Former CEO of WEX crypto exchange that is now defunct, was successfully arrested in Italy after he reopened the BTC-e exchange in 2017 as we reported in the altcoin news previously. Dmitry Vasilyev, who reopened the BTC-exchange and changed the name to WEX.nz in September 2017, was arrested and detained by Italian prosecutors. There was no official statement provided to date but BBC Russia reported on the arrest on July 19. According to the report, the publication cited a friend of Vasilev but also two other anonymous WEX investors. The reason for the detention is still unclear. Back in April 2019, Vasilyev became the prime suspect of a criminal investigation by the police department in Kazakh City Almaty as he was charged with defrauding a local investor in the amount of $20,000 through his WEX exchange as the reports from the crypto media outlet Forklog reported. According to the report, the 32-year-old suspect was announced wanted under an international arrest warrant in the territory of the Commonwealth of the Independent States. The now-defunct WEX exchange still remains a subject to a $4 billion fraud investigation which is led by Greece and the United States. The Greek police previously stated that they had detained the alleged founder of the exchange Alexander Vinnik. The Former CEO of WEX crypto exchange comes after the Vinnik’s arrest in 2017 when Vailyev relaunched the exchange under the WEX name that was soon reported as having suspicious tendencies including overpricing Bitcoin compared to the general norms. WEX halted all withdrawals in July 2018 which led to the claims from users that the platform was a scam. WEX’s fellow exchange and one of the largest crypto exchange out there-Binance froze funds that were sent from wallets associated with WEX users after the suspicions about the exchange being involved in money laundering emerged. As noted in the latest cryptocurrency news, the Russian authorities still fight to get Vinnik home and even the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to help get the exchange founder home. There is still no update on this news and there is almost no information available about Vinniks health and mental condition.

Cryptopia co-founder and ex-former developer VCDragon revealed evidence that shows that the exchange hack was an inside job with an intention to destroy the exchange. More about this information we read in the latest cryptocurrency news today. Just two days ago, @notsofast a twitter user, claimed to be the former developer at Cryptopia and tweeted a link to an article which he claims that there is ‘’the complete story of the fraudulent hostile takeover of Cryptopia by Internal from its founders Adam and Rob.’’ According to VCdragon, he and the Cryptopia co-founder Adam began creating Cryptopia as a hobby project back in 2014 and as the project went on, Adam resigned from his developer position at Intranel. He explained that Intranel didn’t want to give up Adam and offered him to rent an office in the company. The interest of the company continued to grow as the crypto exchange business took off. At the beginning of 2017, Adam and vcdragon believed that they could benefit from this business if Intranel provides support. As VCdragon explained:

‘’Intranel made us an offer that for 20% of the company they would handle all of the business management and development things like helping with hiring and managing staff, paying tax, lobbying for regulator guidance and all the ‘boring’ business stuff.’’

The company offered to contract about 4 people to the developers at a discounted rate and also to provide assistance with finding decent employees for Cryptopia. Since then, the story took a turn for the worse since Intranel hired staff only for themselves and contracted the new employees to Cryptopia and they were given unwarranted managerial latitude so when the exchange was very reliant on the staff, Intranel demanded more than 5% equity in the exchange. The cryptopia co-founder resigned from the position and VCdragon claims that he was not even paid during the 1 month holiday. He stated:

‘’They bled money everywhere they could, we paid for tax on their staff’s flu shots? We paid taxes on Christmas fits to their staff and our company bought the gifts. Everything they were unable to take for themselves they pissed into the wind on needless expenses and luxuries to the company could not afford….that ultimately buried us. ‘’

In the coming altcoin news was reported that Intranel also attempted to sell the Cryptopia company and was also nearly bankrupt.

Steve Wozniak is in the latest cryptocurrency news for investing a new blockchain-based company that is headquartered in Malta. In the latest updates we can see that Steve Wozniak co-founds the energy efficiency company named Efforce as a report by the Maltese news daily The Malta Independent issued on July 18 shows.

The reports show that Steve Wozniak co-founded the company along with Jacopo Visetti who - as his LinkedIn profile shows - works in the renewable energy and environment sector. The page also shows that Visetti co-founded Efforce in January 2018 which is approximately one year and seven months ago.

The Efforce’s LinkedIn page also features Steve Wozniak in the news - just like many best cryptocurrency news sites at this time. According to the page, the company provides the first blockchain-based platform focused on investing in energy efficiency, with its main goal of “being recognized as the first and main platform in the world for tokenized energy savings.”

In the report which is viral in the altcoin news, Wozniak is featured for his recent statement about Efforce at the pre-launch for the Delta Summit which is a blockchain conference held in Malta every year.

Now that Steve Wozniak co-founds the firm, he also said that "EFFORCE is a unique business model and we can have a great impact on the entrepreneurship."

As the news show, Steve Wozniak reportedly spoke about his view towards blockchain and how he thinks that blockchain will be a great boon to decreasing the public’s environmental impact without requiring people to change their habits. Wozniak also addressed the local government and its pro-blockchain attitude as the key to Efforce’s decision to launch in Malta.

Steve Wozniak also said that efficiency has always been important to him. He said the idea is to save money on energy but also to do good on the environment.  “Blockchain will improve the way we use energy and lower energy consumption without changing our habits,” Wozniak said.

As we previously reported, Steve Wozniak also co-founded a blockchain investment project in October 2018 this year. He founded the venture capital fund EQUI Global to support investments in blockchain solutions.

The focus on Bitcoin has affected many other areas of cryptocurrency positively - but also negatively. Among the latter is the field of blockchain, which has been a booming one and a hot topic in our latest cryptocurrency news. However, a new report suggests that blockchain investments could drop by as much as 60% this year alone as the attention continues to focus on Bitcoin (BTC). The new data has been carried out by one fintech research bureau, CB Insights, and was featured on Bloomberg on July 18. As it mentioned, companies in the blockchain space are drawing in a lot less support this year. The report shows that blockchain investments and deals have netted the space $784 million in funding so far. If that momentum continues, by December the figure will be $1.6 billion in total. By contrast, in 2018, companies received $4.1 billion which means that this year's number may represent a 61% reduction. The CEO of CB Insights was featured in the altcoin news for stating that "“It took a little bit for the enthusiasm to wear off,” pointing out to the hype around Bitcoin and how it affected the blockchain investments market. The data also showed that for the five years to July this year, 40% of the blockchain investments focused on the United States, whereas China was the second biggest single country with 15% of the total. Another aspect, which was highlighted by many best cryptocurrency news sites and Reuters, showed that even projects which had gained funding, had less than optimal success rates. As it showed, out of 33 projects, only 12 had made significant progress. Overall, these are "bad signs for the blockchain but not the Bitcoin crowd" according to the NY Times reporter named Nathaniel Popper who wrote the piece. As per the report featured on Bloomberg, the number of blockchain investments is declining but the largest cryptocurrency has done all but regained its losses from the 2018 bear market, while the analysts remain split about its next move. Since it reached a high of $13,800 last month, the BTC/USD pair then fell to almost $9,000 and is currently recovering to challenge $10,000 at press time. The market is stable but lost a lot over the past couple of weeks.