Today in Crypto: China Arrests 93 in $5.6B Crypto Money Laundering Case; Apple Removes Crypto Trading App From Store After Scam Allegations

Australia is set to complete its CBDC project in the middle of 2023, a new presentation said.

The project, which started in July this year, will test a general purpose pilot CBDC to be used in real world services.

The purpose is to use the pilot to understand the uses of a CBDC in Australia, with participants being varied between financial institutions, FinTechs, public sector agencies and technology providers.

Meanwhile, authorities in the Chinese Hunan province have arrested 93 people over money laundering using cryptocurrencies, Coindesk wrote.

There were 93 people arrested for reportedly laundering up to RMB 40 billion, or $5.6 billion.

It comes as China has made an effort to crack down on crypto being used for crimes as well as just the general use of the digital assets. The country has passed a ban on crypto trading, mining and using the assets for payments.

The suspects were reportedly led by an individual calling themselves Hong, and had been laundering funds gained from fraud and gambling across the country, per a report on the WeChat account for the Hengyang county police department, which made the arrest.

In further crypto news, Michael Patryn, co-founder of failed crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, has formed a new DeFi platform, UwU Lend, a report from Coindesk said.

It will be a fork of the Aave blockchain, and has gone live as of Wednesday (Sept. 21). It has already gotten $57.5 million in total value locked.

It will let users borrow against an algorithmic stablecoin named magic internet money (MIM). Patryn, who goes by the name Sifu, has reappeared after a volatile sequence of events after QuadrigaCX’s collapse. He transferred millions in ether to Tornado Cash after his stint as treasurer for the Wonderland DAO, which once held more than $1 billion in its treasury. He got backlash from that community after his identity was revealed, too.

Finally, a popular smartphone app to conduct foreign exchange transactions has been removed from Apple’s App Store as of Friday (Sept. 23), a report from Forbes said.

The app, MetaTrader, was made by Cypriot-based MetaQuotes, has been used to perpetuate a new crypto scam called pig butchering — where a scammer makes a long-term relationship with the victim and then convinces them to lend money.

One victim profiled by Forbes had lost more than $1 million last year after making all his trades through MetaTrader, which showed him fictitious returns.