Mumbai Cops become crypto superheroes 🦸🏽

Good Morning folks!

Welcome to Switch Daily. 😇

Know how you never forget your firsts? Our first school, our first friend, our first kiss, and whatnot. Here is another first to add to this list: Bellatrix, Ethereum’s first step towards the merge. Btw, you can breathe now coz it was super successful. 🥳

Here’s what's on your plate today:

The upcoming Ethereum Merge and Vasil hard fork could not prevent the crypto market from turning red at the end of yesterday’s bearish session. Top crypto coins underperformed, with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Cardano (ADA) leading the way down.

Bitcoin ended the day at $18,794, dropping below the $19,000 level for the first time since 18 June. The total crypto market cap is also affected by the bear market and ended the day at $913.7 billion, down by $49.4 billion for the previous session.

Let's see how your portfolio is performing today - Click here!

When it comes to catching crypto scamsters, Mumbai police are acing the game.😎

After successfully unearthing a ₹200 crore financial scam while trying to close a ₹2 lakh bitcoin mining case in February, the Mumbai Police has once again unearthed a new crypto scam worth over ₹250 Crore. *plays Scam 1992 background score for more effect*.

Here’s what happened — Ritesh Dilip Kumar Sikligar, a.k.a Pancha and Mohan Patil (does not have an alias so let's just call him Patil) had been selling crypto tokens SMP and Magic 3x.

Well, what’s wrong with that? Pretty much everything coz these are fake tokens.

Pancha and Patil lured investors with massive interest rates ranging from 0.5% to 1% per day, depending on the amount invested.😱 For example - If you invested 24,000 in their tokens, they would promise an interest of 0.5% per day and a promise that within 20 months, your money would triple to ₹72,000. It seems they even purchased some property in Mumbai with this money.

After getting wind of this, the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Thane police, a.k.a the guys who investigate financial crimes, set out on a raid in Thane and Powai and arrested Pancha and Patil full Family Man style and arrested the culprits.🫡

It seems these guys have scammed over 1440 investors. The cops had initially estimated the scam to be worth ~₹6 Crore. Turns out, the fraud could have robbed investors of upwards ₹50 - ₹100 Crores. They are currently residing in jail.

Moral of the story: Don’t trust random crypto bruhs. Simply DYOR!

Here is a quick starter pack:

- How to choose a crypto trading platform in India?

- 7 Crypto research tools for crypto investors

LG Electronics has launched a brand new NFT marketplace dubbed LG Arts Labs that will allow users to buy, sell, and trade NFTs directly from their LG smart TVs. The feature is initially enabled for US LG TV owners. Read More.

The Ethereum Merge is officially underway and can be expected to kick in between Sep 13-16. The first step towards the Merge — Bellatrix upgrade was activated yesterday between 5 - 5.30 pm and went through successfully. As the merge countdown started, close to 73% of the Ethereum nodes have marked themselves as merge-ready. Read more.

Russia seems to be moving away from its love-hate relationship with cryptos. The Russian central bank, along with their finance ministry, is considering giving a go-ahead for settling cross-border payments in cryptos, according to a release. Read more.

In a bid to control financial crimes related to crypto, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on Monday said that it has set up a new cryptocurrency division within the country’s police force. The primary task of the unit will be to monitor crypto transactions and focus on money laundering through cryptos. Read more.

Well, that's a wrap for today!

See you, tomorrow folks, 👋