News

In a major development, four Japanese government bodies have jointly flagged crypto assets as a high-risk payment method in real estate transactions, warning the property industry that the technology’s cross-border transfer capabilities make it particularly susceptible to money laundering.

The joint request came from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the Financial Services Agency, the National Police Agency, and the Ministry of Finance. The notice was circulated to industry groups including the Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association and several national real estate federations.

As per the official statement, crypto assets, which have the nature of being transferred instantly across national borders, are considered to pose a high risk of being used as a payment method in real estate transactions for the purpose of money laundering.

Real estate agents handling crypto-involved transactions are now expected to meet bank-style Anti-Money Laundering standards. Under Japan’s Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds, agents must conduct customer due diligence, file suspicious transaction reports with regulators, and notify police when criminal activity is suspected.

If an agent suspects a party of running an unregistered exchange business, they are required to hand that information to law enforcement. Agents who receive crypto assets directly as sellers, even in cases that fall outside the definition of exchange business activity, are still prohibited from using unregistered crypto asset exchange providers.

The notice flagged a specific legal risk around currency conversion. Agents who convert crypto to fiat on behalf of clients may be considered to be operating a crypto asset exchange business under Japan’s Payment Services Act, which requires registration. Doing so without it carries legal consequences.

Crypto asset exchange providers face their own obligations under the notice. They must rigorously verify customer identities and flag suspicious activity, with particular attention to high-value transactions that do not align with a customer’s known financial profile.

Further, the statement also highlighted Japan’s Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, reminding firms that receiving crypto assets worth more than 30 million Japanese yen, approximately $180,000, from overseas triggers a mandatory payment report filing with authorities.

Moscow’s push to bring its cryptocurrency market under control has entered a new phase with the Russian government submitting a legislation to the State Duma that would make operating outside state-sanctioned crypto infrastructure a criminal offense.

Under the proposed law, any individual conducting cryptocurrency transactions without going through a licensed intermediary, meaning a state-regulated exchange, broker, or depository, would face up to four years in prison and a fine of approximately $4,000. The threshold rises sharply for those operating as part of an organized group or generating what the law classifies as large-scale income.

In those cases, penalties could reach upto seven years in prison or five years of forced labor, with fines climbing to one million rubles, roughly $13,100. If passed, the legislation would take effect on July 1, 2027.

The bill does not exist in isolation. It builds on a legislative campaign that began at least as far back as March of last year, when Russian authorities first moved to penalize illegal cryptocurrency mining. What started as targeted pressure on miners is now expanding into a broader attempt to route all crypto activity through channels the state can monitor and tax.

Russian government estimates suggest that around $129 billion worth of crypto assets currently operate beyond the reach of state regulators each year. As per estimates, daily transaction volumes are running at approximately 50 billion rubles.

Alongside the criminal bill, a separate proposal introduced on April 1 would require Russian residents to notify the Federal Tax Service whenever they open or close a foreign cryptocurrency wallet.

Under that measure, residents would also be obligated to report both their wallet holdings and associated transactions starting July 1 of this year. The proposal sits within a broader package of digital currency regulations that the government advanced in March.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Russia and the government are developing a legal structure that would allow established brokers and traditional exchanges to incorporate crypto services without needing to obtain separate licenses. The aim is to bring existing market participants into compliance without dismantling what has already become a functioning industry.

Federal securities regulators have filed suit against Donald Basile, a crypto executive accused of raising roughly $16 million from hundreds of investors through a digital token scheme built almost entirely on false promises, officials said.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) lodged the complaint Friday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleging that Basile ran the operation through two companies under his control, Monsoon Blockchain Corp. and GIBF GP Inc., across a nine-month window in 2021. The instrument used to draw in investors was a series of Simple Agreements for Future Tokens linked to a crypto called Bitcoin Latinum.

Central to the pitch, according to the SEC, was the claim that Bitcoin Latinum was an asset-backed, insured cryptocurrency. Investors were told their exposure was protected, a representation that regulators say had no basis in reality. No insurance company ever issued a policy covering the token or any part of the SAFT offering, according to the complaint.

As per SEC, Basile allegedly assured investors that the capital they committed would go toward reinforcing the token’s underlying value. What actually happened to those funds tells a different story. Further, the regulator alleges millions were quietly diverted to personal expenditures, including real estate purchases, credit card payments, and the acquisition of a horse that cost $160,000.

Regulators are now seeking the full range of available remedies which includes permanent injunctions against further violations, repayment of allegedly ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, civil penalties, and a conduct-based injunction that would bar Basile from participating in any future securities offerings, with narrow exceptions for personal account transactions. Meanwhile, the SEC is also pursuing an officer-and-director bar that would shut him out of leadership positions at public companies.

Sanctioned Kyrgystan-registered cryptocurrency exchange Grinex has halted trading after attackers pulled over one billion Russian rubles from its wallets, with the platform attributing the breach to foreign state actors and calling it a deliberate assault on Russia’s financial system.

Grinex said the funds were taken from 54 addresses. The exchange said the attack required resources and technologies that only hostile state entities could access, and that it was designed to restrict crypto flows out of the region.

Before this incident, Grinex had faced sanctions and transaction blocks outside the Commonwealth of Independent States, but the platform noted that no user assets had ever been stolen prior to this attack. Visiting the exchange’s website now brings up a statement from the company confirming the theft and describing it as a coordinated operation aimed at directly harming Russia’s financial sovereignty

Meanwhile, Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic tracked approximately $15 million in USDT drained from Grinex-linked wallets, a figure higher than the $13.1 million the exchange initially cited. Despite being registered in a different country, Grinex has often being tied to Russia’s crypto ecosystem.

“The digital footprint and nature of the attack indicate an unprecedented level of resources and technology, accessible only to entities of hostile states. According to preliminary data, the attack was coordinated with the aim of directly harming Russia’s financial sovereignty,” the official statement reads.

Elliptic found that the stolen USDT moved through addresses on the Tron and Ethereum networks before being converted into TRX and ETH. That conversion, Elliptic said, was likely carried out to lower the risk of Tether freezing the funds, given that Tether retains the ability to blacklist USDT connected to illicit activity.

Grinex’s own account of the on-chain movement aligns with that picture. The exchange identified a wallet holding around 45.9 million TRX worth over $15 million, indicating the attacker consolidated most of the stolen assets into a single address after the initial transfers cleared.

The exchange said all available information had been handed to law enforcement and that a criminal complaint was filed at the location of its infrastructure. 

In a significant development, the Ethereum Foundation has revealed details of a funded initiative that successfully identified around 100 individuals linked to North Korea who had quietly embedded themselves inside Web3 organizations using fabricated identities.

The disclosure came through a recap of the foundation’s ETH Rangers program, a initiative launched in 2024 designed to provide financial stipends to individuals carrying out public goods security work across the ecosystem.

One of those stipend recipients used the funding to build and operate what became known as the Ketman Project, a focused investigation into fake developers operating inside crypto organizations, with particular attention on operatives believed to be connected to North Korea.

Over the six-month stipend period, the Ketman Project traced roughly 100 North Korean IT workers who had taken up positions within Web3 organizations while concealing their true identities. As per the investigation, researchers connected with around 53 projects to warn them that they may have unknowingly hired active operatives from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea(DPRK). The foundation noted that the findings highlight the urgent need for stronger, coordinated security efforts across decentralized systems.

The threat posed by embedded operatives is considered especially serious given the level of access they can accumulate over time.

North Korean hacking outfits, most notably the Lazarus Group, have been responsible for a sustained campaign of theft across the crypto industry over several years. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis previously reported that hackers with ties to North Korea stole an estimated $2.02 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2024 alone.