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One of the operators of sanctioned Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex was arrested in India on Tuesday, according to two recent news reports.Lithuanian national and Russian resident Aleksej Besciokov, 46, was reportedly arrested by police in the Indian state of Kerala, while vacationing on the country’s southern coast with his family, Techcrunch and KrebsonSecurity reported.Last week, a coalition of international law enforcement agencies from the U.S., Germany and Finland seized Garantex’s domains and servers and froze nearly $28 million in crypto tied to the exchange with the help of stablecoin issuer Tether. The exchange was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) in 2022, for knowingly facilitating money laundering for ransomware actors, including Conti and Black Basta,...

Crypto exchange OKX Europe has acquired a Malta-licensed firm with a Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) license, bringing it a step closer to offering regulated derivatives products throughout Europe, the firm said in a statement on Wednesday.The entity is expected to become operational later this year, once the exchange gets approval from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA). The exchange did not say which firm it acquired.With its MiFID II license, OKX will be able to provide regulated derivatives products and services to its institutional clients in the European Economic Area, which includes 27 European Union member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.This is another step solidifying the third-largest exchange in terms of market cap...

Despite recent acknowledgements by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on several spot crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications, the agency is unlikely to make any decisions approving these products until its leadership is settled.“I would have been very very surprised if they approved any of these filings before Atkins was confirmed at their first deadlines,” said James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “It’s been our assumption that anything that can be pushed until Atkins is officially at the SEC, will be pushed back.”A person familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that they agree with that view. “This administration has shown an ability to break precedent, so I guess it’s within the realm of possibility to see an...

EMB: March 12, 16:00 UTCModular blockchain Hemi Labs' unveiled its mainnet with $440 million in total value locked (TVL).Hemi, founded by early Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik, plans to unify Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two oldest and largest blockchains, into "a single supernetwork," according to an emailed announcement. Hemi is built on both Bitcoin and Ethereum to combine the best qualities of both, taking advantage of Bitcoin's security and Ethereum's programmability. The project raised $15 million in a funding round led by Binance Labs last September.The project is one of several looking to transform the broader blockchain landscape, particularly with regard to decentralized finance (DeFi), through combining Bitcoin and Ethereum due in part to the deep stores of value held in...

As controversy swirled around the Ethereum Foundation (EF) this winter, one of Ethereum's most respected architects was quietly plotting his next move. Danny Ryan—a key visionary behind Ethereum's most ambitious upgrade, "The Merge"—left the EF in September but entered talks a few months later to rejoin the organization as its new leader."I was in conversation with Vitalik and others to potentially go back to help run the Ethereum Foundation," Ryan revealed in a candid interview with CoinDesk. But as the non-profit behind the second-largest blockchain underwent a dramatic leadership reshuffle, Ryan's trajectory unexpectedly shifted elsewhere — towards bringing Ethereum to Wall Street.The changes at the Ethereum Foundation came amid growing community unrest. Critics blamed the foundation for their perception...