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Spanish authorities are crediting the T3 Financial Crime Unit, a consortium made up of Tron, Tether, and TRM Labs, for helping take down a multinational European financial crime syndicate.According to Spain's Guardia Civil, the crime syndicate operated across multiple European jurisdictions, providing cash-to-crypto laundering services for criminal enterprises. T3 said it seized $26.4 million, calling it the most significant coordinated freeze it has been involved with since its launch last year. So far, the group says it has frozen $126 million."Public-private partnerships are particularly effective in cryptocurrency investigations because they leverage our distinct but complementary strengths," Chris Janczewski, head of investigations at TRM Labs said in an email to CoinDesk."Law enforcement brings their traditional expertise to the investigation while the...

If someone told you that stock market investors are offloading their cherished holdings, you will most likely interpret it as a sign of an impending market downturn.The narrative, however, differs in the crypto market, where such selling indicates bullishness, according to analysts observing historical trends in the supply held by long-term investors or wallets holding coins for at least 155 days or over five months."Based on our analysis, sharp declines in long-term holder supply (purple line) have frequently coincided with strong bitcoin rallies (white line), as seen in Q1 and Q4 of 2024. As long as long-term holders continue reducing their balances, Bitcoin remains at risk of a short squeeze to the upside," Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said...

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Ben Schiller, CoinDesk’s Opinion and Features editor.In this issue:Movement Labs rolls out dev mainnetCardano hard forks to decentralized governanceSSV DAO unveils SSC 2.0Musk pushes blockchain in governmentNetwork NewsMOVEMENT LABS ROLLS OUT DEVNET: Blockchain firm Movement Labs has deployed a developer mainnet to advance its goal of bringing Facebook (META)'s Move Virtual Machine (MoveVM) to Ethereum. The developer mainnet's launch will begin the deployment of Movement's core infrastructure and allow selected partners to start implementing decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to an emailed announcement on Tuesday. The release follows the initial mainnet launch of Movement in December and precedes the planned public mainnet beta...

Are we witnessing the dawn of PolicyFi?In an earlier article on why memecoins matter, I argued that memecoins are ushering in a new era of civic engagement by forming speculative markets in which citizens are able to trade coins tied to government policies. I suggested that holder distributions and market caps in those markets would signal popular support for underlying policies to lawmakers, who would then take them into account when crafting public policy, fostering a new form of political dialogue between citizen and state.I called this dynamic PolicyFi and presented it as a constructive use of memecoins.With the Trump administration coming into office and the President-Elect and First Lady launching memecoins, it is a good time to ask if...

Regulation by enforcement is beginning to crumble, with a court recently ruling that the SEC’s refusal to issue a crypto rule was unlawful. A new crypto-friendly administration stands ready to create crypto clarity through new appointments at the SEC and the CFTC.New acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham has proposed an uncommon approach, namely the regulatory sandbox.A regulatory sandbox is a waiver of regulations but in a supervised environment. Projects can test innovative ideas outside rigid regulatory frameworks. Federal digital asset sandboxes may come sooner than you think, but current state sandbox models fall short in the digital assets context, with extremely limited scopes and durations.We propose a “Sustainable Sandbox” and develop Pham’s idea, along with similar proposals from SEC Commissioner...