CoinMarketCap Newsletter, June 9: Did the FBI *Really* Hack Bitcoin?

It’s official! El Salvador has become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender following a vote in Congress. A 90-day period of implementation will now commence. The law states all merchants must accept the cryptocurrency as a payment method. Permanent residency will be offered to anyone who invests 3 BTC in El Salvador’s economy. Read more.

After the FBI retrieved a $2.3 million ransom paid to hackers, some critics claimed this is proof Bitcoin can be hacked. The reality is more nuanced than this. BTC transactions are traceable, and we don’t know which methods the FBI used. It’s likely detectives were able to retrieve the crypto because a private key was stored on a centralized server. Here’s why.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has revealed that he has made a lot of money on Dogecoin. He invested $25,000 into the joke cryptocurrency in 2016. When prices went from $0.01 to $0.07 in the space of 24 hours, he sold half of his stash for a cool $4.3 million. Buterin stressed that all of the profits from this sale went to charity. Read more here.

Six crypto investors have filed a class action lawsuit against Coinbase, accusing the exchange of wrongfully locking them out of their accounts — in some cases for months. The group is seeking damages of more than $5 million. They claim this disruption stopped them from trading or withdrawing funds, with some watching helplessly as crypto prices fell. Read more.