Author: Robert Drage

Robert is a freelance researcher, with a background in information science currently interested in blockchain technology and technical developments in the field.

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News Sports

Australian Cricketer Brett Lee Donates 1 BTC to COVID-19 Charity in India

Former Australian fast bowler Brett Lee is now the second Australian cricketer to donate towards India’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. But Brett made his payment in the form of 1 Bitcoin (BTC).

Moved by the donation made by fellow Australian cricketer Pat Cummings, who donated $50,000 USD to the PM CARES Fund for oxygen supplies in India. Pat’s donation would be worth about 4090943.37 INR or RS 40 lakh.

It saddens me deeply to see people suffering due to the pandemic. I feel privileged to be in a position of making a difference […] I’d like to donate 1 Bitcoin to Crypto Relief to help with the purchase of oxygen supplies for the hospitals across India.

Brett Lee

Is India Still Banning Crypto?

Currently, Bitcoin is still not considered legal tender in India.

A Cabinet note is being prepared. It’s almost nearing completion and then it will be taken to the Cabinet… We will allow a certain amount of window for people to experiment on blockchain and bitcoin. However, the what formulation of cryptocurrency will be part of the Cabinet note which will get ready soon.

Nirmala Sitharaman, Indian Finance Minister

Cryptocurrency donated within India can be exchanged for Indian Rupee, but the industry is “still exploring” the process for using such funds from outside India.

The crypto fund was started by Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon (a Bangalore-based blockchain company), to help buy supplies of food and oxygen. So far the fund has collected $3 million USD, with a donation of $600,000 from Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH).

Considerations will need to be made by a regulatory body in India otherwise the cryptocurrencies gathered in the fund will not be usable. But it seems Sandeep is championing the initiative with great urgency.

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Cardano Crypto News Education Institutions

5 Million Students In Ethiopia Set To Get National Identity Solution Powered By Cardano

Cardano Africa
Cardano Africa

IOHK has formed a partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education in order to implement a blockchain-based national identity solution for 5 million students and 750,000 teachers.

According to a tweet by IOHK Media this will be the world’s largest blockchain deployment to date.

Cardano (ADA) had also previously announced that they are working closely with Ethiopian private and public sector in order to “democratise social and financial services for the world’s 1.7 billion ‘unbanked’ people in Africa”.

How Will Digital Identity Help Students?

By using blockchain technology, qualifications attained by individuals can be verified by the system and therefore ending fraudulent university and jobs applications. Employers will be able to verify the individuals credentials without a third party.

Student IDs will also be paired with data from Learning Management Systems and harnessed by machine learning algorithms to drive personalised teaching, a dynamic curriculum, and data-driven policies and funding.

All teachers and pupils will be issued with tablets with a dedicated network where students can access their academic records. This infrastructure will open the doors to higher education and employment for 80% of students who live in rural regions.

This forms a key plank of our National Digital Transformation Strategy and will underpin a uniquely transparent, data-driven education system based on a dynamic curriculum.

Getahun Mekuria, Ethiopian Education Minister

Is Ethiopia Ready For Such Radical Change?

Doing business in Africa can be difficult due to lack of infrastructure as well as political instability in most countries. Ethiopia is no exception with their inhabitants experiencing Internet shutdowns as well as military forces fighting in the Tigray region. In a report by the Guardian almost 2,000 people killed in more than 150 massacres in this area.

However on the positive side there is a strong belief that blockchain technology is a possible catalyst to end digital exclusion and increase access to higher education.

Ethiopia’s Sheba Valley is already recognised as the leading AI hub in Africa, 70 per cent of our university graduates are in STEM subjects and we are now leading the way in using blockchain to digitalise education.

Getahun Mekuria, Ethiopian Education Minister

IOHK have set major goals, and it seems that they have quite the task ahead to be able to make their vision a reality amid the harsh realities surrounding them in Ethiopia.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Hackers

$7 Billion Dollars Could Crash Bitcoin With a DoS Attack, Expert Explains

Doctor Matthew Green, part of the team that created Zcash, stated in a debate that if there were a malicious party willing to spend $7 billion USD it could start a cyber attack that could crash the network, effectively making it impossible for any transactions to be processed by the network.

However that would require the resources (power, money) of a nation-state or some secret billionaire to get the ball rolling, and since there is no monetary incentive it would possibly be for malicious reasons.

The way this Denial of Service (DoS) would be done is like a 51% attack, where if some entity spent $7 billion USD to create empty blocks it could flood the system. Therefore, that would stop other transactions from being validated and “deny service” to others wanting to use the network. That amount of money spent would produce the largest cumulative difficulty chain, with blocks that are empty (which is valid).

DoS attack to Bitcoin: the end?

Since a prolonged attack will be so expensive in both power and monetary cost it would be impossible to sustain it indefinitely. This means that it wouldn’t necessarily bring Bitcoin (BTC) down completely, but the price will probably drop temporarily and people won’t be able to use the network until the attack is over.

There are some counter measures that can be implemented to prevent instances like these. Project horizon created one such solution after they were hit by a 51% attack. Because a 51 percent attack requires a miner to produce blocks in secret before posting them to the blockchain, they added a delay penalty if a block takes too long to be created. Other methods include adding an element of Proof-of-Stake so that members that don’t own any of the digital asset can’t “grief” the network.

The way blockchain is designed also intrinsically helps against standard DoS attacks according to Alexandre Francois of PenTest Magazine.

For starters, it eliminates the risk of having a single point of failure. It can maintain a list of compromised IPs in its ledger, and this would be resistant to disruption attempts. As soon as a server with the list is compromised, a user can switch to any other node on the network to access a safe copy.

Alexandre Francois, PenTest Magazine

Bitcoin Mining Pools Have Been Targeted in The Past

A report published by U.S. technology company Neustar, for example, estimates a 200% increase in DoS events against their customers in Q1 2019 compared to the same period in 2018.

AntPool, BW.com, NiceHash, CKPool and GHash.io are among a number of Bitcoin mining pools and operations that have been hit by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) showing that this is not a rare occurrence.

However, as Bitcoin becomes more decentralised and mining power is spread over various continents it seems clear that even a nation state with a massive amount of resources could not crash Bitcoin permanently. The aggressor would arguably just incur massive costs to achieve a debatable result.

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Crypto News DeFi Investing

New DeFi Coin “SafeMoon” is Designed For HODLing With 10% Trade Fee Warning

SafeMoon is a decentralised finance (DeFi) token that launched in March 2021 with the aim of protecting their investors against whales that create bubbles and speculation sell-off that can damage a brand’s future prospects. Basically the token rewards you for having diamond hands in a new token class they call “reflection tokens”.

We’ve all been there, seeing those shiny 6 digit figures can be pretty damn tempting to jump in. However, almost always the token suffers from the inevitable valuation bubble, which is then followed by the burst and the impending collapse of the price.

SafeMoon White Paper

SafeMoon is Expensive to Trade

If you’re thinking of trading the SafeMoon coin then think again because you will be hit with a massive 10%-12% trading fee. With 5% of every purchase or sale is redistributed amongst all wallet holders, and the other 5% is split half burned half sold into BNB because of a contract.

SafeMoon Tokens Supply

According to the SafeMoon white paper there is a total token supply of 1 quadrillion, with a launch supply of 777 trillion. If you sell it, you will be hit with a 10 to 12 per cent transaction fee, half of which is redistributed to existing holders, helping to create what they hope will be a ‘price floor’. This mechanism was added to reduce the likelihood of pump and dump schemes.

1,620 Cryptocurrency Dead Coins

Cryptocurrencies are gaining popularity, with some 106 million users globally trading in more than 2,300 cryptocurrencies. However, 1,620 have crashed (“dead coins”) some of which were caused by pump and dump schemes or massive speculative sell-off. This is important to note, as these new coins promise prices to the moon, and a lot of them end up as dead coins.

How Is SafeMoon Different From Other Liquidity Providers?

SafeMoon has three functions that take place during each trade: Reflection, Manual Burn, and LP Acquisition.

The rewards from providing liquidity are static, compared to others that fluctuate based on the amount of coins that help provide liquidity. This is called reflection, and aims to eliminate problems caused by these farming rewards.

Sometimes burns matter; sometimes they don’t. Manual Burns are a strategy that aim to implement a burn strategy that is beneficial and rewarding for those engaged for the long term.

The white paper states that “Automatic Liquidity pool (LP) is the secret sauce of SafeMoon”. Essentially this process is there to help keep the value of the coin more stable when people start selling, through the various methods of capturing LP and reinvesting it into the pool.

How They Plan to Ensure Safety

  • Developers burned all tokens in the Dev Wallet prior to the launch
  • Held a fair launch on DxSale
  • LP locked on DxLocker for 4 years
  • LP generated with every trade and locked on Pancake

Toward the future they plan an integration process with WhiteBIT, a crypto-to-fiat currency exchange offering more than 150 trading pairs, and BitMart, the cryptocurrency trading platform. SafeMoon also plans to develop a non-fungible token (NFT) exchange, as well as charity projects and crypto educational apps.

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Australia Blockchain Crypto News

EFTPOS Australia Plans To Use Blockchain For Micropayments, Autonomous Vehicles, and Digital Identity

During the Australian Blockchain Week conference, Australia’s leading point-of-sale technology provider EFTPOS announced that they plan to use blockchain-powered technologies to run autonomous vehicles and power smart cities with Hedera Hashgraph.

Ben Tabell, EFTPOS chief investment officer, stated that the partnership formed with Hedera will allow them to put in a shared effort to bring a combination of digital identity and payment solutions to Australia.

We’re going to be looking at smart cities. [
] We’re going to be looking at autonomous vehicles and things that we haven’t even thought about yet. All of this needs new infrastructure, and EFTPOS needs to be informed by that.

Robert Allen, deputy chair of Blockchain Australia
Hedera Token Service launches with a fully supportive ecosystem of over 60 initial partners including leading exchanges, custody and wallet providers, members of the Hedera Governing Council, and applications that will issue tokens using HTS

This is a big part of our work and effort at the moment to bring in digital identity and transactions so that we can securely support payments and other transaction clubs in the Australian digital ecosystem.

Ben Tabell, chief investment officer at EFTPOS

Hedera Implementing Blockchain Use Cases in Australia

Hedera Hashgraph had previously also made local headlines in Australia in July 2020, when EFTPOS announced that they would be using Hedera technology to build a proof-of concept for an Australian stablecoin. The pilot focused on micropayments, such as real-time payments for streaming and pay-per-click content.

In January 2021, EFTPOS became Hedera’s 17th governing council member and Australia’s first Hedera node operator. Hedera has also been expanding its governing council recently, with Shinhan Bank joining earlier this month, French utility giant ÉlectricitĂ© de France onboarding in March, and Standard Bank Group becoming the network’s first African node operator in February.

Hedera is the only next-generation network that will support those kinds of use cases. So, we wanted to test it, and it has operated beautifully. [
] Now, because we’ve got all this digital strategy, we are in a position where we can start looking at ways that problems can be solved in a way which is maybe non-traditional and more distributed.

Ben Tabell, chief investment officer at EFTPOS
Categories
Crypto.com Dogecoin NFTs

Trade Dogecoins to Win $50k Cash and DOGE NFT Prizes on Crypto.com App

Following the success of the previous DOGE Treats campaign, Crypto.com announced they’ve launched a second: the DOGE Treats Extravaganza, with 10x the prizemoney to be won.

All Crypto.com App users are eligible to participate and win a share of the USD 500,000 prize pool, where they will give away USD 100,000 of DOGE and exclusive DOGE NFTs every week until 21 May 2021.

Crypto.com “DOGE Treats Extravaganza” campaign schedule

Doge Rules?

As detailed in Crypto.com official blog:

  • Trade (Buy/Sell) at least $100 USD of any DOGE pair in the Crypto.com App during the weekly campaign periods and become an eligible participant.
  • 1 Eligible participant will be selected by lucky draw and receive $50,000 USD and 1 exclusive DOGE NFT.
  • 999 eligible participants with the highest number of DOGE Points during each campaign period will receive DOGE prizes.

Prizes are tiered depending on how many DOGE points a participant accumulates during each period.

Crypto.com “DOGE Treats Extravaganza” prizes

Doge Not Frightened By The Bears

While Dogecoin also suffered a dip, its fall was trivial compared to the rest of the market. By midday, DOGE had recovered and went on to post 12% gains by the end of the day.

Dogecoin, boosted by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Cuban, rallied more than 110% last Friday before dropping by 26% on Saturday, according to CoinMarketCap. It now has a market value of more than $36 billion and is still up 13,400% from a year ago, when it traded for $0.002 and was worth about $250 million.

DOGE Coin Price: CoinMarketCap

Some consider DOGE as just a meme coin however, the community sees itself more as detached from the crypto norm, trying to make the bland world of money a bit more humorous, vibrant, and friendly. The internet currency has now recently gone through use cases where it has performed well.

Categories
Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News Markets

939,185 Leveraged Traders Lose Big In The $10 Billion Liquidations Caused By The Latest Bitcoin Dip

On 18 April 2021 Bitcoin experienced one of the greatest dips in its history, bringing much of the crypto market down with it. Nearly one million traders’ accounts were liquidated in about an hour due to the downward spike.

According to the data on CoinMarketCap, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies around the world went down by about $310 billion in less than 24 hours, shrinking the market from more than $2.2 trillion to less than $1.9 trillion.

Xinjiang Grid Blackouts to blame?

A coal mine explosion in Xinjiang on April 10, caused blackouts and took days to tank bitcoin’s hash rate. The hashrate plummeted from an all-time high above 215 exahash per second on Wednesday to about 120 exahash per second early Sunday.

Since April 15, the Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped more than 49% after touching an all-time high at 218 exahash per second. Regional reports noted that in China the Xinjiang grid is having blackouts and “safety inspections.”

Popular market analyst Willy Woo shares that the Bitcoin hashrate and its price have always been correlated. And thus, following the blackout in Xinjiang, yesterday’s price action followed the collapse in the BTC hashrate.

China Mining Dominance

Following these events, some have even questioned if there isn’t an over-reliance on mining efforts from China. Since about 50% of the hashrate comes from China, if something more serious had to happen it could have serious effects on the global Bitcoin network.

An increase in global Bitcoin mining efforts will reduce the odds of such a hashrate collapse. In the U.S., mining firms are one of the targets of the new bill released in Kentucky. Lawmakers have approved a bill that proposed tax breaks for mining operations set up in the state. One of the proposals in the bill was the removal of the tax duty of electricity for Bitcoin mining.

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Crypto News Ethereum Markets Regulation

Three Management Firms Cleared To Open Ethereum ETFs in Canada

On Friday CI Global Asset Management, Purpose Investments Inc., and Evolve Funds have received clearance from Ontario Securities Commission to launch Ethereum exchange traded funds (ETFs) in Canada.

These ETFs will be available on Toronto’s Stock Exchange (TSX), which will allow retail investors in Canada to invest directly into the digital asset from 20 April 2021. Ethereum (ETH), which is currently the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, is the obvious next choice for institutions looking to get their feet wet in the crypto economy.

While Bitcoin tends to get a lot of attention as it was the first major cryptocurrency, what ether and the Ethereum ecosystem represent is one of the most exciting new technology visions today in society

Som Seif, founder and CEO of Purpose Investments

Three Ethereum ETFs in One Day

All three of these funds were cleared on Friday:

The CI Galaxy Ethereum ETF will trade in Canadian dollars (ETHX.B, unhedged) and in U.S. dollars (ETHX.U). CI GAM is the manager of the ETF and Galaxy Digital Asset Management (“GDAM”) will be the sub-advisor.

Purpose Investments is the manager of Purpose Ether ETF and Ether Capital Corporation will consult. The ETH will be kept in cold storage with Gemini acting as the sub-custodian and CIBC Mellon Global Securities acting as the fund administrator. 

The approval comes a little over two months after Canada approved the Purpose Bitcoin ETF which held 10,064 BTC in the first week of trading.

Purpose ETF is designed to provide investors with exposure to ether by investing directly in physically settled ether. The ETF will offer three classes of units: Canadian dollar currency hedged units (ETHH), Canadian dollar non-currency hedged units (ETHH.B) and U.S. dollar units with ticker units (ETHH.U).

Evolve Funds stated that “similar to Bitcoin, investors will now be able to trade Ether as simple as buying shares through their bank or brokerage.” Evolve’s ETF will trade on the TSX as ETHR.

Canada Crypto Rush

Earlier this year Canada had also approved Bitcoin ETFs. Two of which broke records with their trading volumes: Purpose trading $80 million in its first hour and Evolve raised $421 million in just two days. With the now soon-to-be open Ethereum ETFs, mainstream crypto adoption is warming up in Canada.

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China Crypto News Gambling

Police Arrest a Team Running Illegal Gambling DApp in China

The Jianhu police have arrested a team of developers in the city of Yancheng in Jianhu province, China. The team has been operating a decentralised gambling app on the EOS network. Police have seized 26 million Yuan ($3.8 million USD) in EOS and BTC in illegal revenue.

China’s First Illegal Gambling DApp shut down

In a news report issued by the Jianhu Police, they have arrested 25 suspects that have been part of the online casino called “DAPP Biggame“. Between June 2018 and December 2020, the team behind Biggame allegedly profited from the operations with crypto assets worth 60 million Yuan, or nearly $10 million USD, law enforcement officials said. This is China’s first case involving a decentralised digital casino.

Apprehended suspects at the Biggame office

The report states that a preliminary investigation was opened on November 13, 2020, where they analysed 27 million transaction data in order to find contract addresses used for betting, lottery, and prize distribution, which led them to the perpetrators. Cryptocurrencies were used as a medium for betting and provided a platform to participate in illegal betting.

This DAPP does not need to be downloaded. Users can access and log in on the public chain or through various grapefruit coin wallets, and directly use the grapefruit coins to place bets.

Jianhu police

The DApp allowed players to use EOS smart contracts to place bets on various games such as Dice, Texas Hold’em, and others.

Illegal Activity on The Blockchain

Toward the end of 2020 Yancheng court sentenced individuals that were behind a multinational pyramid scheme to up to 11 years in prison. The perpetrators defrauded investors out of 14.8 billion yuan (US$2.25 billion). The size of the PlusToken scam makes it one of the largest uncovered Ponzi schemes in China to have taken advantage of blockchain technology.

The Chinese police started an “Internet Cleansing Movement” operation which is set to clamp down on illegal online activities from online gambling to money laundering.

Since Q4 last year, an increasing number of court rulings show that nearly 100 individuals have been convicted for knowingly laundering money through crypto over-the-counter trading desks that involved more than $30 million worth of Tether’s USDT.

Other arrests we’ve seen recently:

Categories
Australia Crypto News E-commerce Gaming

Buy A Custom Computer With Bitcoin Through Dream PC Australia

Dream PC Australia, a premier custom computer builder in South Australia and one of the largest PC exporters for Australia has now started accepting crypto as payment for their PCs.

How to Order your PC and Pay in Crypto

Go to Build a Custom PC, selected the items that you want to buy, it’s as simple as going to checkout, selecting the cryptocurrencies payment method, and then you’ll be redirected to a page where you can select either BTC, ETH, or USDC. You can then either scan the QR code or pay it to their address, then you’re done!

An Increase in Australian Companies Accepting Crypto

Dream PC Australia is one of many other businesses in Australia that are now accepting crypto payments for their services, such as Broadwater Builds, Launtel an Internet Service Provider, Queensland Solar and Lighting, and others.

Companies are opting for this payment method because they allow for easy and secure payments, this also opens the gates to people who might only want to play with crypto. With Bitcoin reaching new all-time highs, Aussies are coming into contact with crypto more than ever and business owners want to keep the digital asset due to the increasing price and speculative media coverage.

There are also some associated risks with keeping Bitcoin that need to be taken into account by companies like the volatility of the market, new tax regulations that need to be complied with, and secure storage of the digital asset.