The cryptocurrency market had a moderately bullish week, despite the several price fluctuations seen from the top coins according to market cap.
Following the bullish week that passed, the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is now standing at a price of $5,269 against the U.S. Dollar, although it fell down below the $5,000 price point last Friday, April 12.
The second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, is also looking promising.
After a recent upwards momentum, the coin climbed from $162 on April 16 to above the $170 price resistance just two days later.
Currently, Ethereum is striving to remain stable at a price of $171, with over 3 percent gains during the last 24 hours.
At press time most of these coins are in the green, with small gains over the week.
Suspects Connected to $2.3M Darknet Drug Ring Arrested
Three people from New York and New Jersey were recently arrested for allegedly selling large volumes of counterfeit Xanax tablets and other controlled substances to buyers across the U.S. In the process, the defendants allegedly laundered over $2 million earned through their operation.
According to a press release by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, the alleged drug traffickers were arrested on Tuesday and are charged with running a sizable drug store on the dark web, from which they sold narcotics in 43 states.
In the largest pill seizure in New Jersey's history, a police search warrant yielded hundreds of thousands of Xanax pills, a highly popular prescription drug that's growing in demand on the dark web.
Police also seized fentanyl-laced heroin, ketamine, methamphetamine, alprazolam and steroids.
All of the payments for the drugs were made in Bitcoin, amounting to $2.3 million in total.
Prior to their arrest, investigators were monitoring ATM machines around New York and New Jersey and managed to trace the laundered money.
Romanian Cybercriminals Convicted for Cryptojacking
Two Romanian citizens-Bogdan Nicolescu, 36, and Radu Miclaus, 37-were convicted on 21 counts related to illicit cryptocurrency mining, stealing personal data with the intention to sell it on the dark web, conspiracy to commit money laundering, aggravated identity theft, among other related charges.
The indictment alleges that Nicolescu, Miclaus and another co-conspirator started operating back in 2007 after developing proprietary malware distributed through phishing emails.
More than 400,000 computers, mostly in the U.S., were infected and controlled.
The defendants allegedly sent tens of millions of malicious emails through this method.
The trial for the pair lasted for 12 days before they were convicted on the charges. The sentencing of Miclaus and Nicolescu has been set for August 14 this year.
Silk Road 2.0 Creator Jailed
Thomas White, a university dropout and the person behind the infamous Silk Road 2.0. market, was sentenced to five years and four months of jail last Friday.
White managed to launch the site soon after the original Silk Road was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation back in 2013.
He administered Silk Road 2.0 from November 2013 until March 2014, which was used as a marketplace to traffic drugs, hacking tools and child abuse material, among other things.
The sum of money White made remains unknown.
However, the dark web marketplace had around $96 million worth of goods at the moment of closing.
White was arrested once in 2014 and then again in 2017. He pleaded guilty last month.
---------------
That's it for our summary of this week's major crypto news headlines. This is the 42nd post in our crypto news series. Catch up on the latest installments here:
