Fear stalks crypto

Despite ominous clouds gathering over the crypto horizon, a handful of random, strangely immune coins are pouring it on.

No, we've never heard of Arweave (AR) but we'll simply note for the sake of this section that the 89th-largest token (per CoinGecko) shot up 18% since yesterday.

Theta Fuel (TFUEL), meanwhile, we only recently encountered, as in recent days it has rallied 50% ahead of a major protocol upgrade which, alas, even in the face of stiffening macro headwinds, still manage to get investors' juices flowing. Excelsior!

Ever-stricter crypto regulation in China – and the likelihood of a tightening noose in the U.S. – plus a shifting monetary policy outlook (bye-bye easy money?) collectively, sharply elbowed Bitcoin in the ribs, doubling it over, and leaving it spitting red.

BTC tanked 6.4% in a midday Monday mini-crash, going from about $35,400 to as low as $33,200. Enthusiasts were still parsing Jack Dorsey's Miami utterances yesterday as news broke that the FBI had seized some cyber-extortion ransom paid in BTC. As of Tuesday, June 8, at 6:30 a.m. (EST), BTC was $33,100, having fallen 8% over the prior 24 hours. Most of the coins in the Big Ten fell 10-15%. Polkadot (DOT) fell 15.5%.

Globally, the crypto market shed $200 billion overnight, adding to $300 billion in losses already the week, Cointelegraph reckoned, noting the slump coinciding with a decline in the number of transactions flowing through the Bitcoin blockchain.

On a server. In Northern California. That's where the FBI says it located, and seized, using the courts, and a private key, millions worth of BTC paid in a ransomware attack.

Wait, how exactly did the Feds get into the wallet?

That there was a court order would seem to suggest authorities came knocking on a custodian’s door. In an article asking, "did the FBI hack private keys to Bitcoin wallet," CoinGape delved into some burning questions, such as: how criminal hackers sophisticated enough to cripple a key piece of U.S. infrastructure could not safeguard the keys to their BTC wallet?

And, if the FBI had the wallet's encryption code, why the need for a search warrant?

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced Monday a Department of Justice-led ransomware task force had confiscated a wallet containing $2.3 million out of $4.4 million in BTC paid by Colonial Pipeline to a group of cyber-extortionists with ties to the ransomware-as-a-service platform, DarkSide, believed to be based in Russia.

NBC News, citing a Bay Area-based agent, said the FBI did not hack into the wallet; rather, it used the legal process and public ledger to follow the ill-gotten BTC across a tangled web of dozens of wallet transactions.

 “Connecting the dots between the Federal agency’s claims and how the Bitcoin network functions, it seems there was no breach of security on the Bitcoin network,” CoinGape said.

A non-fungible shindig in downtown Miami dovetailing with the Bitcoin 2021 conference last weekend got more than ample attention even as the NFT craze appears to be fizzling.

The "NFT community" reception took place at a trendy startup warehouse operated by Upstream, a Miami-based professional networking platform.

Drew Austin, Red Beard Ventures' managing partner, regaled a 50-person audience with tales of NBA Top Shot-collectibles-flipping, while Roman Tirone, an executive at digital racehorse stable Zed Run, handicapped the future of thoroughbred-NFTs that gallop in perpetuity, unlike actual racehorses (which usually wind up euthanized by lethal injection). "Zed Run was the talk of Bitcoin Miami," said the Miami New Times.