Moonday Morning: South Korea lost $2.3 billion to cryptocurrency crimes over last 2 years

Welcome to Monday, and welcome to another Moonday Mornings, Hard Fork’s wrap-up of the weekend’s top cryptocurrency and blockchain headlines.

Let’s take a look.

1. Damage from cryptocurrency-related crimes in South Korea over the last two years is estimated to be $2.3 billion (2.7 trillion Won), according to government data, The Korea Herald reports.

2. In an interview with CNBC, eBay’s CEO, Devin Wening, said that the company is involved in the Libra Association because “crypto and blockchain have great promise… [Libra] is promising and it’s worth a try… and could do immense good.” Well, here’s to hoping.

3. Iran’s government has agreed to a set of electricity tariffs for those mining cryptocurrencies, Financial Tribune reports. Exact prices haven’t been disclosed but will replicate export prices which vary inline with supply. This comes after a continued battle with the illicit use of state-subsidized electricity for cryptocurrency mining.

4. Another India-based cryptocurrency exchange has shut down. The founder of Cryptokart, Gaurang Poddar, announced the news on his LinkedIn profile last week. He claimed falling interest in cryptocurrency and a supposed lack of government efforts to regulate the industry as the main drivers behind his business’ failure, New Indian Express reports.

5. Someone in South Korea tried to trademark “Samsung Coin” last week. Only, it has nothing to do with the Korean tech giant, CoinDesk reports. The filing was made by a person using the name Kim Nam-jin. Nice try Kim.

Well, there you have it. Another weekend’s headlines caught up with, now go get on with your week in peace.