🍕Bitcoin Pizza Day
Last week, on May 22, Bitcoin Pizza Day was celebrated. It’s a worldwide celebration for the Crypto community because on that day, in 2010, the first ever transaction on cryptocurrency took place.
A man named Hanyecz posted on a Crypto forum that he was looking for someone willing to exchange 10.000 Bitcoins for two pizzas. Someone named Jeremy Sturdivante, aka Jercos, accepted the offer and sent over two family pizzas from Papa John’s. It was the first time ever that someone traded cryptocurrency for a real life good.
On that day, Hanyecz paid around 41 US dollars for the pizzas. Today, those 10.000 Bitcoins would equal more than 700 million US dollars.
⚖️ US House of Representatives passed the Financial and Innovation Technology for the 21st Century Act
On May 22, 2024, the House of Representatives of the US passed the Financial and Innovation Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), the result of the vote was 279 in favor to 136 against. The FIT21 Act still has to be passed by the Senate to become law.
Both Joe Biden, the President of the United States, and Gary Gensler, the President of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), oppose the passing of this law. The White House released a statement in which they argue that this bill is not protective enough of consumer and investor rights. President Gensler also released a statement opposing the bill, a fragment of the statement reads: “The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (“FIT 21”) would create new regulatory gaps and undermine decades of precedent regarding the oversight of investment contracts, putting investors and capital markets at immeasurable risk.”
The bill was supported by 206 representatives from the Republican party and were joined by 71 representatives from the Democratic party.
The Crypto community in the US is largely in favor of the bill. On May 16, 2024, the Crypto Council of Innovation (CCI) wrote a letter to the House of Representatives expressing their support for the FIT21.
Stay up to date on this matter in the next editions of this report.
🚨The largest Crypto seizure in the history of Argentina took place this month
On May 8, 2024, the Special Unit on the Investigation of Cybercrimes (Unidad Especializada en la Investigación de Ciberdelitos) from Argentina, conducted a legal search of an alleged supermarket that turned out to be an illegal crypto farm. There are four people under arrest.
The Special Unit was able to seize around 656,000 US dollars worth of crypto.
The four people under arrest had scammed two people for around 1.2 million US dollars. The scammers tricked the victims into investing their Bitcoins through phishing techniques, they stole the identity from another investor. The victims were a Mexican citizen, who invested five Bitcoins, and a Chilean citizen, who invested fifteen Bitcoins.
To identify the criminals, the Unit conducted a traceability investigation aided with the TRM Labs forensics tool. According to Alejandro Musso, the prosecutor in the case, “the traceability during the investigation was made possible thanks to the contribution of the powerful forensic tool TRM Labs, which allowed us to bypass the decentralized wallets that obfuscated the path of this asset flow to the final destination wallets.”
This is a milestone in the world of cybercrime investigation. Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alejandro-musso-b6b78b235_el-secuestro-cripto-m%C3%A1s-grande-de-la-ugcPost-7195490564358696960-2t2z/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
💰Donald Trump’s campaign now accepts cryptocurrency donations
Donald Trump, former US President, and now frontrunner for the 2024 US elections, announced on May 21, 2024, that his campaign will be accepting donations in the form of cryptocurrency. All contributions made to the campaign have to be compliant with the regulations from the Federal Election Commission.
The cryptocurrencies accepted as contributions to the campaign are: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Shiba, Solana, Circle, Ripple, Dogecoin and 0X. All donations in crypto assets are accepted through Coinbase Commerce.
According to the Associated Press, Julia Krieger, a spokeswoman for Coinbase, said that “crypto is nonpartisan and moves money forward because it’s cheaper and faster”.
This comes as an effort from Trump to establish himself in favor of new technologies, financial freedom and to attract voters from the crypto community. He also wants to distance himself from Biden’s tougher regulation approach to digital assets. The donation website states: “As Biden piles regulations and red tape on all of us, President Trump stands ready to embrace new technologies that will Make America Great Again.”