HK Asia Holdings (1723) said it bought another 10 bitcoin (BTC) for $858,581.

The Thursday purchase took the Hong Kong-listed company’s total to around 18.88 BTC at a cost of roughly $1.72 million. The acquisitions were made via open market transactions and funded through internal cash reserves.

In a statement, the company said it views bitcoin as a viable store of value amid global economic uncertainty, inflation concerns and expanding use of cryptocurrencies in investment strategies as well as «its potential to act as an effective hedge against depreciation of fiat currencies.»

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A mysterious crypto trader that made millions trading derivatives this year has been identified as William Parker, a convicted fraudster, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.

Parker made $6.8 million on one position after going long on BTC just before Donald Trump’s weekend announcement of a U.S. strategic crypto reserve, per ZachXBT. He then turned around and made another $9 million going short BTC as the price pump quickly reversed.

All of his positions used 50x leverage — a high risk strategy as it means the liquidation price of a position is close to the entry point.

And it seems as though high risk gambling was this particular trader’s speciality, as on-chain data suggests the wallet frequently interacted with Roobet, Gamdom, Shuffle, BC Game, & Metawin accounts — all crypto-based online casinos.

It turns out that the wallet connected to the trades was set as the drainer fee receiver on a phishing website in January, receiving $17.1K from a phishing draining customer in the same month, ZachXBT revealed.

The investigation then dives into a Solana wallet that was the first to interact with the trader’s wallet. This SOL wallet made withdrawals from four casinos following an input validation exploit on a casino game. ZachXBT reached out to these casinos which provided him with a Telegram account of the user.

That Telegram account yielded verification that the trader was active on-chain at the same time as posting in derivatives trading chats on Telegram.

ZachXBT went one step further — finding a payment sent by the trader to an unnamed person on the HyperLiquid exchange. That transaction led to the uncovering of a phone number linked to a person called William Parker.

Parker last year was convicted and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail in Finland for stealing $1 million from two casinos in 2023 . He was served time in 2010 in the U.K. for multiple fraud charges related to hacking and gambling.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions watchdog removed Tornado Cash from its global blacklist Friday.

The crypto mixing tool has been accused of helping North Korea’s Lazarus Group launder stolen funds from its various hacks and thefts, and the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctioned it — meaning no U.S. person or anyone doing business with the U.S. could engage with it financially — multiple times. However, a federal appeals court ruled last November that OFAC couldn’t sanction Tornado Cash’s smart contracts because they weren’t the «property» of any foreign national.

«We remain deeply concerned about the significant state-sponsored hacking and money laundering campaign aimed at stealing, acquiring, and deploying digital assets for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Kim regime,» a press release from the U.S. Treasury Department said.

Another release from OFAC lists over 100 Ethereum (ETH) addresses that are being removed from the Specially Designated Nationals list, which is the record Treasury uses for maintaining its blacklist.

Roman Storm, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, faces a criminal trial this July over his alleged role developing the smart contracts and protocols. Another developer was charged but has not yet been arrested.

In a statement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. needs to «secure the digital asset industry from abuse by North Korea and other illicit actors.»

In a Monday court filing, referenced by the Treasury in Friday’s statement, the Treasury Department suggested it might not go so far as to remove the sanctions entirely.

«Vacating the designation of Tornado Cash in its entirety could have significantly ‘disruptive consequences’ for national security and law enforcement,» the filing said.

The TORN token jumped 40% in the minutes after Treasury’s statement.

Stephen Alpher contributed reporting.

UPDATE (March 21, 2025, 15:05 UTC): Adds additional detail.