unknown sources of crypto holdings.

Partners can choose to either cash out the crypto holdings before splitting or share the tokens directly.

Investigators find hidden Bitcoin in New York divorce

The growing use of cryptocurrency in finance has led to more divorce cases involving digital assets worldwide.

During a New York couple’s divorce proceedings, the wife appointed a forensic accountant to uncover her husband’s hidden Bitcoin holdings. 

The wife, Sarita, found that her soon-to-be ex-husband failed to declare 12 BTC — worth roughly $500,000 — stored in an undisclosed crypto wallet.

“It was never even a thought in my mind because it’s not like we were discussing it or making investments together. It was definitely a shock,” she added.

Magazine: Anti-aging tycoon Bryan Johnson almost devoted his life to crypto

TL;DR

What’s New Around Ripple (XRP)?

The company made the headlines lately, securing yet another accolade. As CryptoPotatoreported, Juniper Research (an entity that specializes in delivering in-depth market research and strategic insights for the digital technology sector) awarded Ripple the Platinum prize for best cross-border payments platform in 2024.

Previously, Ripplewonthe payment prize in the UK – the PAY360 Awards – while Fortune Magazine placed it among the top 50 workplaces for technology in 2023.

RLUSD – the firm’s upcoming stablecoin – has also witnessed some progress. Ripple minted and burned thousands of tokens as part of the private beta testing phase over the last few weeks.

Most recently, the X user Vet claimed the XRP Ledger amendment to allow (clawback) tokens like RLUSD to be employed in the AMM (Automated market makers) “went through the code review.” They argued that the next step involves “some cosmetics and merge into a new rippled release for validators to vote on.”

Despite these developments, XRP keeps underperforming. It plunged by double digits to around $0.51 at the start of October when the SEC appealed a 2023 verdict in the case against Ripple. Currently, the token is worth around $0.52 (per CoinGecko’s data), representing a 9.5% decline on a two-week scale.SHIB’s Ups and Downs

At one point yesterday (October 9), the popular meme coin was among the top-performing cryptocurrencies. Its solid (albeit brief) increase coincided with plunging SHIB exchange reserves and an explosion of the burn rate by over 400%. However, bears stepped in, and the asset’s price is well in the red today (October 10).

Despite the enhanced volatility, multiple analysts envision good days ahead. Not long ago, the X user Yoddhaclaimedthe price pattern had formed a specific triangular shape, which could be followed by a 130% rally if broken to the upside. Conversely, Altcoin Daily warned investors that ultra-optimistic targets like $0.01 are basically impossible:

“I heard someone talking about they bought SHIB because if it only goes to 1c next year then they will be a millionaire. This is literally not possible with SHIB’s current market cap. Learn how to value coins in market cap vs price.”No ‘Uptober’ for BTC… Yet

Many members of the crypto community expected bitcoin’s (BTC) price to surge substantially throughout October since the month has historically been quite successful for the industry in general.

The primary cryptocurrency, though, started the month on the wrong foot, dropping from over $65K at the end of September to $60K a few days later. It recovered some losses, rising to almost $64,000 on October 7 before taking another turn south. Currently, BTC trades at around $61,000, or a 5% decrease in the past two weeks.

According to some market observers, the asset may soon return to the green track. X user Ash Crypto speculated that BTC has broken out from the falling wedge pattern in the weekly pattern and escaped the 6-month descending channel. As such, they predicted a possible “bounce from here.”