CoinEx | Crypto

North Korea and Iran account for the majority of onchain malware, while Malaysia has been named among the most crypto curious Islamic nations. North Korean and Iran linked hackers were responsible for the majority of the 420% increase this year in malware on public blockchains according to a Chainalysis report.  State-linked hackers accounted for roughly two-thirds of new activity whereby attackers stored malware instructions or infrastructure information on public blockchains. Chainalysis also identified UNC5342, a North Korea linked group, to previously unattributed activity spanning Tron, Aptos and BNB Smart Chain. Read more

Trading rebounded in August, but the largest platforms kept an outsized grip on activity as CoinEx chose to exit. The post CoinEx quits after 9 years as crypto trading activity concentrates at biggest exchanges appeared first on CryptoSlate.

CoinEx said falling trading volumes and liquidity, along with rising regulatory and compliance costs, had exceeded “reasonable boundaries,” with withdrawals remaining open until Dec. 22. Crypto exchange CoinEx said it is winding down operations, citing a prolonged crypto market downturn, sinking trading volumes and liquidity, and rising regulatory and compliance costs, according to an announcement on Tuesday. As part of the wind-down, CoinEx will halt new user registrations, referral commissions and other rewards. Futures contracts will enter a “Reduce-Only” mode. CoinEx will also stop accepting new orders or subscriptions across its fiat, margin trading, lending, earn, staking and strategic trading services. “After much reflection, I have come to accept a hard truth. CoinEx did not become one of the industry’s leading exchanges, and the security and compliance risks of running a crypto exchange have become increasingly difficult to contain,” CoinEx CEO Haipo Yang said in a post on X. Read more

Blockchain analysts TRM Labs says CoinEx facilitated more than $3.8 billion in blockchain-traced flows with sanctioned Iranian crypto entities. CoinEx disputes the findings.

TRM Labs traced $3.8 billion moved by 60 sanctioned Iranian entities through CoinEx and said that the exchange’s 8% share of illicit transactions was substantially higher than its counterparts. Wallets with identifiable links to sanctioned Iranian entities have moved over $3.84 billion through cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx since 2019, making it one of the main channels used to bypass US economic sanctions, according to blockchain analytics company TRM Labs. About 60 Iranian platforms were tied to the funds, with $2.7 billion of this flowing between CoinEx and Nobitex, Iran’s largest domestic cryptocurrency exchange, at an average rate of about $1 million per day since 2018, wrote TRM Labs in a Wednesday report. By 2024, CoinEx was Nobitex’s largest external counterpart, nearly nine times that of the next-largest exchange, a pattern that TRM Labs called “inconsistent with independent market behaviour.” Read more