Author: Caitlin Carey

Caitlin is a crypto evangelist with a deep curiosity and passion for learning and writing about everything to do with cryptocurrency. She has a background as a performing artist and songwriter and is a digital media enthusiast, with a bachelor degree in Multimedia.

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News New Zealand Superannuation

Kiwi Fund Manager Sees Aussie Super Funds Holding Crypto Within Five Years

If your entire business model is centred on managing other people’s money and growing capital for the long term, bitcoin is becoming increasingly difficult for investment managers to ignore.

New Zealand’s KiwiSaver fund has invested around five percent of its money into bitcoin. The investment firm purchased bitcoin for the first time in October 2020 when it was trading at around US$10,000, meaning that KiwiSaver has already achieved substantial gains on its BTC holdings despite an almost 50 percent market dip from its all-time high of A$79,800 in April 2021.

KiwiSaver is basically the New Zealand equivalent of an Australian super fund, but with a more progressive charter. The fund is moving with the times by finding innovative ways to maximise returns for its New Zealand clients, and it recognises the long-term advantages of investing in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets.

Australian super funds could be next. KiwiSaver’s chief investment officer James Grigor says he expects competitors to follow suit over the next five years.

If you are happy to invest in gold, you can’t really discount bitcoin.

 James Grigor, KiwiSaver

Bitcoin Being Part of Every Super Fund Portfolio is Inevitable

The eventual adoption of bitcoin as a bread-and-butter asset in the typical retirement fund portfolio is inevitable. All that needs to happen is for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to catch up and start offering a Bitcoin ETF.

If more exchange traded funds (ETFs) started investing in cryptocurrency, then super funds would likely end up holding underlying exposure to it. Australia’s first cryptocurrency ETF is pending and once the ETFs are launched, it will be far easier for investment managers to access crypto rather than having to go via an exchange.

Regulated ETFs will give investment managers the opportunity to buy at an institutional level, retail investors easy access to crypto via traditional equity platforms, and potentially have these ETFs included in broader funds and indexes as a standard part of an investor’s portfolio mix. Overnight, bitcoin can become an everyday asset in a super [fund]’s portfolio.

Byron Goldberg, country manager, Luno Australia

For now, self-managed super funds are the only means by which Australians can hold crypto as part of their superannuation. Until ASIC writes new rules around investing in crypto, the average Joe is left waiting with his future retirement savings invested in more old-school, less trendy investments, such as shares, gold and oil.

In the meantime, you can brush up on current rules for holding crypto in your super and read a Crypto News Australia comparison of five Australian super funds.

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Australia Crypto Exchange Crypto News

Crypto Exchange Gemini Expanding to Australia After Success in Singapore

Gemini is wasting no time in becoming a leader in the Asia Pacific crypto landscape. Its launch into Asia has been a huge success, having acquired a team of talented professionals with industry-specific expertise.

With its APAC headquarters located in Singapore, the Winklevoss twins-led crypto exchange is now expanding to Australia and looking to set up an office base.

To date, our Singapore office has hired a team of over 30 employees across various departments including legal and compliance, engineering, marketing and communications, business development, trading, risk management, talent acquisition, product management, and customer support. If you’re interested in a career in crypto and want to join a dynamic team, we invite you to explore our careers page here.

Jeremy Ng, head of Gemini Asia Pacific

Finding Personnel Could Prove a Stumbling Block

Searching for top talent in Australia could prove a challenge because of a global crypto recruitment shortage as FinTech competes with the top banks to find the right people to fill these jobs.

Gemini is the 14th-largest crypto exchange by volume. By becoming a leader in the APAC region, it could give Binance a real run for its money. Binance is currently the biggest exchange in the game but Gemini could in time challenge it for Australia’s trading volumes.

Categories
Australia Blockchain Crypto News DeFi

$100 Million Aussie Crypto Fund Manager Avoids DeFi But Still Makes 119% Returns

Melbourne-based crypto fund Apollo Capital has outperformed Bitcoin in its year-to-date profits, returning 119 percent compared to Bitcoin’s 19.96 percent YTD growth.

Apollo Capital manages more than A$100 million (US$75 million) and has a couple of key elements to its successful investment strategy:

1. Audited code is a must, and 2. Anonymous development teams are a no-no.

The fund focuses on established projects that have existed for over a year, with a preference for systems running on the well-established Ethereum blockchain. Apollo places importance on selecting only well vetted crypto projects where the code has been audited and deemed legit.

Trust and Traceability

These higher-calibre cryptos have earned their stripes on the blockchain and have a proven history of being trustworthy, whereas anonymous teams often cannot be traced or held accountable if and when it all goes wrong.

Taking these precautions ensures that any crypto Apollo puts its money into has a decent survival rate, lowering the risk of a project being rug-pulled, which is often seen in new crypto projects.

It’s all in the code. Recent DeFi failures such as WhaleFarm and Titanium are classic examples of what can happen with unaudited code. Both projects showed promise until they crashed quickly to zero.

Apollo prefers betting on reputable assets with strong utility such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as newer kids on the block that show promising potential, such as Polkadot, Polygon and Solana.

Risk and Rewards of DeFi

DeFi is a high risk/high reward game, but if it seems too good to be true it probably is and noobs should beware. The most feared outcome for DeFi investors is that they will lose all their money.

The most common reason for a DeFi project going belly up is weaknesses in a contract’s code that leaves it open to exploitation by hackers. Sometimes these “hackers” are actually the project’s developers.

An all-too common scenario in DeFi is the dreaded “rug pull”, where the liquidity is essentially drained by the dodgy team (who remain conveniently anonymous). These faceless masterminds can make off with millions and there’s nothing you can do to get your money back.

The DeFi space is still very new and, as with all things in their infancy, there are always hiccups at the beginning. As we move forward, the demand for decentralised finance only grows stronger and it is coming to us faster.

Australia an International Leader in DeFi

Australian startups are leading the charge. The future of DeFi is perhaps one of the most exciting developments in the crypto space and once the crinkles are ironed out, these platforms could change the world and open up a fairer and more honest financial banking system.

If you are interested in DeFi investments, it is always advisable to be aware of the risks.

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Crypto News Scams

Another South African Ponzi Scheme Exposed for 8,000 Bitcoin

The award for the World’s Biggest Bitcoin Scam of 2020 goes to Mirror Trading International (as declared by Chainalysis). MTI has been ordered into liquidation by South Africa’s Western Cape High Court after being shut down for operating a financial service without a licence and for misleading investors.

An amount of 8,000 Bitcoin (currently worth around US$268 million) has been traced and found in addition to the 1,281 bitcoin already recovered from broker FX Choice. Liquidators believe they will be able to track down more of the bitcoin in question, estimated to be around 29,000 in total.

Liquidators Aiming to Recover as Much BTC as Possible

We obviously want to recover as much money as possible for members, particularly the elderly and the vulnerable. It’s important for members to know that they will not be required to pay into the estate just because they benefited from withdrawals. It merely means their claims will be reduced by the amount that they have already received in terms of withdrawals. If they paid in for example, R30,000, and withdrew R10,000, this means their claim against MTI would be reduced from R30,000 to R20,000.

Riaan van Rooyen, joint liquidator

MTI’s Commissions-Based Franchise Fraud

Mirror Trading International operated as a typical multi-level marketing system pyramid scheme where members were rewarded with commissions of 10 percent on money invested by new referrals, from their “down line”. MTI had an estimated 280,000 accounts by the time it was shut down in December, but liquidators suspect that the real number could be half once bogus accounts in the name of pet goldfish and the family dog are ruled out.

Liquidators will return to court in September to argue MTI should be declared a Ponzi scheme.

In related news from South Africa, Ameer and Raees Cajee – the brothers behind Cape Town-based crypto investment platform Africrypt – disappeared last month under suspicious circumstances along with 69,000 bitcoin belonging to their clients.

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Scams

Esports Influencers With 5 Million Followers Exposed in “Save the Kids” Crypto Scam

FaZe Clan is in a hot mess after an alleged pump and dump scheme was exposed. The eSports group was accused of running one of the worst influencer scams to date, with its Save the Kids charity token $KIDS crashing on launch.

As a result Faze Kay has been dropped from FaZe Clan while other members involved – Jarvis, Nikan and Teeqo – have all been suspended. In an effort to save face, FaZe Clan tweeted:

Save the Kids, a token that vaguely promised a percentage of proceeds raised would go to charity, was pushed by some of the biggest names in the influencer world. FaZe Kay, FaZe Jarvis, FaZe Nikan, FaZe Teeqo, RiceGum and Sommer Ray have over 50 million followers between them.

With just a little digging around, cross-referencing dates, times, tweets, token sales and a close look at a contract’s tokenomics, there were adequate grounds for suspecting that a potential rug pull was on the cards.

FaZe Kay or FaZe Rug?

Within 24 hours of the Save the Kids launch, FaZe Kay sold all but a few of his 6.2 million $KIDS tokens. The proof is there on the blockchain, in black and white.

Watch the whole Coffeezilla Video below.

Save the Kids was a crypto promoted by influencers Faze Kay, Faze Jarvis, Faze Teeqo, Faze Nikan and Ricegum

Do as I Say, Don’t Do as I Do

FaZe Kay has been the ambassador for many other altcoins that have suffered a similar fate (Gamesafe, SafeGalaxy and Moonportal, for example). After marketing the token or coin, he dumps his holdings immediately after launch, retaining a tidy profit.

YouTuber Coffeezilla asked ‘SomeOrdinaryGamers’ to estimate what kind of profit one could expect to make from a Save the Kids kind of pump-and-dump scheme. By multiplying the number of tokens sold by the price at the time of sale, he calculated that a dodgy influencer could pull an easy US$30,000. For other similar scams, the takeaway could be up to US$60,000 per promo.

It appears that the project boasting “anti-whale” protection actually had classic rug-pull code written into its tokenomics. The contract was rewritten in the final moments before launch, allowing sellers to dump $KIDS tokens after only one minute (from being 24 hours after purchase). Save the Kids developer Lucas said, “That’s what I was told to do” when confronted with the fact that this project had all the hallmarks of a malicious pump and dump. Lucas said he believed the influencers were “in this from the beginning“ and wanted the code changed “probably because they wanted to dump right away“.

FaZe Kay has denied making any money from Save the Kids and maintains that the project was 100 percent in the spirit of charitable giving.

This particular instance isn’t the first of its kind. Earlier this year, an Instagram influencer scammed followers out of US$2.5 million in a dodgy Bitcoin scheme.

Categories
Australia Crypto News E-commerce

EFTPOS Australia to Use ConnectID to Verify Identity When You Pay

Move over KYC, connectID is here. Powered by EFTPOS, connectID is an identification hub for the entire Australian identity ecosystem. Think of it as an extension of Australia Post’s Digital iD app combined with your Digital Licence or Proof of Age card and loyalty points program all wrapped into one.

With online shopping and mobile payments part of everyday life nowadays, issues such as online fraud and identity theft have become a real headache for individuals, banks and businesses alike. The constant need to fill in forms and repeatedly upload personal information for proof of identity has only added to the pain. ConnectID aims to streamline the process, offering a neatly packaged one-stop-shop app with identity verification and KYC built in.

In Australia there is a real need to facilitate identity verification methods to help reduce instances of fraud and identity theft, and improve ‘digital trust’ between customers and vendors. We aim to seamlessly combine identity and payments transactions within the same flow and create even better customer experiences.

Rob Allen, EFTPOS ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’

Created with assistance from identity and authentication provider SecureKey, connectID is designed to work within the federal government’s Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF) and the financial industry’s TrustID framework, as well as recognising emerging international standards in distributed digital identity credentials.

Benefits of connectID

  • Manage risk by knowing who you’re selling to
  • Protect yourself against fraudulent transactions
  • Gain customers’ trust with a simple, straightforward experience

EFTPOS says it is providing Australian businesses with a trusted, reliable and cost-effective infrastructure, ensuring all transactions flow quickly and easily through the Australia-based identity hub.

Financial Services, Online Stores and Government Departments to Adopt connectID

Powered by EFTPOS, ConnectID acts as the middleman to connect identity requesters such as financial services, online stores and government departments with every online identity issuer in Australia. Consumers and digital merchants will have secure, private, easy and trusted access to any identity provider in Australia.

Identity providers in turn will be able to offer an additional trust-based service to their customers and connectID enables each of them to talk to the others seamlessly.

Watch the video below to see how connectID works

As previously reported by Crypto News Australia, EFTPOS has also teamed up with Hedera Hashgraph blockchain to develop a micropayments proof-of-concept. This ultimately could lead to the deployment of blockchain technologies in running autonomous vehicles or powering smart cities.

Categories
Crypto News NFTs

OK, Katy Perry is Back in Crypto, Time to Sell …

Colourful pop queen Katy Perry will make history as the first artist to release NFTs with live content from her upcoming Las Vegas residency in December. She will also acquire a minority share of the proceeds in partnership with Theta Labs.

The global pop star and her talent agency – Creative Artists Agency – will launch the collection on Theta Network’s NFT marketplace ThetaDrop. Powered by the Theta protocol, ThetaDrop is a native blockchain that differs from other NFT platforms in that it was built specifically for media and entertainment content.

Katy Perry

The one-of-a-kind digital collectibles will feature content from Perry’s upcoming show Play, coming to the brand-new Resorts World Las Vegas Hotel in December.

I can’t wait to dive in with the Theta team on all the exciting and memorable creative pieces, so my fans can own a special moment of my residency that’s both a digital collectible as well as an IRL [in real life] experience.

Katy Perry

Fans can register for the first drop at Katy.ThetaDrop.com.

Last Time Katy Entered Crypto We Saw a Big Crash

A post shared by KATY PERRY (@katyperry)

Is it time to sell all your crypto in fear of a repeat crash of 2018, or is it a chance to load up on your Theta bags?

Decentralised live video streaming is here and in extremely high demand as platforms such as Theta and newcomer Aioz fight it out to become the next YouTube. Aiming to offer better streaming solutions, these platforms service the huge worldwide audience of consumers looking to watch ever-increasing amounts of video content across the web.

The NFT movement, and its adoption by artists around the globe, is bringing blockchain technology to centre stage. Digital art re-packaged and sold to superfans as rare collectible NFTs is the latest offering from the music industry and will no doubt be a lucrative one. It’s an exciting time for crypto as it continues to cross over into the mainstream in unexpected ways.

Categories
Australia Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

Australia’s Most Valuable Historic Photo Collection to be Auctioned as NFTs

A treasure trove of more than 100,000 original photographs dating back to the 1880s and spanning five generations has been found in the spare bedroom of a Melbourne family home, hidden under some kids’ bunk beds. The entire catalogue, estimated to be worth millions, will be auctioned by Lloyds Australia.

From Ned Kelly to Phar Lap … and the Queen

The collection includes original glass plate negatives of some rare historical gems, including pictures of Ned Kelly’s armour taken during his trial in 1800, the 1915 Gallipoli landing, Queen Elizabeth II (when she was just a princess), and famous racehorse Phar Lap winning the Melbourne Cup in  1930.

Lloyds Auctions Australia

The Rose Stereograph Company Collection, described by Lloyds as “one of the most important photographic collections in Australia if not the world“, is to be auctioned online, complete with NFTs to offer blockchain proof of ownership.

According to Lee Hames, Chief Operations Officer for Lloyds Auctions, “This has to be one of the most important photographic collections in Australia, if not the world.”

There are original glass negatives in this collection that capture the very first moments of not only Australian but world history and some that may even change the course of history. We believe this to be a world first to offer these tangible original glass plates which rival any modern photographic resolution.

Lee Hames, Lloyds Auctions CEO
M.V. Duntroon & Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1 of 1, Glass Plate Negative 1:1, NFT 1:1, original size: 8.8 x 13.9cm. Original negative & minted NFT are both included in this auction. Lloyds Auctions Australia

Collections Viewable Online

M.V. Duntroon & Sydney Harbour Bridge (above) is just one moment in time from the prestigious collection. Collections such as this one will be viewable online as the art world continues to adopt NFTs and digital gallery exhibitions.

Customers will be able to bid for ownership on both the Lloyds platform and in cryptocurrency on leading NFT marketplaces for rare digital collectibles. Winning bidders will receive the minted NFT along with a tangible one-of-one original glass plate negative.

Just last week, Lloyds announced it would accept major cryptocurrencies as payment for collector or sports cars.

Categories
Binance Crypto News Education Gemini Jobs

Crypto Recruitment Shortage: Exchanges are Competing with Banks For Top Talent

If you’ve ever thought of working in crypto, now is the time to reskill and get hired. The crypto industry is growing at such a rapid pace it can’t keep up with the demand for new employees to fill hundreds of open positions.

There are employment opportunities everywhere right now in crypto, with the world’s biggest exchanges posting new positions daily.

“We are hiring aggressively,” Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said by email this week.

We see the industry growing exponentially on a year-to-year basis, and we need to scale our team to cope with it. We are a geo-equal-opportunity employer. We don’t mind where people are, as long as they produce results.

CZ, Binance CEO

Binance Has 800 Positions Up For Grabs

Binance is the biggest exchange and currently has over 800 positions advertised worldwide through its LinkedIn employment portal. Winklevoss twins-led Gemini plans to expand its Singapore team from 30 to 50 by December. Hong Kong-based Crypto.com currently lists more than 200 openings, more than half of them based in Asia.

According to Neil Dundon, founder of recruitment agency Crypto Recruit, curiosity regarding jobs in crypto has expanded about five to 10 times in the past nine months. Despite that popular interest, however, finding candidates with relevant experience is proving difficult, resulting in some companies being forced to lower their expectations.

A single job posting can attract hundreds of applicants. In terms of length of experience, one or two years is good enough these days. The skills shortage is so bad at the moment that companies are casting a wider net.

Neil Dundon, Crypto Recruit

Just as the best NFL or EPL football players are snapped up by teams with the deepest pockets, highly skilled crypto candidates are being poached by the banks with the biggest wallets: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are now offering crypto and trading services to their clients and have scouted top talent to fill these positions.

While investment banks are recruiting the best in the business to come and work for them, smaller companies are having a hard time competing, finding it difficult to source people with crypto experience.

Gemini Job Benefits Include Unlimited Vacation Leave and a Profit-Sharing Program

To sweeten the deal and entice the best employees, Gemini’s APAC managing director Jeremy Ng said the company is considering offering benefits including unlimited vacation leave and a profit-sharing program to attract talent globally.

Even big tech companies such as Facebook and online retail giant Amazon have big plans to expand into crypto. While Facebook works on its Diem token (formerly known as Libra), Amazon recently posted a blockchain job listing for a Head of Product.

The long and the short of it:

  • There are hundreds of new jobs in crypto being listed every day
  • There are not enough job candidates with crypto credentials to meet the demand for these positions
  • Big banks are scooping up all the top talent for themselves
  • Crypto exchange Gemini is sweetening the deal by offering unlimited vacation leave and a profit-sharing program to attract talent globally
  • Roles for developers and customer support are areas of high demand.

Blockchain Collective, an educational body for blockchain learning, plans to meet the high demand for crypto job candidates by partnering with TAFE Queensland to offer an advanced diploma in Applied Blockchain.

Categories
Blockchain China Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrency Law

Censorship Freedom: Hong Kong Newspaper Launches on the Blockchain Using DeFi Protocols

Hong Kong activists are scurrying to preserve the back catalogue of pro-democracy newspaper the Apple Daily by uploading thousands of articles onto the censorship-proof blockchain platform ARWeave.

ARWeave is a decentralised file storage platform that breaks down a file into bits of information distributed over an open network of anonymous computers around the world. It describes itself as a “collectively owned hard drive that never forgets“.

After a 26-year run, the Apple Daily was forced to cease publication on June 23 after being targeted by a national security crackdown for breaching “vaguely formulated offences“ as China’s grip over free speech tightens.

Five Executives Arrested, Assets Frozen

Last week, 500 officers raided the newspaper’s headquarters, going through reporters’ notes and other journalistic material. Police froze assets of companies linked to the Apple Daily and arrested five executives.

Following the raid, the Apple Daily closed its website and erased all its social media platforms. In anticipation of popular demand for its final print run, the paper printed 1 million copies, more than 10 times its usual run.

Staff members of Apple Daily and its publisher Next Digital with the final edition at the paper’s headquarters in Hong Kong, June 24. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Democratic Leaders Condemn Closure of Apple Daily

The shutdown is the most serious blow yet to Hong Kong’s media freedoms. US President Joe Biden described it as “a sad day for media freedom in Hong Kong and around the world“, adding that the Apple Daily had been “a much-needed bastion of independent journalism in Hong Kong“.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab asked China to respect the agreement signed in 1997 committing to continue allowing free media in Hong Kong after the colony’s reversion to China from British rule.

We certainly view what’s been happening with the closure of the Apple Daily and the arrest of journalists very, very seriously. We call on China to respect the terms that it freely signed up to and we think that’s a matter of trust as well as important for the people of Hong Kong.

Dominic Raab, British Foreign Secretary

Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai has been behind bars since last December over unauthorised rallies during Hong Kong’s mass pro-democracy protests in 2019. Lai is facing three national security charges, including colluding with a foreign country, and is already serving several jail sentences.

As the fight for free speech in Hong Kong continues, blockchain technology is playing a vital role in advocating for human rights in China – providing a platform where repressed citizens can resist centralised power by accessing decentralised networks that are immune from state censorship and impossible to silence.

New Blockchain Platform LikeCoin Embraced

Programmer Kin Ko has been building a decentralised registry called LikeCoin, which helps internet users identify metadata (creator, date, time, location, version) of content through a unique code called an International Standard Content Number (ISCN), similar to a book’s distinctive International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Any changes made to content would be recorded and tracked through a digital fingerprint. LikeCoin has been embraced by pro-democracy activists such as Citizen News, already using the platform to catalogue its online images.

The open-source transparency and immortality of blockchain technology poses a grave threat to those in power in China, who are desperate to keep authoritarian control over the narrative of the country’s media.