The U.S. government has taken full legal ownership of more than $400 million in seized cryptocurrency, cash, and real estate tied to Helix, once one of the most widely used bitcoin mixing services on the darknet. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., entered a final order of forfeiture on Jan. 21, transferring the assets to the government following the conviction of Helix operator Larry Dean Harmon. The forfeiture includes thousands of bitcoin, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and an Ohio mansion purchased during the peak of Helix’s operation. Helix functioned as a cryptocurrency mixer, pooling and rerouting bitcoin transactions to obscure their...

Ripple enters 2026 with new permissions in the UK and the EU.In January, Ripple said it received UK Financial Conduct Authority permissions covering an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license and cryptoasset registration.On Feb. 2, it said it received full EMI approval in Luxembourg.But what does that really mean for XRP investors?Ripple’s own standardized XRPL “snapshot” tables effectively stop at Q1 2025 (when it said it would sunset the XRP Markets Report in its current form), so 2026 “utility” narratives should be tested against fresher third-party research and live XRPL dashboards, most recently benchmarks like Messari’s Q3 2025 network review, rather than year-old quarter-over-quarter comps.Key takeawaysRipple’s licensing...

The U.S. government has taken full legal ownership of more than $400 million in seized cryptocurrency, cash, and real estate tied to...

Ripple enters 2026 with new permissions in the UK and the EU.In January, Ripple said it received UK Financial Conduct Authority permissions covering an...