Friday Forbes wrote that price of Bitcoin had dropped 10% over the previous 24 hours, dipping below the "psychological" $7,000 level. That's after starting the week at over $8,000, and less than a month after it rose to $10,000. Apparently cryptocurrencies had gotten some very bad news from China. Bitcoin rivals ethereum and bitcoin cash have led the market lower [Friday] morning, each losing over 12% of their value in the last 24 hours. Ripple's XRP, litecoin, EOS, bitcoin SV, and binance coin have all also been heavily sold off, wiping billions of dollars from the value of the combined bitcoin and crypto market. [Friday] morning the People's Bank of China has warned it will be cracking down hard on bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading in the country. "Once [bitcoin or cryptocurrency trading] is discovered, it will be disposed of immediately, and it will be prevented from happening early," read a People's Bank of China statement, translated through Google.

The Shanghai-based central bank also warned against conflating the country's interest in blockchain with bitcoin and crypto...

The bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry has been rocked by reports of Chinese police raids on the offices of major bitcoin and crypto exchanges Binance and Bithumb in the country over the last week -- though both have denied the raids took place.
But now that same Forbes columnist asks: Is this when to buy bitcoin? Among other reasons... As well as the May bitcoin halving, which will see the number of bitcoin rewarded to miners cut by half from 12.5 bitcoin to 6.25 bitcoin, bitcoin investors are hopeful next year will bring an increase in the number of bitcoin retail investors and people using bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for payments. Bakkt, a New York Stock Exchange-owner backed bitcoin and cryptocurrency venture, announced last month it plans to launch a consumer app for cryptocurrency purchases in 2020. U.S. coffee chain Starbucks will be its first launch partner, with the company one of the original backers of the crypto project, along with software giant Microsoft and Boston Consulting Group. Meanwhile, Bakkt's bitcoin futures daily volume hit a new all-time high this week, according to data from Intercontinental Exchange, with some $20.3 million across 2,700 futures contracts on Friday.

Many in the traditional financial industry remain unconvinced by bitcoin and crypto, however. This month, former European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet slammed bitcoin and Facebook's crypto project, warning bitcoin is "not real" and not the future of money.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A Dutch court has ruled that Facebook can be required to use filter technologies to identify and preemptively take down fake ads linked to crypto currency scams that carry the image of a media personality, John de Mol, and other well known celebrities. The Dutch celerity filed a lawsuit against Facebook in April over the misappropriation of his and other celebrities' likeness to shill Bitcoin scams via fake ads run on its platform.

In an immediately enforceable preliminary judgement today the court has ordered Facebook to remove all offending ads within five days, and provide data on the accounts running them within a week. Per the judgement, victims of the crypto scams had reported a total of ~$1.8M in damages to the Dutch government at the time of the court summons. It's not yet clear whether the company will appeal but in the wake of the ruling Facebook has said it will bring the scam ads report button to the Dutch market early next month.

The IRS's criminal division identified "dozens" of potential cryptocurrency tax evaders or cybercriminals after a meeting this week with tax authorities from four other countries. Bloomberg reports: Officials from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and the Netherlands -- known as the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement -- shared data, tools and tax enforcement strategies to find new leads in a quest to mitigate cross-border money-laundering, tax evasion and cybercrime. The IRS's cybercrime unit has developed expertise in "who is moving the money and where it's going," Ryan Korner, a senior special agent in the IRS's Criminal Investigations office in Los Angeles, said in a call with reporters Friday. "We have tools in place that we didn't have six months or a year ago."

The effort is part of the Internal Revenue Service's renewed focus on fighting tax evasion tied to cryptocurrency as digital currency has become more popular and gained in value. The agency has struggled in recent years to enforce tax laws and keep up with criminals as technology has advanced. "Tax fraud is not a new crime, but the sophistication with which criminals commit tax fraud has significantly increased through cyber-related activities in recent years," the joint chiefs said in a statement. "Data breaches, intrusions, takeovers and compromises are the new tools that criminals use to commit tax crimes." The IRS is preparing for a new wave of cryptocurrency audits. The agency sent letters to more than 10,000 people earlier this year, warning that they might be subject to penalties for skirting taxes on their virtual investments. The IRS and its partners are using data from previous enforcement activities to find new criminals, Korner said. Using the data from the five countries gives them a broader view of how accounts, money and people are connected.

The share of cryptocurrency jobs per million has risen 1,457% over the past four years, according to a study by job site Indeed.com. VentureBeat reports: Indeed analyzed millions of job postings on Indeed.com to unpack how Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain trends have affected the job market. Searches for Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency roles are going down -- yet employer demand has skyrocketed. According to Indeed, in the four-year period between September 2015 and September 2019, the share of these jobs per million grew by 1,457%. In that same time period, the share of searches per million increased by 469%.

In the past year, the share of cryptocurrency job postings per million on Indeed.com has increased by 26%, while the share of searches per million for jobs has decreased by 53%. Bitcoin's volatility seems to correlate with job seeker interest, and the change in Bitcoin price this year might be why job searches have declined. Employers, however, are doubling down on the technology, which uses decentralized ledgers to produce secure and transparent transactions. The report says that if you want a better chance at getting a job in this field you should be a programmer familiar with basic cryptography, P2P networks, and a language like C++, Java, Python, or JavaScript (along with certain soft crypto skills). To stand out, you should learn new blockchain development languages, like Hyperledger, Bitcoin Script, Ethereum's Solidity, the Ripple protocol, or even languages currently in development -- like Rholang.

The top hirers are as follows: Deloitte, IBM, Accenture, Cisco, Collins Aerospace, Ernst & Young, Coinbase, Overstock, Ripple, Verizon, Circle, Kraken, ConsenSys, JP Morgan Chase, and Signature Bank.

David Marcus, the head of Facebook's cryptocurrency projects, says that Bitcoin is digital gold, but it's not a good currency for transactions. From a report: "I don't think of Bitcoin as a currency. It's actually not a great medium of exchange because of its volatility," Marcus said speaking at the New York Times DealBook Conference in New York. "I see it as digital gold." Marcus said Bitcoin is like gold because you can hold on to it as an investment just as people do with actual gold, but the drastic upswings and dips that Bitcoin goes through makes it a bad option for people who need a system to send remittances across borders. That is a key market that Facebook is targeting with its Libra cryptocurrency and Calibra digital wallet. Unlike Bitcoin, Libra's value will be tied to currencies like the U.S. dollar and the Euro, which will help it remain stable. Marcus said a key reason that Bitcoin has not been regulated out of existence is because it is not perceived to be a medium of exchange. "It's an investment class that's decorrelated from the rest of the market," Marcus said. "Why feel threatened by that?"

A single Bitcoin holder -- called a "whale" in cryptocurrency parlance -- likely manipulated the market and helped fuel the big rise in Bitcoin's price in 2017, according to researchers. That year, Bitcoin's price jumped from under $1,000 in January to more than $19,000 in December. From a report: Last year, University of Texas professor John Griffin and Amin Shams, an instructor at Ohio State University, published controversial research concluding that in 2017 just a few big players used the stablecoin Tether to prop up the price of Bitcoin following market downturns. Griffin and Shams now tell Bloomberg that just a single whale was likely behind the behavior. They say that one entity on Bitfinex, a popular cryptocurrency headquartered in Hong Kong, appears able to push the price of Bitcoin up when it falls below certain thresholds. Griffin and Shams studied Bitcoin and Tether transactions from March 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018. They found that Bitcoin purchases on Bitfinex increased whenever the price dropped by certain increments. According to Bloomberg, which saw a prepublication version of a paper set to be published in the Journal of Finance, the authors conclude: "This pattern is only present in periods following the printing of Tether, driven by a single large account holder, and not observed by other exchanges."

"The price of Bitcoin skyrocketed overnight, rising by nearly 40 percent from a recent low," reports Newsweek: The sharp turn came as Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke highly of the decentralized technology on which the digital currency is founded, telling members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee that the country should "seize the opportunity" of blockchain... China banned cryptocurrency exchanges in 2017, and Xi's comments are believed to be among his first to embrace blockchain technology so thoroughly.

The price of Bitcoin cracked $10,000 briefly Friday night, a symbolic but notable threshold the digital currency has not reached in over a month, at which point it had been enduring a steep sell-off. Xi's speech may have suggested to investors that a potentially expansive consumer base for cryptocurrency could begin to open, although other reporting has suggested that Bitcoin could instead face China as a competitor, rather than an open market. Mu Changchun, a deputy director at the People's Bank of China, said at an event sponsored by the China Finance 40 Forum in August that the country is "close" to releasing its own cryptocurrency. The bank has apparently been working on such technology since last year.

Bitcoin has had something of a volatile week, owed in large part to testimony delivered Wednesday by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose company is seeking to develop its own cryptocurrency: Libra... Democrats on the committee were largely unsatisfied with Facebook's promises, and analysts have suggested that their lack of enthusiasm may have cast a pall over cryptocurrencies more broadly, contributing to a major sell-off of Bitcoin Wednesday. The price sank to its lowest in five months. Increased regulatory scrutiny of Libra was largely credited for the decline. However, recent events, such as Xi's speech and a potential "short squeeze," have reinvigorated interest in Bitcoin, even if the market for cryptocurrencies remains plagued with uncertainty.

A California man is suing AT&T after he says one of its employees allowed a hacker to access his cell phone number that resulted in his data being compromised and more than $1.8 million in cryptocurrency stolen from his accounts. ABC News reports: Seth Shapiro says that an AT&T employee allowed a hacker to swap his phone number from his phone to a separate device, which resulted in "the compromise of highly sensitive personal and financial information and the theft of more than $1.8 million," according to court documents. The process of so-called "SIM swapping" allows hackers a way to gain access to all the information tied to a phone number potentially giving them access to every email, photo, app and more on the phone.

The complaint filed on Oct. 17 claims that while third parties had control over his AT&T wireless number, "they used that control to access and reset the passwords for Mr. Shapiro's accounts on cryptocurrency exchange platforms, including KuCoin, Bittrex, Wax, Coinbase, Huobi, Crytopia, LiveCoin, HitBTC, Coss.io, Liqui, and Bitfinex." The digital currency "was accessed by the hackers utilizing their control over Mr. Shapiro's AT&T wireless number," the court documents added. The lawsuit alleges that hackers were able to access "accounts on various cryptocurrency exchange platforms, including the accounts he controlled on behalf of his business venture. The hackers then transferred Mr. Shapiro's currency from Mr. Shapiro's accounts into accounts that they controlled." "In all, they stole more than $1.8 million from Mr. Shapiro in the two consecutive SIM swap attacks on May 16, 2018," the complaint added. AT&T told ABC News in a statement that they dispute the Shapiro's allegations and shared information on how customers can help keep themselves safe from SIM swaps.

"We dispute these allegations and look forward to presenting our case in court," the statement said. "Customers can learn how to help protect themselves from this scam by going here -- https://about.att.com/sites/cyberaware/ni/blog/sim_swap."

For the past week, a group of criminals has been launching DDoS attacks against companies in the financial sector and demanding ransom payments while posing as "Fancy Bear," the infamous hacking group associated with the Russian government, known for hacking the White House in 2014 and the DNC in 2016. From a report: The attacks, brought to ZDNet's attention by one of our readers, were confirmed today by Link11 and Radware, two companies that provide DDoS mitigation services and have documented similar "ransom denial-of-service" (RDOS) attacks in the past years. In an interview with ZDNet, Daniel Smith, Radware ERT researcher, said the attacks started last week and targeted the financial vertical. Smith said "the group is launching large scale, multi-vector demo DDoS attacks when sending victims the ransom letter."

A Link11 spokesperson said the same thing, adding that the purpose of these demo attacks is to serve as an initial warning and intimidation factor, to convince victims into paying the ransom demand. According to a copy of the ransom letter, the group is sending victims, the fake Fancy Bear group is asking for payments of 2 bitcoin, which is about $15,000 at today's exchange rate.

America's lawmakers and Federal Reserve officials "are so concerned about Facebook's plans to launch a new digital currency," reports Politico's financial services reporter, "that they're contemplating a novel response -- having the central bank create a competitor." Momentum is building for an idea that was once considered outlandish -- a U.S. government-run virtual currency that would replace physical cash, a dramatic move that could discourage major companies like Facebook from creating their own digital coins. Facebook's proposed currency, Libra, has forced the Fed to consider the issue because of a fear that private companies could establish their own currencies and take control over the global payments system. Some Fed officials share the concern about a new balkanized currency system outside government control that Facebook has threatened to unleash. "Libra bust this way out into the open," said Karen Petrou, a managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics who advises executives on coming policy shifts.

But it's not just Facebook. The matter is also taking on urgency as other countries consider creating their own digital currencies -- another potential challenge to the primacy of the U.S. dollar. The head of the Bank of England has floated the idea that central banks could create a network of digital currencies to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency... The Bank for International Settlements, which represents the world's central banks, said early this year that most were conducting research into central bank digital currencies and many were progressing from conceptual work into experimentation and proofs-of-concept...

The details of a possible [U.S.] Fed-developed digital currency are still vague. But advocates and experts say such an instrument could give consumers a new way to make payments without having to rely on banks and without incurring fees when they transfer money. The digital currency would likely take some inspiration from the technology that underpins other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The discussions are informal at this point. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have written to the central bank asking officials to consider how they might approach a digital currency, and some Fed officials have begun to acknowledge the government might someday play a role. "It is inevitable," Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Patrick Harker said at a recent conference, according to Reuters. "I think it is better for us to start getting our hands around it."
The article argues that America's central bankers "worry that another major company could enter the space. If the Fed doesn't establish a digital currency, who will...?

"The growing pressure on the Fed is evidence of how rapid developments in technology are beginning to shake the foundations of the financial system, raising questions about whether policymakers are prepared."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Federal authorities in the U.S. have unsealed charges against the South Korean operator of a child porn ring that's been billed as the world's "largest dark web child porn marketplace." The child porn site, known as Welcome to Video, charged some users in Bitcoin and authorities say they successfully unmasked those Bitcoin transactions in order to catch the perpetrators. An additional 337 people from around the world have been charged in relation to the Tor-based site. Welcome to Video contained over 200,000 videos of child sexual abuse and had users from countries like the U.S., UK, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Brazil, and Australia, according to the indictment, which was uploaded by NBC News reporter Cyrus Farivar. Users could download videos through a system of credits that could be gained by referring new users or by buying those credits with Bitcoin.

Charges in the U.S. against the site's operator Jong Woo Son were only unveiled today, but the 23-year-old Korean national was arrested in March of 2018 and is already behind bars in South Korea. The operation was a joint investigation by numerous law enforcement agencies around the globe. Between June 2015 and March 2018, Welcome to Video received Bitcoin transactions totaling over $370,000 in U.S currency. Undercover agents in Washington D.C. monitored the site, filled with images of child rape, and were able to deanonymize the Bitcoin transactions, something that average users often believe is impossible. The investigation uncovered at least two former federal law enforcement officials allegedly involved in the child porn site, a 35-year-old U.S. Border Patrol Agent from Texas, and a former HSI special agent, also from Texas.

Andrew L.Goodkind, Benjamin A. Jones, and Robert P. Berrens, writing in a paper: Cryptocurrency mining uses significant amounts of energy as part of the proof-of-work time-stamping scheme to add new blocks to the chain. Expanding upon previously calculated energy use patterns for mining four prominent cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero), we estimate the per coin economic damages of air pollution emissions and associated human mortality and climate impacts of mining these cryptocurrencies in the US and China. Results indicate that in 2018, each $1 of Bitcoin value created was responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in the US and $0.37 in China. The similar value in China relative to the US occurs despite the extremely large disparity between the value of a statistical life estimate for the US relative to that of China. Further, with each cryptocurrency, the rising electricity requirements to produce a single coin can lead to an almost inevitable cliff of negative net social benefits, absent perpetual price increases. For example, in December 2018, our results illustrate a case (for Bitcoin) where the health and climate change "cryptodamages" roughly match each $1 of coin value created. We close with discussion of policy implications.

PayPal is withdrawing from the Libra Association, the 28-member nonprofit organization formed in June 2019 to oversee the cryptocurrency's creation and eventual consumer rollout. The Verge reports: The company doesn't cite a specific reason, saying only in a statement to The Verge that it decided "to forgo further participation in the Libra Association at this time and to continue to focus on advancing our existing mission and business priorities as we strive to democratize access to financial services for underserved populations." "We remain supportive of Libra's aspirations and look forward to continued dialogue on ways to work together in the future," the statement continues. "Facebook has been a longstanding and valued strategic partner to PayPal, and we will continue to partner with and support Facebook in various capacities."

However, a report published by the Financial Times yesterday said PayPal had begun distancing itself from the project amid increasing regulatory scrutiny. The company reportedly signaled its intention to skip a meeting in Washington, DC scheduled for today, and the FT reports that at least one primary concern for PayPal has been the lack of attention Facebook executives have paid to Libra's considerable backlash. Another key concern is how the platform will combat money laundering activity.

What's the world's most widely used cryptocurrency? If you think it's Bitcoin, which accounts for about 70% of all the digital-asset world's market value, you're probably wrong. From a report: While concrete figures on trading volumes are hard to come by in this often murky corner of finance, data from CoinMarketCap.com show that the token with the highest daily and monthly trading volume is Tether, whose market capitalization is more than 30 times smaller. Tether's volume surpassed that of Bitcoin's for the first time in April and has consistently exceeded it since early August at about $21 billion per day, the data provider says.

With Tether's monthly trading volume about 18% higher than that of Bitcoin, it's arguably the most important coin in the crypto ecosystem. Tether's also one of the main reasons why regulators regard cryptocurrencies with a wary eye, and have put the breaks on crypto exchange-traded funds amid concern of market manipulation. "If there is no Tether, we lose a massive amount of daily volume -- around $1 billion or more depending on the data source," said Lex Sokolin, global financial technology co-head at ConsenSys, which offers blockchain technology. "Some of the concerning potential patters of trading in the market may start to fall away."

Ten hospitals -- three in Alabama and seven in Australia -- have been hit with paralyzing ransomware attacks that are affecting their ability to take new patients, it was widely reported on Tuesday. Ars Technica reports: All three hospitals that make up the DCH Health System in Alabama were closed to new patients on Tuesday as officials there coped with an attack that paralyzed the health network's computer system. The hospitals -- DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, Northport Medical Center, and Fayette Medical Center -- are turning away "all but the most critical new patients" at the time this post was going live. Local ambulances were being instructed to take patients to other hospitals when possible. Patients coming to DCH emergency rooms faced the possibility of being transferred to another hospital once they were stabilized.

"A criminal is limiting our ability to use our computer systems in exchange for an as-yet unknown payment," DCH representatives wrote in a release. "Our hospitals have implemented our emergency procedures to ensure safe and efficient operations in the event technology dependent on computers is not available." At least seven hospitals in Australia, meanwhile, were also feeling the effects of a ransomware attack that struck on Monday. The hospitals in Gippsland and southwest Victoria said they were rescheduling some patient services as they responded to a "cyber health incident." According to news reports, hospital computer systems remained locked down at seven hospitals on Tuesday more than 24 hours after the attack struck. "An official said it would take weeks to secure and restore damaged networks," reports Ars Technica. "The official said there was no indication that patient records had been accessed."

"In April 2013, I received via U.S. mail more than a gram of pure heroin as part of a scheme to get me arrested for drug possession," writes security reserch Brian Krebs. "But the plan failed and the Ukrainian mastermind behind it soon after was imprisoned for unrelated cybercrime offenses.

"That individual recently gave his first interview since finishing his jail time here in the states, and he's shared some select (if often abrasive and coarse) details on how he got into cybercrime and why... Vovnenko claims he never sent anything and that it was all done by members of his forum... "They sent all sorts of crazy shit. Forty or so guys would send. When I was already doing time, one of the dudes sent it...." In an interview published on the Russian-language security blog Krober.biz, Vovnenko said he began stealing early in life, and by 13 was already getting picked up for petty robberies and thefts... "After watching movies and reading books about hackers, I really wanted to become a sort of virtual bandit who robs banks without leaving home," Vovnenko recalled...

Around the same time Fly was taking bitcoin donations for a fund to purchase heroin on my behalf, he was also engaged to be married to a nice young woman. But Fly apparently did not fully trust his bride-to-be, so he had malware installed on her system that forwarded him copies of all email that she sent and received. But Fly would make at least two big operational security mistakes in this spying effort: First, he had his fiancée's messages forwarded to an email account he'd used for plenty of cybercriminal stuff related to his various "Fly" identities. Mistake number two was the password for his email account was the same as one of his cybercrime forum admin accounts. And unbeknownst to him at the time, that forum was hacked, with all email addresses and hashed passwords exposed.

Soon enough, investigators were reading Fly's email, including the messages forwarded from his wife's account that had details about their upcoming nuptials, such as shipping addresses for their wedding-related items and the full name of Fly's fiancée. It didn't take long to zero in on Fly's location in Naples. While it may sound unlikely that a guy so immeshed in the cybercrime space could make such rookie security mistakes, I have found that a great many cybercriminals actually have worse operational security than the average Internet user. I suspect this may be because the nature of their activities requires them to create vast numbers of single- or brief-use accounts, and in general they tend to re-use credentials across multiple sites, or else pick very poor passwords -- even for critical resources...

Towards the end, Fly says he's considering going back to school, and that he may even take up information security as a study. I wish him luck in that whatever that endeavor is as long as he can also avoid stealing from people.

Venezuela's central bank is running internal tests to determine whether it can hold cryptocurrencies in its coffers, Bloomberg reports. From the report: The efforts come at the behest of state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, which is seeking to send Bitcoin and Ethereum to the central bank and have the monetary authority pay the oil company's suppliers with the tokens, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. Staffers are also studying proposals that would allow cryptocurrencies to be counted toward international reserves, now near a three-decade low at $7.9 billion. U.S. sanctions against Nicolas Maduro's authoritarian regime have largely isolated Venezuela from the global financial system, exacerbating one of world's most severe economic crises and forcing officials to use a patchwork of methods to move money around. While Maduro's prior efforts to start the world's first sovereign crypto largely failed, the continued efforts to use digital currencies shows how desperate the government is to come up with a way to skirt the restrictions.

The owner of the New York Stock Exchange launched its long-delayed market for bitcoin futures Sunday, a high-profile bet that consumers, businesses and Wall Street will embrace cryptocurrencies. From a report: Trading in the new bitcoin futures began just after 8 p.m. EDT [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], with the first trade at $10,115.00, in line with the current price of bitcoin, said a spokesman for the exchange's parent company, Intercontinental Exchange Futures let traders bet on whether an underlying market such as oil, gold, stocks or currencies will rise or fall. The new futures are part of a venture called Bakkt (pronounced "backed"), whose ultimate goal is to make cryptocurrencies sufficiently transparent and regulated for individuals to use in retail purchases. Bitcoin has failed to gain traction as a tool for payment, in part because of its extreme volatility. If successful, ICE's futures could make it easier for merchants to protect themselves from swings in bitcoin prices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Facebook's plan to revolutionize the global economy with its version of bitcoin hit another snag this week when the French finance minister said the country would block the Libra cryptocurrency if it launches as planned in 2020. Libra, which is scheduled to launch in the second half of next year, is designed to be a fast and easy way for people to transfer money around the world, using the company's Messenger and WhatsApp services. Bruno Le Maire, speaking at a cryptocurrency conference organized by the Organization for Economic Development (OECD) on Thursday, didn't mince words when it came to the threat posed by Libra to the stability of the French economy by undermining the influence of the euro.

"The monetary sovereignty of countries is at stake [from] possible privatization of money by a sole actor with more than 2 billion users on the planet," he said. Le Maire said that during times of economic crisis, citizens may abandon national currencies in favor of Libra, making it very difficult for governments to manage the economy. "All these concerns around Libra are serious. So I want to say this with a lot of clarity: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil," Le Maire added.

A $1 billion Bitcoin transaction has become conspicuous not because of its size but because its sender spent far too much on fees. From a report: Someone could have sent 94K BTC for $35. Social media users were guessing at the origin and destination of the funds on Sept. 6, which involved 94,504 BTC ($1.018 billion). According to Twitter-based monitoring resource Whale Alert, the transaction did not involve known wallets or those belonging to a specific cryptocurrency-related organization, such as an exchange.

One theory suggested the funds may be tied to institutional trading platform Bakkt, which begins accepting client deposits today. "Institutions building inventory for their market-making needs going forward," commented Max Keiser on the giant transaction. He added: "This = effective 'put' on the BTC price at $9,000. Ie, institutions are net-buyers of any BTC that shows up at $9k. Risk/reward now for buyers is excellent."