The Spanish Prosecution office says it is investigating Arbistar for allegedly running a bitcoin trading scam with preliminary findings suggesting $1 billion in investors’ funds cannot be accounted for. The disappearance of investor funds has affected 32,000 families that are failing to access their savings that are invested with Arbistar, a suspected pyramid scheme masquerading as a bitcoin trading platform.
Bitcoin has had a strong start to the decade, adding over 40% to its price so far this year—and taking its market capitalization to around $200 billion.
In the past, cryptocurrency mining operations, especially that of Bitcoin, have gotten a lot of flack for consuming jaw-dropping amounts of energy. Bitcoin alone consumes more energy each year than the entire country of Switzerland.
An exodus of upward of 40,000 Bitcoin from derivatives exchanges BitMEX might have pushed up Bitcoin’s transaction fees. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s have fallen.
