Officers carried out a search warrant at the Gadcet shop in Chatham's High Street on 28 April 2023, where they said they seized a number of crypto ATMs, including one on public display. Habibur Rahman, 37, of Langdon Crescent in East Ham, London, was arrested on the same day and has now been charged with operating the machine without registration from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). He is also alleged to have laundered £300,000 of criminal cash by converting it into cryptocurrency. Mr Rahman has been bailed to attend Medway Magistrates' Court on 10 October. Crypto ATMs are machines which allow customers to buy or convert funds into cryptoassets, but the FCA has previously warned they can be used to launder illegally obtained cash.
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Bitcoin’s BTCUSD -0.60% price rose on Friday as cryptocurrencies recovered from a selloff earlier this week. The largest and oldest token rose 6.7% by Friday morning to $60,998 after briefly touching $62,000, before retreating somewhat. The large-cap token continues to baffle some investors, although its moves this week have echoed the stock market’s swings. Mirroring the global selloff in stocks on Monday, which put the S&P 500 on the brink of correction, cryptocurrencies also tumbled. But the S&P 500 SPX 0.00% had its best single-day performance since 2022 on Thursday, led higher by technology stocks, and Asian markets including Japan’s Nikkei closed higher. Again, cryptos followed.
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The other risk facing Bitcoin, altcoins, and stocks is that the U.S. economy is doing better than expected. In a report, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said that the economy expanded by 2.8% in the second quarter, beating the median estimate of 2.0%. It was also better than Q1’s growth of 1.4%. Another report revealed that the initial jobless claims dropped from 245,000 to 235,000 last week. That number was also better than the median estimate of 237,000. These numbers mean that the Federal Reserve may decide to hold rates higher for longer than expected. In previous statements, Jerome Powell and other officials have expressed concerns that the economy was slowing. In particular, the Fed is more concerned about the labor market as the unemployment rate rose to 4.1% in June, its highest point since 2021. Still, economists expect the Fed will leave interest rates unchanged in its meeting next week. The CME Fed Watch tool estimates that the bank will cut rates in September.
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