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The second pause comes less than eight hours after its first pause as the crypto exchange grapples with unprecedented Bitcoin network congestion.

PLUS: Bitcoin maximalists find Ordinals annoying. But they are a good thing for the network in the long run.

The world’s biggest crypto exchange has now resumed withdrawals, but problems continue to linger for the bitcoin protocol.

Pepe fell for a second day on Sunday as the crypto token styled on the Pepe the Frog cartoon meme left at least one investor sitting on paper losses of $500,000. 

Pepe is currently trading at $0.00000259, according to Coingecko data. The price peaked at $0.00000420 on Friday, which may or may not be related to the weed-related 4:20 meme. 

The slide has left at least one large trader nursing paper losses. The data firm Lookonchain noted on Sunday that a so-called whale bought 962.3 billion PEPE for an average price of $0.000003122. At the current price, that trade is about $500,000 in the red. 

Memecoins take a recognisable internet meme and add an element of financial speculation. They have a long history in crypto, even if they have zero utility. While early adopters can make big profits on the way up, those who buy near the top can end up sitting on huge losses.

The losses on Saturday came as Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, offered clients the chance to trade the token for the first time. Binance listed the pepe memecoin despite warning that “the token has no utility and it is created by an anonymous team.”

Pepe coin trading volume 

Pepe has recently exploded into the consciousness of crypto traders, with trading volume topping $250 million in 24 hours last week — exceeding that for both dogecoin and shiba inu . Those trading the token on Uniswap have burned more than $10 million in Ethereum transaction fees over the past three weeks, on-chain data show.

Even after the recent decline, the token has a market cap just over $1 billion, making it the 45th most value crypto token, according to Coingecko. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The United States Justice Department’s national security division is conducting an inquiry into whether Binance allowed the violation of U.S. sanctions related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on its platform, according to a Bloomberg report.

Lawyers for Voyager Digital say the bankrupt crypto lender will self-liquidate its assets and wind down operations after failing to clinch a deal on a sale to either FTX US or Binance.US.

Episode 44 of Season 5 of The Scoop was recorded with The Block’s Frank Chaparro, and former Paxful CEO Ray Youssef.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please send feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblock.co.

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Ray Youssef is the c0-founder and former CEO of Paxful — a once-prominent peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) Bitcoin marketplace that shut down in April after operating globally for nearly a decade.

Shortly after Paxful closed shop, Youssef released the Civ Kit white paper outlining a P2P electronic market system combining Nostr architecture and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to resist censorship and promote permissionless trading.

In this episode, Youssef lays out his ambitions for how the Civ Kit will lead to thousands of plug-and-play P2P marketplaces around the world, and how decentralized identity tech developed by Jack Dorsey’s company TBD plays an important part in the process.

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This episode is brought to you by our sponsor CleanSpark.

About CleanSpark

CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) is America’s Bitcoin Miner™. Visit cleanspark.com/theblock to learn more about the CleanSpark way.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The Justice Department is investigating whether crypto exchange giant Binance was used to let Russians evade U.S. sanctions, Bloomberg reported.

The probe into the world’s largest crypto exchange is tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Justice Department’s national security division is leading the investigation, which is running in parallel to another inquiry by the agency’s criminal division. 

Binance told Bloomberg it complies with all U.S. and international financial sanctions.

“In 2021, Binance launched an initiative to completely overhaul its corporate governance structure, including bringing in a world-class bench of seasoned executives to fundamentally change how Binance operates globally,” Binance said in a statement to Bloomberg. “Our policy imposes a zero-tolerance approach to double registrations, anonymous identities, and obscure sources of money.”

CFTC accused Binance

News of the DOJ probe comes as law enforcement and U.S. regulators increase scrutiny of the crypto industry. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Binance of “willful evasion of federal law” and “operating an illegal digital asset derivatives exchange” in a March enforcement action.

Internal Binance messages included in the CFTC complaint show that Binance executives discussed transactions by the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas on the exchange in 2019, for example. Binance officers even acknowledged some of their customers are “here for crime” on the platform, but said, “we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes.”

Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

After attempting to thwart what it called a ‘coordinated’ attack on its town square, Aragon doubled down on its “code is law” position.

A pseudonymous crypto trader bought trillions of the meme coin three weeks ago on UniSwap for $263, and still holds about $9 million of PEPE after selling several million dollars worth, according to data from blockchain platform Arkham.