Tweet Authorities in New York indicted a man alleged to be part of the Sinaloa Mexican cartel in connection with trafficking fentanyl in quantities that would kill 10 million people. Francisco Quiroz-Zamora, aka the “fat one” was charged under the Kingpin Act, which is significant because it carries a term of imprisonment of life on conviction. […]
Tweet Executive Order President Trump issued an Executive Order imposing economic sanction on the initial coin offering (“ICO“) by the Government of Venezuela, called the Petro coin (the “Petro ICO“). The Executive Order makes it illegal to engage in transactions, dealings or financings in connection with the Petro ICO, which would include buying, selling, trading, […]
Tweet As tax time approaches, purchasers, sellers, traders and holders of digital currencies are wondering whether taxes are payable on digital currencies in Canada. The answer is that it depends. While the Income Tax Act governs in respect of taxes payable in the digital currency space, the issue of taxes payable on digital currencies in Canada […]
Tweet Digital currency issuers often ask about the Howey Test and its applicability to their activities. Here is our summary of the law. In determining whether digital currencies are securities, securities regulators in Canada have expressly stated that they are evaluating digital currencies within the framework of three court decisions that considered the elements of […]
Tweet This guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain, distributed ledger tech, and digital currencies is taken from a collection of presentations, comments, speeches we’ve made at conferences or written articles from 2012 to 2015. Bitcoin Consumer payments and ways of transferring value in Canada and globally have shifted over the last several decades from paper-based media, such […]
Tweet US President Trump signed new sanctions legislation into law on August 3, 2017, against Iran, Russia and North Korea, and at the same time, adopted a new national strategy to combat terrorist financing and money laundering. The legislation, “HR3364 – Countering America’s Adversaries Though Sanctions Act” is more than about sanctions. In large part, […]
Tweet According to tracing that was revealed this week at the Black Hat USA Conference, BTC-e was the Bitcoin exchange that serviced over 95% of all the ransomware extortion payments globally since 2014. Researchers wrote scripts that extracted payments to Bitcoin wallet addresses to determine what exchanges was used for extortion payments. The research also showed […]
Tweet The US continued its take down of Bitcoin companies this week with the unsealing of an indictment against BTC-e and Alex Vinnik, and his arrest in Greece. The Indictment against Vinnik and BTC-e was obtained in January 2017, and was sealed until now so that he could be located internationally and arrangements made to […]
Tweet The US DoJ has taken down what it calls the world’s largest criminal marketplace on the Internet called AlphaBay yesterday, which operated for over two years on the darknet. AlphaBay was ten times larger than Silk Road, when it was taken down in 2013. AlphaBay was a Canadian darknet illegal drug marketplace with servers in […]
Tweet A cannabis activist has been charged with illegally importing Fentanyl from China to Canada, through Vancouver, and paying for it with Bitcoin. The Manitoba government is seeking to forfeit his assets as proceeds of crime. The defendant, Raymond Csincsa, is allegedly on welfare and alleges that the $4,780 in cash located at his home […]