Category: Crypto Wallets

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Cardano Crypto Wallets eToro Regulation Tokens TRON

Regulatory Concerns for Cardano as eToro Delists ADA for US Traders

US investment platform eToro has this week delisted Cardano and Tron from its trading pairs, citing regulatory issues. According to an official announcement from eToro, US users will no longer be able to open new positions or receive staking rewards for Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX) due to regulatory issues.

Regulatory Uncertainty Affects Exchanges

The investment platform only cited “business-related considerations in the evolving regulatory environment” as the reason for delisting the digital assets. The new update will take effect on December 26 and staking for the assets will end on December 31.

In recent months, regulators in the US and UK have placed more focus on exchanges as part of regulating the crypto sector. However, at the same time, eToro Australia has introduced crypto staking and 15 new digital assets.

Due to the lack of regulatory clarity, exchanges have different limiting factors for their own policies, so if a currency – ADA, for example – doesn’t meet some or other requirements, an exchange can delist it if it sees fit. In the current state of crypto, one can see liquidity come and go based on various countries and their rules regarding the asset class, and since crypto is a global product but regulations vary between countries, complications can arise.

What Will Happen to Assets on eToro?

According to eToro’s post, positions can be closed at any time – meaning users can still sell their ADA and TRX on eToro and receive USD, adding that it has no plans to force selling. Users will still be able to securely hold existing positions of Cardano and Tron. While staking rewards will no longer be offered to US users for either asset, the final reward payout will go to users on January 15, 2022.

We are only limiting users from opening new positions. We are not forcing users to sell any existing positions.

eToro announcement

eToro plans to roll out its Money crypto wallet in 2022, compatible with the assets so that users can move their holdings there if they don’t wish to sell now. The limiting of sales won’t happen for at least 30 days after offering support for redeeming ADA and TRX to the wallet, which will continue to support the assets even after US users can no longer sell their holdings for USD.

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Blockchain Crypto News Crypto Wallets Investing

Square Publishes Whitepaper for its Decentralised Bitcoin Exchange

Digital payments giant Square has released a whitepaper through its new TBD division introducing tbDEX, a decentralised crypto exchange that aims to “create ubiquitous and accessible on-ramps and off-ramps that allow the average individual to benefit from crypto innovation”.

The tbDEX protocol will be an easily accessible crypto exchange that aims to bridge users from fiat currencies to Bitcoin and other digital crypto assets.

The vast majority of people receive wages and pay for goods and services in fiat currency. They must pay taxes in fiat currency. So how do we unleash the potential of Bitcoin and decentralised financial infrastructure when most of us still live in a world of fiat? To do so, we need to build bridges between the fiat and cryptocurrency worlds…

Square’s whitepaper

tbDEX Will Not Be Completely Decentralised

While most decentralised exchanges (DEXs) include a governance token, tbDEX will not utilise a trustless model – instead, it will operate as a message protocol designed to facilitate trust relationships without relying on a federation to control access.

The tbDEX also intends to include features that will generally disqualify it from being considered a completely decentralised exchange. For example, to appease regulators, tbDEX will comply with customer identification regulation such as know-your-customer (KYC) checks. 

There is also controversy surrounding the whitepaper’s proposal to include blockchain analytic solutions, which will either be built into the exchange or operate through the use of a third party, in order to track transactions on the platform. To prevent illicit business activities, such a system would allow authorities to cross-reference payment IDs and public wallet addresses with users’ KYC information to reveal personal identities behind transacting parties.

Potential Game Changer

Bringing some regulation to the crypto space does have its benefits, however; these more centralised features would allow for chargebacks on tbDEX, allowing Square to reverse transactions if needed. This is a game changer as it could potentially protect investors from suffering financial loss (which previously has been irreversible) in the event of a rug-pull scam.

Square CEO Jack Dorsey (also CEO of Twitter) has been active in the crypto space over the years, speaking as a guest at crypto conferences around the world and promoting his companies’ products, such as Square’s crypto-friendly mobile payment application, Cash App.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Privacy Zcash

Zcash Soars 30% After Move to Proof-of-Stake Announcement

Privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) has seen a near 30 per cent rally after its parent organisation announced various upgrades to the protocol and its wallet to “engage directly with ZEC users [and] rapidly roll out new features”.

Electric Coin Company (EEC), the organisation behind Zcash, has released its new roadmap outlining various changes and upgrades to the protocol as well as a new wallet arriving sometime in 2022.

Originally based on Bitcoin’s codebase, Zcash’s supply is capped at 21 million coins with 13 million in circulation, with the market cap at around US$2.7 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Shortly after releasing the roadmap, the price of ZEC rallied from US$147 to US$189, an increase of 28.6 percent, and at the time of writing was sitting at US$210.

Zcash Upgrades in the Pipeline

In the blog post, ECC stated that the first step of its roadmap would be the release of an official wallet, the code of which will be open-source. Developers intending to develop on the protocol can also expect the release of a software development kit in the near future. 

Past indications to move Zcash to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) have come to fruition, with the ECC announcing it will migrate the blockchain from an energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, whereby miners need to run software on a computer in order to validate transactions and those with the most computing power validate the most transactions. The ECC announcement suggests that users would be able to stake a portion of their ZEC holdings into a dedicated Zcash smart contract to become validators on its blockchain, according to the size of their stake.

This shift will also increase the utility for ZEC through capabilities that include yield generation through staking and a possible path to on-chain governance mechanisms for ZEC HODLers.

 Josh Swihart, senior vice-president of growth, ECC

The last part of ECC’s roadmap focuses on interoperability. As the company completes the transition to a proof-of-stake model, new opportunities for cross-chain interoperability will arise, such as possibly using the interoperability network Cosmos.

Privacy a Pillar of Web 3.0

In this new internet, each individual is self-sovereign. There are no centralised gatekeepers to decide who can participate. There are no kingmakers who determine who wins and who loses.

ECC blog

By using cryptographic techniques, ZEC can obscure identifying information such as addresses and transaction amounts from anyone that’s not allowed to see. The coin uses a cryptographic technique called zero-knowledge proofs, which allows transactions to be made without specifying any details about those transactions other than the fact that they are legitimate. The protocol also allows users to make all their transactions anonymous, except to a specified list of addresses.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Cryptocurrencies Scams

Scam Warning: Another Crypto User Falls Victim to Fake MetaMask Google Ad

Scammers have struck again with a sneaky paid advertisement on Google for a fake MetaMask wallet that allows access to victims’ crypto. The scam has been running for the best part of a year but is still alive and well thanks to Google, with a new domain constantly being promoted via Google Search ads.

Just days ago, one Reddit user posted how his friend lost 38 ETH (US$163,000) to the scam. He also lost some altcoins, bringing the total crypto lost to approximately US$190,000.

MetaMask issued an official warning via Twitter last December about the phishing/ad scam. The domain being promoted by the Google ad reads maskmeta, not metamask.io (which is the official MetaMask domain).

Google’s Fake MetaMask Ad Promotion  

When a user searches Google for MetaMask, a fake ad for the MetaMask wallet comes up as the first listing, which leads the victim to the scammers’ domain, rather than the official MetaMask.io site. MetaMask alerted its community to the scam and recommended the use of direct links to ensure users are directed to the legitimate metamask.io domain.

Here are two rules to keep you safe:

  1. Never click sponsored or paid ad links to get to MetaMask.
Fraudulent MetaMask ad in Google Search

The fake MetaMask phishing page prompts users to install the extension, which gives them an option to either import an existing wallet or create a new one. It looks identical to the real MetaMask.

Fake MetaMask site
Legitimate MetaMask site

The only difference between the original MetaMask site and the fake one is unnoticeable for most users (the writing on the button for getting the fake extension says ‘Install now’, not ‘Download now’).

2. Question everything when asked to enter your seed phrase.

Fake MetaMask phishing page

If you click on the ‘Create Wallet’ button on the right, the fake ad sends you to the real MetaMask.io site as there is no crypto for the attackers to steal. However, if they click on ‘Import a wallet’, you will be asked to enter the key phrase of your existing wallet, which is then sent to the attacker. Never, ever enter your seed phrase into anything unless you are absolutely certain you are using the official MetaMask wallet extension.

MetaMask phishing form stealing wallet phrase

So remember: do not click on any Google ad search suggestions. Stay safe. Google Ad scams are everywhere.

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Basic Attention Token Crypto News Crypto Wallets

Brave Launches Built-In Crypto Wallet to Tackle Fake Extensions

The privacy-centric browser Brave has launched its new self-custody crypto wallet built into its desktop browser application, enabling users to store and buy cryptocurrencies, make use of DeFi, and store NFTs.

According to an announcement from Brave, its new browser wallet has a host of crypto-focused functionalities. One of the main reasons for the creation of the wallet is to counter fake and risky browser extensions that people use as crypto wallets.

Fighting Fake Extensions

While countless crypto wallet options exist (hardware wallets and software wallets), most are browser extensions. These extensions have inherent security risks, are more susceptible to phishing and asset theft, and require extra background processes to run, possibly creating performance issues on users’ devices. 

One of the biggest problems with extensions is how easy it is for criminals to make fake ones pretending to be a good wallet extension – such spoofing attacks are quite common.

Brian Bondy, CTO and co-founder, Brave

According to Brave’s chief training officer, the new implementation was “built from scratch, natively into the Brave browser”. It’s different from other Web 3.0 wallets such as MetaMask in that it does not require users to download an extension, but is rather built directly into the browser as a core feature. According to the firm, this is also meant to reduce security risks and reliance on extra CPU and memory.

One of the hurdles is the crypto wallet industry’s reliance on extensions, which introduces friction for DApp adoption and often leads to users losing funds via fake extension phishing scams […] The Brave Wallet requires no extensions and is instead browser-native, removing key performance and security concerns while preserving the core features of popular crypto wallets.

Brian Bondy, CTO and co-founder, Brave

Bondy says the browser’s cryptocurrency wallet is similar to hardware crypto wallets as it implements its own BIP32 hierarchical deterministic wallet, meaning “the funds are always stored on the blockchain, but the keys to unlock those funds are stored in the Brave Wallet”.

The Brave Wallet will soon be available on Brave’s mobile app and by 2022, the wallet will integrate the Solana blockchain, making Solana (SOL) the default provider for DApp support. Initially, Brave provided in-browser crypto swaps and had an established DEX, but has now moved to create the infrastructure in the wallet.

The wallet will allow users to transact in “almost any crypto asset”, supporting all chains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), including Polygon, xDai, Avalanche and others.

What Users Can Do with the Wallet

Research has found that the number of global crypto users has more than doubled in the first half of this year, from a little over 100 million at the start of 2021 to 221 million in June. It’s estimated that currently 13 percent of Americans invest in crypto, and with numbers on the rise users need safe and trustworthy technology to work with their digital assets.

The crypto-friendly browser has gained major popularity due to its privacy-centred design and the way it approaches ads by rewarding users in Basic Attention Token (BAT), its own native cryptocurrency, for viewing privacy-protecting ads. However, the new wallet differs in that it is not connected to Brave Rewards. Here is a list of the Brave wallet functionalities:

  • see live and historical market graphs (price data powered by CoinGecko);
  • find best price match against a list of providers with built-in swap functionality;
  • send and receive assets;
  • buy with fiat via Wyre;
  • interact with DApps for any EVM compatible network;
  • manage portfolio with NFT and multi-chain support;
  • easily import wallet from MetaMask and other self-custody wallets, or Brave’s legacy Crypto Wallets extension, or hardware wallets such as Trezor and Ledger (no Ledger Live required); and
  • send and receive NFTs.
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Crypto News Crypto Wallets DeFi Institutions

Crypto Adoption Rate is Mirroring Internet Adoption of the Late 1990s

Crypto adoption from 2014 to 2020 is resembling that of the internet from 1990 to 2000, the same years when the online boom was considered a scam and a bubble that would eventually burst.

The speed at which cryptocurrencies have taken off has been surprising. On one hand, detractors had to sit back and watch how crypto assets reached the mainstream mostly driven by institutions and renowned wealthy investors such as Paul Tudor Jones and Mark Cuban, collectively highlighting the benefits of crypto and blockchain technology. 

But the crypto community could not have predicted the speed and extent of crypto adoption this year. In August, Crypto News Australia reported that global adoption had surged an incredible 880 percent over the past year, and the number of active addresses reached its peak on November 10 – the highest level since May.

At the beginning of November, the number of active bitcoin addresses stayed above 1 million for five days in a row. This, according to analytics firm Santiment, signals that prices will flirt with further all-time highs (ATHs) in the future.

Cryptocurrency adoption in Australia has advanced markedly. Earlier this month, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) allowed users to buy, sell and hold crypto on its CommBank mobile app. However, Australia still has many challenges ahead with crypto adoption in terms of education and regulation.

Number of Users Engaging With Crypto Products Skyrockets

The number of users and institutions engaging with crypto and DeFi-related products has risen as well. According to Coinbase’s Q3 2021 Shareholder Letter, the number of users on the exchange earning yields on their crypto assets increased to a total of 2.8 million.

Meanwhile, crypto-native institutions have been keener to explore the DeFi space as the sector has experienced a boom. More institutions are using Ethereum to borrow and lend across several DeFi apps, as per a report from digital assets broker Genesis.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Solana Tokens

BAT Token Surges 30%+ After Solana Partnership Announced for DApp Support

Breakpoint 2021 was the first conference organised by the Solana Foundation, held in Lisbon, Portugal, from November 7-10. Featuring an all-star guest speaker lineup of coders, co-founders and CEOs in the business, the event brought together industry leaders, builders and innovators from around the globe.

Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave, announced on stage with Solana CEO and founder Anatoly Yakovenko that Brave will be partnering with Solana to integrate it into the browser and make it the default for DApp support.

Solana Default For Brave Browsers

Together, the companies will bring best-in-class crypto wallet features for the Solana blockchain into Brave’s Web3 desktop and mobile browsers, to be rolled out in the first half of 2022. 

We’re gonna make it so any dApp that is Solana enabled … we will make it use Solana by default. So dApp builders who built for Solana as well as other chains, in Brave it’s going to use Solana and that’s going to just help, I think, bring dApps over to Solana.

Brendan Eich, CEO, Brave

After the presentation and news of Brave announcing its Solana partnership, the price of Brave’s Basic Attention Token (BAT) pumped up from US$1.00 to reach US$1.36 on November 9.

Source: CoinGecko

The news was tweeted by both companies announcing the new coming features:

Watch the full presentation at Breakpoint 2021 on YouTube below.

In September, Crypto News Australia reported Brave’s in-browser crypto swaps with 20 percent BAT rebates. Click to read and learn more about the best browser for crypto enthusiasts. Also, Brave has built its own in-app Decentralised Exchange Aggregator (DEX), which enables users to swap tokens using the Brave browser.

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Crime Crypto News Crypto Wallets Google Scams

Google Ads Scam Alert: $500,000 Stolen Through Fake Crypto Wallets

According to a Check Point Research (CPR) report, users of crypto swap platform PancakeSwap, as well as crypto wallets MetaMask and Phantom, have been targeted in a phishing scam involving the theft of over US$500,000.

The crypto world is full of scammers and dangers, and in recent weeks CPR has identified multiple reports of phishing scams in which crypto wallet users have had their funds stolen while trying to install well-known wallets. The scam worked by using Google Ads to direct users to fake crypto wallets.

According to the CPR report:

Over the past weekend, CPR encountered hundreds of incidents in which crypto investors lost their money while trying to download and install well-known crypto wallets or change their currencies on crypto swap platforms like PancakeSwap or Uniswap.

Check Point Research (CPR) report

Scammers Replicate Official Websites

CPR has found that the scam has been hitting popular crypto wallets MetaMask and Phantom, with the scammers mimicking the legitimate websites almost exactly. Phantom and MetaMask wallets are the most popular wallets for both the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems.

CPR added:

CPR researchers spotted multiple phishing websites that looked like the original website because the scammers copied its design.

Check Point Research (CPR) report

For the Phantom domain, users were scammed when encountering domains such as “phanton.app” and “Phantonn.app” instead of the legitimate “phantom.app”. The same applied for MetaMask. Users encountered domains such as “MètaMask” on Google Ad campaigns.

The scam works as follows: attackers buy Google Ads in response to searches for popular crypto wallets.

Google Ads for the fake phishing scam websites. Source: CPR

By clicking on the ad, the unsuspecting user is redirected to a phishing website, which looks almost identical to the official wallets’ website.

The phishing website, which looks almost identical to the actual website. Source: CPR

The user then clicks on the “Create New Wallet” button, which generates a message about a secret recovery phrase. Users think it is the phrase with their new wallet, though it’s actually a recovery phrase for the attacker’s website. The attacker then moves on to also steal the user’s password.

The user then clicks on “save and continue” and is redirected to the original wallet’s website. If the user then adds the chrome wallet to their browser and inserts the newly created recovery phrase, they log into the attacker’s wallet instead of creating a new one. If the user then transfers any funds, the attacker will immediately intercept them.

CPR advises crypto wallet users to “refrain from clicking on ads and only use direct, known URLs”.

Scams on the Rise

Last year, hardware wallet provider Ledger suffered an internal break of security which resulted in the exposure of 250,000 to 1,000,000 customer email addresses. Recently a number of fake Ronin wallets were spotted circulating on the Apple and Google App Stores. Fake wallets trick users into disclosing account information which then drains the funds or collectibles held within the wallets.

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Bitcoin Bitcoin Cash Crypto News Crypto Wallets

Craig Wright in Court Battle Again Over Satoshi Nakamoto Claims

Australian computer scientist Craig Wright once again finds himself at the centre of a legal battle, this time regarding the rights to Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC wallet, currently valued at US$69 billion.

On November 1, the crypto “Trial of the Century” kicked off in Miami, US, with plaintiff Ira Kleiman facing off against Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, the presumed peudonymous developer of Bitcoin. Many hope that the trial will shed some light on Wright’s claims. However, that’s less the primary focus of the trial than whether the late David Kleiman (Ira’s brother) and Wright were business partners, entitling Ira to half the contents of the wallet.

Given bitcoin’s current price, the wallet’s holdings – assuming the holder started with no net worth – would make its possessor the 15th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

The Fight for ‘Satoshi’s Bitcoins’

Wright, the Australian crypto pioneer who has made various claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, is fighting a lawsuit that could end with him having to share the contents of Satoshi’s wallet. Wright has even gone to the lengths of filing lawsuits against those who have alleged that he isn’t Satoshi.

Kleiman alleges that his late brother David, who was a computer forensics expert, collaborated with Wright on the creation and early development of Bitcoin. The Kleiman estate is asking for US$11.4 billion, alongside the return of intellectual property or its fair market value. Wright claims he is the sole inventor and thus the only individual entitled to the billions held in the wallet.

Australian crypto pioneer Craig Wright. Source: CoinGeek

The suit alleges that David Kleiman and Wright formed a partnership and established an entity called W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, which they used to mine bitcoin and organise their joint intellectual property, including the Bitcoin source code. It is also alleged that Kleiman was involved in multiple business relationships with Wright. The Kleiman estate has accused Wright of perpetrating “a scheme against Dave’s estate to seize Dave’s bitcoins and his rights to the intellectual property associated with the Bitcoin technology”.

The case file from 2018 states that “it is undeniable … that Craig and Dave were involved in Bitcoin from its inception and that they both accumulated a vast wealth of bitcoins from 2009 through 2013”.

A panel of 10 jurors will have three weeks to hear the evidence and decide the fate of what Wright’s team is calling “Satoshi’s bitcoins”.

Can They Even Access the Wallet?

The still-unsolved mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, and Wright’s seeming inability to retrieve the coins in his wallet, means that recovering the coins may not be possible in any case. 

According to Aaron Brown, a crypto investor who also writes for Bloomberg Opinion, Wright is definitely “an important early innovator in cryptocurrency, and is also rich from cryptocurrency”, adding: “beyond that, his claims to be the main or only author of the original Bitcoin white paper have little support”.

To this day, Wright hasn’t been able to prove that he is in fact Satoshi or that he even has access to the wallet. After announcing in May 2016 that he would move Satoshi’s bitcoin – proving he had access to Satoshi’s private keys and was, therefore, Satoshi – Wright failed to do so, writing, “I do not have the courage. I cannot”, in a now-deleted blog post. If Wright really is Bitcoin’s inventor, he should presumably have the ability to control the keys.

While Bitcoin SV proponents and Wright’s fans believe the trial will finally prove Wright’s Satoshi claims, others believe it may disprove his theories. If Kleiman wins the case, but Wright is proven not to be Satoshi (or has lost access to the wallet), will Kleiman still be able to access the bitcoin at the heart of the dispute? Most likely not.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Crypto Wallets Lightning Network

US Employees Can Now Get Paid in Bitcoin Using Strike App

Lightning Network payment platform Strike is allowing its users in the US to instantly convert all or a portion of their paycheques into bitcoin. The company, well known for its work in El Salvador, is following the lead of Coinbase, which recently started allowing its users to convert their salaries to crypto and be paid in bitcoin (BTC).

‘Pay Me In Bitcoin’ Now Active

From October 15, Strike’s “Pay Me In Bitcoin” feature allows users to enable direct deposits and configure any amount of money coming into their accounts to be converted into bitcoin with no fees attached.

Strike began experimenting with the feature last year when National Football League player Russell Okung used the payment platform to split his salary between bitcoin and fiat. Several other athletes and content creators have since followed in Okung’s footsteps.

“Pay Me In Bitcoin” gives anyone in the US easy access to sound money for anybody eligible for a Strike account, regardless of who they work for. In the words of company founder and CEO Jack Mallers, “Today, anyone with a Strike account, no matter who their employer, can get paid in bitcoin.”

Seeking to Give Financial Freedom

The new feature seeks to give financial freedom to those who cannot get paid directly in BTC. Almost anybody in the US or El Salvador can sign up for Strike and start saving a portion of their income in BTC automatically. It will also enable users to shield themselves from high inflation rates and have more control over their money.

If you are not getting a 25 percent raise every year and you are saving in dollars, you are not out-earning or out-saving the rate of inflation or the increase in cost of living, and your quality of life will degrade as time goes on.

Jack Mallers, founder and CEO, Strike

Mallers has been vocal as to the benefits of BTC:

Strike Involved in El Salvador and Twitter Tips 

Twitter has recently rolled out Bitcoin Tips, which allows users to tip each other using Bitcoin’s Lightning network. One of the two payment options Twitter has made available is through Strike, which can connect to the Lightning Network.  

Since the Central American republic made bitcoin legal tender last month, Strike has been integral in helping El Salvador build its national bitcoin-based payments system.

This latest announcement from Strike comes at a particularly good time for Lightning Network, which has seen 122 percent growth in the past few months.