Bitcoin Daily: Bitcoin Marks New Record High Above $48,000; Miami Mayor Offers To Pay Workers With Crypto

Bitcoin hit a new record Thursday (Feb. 11), surging past $48,000, CNBC reported.

The price surge followed reports that Bank of New York Mellon is launching a digital asset platform that will include custody services for bitcoin. The announcement reflects bitcoin’s move into the mainstream, as just three days ago, Tesla announced that it had bought $1.5 million in bitcoin.

Bitcoin hit $48,297 around 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, CNBC noted. As of 6:58 p.m., it rested at $47,884.87.

In other news, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez proposed a resolution that would allow municipal workers to be paid in bitcoin and would allow all residents to be able to pay property taxes and city fees with cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg reported.

The report stated Suarez is also interested in studying whether the city could invest a “limited amount of government funds” in bitcoin, citing the draft resolution. However, Florida’s current laws restrict how local governments can invest funds, and they generally only permit investments in low-volatility options.

The proposal is part of a larger plan to put Miami on the map as a city that “embraces new technologies,” the resolution said, according to Bloomberg. The resolution also noted that Suarez “is committed to promoting the emergence of Bitcoin as it continues to gain mainstream acceptance.”

Meanwhile, just 270 deposit addresses — particular locations on digital asset networks — received 55 percent of all illegal cryptocurrency transactions in 2020. They laundered $1.3 billion of illicit digital asset, according to an excerpt of the Chainalysis 2021 Crypto Crime Report.

“We believe the growing concentration of deposit addresses receiving illicit cryptocurrency reflects cybercriminals’ increasing reliance on a small group of OTC brokers and other nested services specializing in money laundering,” the report stated.

However, many of these addresses largely facilitated legitimate activity. The report noted that this could mean that the illicit cryptocurrency was “inadvertent” and caused by issues in the compliance programs they follow, “reinforcing the need for compliance professionals and investigators to stringently assess all deposit addresses.”

On the other hand, funds marked as non-illicit might actually be money laundered by offline actors who first exchanged fiat money into cryptocurrency, according to the report.

Lastly, Manhattan authorities charged an Alabama man for stealing over $150,000 in cryptocurrency through a SIM swap scam that went on for over a year, the New York Daily News reported.

Between August 2018 and October 2019, Joseph Oaks allegedly accessed 50 online accounts after transferring the victim’s phone number to their own cellphone. He could then access the victim’s various apps and personal account information. In total, he transferred 300 victims’ phone numbers in attempts to access their accounts, the publication reported, citing a press statement.

Authorities charged Oaks with grand larceny, identity theft, scheme to defraud, computer tampering and computer trespass, the report stated.