Author: Lauren Claxton

Lauren is currently a freelance writer with experience in finance writing. She has a growing interest in the metaverse and all things NFTs and expects to graduate in 2022 with bachelors degrees in creative writing and public relations.

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Crypto Exchange Hackers Osmosis

Decentralised Exchange ‘Osmosis’ Goes Offline After $5 Million Hack

The Osmosis decentralised exchange (DEX) has gone offline due to a US$5 million liquidity pool exploit. Core developers halted the network after a bug was uncovered by an Osmosis subreddit community member:

Network Suspended for ‘Emergency Maintenance’

Reddit user Straight-Hat3855 discovered the bug in the blockchain and shared it on the ‘Cosmos Network’ – the Osmosis subreddit. Straight-Hat3855 happened on the bug when depositing funds into the liquidity pool and immediately withdrawing them. Upon withdrawal, the value of the funds had unintentionally increased by 50 percent.

At 10:57pm EST, Osmosis’ core developers announced that the chain had been “halted for emergency maintenance”, much to the frustration of users. This emergency stoppage took 12 minutes to coordinate following the discovery of the bug:

Osmosis has since posted an update stating that the liquidity pools were not completely drained. The Osmosis token (OSMO) has been down by 6.96 percent in the past 24 hours.

Hackers Target DEXes

This year has been fraught with assaults on decentralised exchanges. In March, German DEX Li.Finance had one of its smart contracts exploited in an assault that resulted in a US$600,000 combined loss of assets taken from 29 users. Luckily the issue was rectified with a quick turnaround, and the investors were reimbursed.

At the beginning of May, DEX Saddle Finance lost US$14 million to hackers. The automated market maker began working with Bitcoin security organisation BlockSec to locate the funds. However, at the time it was deemed highly unlikely that US$10 million of the $14 million stolen would be recovered.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Payments

PayPal Allows US Users to Withdraw BTC and ETH to External Wallets

PayPal has announced it will begin allowing US crypto holders to transfer their digital assets to external wallets. The rollout of the update has just begun and is likely to be available to all US users within the next fortnight.

PayPal for BTC and ETH

PayPal will offer users the option to transfer bitcoin, ether, litecoin, and bitcoin cash to external wallets in coming weeks. The long sought-after addition will bring PayPal in line with other successful cryptocurrency services in the industry. The feature has been a hot topic since the company’s October 2021 launch of its crypto buy, sell and hold service:

According to Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president of PayPal’s blockchain, crypto and digital currencies sector, the company believes its “role in the ecosystem is about increasing access”. The move to permit transfers to external wallets has made PayPal the largest blockchain-enabled consumer digital wallet.

Earlier Crypto Business Moves

In March 2021, PayPal upgraded its technology to permit US users to make payments with their cryptocurrency with the same ease as using a debit or credit card. This option became available for millions of global merchants, easily converting ethereum, bitcoin and litecoin to fiat money.

And at the beginning of 2022, a developer found stablecoin development code within the PayPal App. The discovery prompted PayPal to come forward with the admission that it was experimenting with a stablecoin of the same name. A logo image was discovered alongside the code.

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Australia Regulation Scams

Aussie Consumers have Already Lost $200 Million to Investment Scams in 2022

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch site has found that Aussies lost over A$205 million to investment scams between January and May of 2022.

This represents a 314 percent increase compared to the first four months of 2021, with more than A$80 million of this year’s losses (between January 1 and May 1) from crypto scams alone.

https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/accc-tackle-large-companies-pressuring-small-contractors/
The ACCC warns of a significant increase in investment scams.

ACCC On Edge Over Losses

With more than half of the year still ahead, these daunting figures have the ACCC on edge. Its deputy chair, Delia Rickard, has noted that consumers who lack familiarity with crypto and its intricacies are most likely to accidentally engage with scam tactics.

https://itwire.com/it-industry-news/telecoms-and-nbn/accc-has-a-$300,000-court-win-against-superfone.html

We are seeing more money lost to investment scams and so are urging all Australians not to trust investment opportunities that seem too good to be true.

Delia Rickard, deputy chair, ACCC

While the number of investment scams has increased compared to the same period last year, the true amount of funds lost to investment scams could be far higher, the ACCC believes. This is because only about 13 percent of people report their losses. In 2022, the number of reports is down despite losses increasing, suggesting investors are sustaining higher individual losses on average and are reticent to disclose them.

The ACCC also believes that crypto scams are likely to have increased due to a heightened awareness of crypto introducing many naive investors to the game.

Louder Calls for Regulation

In August 2021, the ACCC began issuing warnings regarding scammers swindling Aussies via fake crypto platforms. These “creative” ploys had seen unscrupulous operators impersonating crypto exchanges and targeting victims via chat channels such as Telegram.

The new federal Labor government is being urged by consumer advocates to protect Aussies from these crypto scams. CHOICE, Australia’s largest consumer advocacy group, is calling for increased regulation of the industry – with the addition of a “single definition for crypto assets”.

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Crypto News Japan Regulation Stablecoins

Japan to Regulate Stablecoins to Protect Citizens Following UST Implosion

The Japanese government has agreed to pass a law that will regulate stablecoins, defining them as digital money and protecting Japanese citizens from potential losses on their crypto investments.

This follows last month’s implosion of Terra’s UST and LUNA:

Safety Net for Investors

In 2021, Japan’s Financial Services Agency prepared a bill to clarify the legal status of stablecoins. This week, that bill successfully passed through the upper house of Japan’s parliament and will come into effect in 2023. Under the legislation, stablecoins must be linked to either the yen or another legal tender, with holders guaranteed the right to redeem their stablecoins at face value.

The move will mean a safety net for investors who are currently on edge or recovering from large losses after the TerraUSD (UST) crash that saw LUNA tank. The legislation also means that stablecoins can only be issued by a licensed bank, trust company, or registered money transfer agent:

Currently, Japanese exchanges do not list stablecoins, and it is worth noting that this newly passed law will not address overseas asset-backed stablecoins and their algorithmic equivalents. The law also takes aim at money laundering.

Controversies Surround Stablecoins

Following last month’s fall of Terra, a South Korean LUNA investor attempted to take matters into his own hands after losing US$2.4 million in the collapse. The investor literally knocked on the front door of Do Kwon, founder of Terraform Labs, to speak with him about the loss. While the act was not technically deemed to be trespassing, the investor was arrested and is likely to face a fine.

Last week, the Bank of England (BoE) agreed to “rescue” collapsed stablecoins to protect holders. The announcement came from HM Treasury and suggested that the BoE is eager to amend financial legislation to pull crypto under its jurisdiction.

Closer to home, the Australian and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) announced plans to extend the usage of A$DC – its cash-backed stablecoin – to meet demands from institutional customers.

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Australia Crypto News ETFs

Bear Market Sees Aussie Crypto ETF Volumes Dry Up

Australia’s long-awaited and much-debated exchange-traded products are finally in circulation and investors seem … less than impressed. Since the May 12 launch of three ETFs, trading volumes have only been on the decline.

ETF Drought Sets In

Only two weeks ago it seemed that these Australian ETFs had fizzled out on debut, with none of the three new funds (CBTC, EETH and EBTC) able to crack the A$1 million volume benchmark. In the period since launch, sales have only continued to fall, with the current bear market showing an apparent ETF volume drought.

Market Looks to the Cosmos

However, the Cosmos Purpose Ethereum Access ETF (CPET), heralded as the “world’s first physically settled ether ETF”, has just hit the market with high hopes:

CPET saw 2,073 shares change hands on May 31, its debut day. How successful it will be in Australia is yet to be determined. While some are hailing CPET as the kick crypto ETFs need to increase their volumes, as of June 1, the daily return on the newcomer was -5.88 percent.

Aussie ETFs Slow off the Mark

The initial development of Australian-based Bitcoin ETFs had been delayed by several factors, with the journey to launch being long and fraught. Their creation was hampered by high collateral requirements at the beginning of April, with fund managers claiming these were making it difficult for clearing participants to agree to trade the ETFs.

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Crypto News DeFi Tokens Waves

WAVES Token Pumps 60% Amid DeFi Revival Plan and Airdrop

More positives for the Waves open-source blockchain, following the announcement of a DeFi revival plan, the WAVES token price increased by approximately 60 percent in the May 31 trading session, only to crash back down a couple of days later.

DeFi Revival Makes WAVES

The WAVES token jumped from US$6 at the beginning of the week to a US$10.15 intraday peak on May 31 and is now likely to hit its US$12.30 resistance, a point it has not reached since May 11.

The trouble for the WAVES token began at the beginning of April after a large sell-off of USDN. The knock-on effect was last month’s de-pegging of the stablecoin. This, combined with the Vires Finance liquidity crisis and the LUNA crash, meant an intense plunge for WAVES.

Anatomy of a ‘Master Plan’

There are several contributing factors to the 60 percent WAVES surge, the most notable being the Waves DeFi revival plan. The so-called “master plan”, according to a Waves Tech post, will look like this:

  • begin buying and locking CRV tokens with 45 percent of the WAVES staking profits from Neutrino, and vote to incentivise the USDN 3-pool, to improve demand for USDN;
  • liquidate large accounts, taking control of their collateral;
  • sell the collateral without de-pegging USDN to return liquidity to Vires Finance and reduce utilisation rate, enabling larger user withdrawals; and
  • improve Neutrino architecture with a new recap token that recapitalises Neutrino with new Waves Tokens when under-collateralised:

As part of the recapitalisation of Neutrino, the Waves protocol will be airdropping the new token via Tsunami Testnet, providing users meet eligibility conditions.

With the wider crypto market slowly turning green after a lengthy period of lows, along with the revival plan to be implemented, WAVES may continue its surge over coming weeks.

WAVES’ Recent Breaks

March was eventful for the Waves protocol as it managed to stay at the forefront of innovation via a partnership with Allbridge. A combination of this partnership and the protocol’s migration to Waves 2.0 caused the token to surge by 120 percent in just a week.

The back end of March saw the Waves protocol pump 70 percent following the news that it would be launching in the US. The US Waves Labs project was tasked with supercharging the protocol’s ecosystem upon its March 28 launch.

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Australia Banking Crypto News

Australia’s Big Banks Remain on the Crypto Sideline, For Now

Major banks down under are reportedly vulnerable to losing customers to global ‘super apps’, according to the Australian Financial Review (AFR).

This comes as National Australia Bank (NAB) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) declare they won’t permit their customers to trade crypto, and the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) admits to facing challenges with its crypto project.

‘Big Four’ Need to Get in the Game

This week’s AFR banking summit has left three of Australia’s ‘Big Four’ banks with some food for thought. Simon Cant, co-founder of venture capital firm Reinventure Group, suggested during the summit that the biggest threat to Aussie banks will be the arrival of ‘super apps’. Customers could potentially find an app for all their financial needs, from everyday banking and taking out loans to getting paid, trading crypto, and investing.

One such example of super-app providers is US-based tech giant Square, which has recently acquired Afterpay and has plans to go global with its Cash App. Dom Pym, co-founder of Up – an Aussie neobank – has also encouraged the big banks to investigate human resources software, social media giants, and gaming apps.

https://dompym.com/

This is where people are using technology, and so they’re going to use finance and banking through that … that’s where the next generation of banking customers are.

Dom Pym, co-founder, Up

Traditional financial institutions delaying or denying progress in the crypto sector could be shooting themselves in the foot. NAB’s spokesperson has stated the company is taking a “wait and see” approach to the retail use of crypto, instead focusing on underlying blockchain technology. CBA also seems to be monitoring the market with its CEO, Matt Comyn, stating that “crypto, clearly, is a polarising topic”, despite believing that the industry will be a continuing source of innovation over the coming decade:

CBA’s Crypto Trial Still on Hold

The Commonwealth Bank has been working on bringing crypto to its customers for several months now. In late 2021, CBA began developing methods for customers to earn interest on crypto. To do so the bank entered a partnership with Gemini, a crypto custodian and exchange.

However, last month CBA halted its trading pilot due to impending regulation and market turmoil. There has been no mention of when the pilot might restart, with the trading of those trialling it at the time put on hold.

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Australia Cryptocurrency Law Scams

Australian Labor Government Urged to Protect Aussies from Crypto Scams

Consumer advocates have begun urging the new Australian Labor government to protect citizens from crypto scams. This accompanies the release of a national survey conducted by CHOICE on Australians’ attitude towards crypto:

CHOICE vs Crypto Scams

Consumer advocates are calling for industry reform in the crypto and blockchain sector as the Labor Party embarks on its first term of government. Despite only one in 10 Aussies having reportedly purchased crypto in the past 12 months, a concerning cohort of those were caught up in investment scams. On top of this, the recent flattening of the market has seen billions of consumer dollars lost.

The combination of crime and market volatility has prompted CHOICE, Australia’s leading consumer advocacy group, to petition the incoming government for change:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickveyret/overlay/photo/

CHOICE is hearing from many Australians about financial loss and other harm caused by purchasing crypto assets that were not what they appeared to be.

Patrick Veyret, spokesman for CHOICE

CHOICE is calling for more stringent regulation and is composing a submission to the federal treasury. The submission will request several changes, including a “single definition for crypto assets” for regulatory purposes, as well as the requirement for crypto exchanges to install appropriate measures to “prevent fraudulent payments and to reimburse consumers” should fraudulent payments occur.

Consumer Watchdog Nips Crypto

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been cracking down on crypto scammers over the past year. In March 2022, the ACCC sued Meta, Facebook’s parent company, over its failure to prevent the circulation of scam crypto ads. The misleading ads took the form of several local Aussie celebrities appearing to endorse crypto investments and were in adjudged to be in breach of Australian consumer law.

An uptick in the number of crypto investment scams was reported by the consumer watchdog in April this year as crypto superseded bank transfers in terms of investment scams. As a result, losses to crypto scams had increased by 90 percent in the space of three months.

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Australia Crypto News Education

Australia’s Swinburne Uni Set to Officially Educate Students on Cryptocurrency

Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology will be uniting Web3 and education by partnering with two Australian fintech firms that will help students attain valuable exposure to the cryptocurrency and fintech business worlds.

Swinburne University of Technology Gallery: Images, Photos, and Videos https://collegedunia.com/australia/college/608-swinburne-university-of-technology-melbourne/gallery
Swinburne University to offer a fintech Masters course.

Vital ‘Hands-On’ Experience

Swinburne University will partner with Banxa, a payment service provider that features a fiat-to-crypto platform, and Judo Bank, a fintech loan provider. With Banxa invested in its work within the crypto and blockchain space, and Judo Bank being one of Australia’s very few fintech unicorns, students are guaranteed to get vital hands-on experience as part of their Master of Financial Technology (fintech) degree.

The course director is Dr Dimitrios Salampasis, a 2021 Blockchain Educator of the Year awardee who professes a strong belief in the initiative, stating that students will be “exposed to real-life examples and cases across the spectrum of financial services”.

https://fintech.global/globalregtechsummit/speaker/dr-dimitrios-salampasis/

The whole vision behind this degree is to bring industry in to ensure relevance on the things we teach and to be able to bring these real-life insights for leadership in the classroom. We can ensure that the students get exposed to whatever the latest developments are in the space, because the general fintech space is moving so quickly.

Dimitrios Salampasis, director, Swinburne Master of Fintech

The partnership with Swinburne will allow both fintech firms to host lectures, co-create content, and provide relevant case studies. Students will also receive access to each company’s networks for their learning.

Another Melbourne University Focusing on Crypto

Swinburne isn’t the first Aussie uni to focus on cryptocurrency. Last October, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University called on the federal government to reform the rules around crypto capital gains tax.

RMIT has also launched a ‘green cryptocurrency’ lab. Co-founded with the CloudTech Group, the lab’s focus is on reducing the carbon footprint of crypto.

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Crypto News Metaverse

Metaverse Presents a $3 Trillion Opportunity, According to Analysis Group Report

The metaverse is proving its popularity, according to data contained in a recent report from the Analysis Group that estimates the so-called “internet on steroids” could make a US$3 trillion GDP contribution in its first decade.

Augmented Reality and Visions of a Dystopian Metaverse - Digital Bodies https://www.digitalbodies.net/augmented-reality/augmented-reality-and-visions-of-a-dystopian-metaverse/
The metaverse, a $3 trillion opportunity in 3D.

Opportunity in the Metaverse

The report suggests that metaverse adoption could “contribute 2.8 percent of global GDP in the 10th year after the adoption begins”, providing adoption starts this year. However, such growth is only likely if the industry reaches its expected potential:

Analysis Group is not the only company assessing the latent profitability of the metaverse sector. Global investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts as much as US$8 trillion potential earnings. More conservatively, leading crypto asset manager Grayscale foresees a US$1 trillion opportunity. Regardless, JPMorgan – another global investment bank – believes the metaverse is likely to infiltrate every sector in coming years.

Metaverse Success Stories

Lately, the metaverse has been gaining traction through several differing channels. Most recently, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (formerly Facebook) launched a metaverse-themed store in San Francisco. The store incorporates wall-to-wall LED screens displaying what users could witness through VR headsets, with the aim of providing interactive demos to anyone interested.

Also this year, metaverse token ‘CEEK VR’ surged by 100 percent following the exposure it gained at the 2022 Grammy Awards. CEEK hosted a booth at the event which evidently attracted the attention of many investors, successfully driving sales.