Crypto Fraud Is Everywhere You Look

Plus, putting some numbers on a down year.

Number of the Week: $299 billion (explanation below)

Crypto Fraud Is Everywhere You Look

A year ago, a random cryptocurrency headline that might catch your eye was about some coin you never heard of that was all of a sudden worth a gajillion dollars. Today, a random headline about cryptocurrency is about some company you’ve never heard of that is being indicted or fined for one kind of fraud or another.

Here is Exhibit A: On Wednesday, the US Justice Department issued several charges against Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national who is a senior executive of a Hong Kong-registered crypto exchange called Bitzlato. It is hard to find anyone, even in crypto circles, who’d ever heard of Bitzlato before Wednesday.