The U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Funnull Technology, a provider of technology for websites allegedly involved in so-called pig butchering scams, and two cryptocurrency wallets said to be linked to Huione Group.

Philippines-based Funnull also directly facilitated a scam involving virtual currencies resulting in over $200 million in victim losses, OFAC said in a Thursday press release. In addition, the company is alleged to have acquired several IP addresses from mainstream cloud service providers to sell to cybercriminals. The sanctions also cover a Funnull administrator, Liu Lizhi.

The majority of cryptocurrency investment scam websites reported to the FBI are linked to Funnull,» Blockchain security firm Elliptic said in a blog post, which also identified the sanctioned wallets as being linked to Huione.

The wallets on Ethereum and Tron received funds directly from Huione Pay, part of Huione Group, Elliptic said. Huione was labeled as a «primary money laundering concern» by FinCEN earlier this month.

The two addresses received more than $4 million in total, according to Elliptic.

Hong Kong-based trading platform HashKey Group has announced the listing of XRP XRP for professional investors.

The company said in a tweet that spot XRP/USD markets are now live, although the trading pair notched just $4,000 in volume in the first hour after listing.

HashKey Group is licensed by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and targets institutional investors in Asia.

The listing comes after XPR was selected as one of five assets to be included in included in the U.S. strategic crypto reserve.

HashKey Group cited XRP’s resurgence in late 2024 as a catalyst for this cycle’s first altcoin season, and in April it rolled out Asia’s first XRP tracker fund in partnership with Ripple.

“HashKey Capital has been a valued partner in expanding institutional access to XRP across Asia, » Fiona Murray, Ripple’s managing director of APAC said in a press release. «

From launching the region’s first XRP Tracker Fund to facilitating XRP’s listing on HashKey Exchange, our collaboration reflects a shared commitment to real-world utility. We look forward to advancing that momentum through responsible innovation.”

XRP is currently trading at $2.19, down 4.4% over the past 24 hours following a wider crypto market sell-off that has seen bitcoin slump to $105,000.

The crypto market mood was sombre Friday, with XRP XRP losing key support alongside losses in market leader bitcoin and other major tokens, as traders awaited the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the core PCE.

Payments-focused XRP dipped below the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) for the first time since April 10, indicating a strengthening of downward momentum. Prices fell below $2.20, registering 4.6% losses on a 24-hour basis, according to data source TradingView.

The decline followed reports of increasing demand for XRP as a corporate Treasury asset.

Prices for BTC, the premier digital asset by market value, briefly fell below $105,000 during European hours, extending overnight losses to trade nearly 3% lower on a 24-hour basis.

BTC’s losses followed a $358 million net outflow from the 11 spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) Thursday, their first since May 13 and highest single-day tally since March 11, according to data source SoSoValue. Renewed trade war fears also weighed over the sentiment.

Other majors, such as ETH, SOL, and DOGE, posted larger losses, with smaller tokens like OP, ARB, BONK, and PEPE falling by over 10% each, according to data source Coingecko.

Focus on U.S. core PCE

Consumer prices, represented by the personal consumption expenditure index, rose 0.15% on a monthly basis in April, bringing the annual inflation rate down to 2.2% from 2.3% in March, according to economists surveyed by FactSet.

The core PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, is forecast to have risen 0.12% on a monthly basis and 2.5% on an annual basis.

Another good month for inflation could raise Fed rate cut bets, boding well for BTC and other assets.

«All eyes now turn to the Core PCE data due today, which could reignite bullish sentiment if inflation shows signs of easing,» Valentin Fournier, Lead Research Analyst at BRN, said in an email.