Colombian President Gustavo Petro is said to have accepted over $500,000 worth of digital tokens from a fraudulent cryptocurrency project to fund his 2022 election campaign, according to local media reports. The cryptocurrency project, Daily COP, illegally donated 2 billion Colombian pesos, equivalent to $514,036 in cryptocurrency, to Petro's campaign in 2022, said Omar Hernández, a former contractor for the token project, in an interview with Caracol Radio on Wednesday. According to Hernández, the donation was discussed during a meeting at a bakery in Bogota in February 2022 between Sebastián Betancourt, co-founder of Daily COP, and Petro's campaign manager at the time, Ricardo Roa. They also discussed the "advantages of cryptocurrency as an alternative to the traditional banking system." (The Block)

PANews reported on May 6 that, according to Protos, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) charged and arrested the heir of the jewelry brand Cartier on suspicion of using USDT Money Laundering, and the funds came from drug trafficking. In Miami, law enforcement arrested Maximilien de Hoop Cartier, a direct descendant of Louis Cartier, the founder of the luxury watch, necklace and bracelet maker. Allegedly, Maximilien de Hoop Cartier had collusion with the Colombian drug cartel. In addition to the five Colombian nationals, Cartier tried to import 100 kilograms of cocaine and Money Laundering hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly through USDT transactions over the counter (OTC). They had actually successfully Money Laundering $14.5 million in USDT before being arrested. Currently, Cartier is being held at the Miami Detention Center, while his co-conspirators are being held in a Colombian prison. To carry out his plan, Cartier took control of shorter shell companies and lied to financial institutions that they were in the software and technology business. He then used the accounts of these companies as an unauthorized intermediary for the transfer of coins, according to the complaint. Cartier used USDT, dollars, pesos and other coins to Money Laundering hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crime proceeds.

The Department of Agriculture of the Philippines said on April 26 that the El Niño phenomenon has caused losses of more than 4.3 billion pesos (about 500 million yuan) to the agricultural sector in the Philippines, affecting over 85,000 farmers and fishermen. The most severely affected crops are rice and corn. The Department of Agriculture has taken assistance measures, including distributing fertilizers and providing irrigation, to reduce farmers' losses.

BTC has hit an all-time high in Argentine pesos and has now risen to a record 40 million pesos (ARS) per BTC, thanks to the collapse of the Argentine peso (which has fallen 99% against the US dollar Exchange Rate since 2018), digital assets are becoming a local choice, although in order to maintain purchasing power, Argentines prefer to use popular stable coins such as USDT and USDC to save and exchange local income rather than Bitcoin. （Cryptopotato）

According to the Economic and Commercial Office of the Chinese Embassy in Colombia, the Colombian newspaper La Repubblica reported that the Colombian Ministry of Communications and the Colombian National Learning Service Center (SENA) signed a contract for the construction and operation of the Usme Artificial Intelligence Center in Bogotá. Covering an area of 7,908.49 square meters and with an investment of 50 billion pesos (about 13 million US dollars), the National Learning Service Center needs to be delivered within two years and operated and managed for three years, providing citizens with cloud computing, big data and other related skills training. Colombia's Minister of Communications, Lizcano, said the project would benefit thousands of people and was vital to the country's development. In the future, the central government will cooperate with other municipal governments to build another 100 AI centers to coordinate social resources, development strategies and national construction forces to promote the development of public digital innovation.

When Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, took office this month, he shut down half of his government departments on his first day on the job. The move gave some people hope that he would deliver on his campaign promises – including stabilizing the economy and currency, and even hinting at crypto policies in the future. Unfortunately, he has reneged on his main campaign promise to reduce inflation. Instead, Javier Milei doubled inflation overnight. Within 24 hours of assuming the presidency, he devalued the official exchange rate of the Argentine peso against the dollar from 366.5 pesos per dollar to 800 pesos per dollar.

PANews reported on November 20 that, according to a statement, the Philippine Ministry of Finance sold 15 billion pesos ($270 million) of debt, which will mature in November 2024, according to a statement. These bonds are intended for institutional investors and have a coupon rate of 6.5% per annum. The total amount of bids was 31.426 billion pesos, more than three times the initial offer of 10 billion pesos. However, these tokenized bonds will not be tradable. The bonds will be issued in the form of digital tokens and will be kept in a distributed ledger technology registry, a blockchain-based registry owned by the country's Ministry of Finance. The Ministry will implement a dual registry structure, with the DLT registry operating in parallel with the National Registry of Paperless Securities (NRoSS). Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Eli Remolona said in a statement that while tokenized bonds are being sold to institutional investors, the government wants to sell them to retail buyers "over time."

The Philippines will sell tokenized treasury bonds for the first time next Monday to further develop the domestic debt market, according to Golden Finance. The Philippine Department of Finance said it would sell at least 10 billion pesos ($179 million) in one-year token bonds. The agency canceled the scheduled note auction scheduled for the same day in order to pave the way for the issuance of new bonds. The government said it reserved the right to change the size of the issuance.

Odaily Planet Daily News Since the news that the presidential candidate Javier Milei, who supports Bitcoin, won the primary election on August 13, the price of Bitcoin in Argentina has jumped to a new high, with 1 BTC worth 10.2 million Argentine pesos (ARS). In Argentina, bitcoin has climbed sharply this week, rising 21 percent from ARS 8.4 million to ARS 10.2 million in less than an hour on Monday. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has been steadily increasing in value against the Argentine peso since the end of 2022. According to CoinGecko data, since August 17, 2022, Bitcoin has surged more than 210% against the Argentine peso.

According to PANews on August 12, according to Diarionucleo, the Argentine Federal Police conducted 27 raids across the country, confirmed the identities of 24 people and confiscated encrypted assets (worth about $4,000), including Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT etc. One of the investigations that led to this operation began in February this year, when cybercriminals managed to copy the phone number of the chief operating officer of a major company, gaining access to the company’s bank accounts worth 20 million pesos, which were later transformed through various transactions. for cryptocurrency. As this criminal engineering complicates the monitoring of bank account funds, it required the intervention of teams specialized in cryptocurrency activities from the Buenos Aires provincial public sector and the Argentine Federal Police.

According to news on July 28, the Argentine Ministry of Economy released a list of electricity rates, which will increase electricity costs for cryptocurrency mining. The document stipulates that mining activities will cost 17,240 Argentine pesos per megawatt-hour, which is about $63.3. Residential energy, on the other hand, enjoys a 70% subsidy at about $11.3 per MWh. The revised rates will come into effect on August 1 and will remain in place until October 31, 2023, when they may change again.

Odaily Planet Daily News The Argentine Ministry of Economy released a list of electricity costs, which will increase electricity costs for cryptocurrency mining. The document stipulates that mining activities will cost 17,240 Argentine pesos per megawatt-hour, which is about $63.3. Residential energy, on the other hand, enjoys a 70% subsidy at about $11.3 per MWh. The revised rates will come into effect on August 1 and will remain in place until October 31, 2023, when they may change again.