Enforcement goes on with Bitzlato action — Law Decoded, Jan. 16-23.

cointelegraph.com:

The good news of the last week is that Bitcoin (BTC) continued to review, making around 10% up from Jan.16 to Jan. 23. But it has yet to change a worrying trend of crypto companies making headlines due to their troubles with the law. 

The United States Department of Justice launched a “major international cryptocurrency enforcement action” against China-based crypto firm Bitzlato and arrested its founder, Anatoly Legkodymov. The enforcers consider Bitzlato to be a “primary money laundering concern” connected to Russian illicit finance. While the exchange attracted little attention until the DOJ action, it had received $206 million from darknet markets, $224.5 million from scams, and $9 million from ransomware attackers.

The United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) states the Binance cryptocurrency exchange was among the “top three receiving counterparties” of Bitzlato in terms of Bitcoin transactions. However, it doesn’t mention Binance among the top sending counterparties to the malevolent exchange.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has followed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in filing parallel charges against the crypto user allegedly behind a multimillion-dollar exploit of decentralized exchange Mango Markets. Avraham Eisenberg is alleged of manipulating Mango Markets’ MNGO governance token to steal roughly $116 million worth of cryptocurrency from the platform.

Iran and Russia want to issue new stablecoin backed by gold

The Central Bank of Iran is reportedly cooperating with the Russian government to jointly issue a new cryptocurrency backed by gold. A “token of the Persian Gulf region” would serve as a payment method in foreign trade. The stablecoin aims to