Author: José Oramas

José is a journalist and translator with a keen interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

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Blockchain Cryptocurrencies Institutions

Banca Generali To Introduce Cryptocurrency Services In 2021 As More Financial institutions Embrace Cryptocurrencies

State and private financial institutions are embracing Bitcoin instead of gold, as traditional fiat devalues and cryptocurrencies are becoming better stores of value. Just recently, Banca Generali, a major private bank in Italy, announced its plans to introduce cryptocurrency services in 2021, by providing their customers cryptocurrency custody.

Generali announced on December 15 a new corporate and commercial partnership agreement with Conio, a fintech firm that serves over 150,000 cryptocurrency portfolios for its customers. The bank is injecting $14 million into Conio’s capital as well.

We predict that the future structure of financial markets will be influenced by blockchain technology, which continues to enable innovation in cryptocurrencies and many other areas of the financial ecosystem.

Stated Generali CEO, Gian Maria Mossa.

Banks Embracing Cryptocurrency

Globally, banks are turning their views towards cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, considering the tremendous growth that crypto has had in the finance realm these last months.

Even some central banks, like the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve, are considering integrating cryptocurrency services alongside traditional systems into their services — although to a more limited extend at first.

Recently in Switzerland, Sygnum, a major cryptocurrency bank, had successfully tokenized its shares — using a tokenization platform called Desygnate.

We are excited to be the first bank in the world to tokenize our shares. This is an important milestone towards fulfilling our mission of creating more direct and efficient access to ownership and value. This includes new engagement models with our clients and partners, and ultimately providing liquidity for our trusted shareholders.

Mathias Imbach, co-founder of Sygnum and CEO at Desygnate.

Even the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, suggested that gold could “suffer for years” now that institutional investors are embracing Bitcoin as a replacement to their stores of funds.

And Morgan Stanley, one of the most relevant multinational banks, called bitcoin a hedge fund against fiat inflation, with the potential to replace the U.S Dollar.

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DeFi Ethereum

CEO of DeFi Insurer, Nexus Mutual, Loses US$ 8M In A Targeted Attack

An unknown attacker drained 370,000 NMX tokens from Hugh Karp, CEO and founder of the DeFi insurance firm Nexus Mutual. The amount stolen is equivalent to US$ 8M.

The firm announced the attack on Monday 14 UTC. The subject gained remote access to Karp’s personal computer and modified the Metamask extension, which facilitates web applications to communicate with the Ethereum blockchain.

Immediately, the attacker, who apparently is also a member of the firm, drained an amount equivalent to $8 million by implementing a different extension — tricking Karp into signing a different transaction, and sending the funds to the attacker’s address.

According to the investigations, the attacker is a member of the firm, and only Mutual members can receive NMX. But the firm hasn’t “completely identified” the subject. Although, weeks ago, the attacker completed a KYC (Know Your Customer) — a process that financial institutions do to verify their client’s identity.

The personal address from Hugh Karp, taken from Etherscam.io

The attacker has already converted some of the stolen 370,000 NMX tokens into 334ETH — which is equivalent to US$ 200,000.

Besides, according to data from Coinmarketcap, the price for the NMX token fell a considerable amount since the announcement was made, now at -18,40% by the time of writing.

NMX token chart, from coinmarketcap.
Categories
Australia Bitcoin Blockchain

Australian MetaStreme To Improve Blockchain Technology With RouterSV

MetaStreme, an Australian e-wallet and Bitcoin interface platform, recently proposed a new project prototype called “RouterSV” — a tool that will be designed to improve network security by publishing the traffic logs on the Bitcoin blockchain.

How Does It Work?

RouterSV uses the Syslog standard to send data logs collected in routers and other network devices to the Bitcoin SV ledger. According to MetaStreme’s director, Paul Chieri, by publishing the log files, the transaction records would become permanently auditable, and allow network administrators to share valuable data records with each other.

RouterSV takes logs collected by a router or other network devices and stores them to a syslog server which then writes that data to the BSV ledger. Syslog is a commonly used protocol by routers, servers, switches, and other network devices. It allows the collection of system and security logs of multiple devices to be collected into a single database.

Stated Paul Chieri to Coingeek

In a recent interview, Chieri stated that the company is already using its own system to publish the traffic logs to the BSV blockchain. The director added that RouterSV is under design, and it’s an open project if people experienced with Syslog records are interested in joining in its development.

MetaStreme is powered by Bitcoin SV (BSV) protocol – which enables other programs to interact with the BSV network through an API (Application Programming Interface) — a software intermediary that allows two applications to interact with each other.

Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) originated from a hard fork from BTC Cash. The result is a cryptocurrency with its own separated blockchain. The BSV network has a number of advantages, such as scalability — with bigger blocks of 128MB, lower fees, and better network development.

Categories
Australia Institutions Trading

SelfWealth, Australia’s Leading Trading Platform, Launches US trading In Their ASX Portfolio

Australia’s low-fee leading trading platform, SelfWealth, will launch a beta-test program with a few selected members to integrate US trading before Christmas 2020 — on December 14, with a new mobile app for Android and iOS.

More than 60,000 Aussie investors will have direct access to all major US exchanges through their SelfWealth account. The Melbourne-based broker will add the US trading account into their ASX portfolios.

Pre-registered traders will have access to popular American stocks like Facebook, Amazon, Tesla — and more than 7,500 + other financial instruments to choose from, a list which SelfWealth plans to expand in the future.

Competitive FX fees

The US trading launch is coming with a $9.50 USD flat fee per trade. Unlike banks, which can charge up to 1.00% SelfWealth implements competitive FX rates, charging only 0.60 % when transferring to or from USD.

For years, SelfWealth has been growing strongly off the back of disillusioned investors that have been overpaying to invest. Now, they can invest in the US and the ASX in one convenient place at a reasonable price.

– SelfWealth’s Managing Director Rob Edgley in a public statement.

Edgley underlined the support of SelfWealth clients, who have shown increased interest in the new US trading launch and additional products.

“Our hard-working team will now turn their efforts towards additional functionality across the trading platform and new products that our clients have been asking for.”

According to Edgley, Aussie investors don’t need multiple trading accounts and apps to access US stock markets. SelfWealth members will have a US cash account to help them avoid per-trade foreign exchange fees.

Categories
Crypto News Cryptocurrencies DeFi Ethereum

Visa Partners With Circle to Connect Its 60M Merchants With Ethereum-based US Dollar Coins

Visa is taking a step further from traditional payments and jumping in on two major cryptocurrency projects. The first one is the recent announcement of the integration of the US Dollar Coin, an Ethereum-based stablecoin created by Circle Internet Financial, into Visa’s fintech FastTrack Program.

Visa will work with Circle to integrate the Ethereum protocol to its customers — by issuing cards for USDC payments. Now more than 60M merchants can send and receive USDC whenever they want. Visa won’t take custody of the digital currency.

Visa integrates the Ethereum-based USDC as ETH upgrades to Eth2, making it a more efficient and faster blockchain protocol. The company believes that its 60M base customers can benefit greatly from this new upgrade. Now traders are hoping for a major bullish uptrend for the next week.

No More Cash Or Miles: It’s Bitcoin now

The second project is with BlockFi, a New York-based startup that specializes in cryptocurrency-backed loans and savings accounts. Visa is launching in early 2021 a credit card that rewards its users with Bitcoin — instead of traditional money or miles.

The new card is issued by Evolve Bank & Trust and has an annual fee of $200.

“We’re excited to add credit cards to our suite of products and expand Bitcoin’s accessibility to a broader set of consumers. This card makes it simple and risk-free for people to gain or increase exposure to a new asset class without changing their spending or investing habits.”

Zac Prince, CEO of BlockFi said in a statement.

Visa currently has 25 cryptocurrency wallets integrated into its system. And as Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are becoming wildly popular every day, Visa expects to serve the cryptomarket customers with these two projects — by enhancing new payment methods and providing crypto-rewards.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

$860 Million In Crypto Wiped Out in a Single day — An Even More Volatile Market Ahead

These past two weeks have been interesting for the cryptomarket world: an overall bullish trend and a new all-time high of $19,918 for Bitcoin since 2017 — more financial institutions savagely acquiring BTC, famous investors highlighting crypto in general and, even more insane: at least $860 million in Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other alts were liquidated this Tuesday, in just a few hours.

But Bitcoin takes the lead on ramping liquidations — recent data from Bybt shows how exchanges were massively liquidating trading positions after BTC dropped from 19,900 to 18,000 — which means that more than 80,500 long traders sold off their futures to avoid bigger losses.

Futures Liquidation Data chart: Source: Bybt

Binance Takes The Lead

Binance is the current platform with the most liquidated positions — and long positions were 85 % of that sum. In a single order, a trader lost $6 million on the Singapore-based Huobi-BTC, which is the largest liquidation in a single order.

This Tuesday, investors were looking to hit $20,000 on Bitcoin after the price surged again at the beginning of this week. Sadly, it never went above 19,918. This second drop — from 19,900 to 18,000 — caused more than $370 million in liquidations in less than a single hour.

Now, in Bitcoin alone, the number appears to go as high as $720M at the moment of writing.

Exchange Liquidation Data. Source: Bybt

“It Was Just A Bull Trap”

However, some traders think that this was just a correction, and a more volatile market is ahead, just as Gleen Goldman, lays it out on his Twitter account:

$20,000 is a major resistance level, and we are now seeing volumes that are rarely traded. There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the next move of Bitcoin, so traders must take measures before entering the market again.

Categories
Australia Crypto News DeFi Hackers

Simon Green Warns About Escalating Cyberattacks Following The Australian Levitas Capital Hack

Simon Green, the CEO of Palo Alto Networks JAPAC, stated that cyberattacks are a major threat to the digital transformation of businesses in the Australian economy, as well as global. This year, hackers have stolen more than $ 100 million in DeFi projects alone.

In an online interview with Skynews Australia, Green Addressed the dangers of the escalating amount of cyberattacks, in several companies related to fintech and finance in general — especially following this last week’s attack on the Sydney-based hedge fund Levitas Capital.

As more Australian businesses are forced to go digital, the growth of cyberattacks is becoming a major concern. Green believes that during the pandemic, these attacks have increased.

A rapid increase in cyber threats has been seen, particularly during the pandemic. The environment has changed dramatically, particularly over the last nine months. People are now sitting in their homes and spending a lot of time on digital means. Whether it is in personal or business means, cyber threat is becoming an increasingly large problem.

Stated Green for Skynews Australia

Levitas Capital, Victim of a Hack Spree

A fake Zoom invite link shut down the Australian hedge fund Levitas Capital, and cost it almost US$ 8,7 million in losses after a hacker sent fake invoices on behalf of the firm Australian Catholic Super — their major client, to withdraw its funds.

Levitas Capital is the latest victim of a cybercrime spree that affected almost 2000 other Australian businesses with similar hacks this year. This prompted an ongoing investigation by the Federal Police called “Operation Dolos”.

Fintech and Finance Platforms Targeted by Hackers

A lot of money is flying into the world of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and hackers are taking advantage of the weak points of DeFi projects, using scams like flash loans through Smart Contracts.

This way, hackers have stolen more than US$ 100 million from several DeFi platforms this year alone. The most recent one is Pickle Finance — the cybercriminals hacked its protocol for US$ 19,7 million worth in DAI Stablecoin — and cybersecurity incidents cost Australian businesses around US$ 29 billion each year.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

The Wall Street Journal Discusses Bitcoin And The Adoption Of Cryptocurrencies By Institutional Investors

It has been an exciting two months for the cryptocurrency world, especially for Bitcoin. Since it rallied 80 % in just two months, it has settled new market capitalization records and capturing a lot of mainstream media attention. Now BTC lands on the homepage of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

In a new report, WSJ discusses the embrace of Bitcoin among institutional traders — also highlighting how BTC gained the attention of famous multimillionaires investors, like Paul Tudor Jones and Stan Druckenmiller — both speaking highly positively about Bitcoin over the past few months.

The Wall Street Journal emphasizes how retail investors, hedge funds, and other companies are hungry for buying and holding cryptocurrency — especially BTC.

The Rapid Growth and Adoption of Bitcoin

More institutions and online financial services are embracing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies every day — giving them a big boost in their prices. But also making them more scarce: Grayscale, 3iQ, and ETC Group alone have acquired over 24,000 BTC. That’s roughly translated to $457.764.000,00 million.

This week, BTC reached a level of USD 18,900 (25,700 AUD) on the daily chart, trading as high as 19,400 — prices that are rarely traded.

Source: Binance

As more high-net-worth investors and financial institutions buy Bitcoin, BTC replaces gold as a store of value, breaking their correlation.

Gold vs Bitcoin correlation

Public figures like Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal, also spoke about Bitcoin, stating his bullish position with BTC and how cryptocurrencies are moving away from being “just an asset“:

As paper money slowly dissipates and disappears from how people are using transactions, central banks especially on the retail side will need to replace paper money with forms of digital fiat currency.

Stated Schulman for CBNC.

PayPal made a considerable impact in the cryptocurrency world these past months — the company recently removed its waitlist for US residents to buy and hold crypto-assets — and together with Cash App, they have accumulated over 70 % of newly mined Bitcoins.

Categories
Australia Payments

Australian Digital Banking Platform, Novatti, Expands Across 179 Countries By Partnering With UnionPay

Novatti, an Australian fintech company, has expanded and improved its payments network — by partnering with UnionPay, a global card payment company.

Now Novatti, a leading digital banking platform, listed in the Australian Stock Market (ASX) — has expanded its payments network service across 179 countries by partnering with UnionPay — which has 8.4 cards issued globally. Driving immense growth for the company.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with UnionPay, a leading global card payment company. Through this partnership, Novatti will drive continued growth in our payment processing business, delivering further value from our existing platforms and technology.” 

Managing Director of Novatti, Peter Cook, stated in a press release.

Only in Australia, 90 % of ATMs accept UnionPay, as well as 80 % of sale terminals, and major retailers such as Cole and Target. This association will expand Novatti’s growing list of global partners, like Visa, Google Pay, and Decta. 

Novatti Is Not The Only Improving Australian Fintech Platform 

Another Australian fintech platform that recently improved its payment services is RaleyPay — a cryptocurrency exchange that implemented a simple and efficient method by allowing their users to pay their bills or make online shop integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce & Magento, all with Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Now Australians can buy Bitcoin or Ethereum with AUD via PayID or bank transfer — or spend their cryptocurrencies on E-commerce sites.

RaleyPay converts the crypto transactions to fiat, at the moment the transaction is made. This method bridges the gap between traditional fiat and the expanding market of the crypto world.

Categories
Crypto Exchange Scams

Scammers attack GoDaddy-hosted Cryptocurrency Platforms

Several cryptocurrency platforms hosted by GoDaddy have suffered attacks led by fraudsters throughout this week — by phishing scams aimed at GoDaddy’s employees.

The first attack started on November 13 when Liquid — a cryptocurrency trading platform — stated in a blog post about a security incident and data breach. According to a report from KrebsOnSecurity, the fraudsters tricked the employees into transferring control over several cryptocurrency domains to them.

Mike Kayamori, CEO of Liquid, stated that GoDaddy incorrectly transferred account control to a malicious actor:

“On the 13th of November 2020, a domain hosting provider “GoDaddy” that manages one of our core domain names incorrectly transferred control of the account and domain to a malicious actor.”

Stated Kayamori in a blog post.

Kayamori added that the scammers changed the DNS records and took control of several internal email accounts — compromising Liquid’s infrastructure by gaining access to data storage.

NiceHash Under Attack

NiceHash, a cryptocurrency mining service, was the second GoDaddy-based platform that went under attack. The platform reported on November 18 that the settings for its registration records were changed without previous authorization.

The same thing with Liquid — the scammer changed the DNS records. Immediately, NiceHash froze its customer’s funds for 24 hours. Later, the service stated that their records were changed back to their previous settings and remained safe.

“At this moment in time, it looks like no emails, passwords, or any personal data was accessed but we do suggest resetting your password and activate 2FA security”.

stated NiceHash on their site.

Phishing is a type of online scam. The scammers impersonate legitimate organizations via email, text message, advertisement, to other companies, institutions, and people in general — in order to steal important information that could lead to the withdrawal of millions of dollars or any type of damages.

This phishing attack is not the first one to put GoDaddy in the spotlight:

  • In March, a phish hooked a customer service employee from GoDaddy, — compromising the brokering platform Escrow.com, among other sites. The scammer did the same thing — he changed the DNS records, and left a malicious message on the homepage that remained for about five hours.
The message left on Escrow’s homepage. Source: Escrow.com
  • According to Security Boulevard, GoDaddy suffered in October 2019 a data breach that affected 28,000 of its customers’ web hosting accounts — but GoDaddy didn’t know about the security incident until May of this year.

According to KrebsOnSecurity, other crypto platforms were possibly targeted by the same group of scammers. Platforms like Bibox, Celsius Network, and Wirex might have been victims of social engineering and phishing scams. But there are no official statements from these companies.