Monat: Oktober 2024

• The AFP arrests a 32-year-old man during a raid at his home in New South Wales
• Seizing the crypto was made possible after the AFP cracked the suspect’s seed phrase
• The arrest marks the second under Operation Kraken

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has seized $6.4 million in crypto from the alleged mastermind behind Ghost, an encrypted communication platform used by criminals, for creating and administrating the app.

Under Operation Kraken, a 32-year-old man from New South Wales was arrested on September 17, and charged with five offenses, including supporting a criminal organization, according to an AFP statement.

The success of this operation was made possible after an AFP analytics specialist uncovered the account’s seed phrase belonging to the suspect’s digital wallets from devices during a raid at his Narwee home.

According to the AFP, they moved the assets to a secure AFP cryptocurrency storage where it was restrained under the Commonwealth Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

This marks the second crypto asset seizure under Operation Kraken after crypto and property worth nearly $1.4 million were seized as part of an investigation into an alleged criminal syndicate in Western Australia.

“The restraint of these assets shows the technical capabilities and powers that the AFP, and our partners through the CACT (Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce), are able to bring to bear on organized crime,” said acting Commander Scott Raven.

To date, Operation Kraken has made 46 arrests, conducted 93 search warrants, seized 30 illicit firearms, seized $1.6 million in cash, and restrained $7.65 million in assets.

Cracking down on Ghost

According to the AFP, Ghost was created nine years ago; however, it was only in 2022 that the opportunity for law enforcement to target the platform arose.

The need to crackdown on the communication platform is highlighted by the number of organizations involved. In 2022, international partners began targeting Ghost and asked AFP to be part of its task force.

Europol created a task force called OTF NEXT, which was led by the FBI and the French Gendarmerie. Under these two organizations, those assisting included the AFP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Swedish Police Authority, the Dutch National Police, the Irish Garda Síochána, and the Italian Central Directorate for Anti-Drug Service. The Icelandic Police also helped.

While working within the task, the AFP created Operation Kraken after they were able infiltrate Ghost. After modifying the updates the suspect released, which infected devices, the AFP was able to access the content on these devices in Australia.

According to the AFP, most of the alleged offenders who used Ghost are in New South Wales; however, they were also found in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

The post Australia’s “Operation Kraken” seizes over $6 million in crypto from alleged Ghost mastermind appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Franklin Templeton has launched the OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on Aptos.
• FOBXX currently has a market cap of over $435 million, second among tokenized US Treasuries behind BlackRock fund BUIDL.

Franklin Templeton has expanded its OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) to the layer-1 blockchain Aptos.

The $1.6 trillion asset manager, which also offers the Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) and Franklin Ethereum ETF (EZET), announced the launch of FOBXX on Aptos on Wednesday, October 2, 2024. It’s another milestone for the company after its recent expansion of the tokenized money fund to Avalanche.

FOBXX launched in 2021 and is a US Treasury-backed fund that brings the benefits of tokenized real-world assets to investors.

With its expansion to Aptos, the fund has expanded to a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and adds to institutional investor access through Franklin Templeton’s platform Benji Investments.

FOBXX will be represented by Franklin’s BENJI token on the Aptos network, helping to merge traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralised finance (DeFi). Franklin brought its money market fund to Polygon and Stellar blockchain networks in April 2024.

The firm then expanded it to Arbitrum in August 2024.

Tokenized treasuries market growth

According to data from RWA.xyz, FOBXX is currently the second largest tokenized fund with over $435 million in assets.

The top US Treasury-backed asset is the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which launched on Ethereum and currently has over $518 million in assets under management.

Investors have increasingly looked to tap into opportunities in the RWA market. This has seen treasury-related products such as the Ondo U.S. Dollar Yield (USDY), Hashnote Short Duration Yield Coin (USYC) and OpenEden TBILL Vault (TBILL) attract a growing number of holders.

USDY, USYC and TBILL have market caps of $420 million, $280 million and $116 million respectively. Ondo launched its USDY fund on Sui in March.

Meanwhile, the total value of tokenized US treasuries, cash-equivalents and bonds, per RWA.xyz, has grown to over $2.27 billion.

That’s up from around $769 million on January 1, 2024, when FOBXX incidentally accounted for over $325 million of the total market value.

BlackRock’s BUIDL launched in March 2024 and hit $500 million market cap in July.

The post Franklin Templeton launches its tokenized money fund on Aptos appeared first on CoinJournal.