Yang Zuoxing - founder of the Chinese bitcoin mining manufacturer Micro BT - has been arrested for embezzling as much as 100,000 yuan. This comes out to just over $14,000 in USD.
Zuoxing Has Been in Jail for Two Months
Zuoxing is the former director of Bitmain, arguably the largest bitcoin mining company in the world and China’s biggest source of bitcoin-related income. It’s funny that the country - for the longest time - was considering a solid ban on all crypto mining activities due to the potential hazards they allegedly presented to the environment, though regulators ultimately came back with, “It’s perfectly legal. We’ll lay off for now.”
Perhaps the country didn’t want to miss out on all the tax revenue it was likely to earn from companies like Bitmain or its number one competitor Canaan Creative, also stationed in China. Both mining companies earn billions of dollars each year, which means that so long as these companies benefit, China is likely to benefit, and who would willingly give up hordes of money like that?
Zuoxing - who has reportedly been in jail since late October - is allegedly the designer of Bitmain’s AntMiner S7 and S9 models, some of the most popular mining machines on the planet. Following a serious dispute with the company in 2016, Zuoxing left Bitmain to start his own venture, which turned out to be Micro BT.
This led to a civil suit arising from Bitmain, though the suit has been dropped at press time.
2019 has been a heavy year for crime involving either cryptocurrencies themselves, crypto businesses or individuals involved in the space. Some of the biggest stories that come to mind involve the recent hack of Up Bit, a popular cryptocurrency exchange based in South Korea. Nearly $50 million in ether funds disappeared overnight via the work of an unknown assailant.
But this isn’t the biggest story to stem from the darker side of the crypto industry. Many sources believe that the recent theft of approximately $722 million as a means of funding a fake cryptocurrency company places number one on the list of top cryptocurrency thefts. The culprits behind the scheme hailed from Colorado and California and were arrested last week on charges of fraud.
Crime Is Running Rampant
While three men were caught, five are believed to have been involved, and two remain at large. The men involved may have been targeting investors as far back as 2014. They spent years traveling to different parts of the globe and creating false videos to give investors the idea that the company was considerably larger than it was.
Other stories stem from companies like Binance, which was robbed of more than $40 million in BTC funds last May. While Binance stated that it had enough money to reimburse any customer losses, the attack still “hurt.”
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