Today in Crypto: Crypto.com Hires Former US Regulator and Prosecutor to Head Financial Crimes Unit; Bitcoin’s Tumble Costs Futures Traders $430M

Crypto.com has hired an ex-Washington regulator and federal prosecutor to oversee efforts to make sure the platform isn’t being used for illicit acts like terrorism financing and fraud, a Wall Street Journal report said Tuesday (April 12).

Duncan DeVille will be the executive vice president for compliance in the Americas, and global head of financial crimes compliance, the report said. He worked in the U.S. Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit and as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Coinbase, the global crypto exchange, lost its bid to force arbitration over a crypto theft of over $31,000, Coindesk reported Tuesday.

The case began when Abraham Bielski was contacted by a scammer last year who claimed to be a PayPal rep, and Bielski gave remote access to his Coinbase account.

The customer service offered by Coinbase was reportedly “meager and ineffective,” the case said.

In other news, Pantera Capital will close the Pantera Blockchain Fund in the next few weeks, with a total of $1.3 billion in committed capital, Coindesk wrote.

The fund rolled out during a record-setting period for crypto investment, the report said.

Meanwhile, futures traders betting on crypto price recovery were flummoxed when bitcoin fell to below $40,000, Coindesk wrote Tuesday.

Traders tallied up to $430 million in losses to liquidations, which occur when an exchange closes a trader’s leveraged position due to the loss to the trader’s margin.

Finally, fundraising platform Pledge announced the launch of PledgeCrypto, which lets nonprofits take crypto donations, a report from LiveMint said.

The platform lets nonprofits take crypto donations and instantly convert them to fiat.