Month: January 2023

Enlarge (credit: Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images)

For years, the cryptocurrency economy has been rife with black market sales, theft, ransomware, and money laundering—despite the strange fact that in that economy, practically every transaction is written into a blockchain’s permanent, unchangeable ledger. But new evidence suggests that years of advancements in blockchain tracing and crackdowns on that illicit underworld may be having an effect—if not reducing the overall volume of crime, then at least cutting down on the number of laundering outlets, leaving the crypto black market with fewer options to cash out its proceeds than it’s had in a decade.

In a portion of its annual crime report focused on money laundering that was published today, cryptocurrency-tracing firm Chainalysis points to a new consolidation in crypto criminal cash-out services over the past year. It counted just 915 of those services used in 2022, the fewest it’s seen since 2012 and the latest sign of a steady drop-off in the number of those services since 2018. Chainalysis says an even smaller number of exchanges now enable the money-laundering trade of cryptocurrency for actual dollars, euros, and yen: It found that just five cryptocurrency exchanges now handle nearly 68 percent of all black market cash-outs.

Enlarge (credit: Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images)

For years, the cryptocurrency economy has been rife with black market sales, theft, ransomware, and money laundering—despite the strange fact that in that economy, practically every transaction is written into a blockchain’s permanent, unchangeable ledger. But new evidence suggests that years of advancements in blockchain tracing and crackdowns on that illicit underworld may be having an effect—if not reducing the overall volume of crime, then at least cutting down on the number of laundering outlets, leaving the crypto black market with fewer options to cash out its proceeds than it’s had in a decade.

In a portion of its annual crime report focused on money laundering that was published today, cryptocurrency-tracing firm Chainalysis points to a new consolidation in crypto criminal cash-out services over the past year. It counted just 915 of those services used in 2022, the fewest it’s seen since 2012 and the latest sign of a steady drop-off in the number of those services since 2018. Chainalysis says an even smaller number of exchanges now enable the money-laundering trade of cryptocurrency for actual dollars, euros, and yen: It found that just five cryptocurrency exchanges now handle nearly 68 percent of all black market cash-outs.

Enlarge / Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research within the Food and Drug Administration, testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on the federal coronavirus response on Capitol Hill in March 2021, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Pool)

The US Food and Drug Administration's committee of independent vaccine experts gathered Thursday to discuss the future of COVID-19 shots. The meeting seemed primed for explosive debate. Earlier in the week, the FDA released documents that made clear the agency is holding steadfast to its idea that COVID vaccines will fit the mold of annual flu shots—with reformulations decided in the first half of each year, followed by fall rollouts in anticipation of winter waves.

But outside experts, including some on the FDA's advisory committee, have questioned almost every aspect of that plan—from the uncertain seasonality of COVID-19 so far, to the futility of chasing fast-moving variants (or subvariants, as the case may be). Some have even questioned whether there's a need to boost the young and healthy so frequently when current vaccines offer protection against severe disease, but only short-lived protection against infection.

One particularly outspoken member of FDA's committee, Paul Offit, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has publicly assailed the bivalent booster, writing a commentary piece in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month titled: Bivalent Covid-19 Vaccines — A Cautionary Tale. (The FDA's advisory committee voted 19-2 in support of the bivalent boosters last year, with Offit being one of the two votes against.)

Enlarge / Artist's conception of D&D fans holding back WotC's attempts to change the game's license. (credit: WotC)

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) owner Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has halted its attempts to update the longstanding Open Gaming License (OGL) that has dictated the legal use of the game's rules for decades. The move comes after weeks of controversy and belated attempts to partially scale back leaked plans for an OGL update.

The original OGL 1.0a, first released in the early '00s, will now "remain untouched" WotC announced in a tweet Friday. What's more, the entire D&D Systems Reference Document (SRD)—which also includes creative content like classes, spells, and monsters trademarked and copyrighted by WotC—is now available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, meaning it's free to use as long as proper credit is given.

WotC's full retreat in this licensing battle comes as WotC says survey feedback on the latest draft update to the license was "in such high volume and its direction is so plain," that the company felt it had to act immediately, as Executive Producer Kyle Brink wrote on the D&D Beyond blog.