a95103581

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Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, the husband and wife behind laundering millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin from the 2016 hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, have both been sentenced to prison.

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Carmona was among the first of his IcomTech cohorts to ring in the New Year in prison. Two of the project’s promoters, Gustavo Rodriguez and David Brend, were also convicted for their roles in the scheme. A judge sentenced Rodriguez to eight years in prison, while Brend received 10 years. Brend reported to the Federal Prison Camp in Pensacola, Florida, on Dec. 16.

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Despite a recommendation that he serve his time in a New York-area facility, Bureau of Prison records showed Carmona was housed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky, as of December.

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David Carmona, the founder of the crypto Ponzi scheme IcomTech, has been held in US detention since his 2022 arrest and received a 10-year sentence from a federal judge in 2024.

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After Donald Trump won the election on Nov. 5, pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis said she would move forward with legislation for the US government to buy Bitcoin and hold it for at least 20 years.

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“If one country implements a Bitcoin strategic reserve, you can kiss goodbye to your 4-year cycles,” crypto analyst Tyler Durden said in a Dec. 17 X post.

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Meanwhile, the possibility of the incoming Trump administration creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve in the United States has the crypto industry speculating that the market narrative could move into uncharted territory.

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“In the less likely scenario that the extended 2017 cycle repeats with similar diminishing returns, Bitcoin could peak around $290,000 by early 2026,” they said.

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Bitfinex analysts said that if Bitcoin mirrors the 2021 cycle, with a roughly 40 percent increase above its moving averages, it could potentially “reach around $339,000.”

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Bitcoin author Andy Edstrom said on Dec. 16 that he is already “struggling to get used to the fact that $1,000 is less than a 1% move in Bitcoin’s price.”

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“Long-term, I’m looking for Bitcoin to match the market cap of gold, which would price Bitcoin at $900,000,” Carter told Bloomberg Television on Dec. 17.

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At the time of publication, Bitcoin was trading at $105,360, a price that Castle Island Ventures’ partner Nic Carter said could grow nearly ninefold in the long term.

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“The BTC ETFs are one of the largest cohorts of Bitcoin holders at over 1.13 million BTC,” the analysts said.

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About $36 billion has flowed into United States-based spot Bitcoin ETFs since they launched in January, Farside Investors data shows.

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This “wasn’t just some crypto conspiracy theory,” Grewal posted on X on Dec. 6. “[The FDIC] is still hiding behind way overbroad redactions.”

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Earlier this month, Grewal said the letters added credence to a long-shared crypto industry rumor that the Biden administration was trying to cut the crypto industry off from financial services, a policy dubbed “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.”

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“What is [the FDIC] working so hard to hide?” Coinbase legal chief Paul Grewal wrote in a Dec. 12 X post in response to Judge Reyes’ order.

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Maartuun also claimed that the sell-side risk ratio and the net taker volume may indicate “a top.”

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“Retail is also involved in futures trading,” he said. CoinGlass shows Bitcoin Open Interest (OI) — a metric tracking the total number of unsettled Bitcoin derivative contracts such as options and futures — is $61.2 billion at the time of publication.

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Maartuun suggested that Bitcoin is maintaining its strength despite the strong sell pressure from long-term holders due to retail demand also reaching its “yearly highs,” according to CryptoQuant’s retail demand 30-day change chart.

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