Rishi Sunak has attended a prayer service for Israel following an unprecedented attack by Hamas – as pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside the Israeli embassy.
The prime minister made an address at a synagogue in north London – and said: “I wanted to come here and stand with you in this hour of grief as we mourn the victims of an utterly abhorrent act of terror.
“To stand with you in this hour of prayer as we think of those held hostage, and your friends and loved ones taking refuge in bomb shelters or risking their lives on the frontline.”
Mr Sunak went on to say that Hamas “are not militants, are not freedom fighters, they are terrorists”.
“Their barbaric acts are acts of evil… teenagers at a festival of peace gunned down in cold blood. Innocent men, women and children raped, abducted, slaughtered. Even a Holocaust survivor taken away as a captive.”
The PM went on to say there was “no question of balance” – and he stood with Israel.
In Westminster earlier, hundreds of people also attended a Jewish community vigil – with security minister Tom Tugendhat and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy among the speakers.
There were chants of “let our children go” by the crowd, and organisers claimed up to 2,000 people were in attendance. Many held photos of Noa Argamani, an Israeli woman who was kidnapped by Hamas militants.
Over in west London, an estimated 5,000 people gathered near the Israeli embassy in Kensington – with some shouting “Free Palestine” and “Israel is a terrorist state”.
Parts of the building were boarded up and a huge police presence was in attendance. A Palestinian flag was draped on top of a lamppost nearby, with a firework fired towards the embassy.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: “We are aware of instances of suspected criminal damage in Kensington High Street.
“Officers are on scene, intervening and gathering evidence. We are actively seeking to locate and arrest those suspected of being involved in any criminal activity.”
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Flares set off outside Israel embassy
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, one of the groups behind the demonstration, said: “The offensive launched from Gaza can only be understood in the context of Israel’s ongoing, decades long, military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land and imposition of a system of oppression that meets the legal definition of apartheid.
“This is the context in which we need to understand the cycle of violence. If violence is to end, both that of the oppressor and the oppressed, then we must all take action to end the root cause – Israeli apartheid and oppression of Palestinians.”
Israel under ‘huge’ rocket barrage – live updates
Police ‘step up patrols’
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Suella Braverman has joined Metropolitan Police officers on a patrol in Golders Green – an area of north London with a prominent Jewish population.
It came hours after a kosher restaurant in the area had its window smashed and cash register stolen, while “Free Palestine” was graffitied on a nearby railway bridge.
Police have said they are investigating the attack
The incident is being investigated as a potential hate crime by the British Transport Police, with local authorities describing it as a “deliberate attempt to intimidate the Jewish community”.
Earlier, Ms Braverman had urged police forces across England and Wales to step up patrols – as past unrest in the Middle East had been used “as an excuse to stir up hatred against British Jewish communities”.
She added: “The barbaric attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists who have massacred civilians and kidnapped the most vulnerable, including the elderly, women and children, is truly sickening.
“The UK stands unequivocally with Israel in her fight against this evil.”
Communities minister Lee Rowley has urged protesters not to attempt to glorify Hamas’s attack on Israel.
He told Sky News that Hamas has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK – and while there is a right to protest, there is not a right to glorify terrorism.
Rishi Sunak has hosted an emergency COBRA meeting on the ongoing situation in Israel and Gaza.
Read more:
Haunting messages left by Israelis taken hostage
How attack caught Israel off guard
What is Hamas, and why is it in conflict?
Number 10 has said it would be “utterly despicable” for anyone to use the events in the Middle East as a “pretext” to threaten or attack Jewish communities in Britain.
Greater Manchester Police has also deployed additional officers to key locations in a bid to step up the protection of communities and respond to any incidents.
Superintendent Rachael Harrison said: “This is an extremely worrying time for some of our communities and our thoughts are with those who are affected.
“We are doing everything we can to keep people safe and ensure they feel reassured by our presence.”
Danny Darlington, Bernard Cowan and Nathanel Young have died
Grieving families have paid tribute to British nationals “murdered” in Israel over the weekend.
They have been named as Bernard Cowan, Danny Darlington and Nathanel Young.
More than 10 Britons are feared dead or missing in the country, Sky News understands.
The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.
While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.
On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.
Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.
Tariffs compound existing mining challenges
Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.
Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.
According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.
Bitcoin hashprice since late 2013. Source: Bitbo
“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.
He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.
Source: Summer Meng
“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.
Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.
BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.
“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Source: jmhorp
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.
Related: Bitcoin mining using coal energy down 43% since 2011 — Report
“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.
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Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.
While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.
OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.
The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.
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Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.
A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.
In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.
CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.
CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI
The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.
CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.
In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.
CLS Global’s profile
According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”
Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.
The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.
Source: CLS Global
According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.
How much wash trading is in crypto?
Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.
According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.
Estimated wash trade volume in crypto. Source: Chainalysis
Related: Russian Gotbit founder strikes $23M plea deal with US prosecutors
Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.
In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.
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