A Florida man known online as "Bitcoin Rodney" pleaded guilty in federal court in Baltimore this week to conspiring to run an unlicensed money transmitting business tied to a $1.8 billion cryptocurrency fraud scheme, according to prosecutors. HyperFund claimed those payouts were funded in part by revenue from large crypto-mining operations that, prosecutors say, never actually existed. By 2021, the company had begun freezing investor withdrawals altogether.