Category: Cryptocurrencies

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Cryptocurrencies Stablecoins Tether

Another $2 Billion USDT Minted At Tether Treasury

Tether – one of the biggest cryptocurrency stablecoins has minted another $2 billion USDT on the TRON blockchain.

A stablecoin is a new class of cryptocurrencies that price is pegged to an asset like the USD. For example, 1 USDT would equal 1 USD approximately.

What This Could Mean For USDT

Despite certain voices who have criticized Tether for a long time, asking whether USDT really is tied to the US Dollar or not – and how this tethering is actually ensured – Tether representatives and associates have gone on record in the past stating that every Tether token minted is actually backed by a reserve.

The above video is a podcast where Gregory Pepin – the CEO of Deltec bank – talks about the reserves backing USDT. Deltec is the Bahamas-based bank run by Tether Ltd., where their cash reserves are stored.

“We cannot take domestic customers and we cannot hold domestic Bahamian dollars. So that report is actually not relevant. And actually, if [the post’s author] took a little effort to go and dig a bit about the size of the Bahamian market of banking, [that person] would have found out that the entire mass of banks have around $200 billion in assets, I believe. And we are a part of that.”

Although any financial information, whether to do with crypto, fiat or both should be taken with a grain of salt, it’s worth noting that USDT is still one of the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap – so it’s quite possible that this minting is simply the result of new investors, or simply new funds that Tether Ltd. is putting to use. In addition, 2020 has seen the US Dollar ride quite a wave of inflation.

Overall, the minting of $2 billion worth of USDT should not be a cause for worry – but as always, be sure to perform careful research before making any investment.

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Australia Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies

Pay for your NBN Internet with Bitcoin Through Aussie RSP Launtel

Australian NBN Service Provider Launtel has enabled payments in Bitcoin on their website, allowing you to pay for your internet using BTC.

On the website, you can select Bitcoin as a payment method, then you’ll be redirected to a page showing a QR code you can use to pay (at the current going rate for BTC).

New Bitcoin Payment Method

The ability to pay for your internet in Bitcoin is not advertised – as of today – on Launtel’s website. However, the announcement was made on the company’s Twitter account and is visible on the User Account payment page.

Launtel has now joined the ranks of companies like Tesla who allow their goods and services to be paid for in Bitcoin. In fact, Tesla has gone even further, allowing tokenized (TESLA) stocks for sale on Binance.

Australian Companies Accepting Bitcoin Is Growing

The list of Australian companies accepting cryptos as payment is growing, these are some we have seen recently:

Companies might be deciding to accept Bitcoin because of the increasing price over the past year or so. Cryptocurrencies still do, however, remain a new market and companies should be aware of this and factor in the risks vs rewards into their decisions.

Categories
Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

Hardware Hacker Modifies Old School Game Boy To Mine Bitcoin

Stacksmashing – a YouTube content creator who focuses on reverse engineering gadgets and old-school games just for kicks – recently made waves with his video in which he sets up a Game Boy to mine Bitcoin, with a little help from a Raspberry Pi Pico and a connection to a computer running a Bitcoin node.

Battery-Powered Bitcoin

In an era where gamers and crypto miners are engaging in asymmetrical warfare over high-end GPUs and exploring the tactical advantages of eBay botting versus grey market rigs from Newegg, one entertainer set out to see if he can use other gaming equipment for the task as well.

The experiment was a success, with Stacksmashing successfully setting up a Bitcoin mining rig running on four AA batteries, childhood memories and sheer ingenuity.

Of course, certain technical hurdles had to be overcome first – for starters, Game Boys cannot connect to the Internet. The memory available on a Game Boy is also too small to contain the entire blockchain – so the Game Boy was jimmy-rigged with a Raspberry Pi Pico for some processing power, which was then linked to a PC with internet access running a Bitcoin mining node.

However, before you go rummaging through that one box in your garage to duplicate the experiment, note that the mining rate of the entire setup only amounts to 0.8 hashes per second. For comparison, a dedicated mining rig has an average speed of about 125 billion times that, meaning that if things were left to run their course – assuming the mining difficulty of Bitcoin left unchanged – Stacksmashing’s Game Boy would earn 1 BTC within a few quadrillion years.

In order to test his setup, Stacksmashing had to set up a new Bitcoin blockchain that contained no prior records. However, it’s quite exciting to see that the thing actually works – and beeps along to some cutesy animations while at it.

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Crypto Wallets Cryptocurrencies Hackers Illegal

Ledger And Shopify Hit With Class-Action Lawsuit Over 2020 Data Breach

One of the most popular hardware wallet companies, Ledger suffered a massive blow to their reputation last year when a massive data breach occurred, causing somewhere between 250,000 and 1,000,000 customer email addresses to be leaked – and among the affected customers, 9500 also had more personal information leaked, such as their names and addresses.

ID Tag Team Theft

It turns out that the incident was actually part of a coordinated effort by two rogue Shopify employees to harvest data from Shopify users, with slightly less than 200 distinct merchants affected.

As Ledger used Shopify’s platform to create their online store, both companies are now being sued in a class-action effort.

The lawsuit will be coordinated by Roche Freedman, a company known for taking on crypto-related cases.

Although Pascal Gauthier – the CEO of Ledger – took to Twitter at the time to reassure customers that the cryptocurrencies stored in the hardware wallets – also known as cold wallets – were not affected in the least, his statement was not well-received by several users who received threatening e-mails rife with promises of midnight visits and the like.

Ledger’s general counsel Antoine Thibault commented on the case, stating that although they will not comment on ongoing legal cases, the company would like to remind Ledger customers that their cryptocurrency stashes were safe.

“Ledger does not comment on ongoing legal issues. Ledger would however like to take this moment to remind our customers, yet again, never to divulge their 24 words and validate the identity of the recipient of your transactions. You are in sole and total control of access to your funds.”

In turn, Kyle Roche of Roche Freedman stated that the class-action lawsuit had been in preparation for a while – and that he and his firm had been consulting with blockchain experts ever since the incident had taken place.

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Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Europe

Data Shows Ukrainian Officials Are Well-Stocked On Crypto, Owning a Massive 46,351 BTC

According to a graph of the cryptocurrencies owned by civil servants, 652 officials in the Ukrainian government declared owning 46,351 Bitcoin – among other cryptocurrencies such as XLM, ETH, Monero and ADA. The total value would be around $2.7 Billion USD.

To Declare Or Not To Declare, That Is The Question

In Ukraine, civil servants must declare all property that they own. However, the legislation regarding cryptocurrencies in Ukraine – a country far ahead of many others when it comes to crypto adoption – is still in its incipient stages, and has not been voted on by Parliament yet. Meanwhile, Dinamo Kiev, one of the most popular football teams in Ukraine, has also been developing its own cryptocurrency.

As a result, public servants are not yet obliged to declare their crypto holdings. Nevertheless, 652 of them chose to declare their holdings – sharing 46,351 BTC between themselves.

Taking a Closer Look At Who’s HODLing

Among those who chose to declare their holdings, the biggest whale is Vyacheslav Mishalov, a member of the Dnipro city council. He accounts for over a third of the total BTC holdings reported, owning a total of 18,000 BTC.  Other noteworthy BTC holders are the first secretary of Ukraine’s embassy in Vietnam – Petro Lenski – with around 6,528 BTC, and Alexander Urbanski – the deputy chairman of the Odesa regional council – who holds a considerable sum of 5,328 BTC.

Although not a Bitcoin HODLer, Rostislav Solod is another public servant in the Kramatorsk region of Kiev – who, besides managing to get into politics and administration at 19, is also a multi-millionaire in Monero. Having bought in when the cryptocurrency was see-sawing between 30 and 50 cents, that’s quite a profit.

According to Chainalysis, Ukraine, Russia and Venezuela are the countries where cryptocurrency is the most widespread – and with people in power who may bring up crypto in a legislative meeting from a more informed position than those who see investing in cryptocurrencies as a new way to attract other investors, the trend may keep going for a while. 

Categories
Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Investing Scams

Singapore Authorities Caution Crypto Investors

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has warned crypto investors to be wary of new tokens and to do their research before investing. The warnings come after the Prime Minister of Singapore had his account created without permission on BitClout – a platform for social tokens.

Pre-Loaded Identity

Lee Hsien Loong – the Prime Minister of Singapore – issued a statement on social media informing people that he was not involved in any of this and does not endorse the platform. The creator coin using his likeness had used his profile picture and Twitter bio in order to create the token – rising at a market cap of over $9800.

I have discovered that my Twitter profile (and others as well) has been used without my permission or knowledge on a blockchain platform that allows users to buy and speculate with its proprietary cryptocurrency.

The site’s creators are anonymous, but I have sent an open tweet out to ask that my name and photo be removed from the site immediately, as I have nothing to do with the platform. It is misleading and done without my permission.

Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore

Although the Prime Minister’s account has since been taken off of BitClout, it appears that his account may have been pre-loaded by the platform, going by the number of Twitter followers that users have –  over 792,000, in Loong’s case.

The PM encouraged crypto investors to only deal with businesses regulated by the relevant Singaporean authorities in order to benefit from the protection of the applicable law.

Although Singapore is, overall, a country that is very welcoming to Blockchain – even collaborating with Australia on certain issues – the need for caution in an industry rife with investment opportunities will never diminish.

Categories
Blockchain Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrency Law

Former SEC Chairman Hints At Possible Bitcoin Regulation On The Horizon

Jay Clayton – a former chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission – has given CNBC an intriguing soundbite regarding possible future regulation of Bitcoin, which he sees as a real possibility lurking just beyond the horizon.

Similar To Gold In The 30s

Just about a week ago, big-league investor Ray Dalio hinted that in the not-so-distant future, Bitcoin may actually be banned in the US for private purposes, similarly to the ban on private ownership of gold in the 1930s.

Now, the former chairman of the entity currently going toe to toe with Ripple in court has stated that he sees tighter regulations placed on Bitcoin – and maybe cryptocurrencies in general – as a thing that may be coming pretty soon. He also added that during his stint at the SEC, he did not seek to declare BTC a security – but also that it was already classed as a non-security before he took up the position.

Currently, Mr Clayton is a crypto advisor for investment firm One River Asset Management.

Although Clayton has reasserted that he is not privy to any insider information regarding future regulation, his career has certainly provided him with enough insight to make an educated guess – and probably more.

“Where digital assets land at the end of the day […] will be driven in part by regulation—both domestic and international—and I expect, and I’m speaking as a citizen now, that regulation will come in this area both directly and indirectly whether it’s through how these are held at banks, security accounts, taxation and the like. We will see this regulatory environment evolve.”

The debate surrounding the amount of regulation cryptocurrencies should be subjected to is generally between those who want crypto to become increasingly more mainstream and the ones who want their own private realm of finance. Provided the restrictions speculated about become a reality, it remains to see which of the camps will be proven right – if either of them.

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Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Institutions

PayPal Will Allow Crypto Payments to its 29 Million Merchants in the U.S.

PayPal is now allowing U.S. customers to pay with cryptocurrency the same way they would with a credit or debit card. The crypto checkout service will allow using crypto holdings to pay at millions of merchants worldwide.

Following its previous plans to allow crypto payments with its digital wallets, PayPal’s crypto checkout service is live today in the U.S. All users will be able to easily convert their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin to fiat money and use it with its 29 million merchants.

This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet.

Dan Schulman, CEO of Paypal [Reuters]

Payments With Crypto

PayPal allowing crypto-payments is a considerable milestone for the crypto-space. The move came weeks after Tesla announced that customers can now buy its vehicles using Bitcoin.

Schulman believes that by converting crypto into fiat, merchants will not take into consideration their inherent volatility.

We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants.

Dan Schulman, CEO of Paypal [Reuters]

Besides Paypal, Crypto.com announced a global partnership with Visa to accelerate the worldwide adoption of cryptocurrencies and crypto-payment methods. This will allow further expansion of MCO cards all over the Middle East, Africa, and Asian countries.

Categories
Blockchain Cryptocurrencies DeFi

Cosmos Investors On Track To Implement Inter-Blockchain Systems

Blockchain technology has led to the rise of DeFi and better banking technology. However, since Ethereum implemented the features that allow this, more and more companies have created their own blockchains and restricted tokens created on it from being accessed by those using other technologies.

Now, Cosmos – the company behind the ATOM token – has voted to include this protocol, ending it’s isolation from those not in the Cosmos Hub.

The IBC protocol aims to decentralize DeFi once again, by allowing communication between blockchains without having to go through extra steps.

Overwhelming Support

The vote for enabling IBC passed with a clear majority in favour of implementation.

According to Zarko Milosevic – the chief scientist at blockchain consulting firm Informal Systems – the move will allow any 2 IBC-enabled blockchains to pass information back and forth permissionlessly. This would also allow DeFi firms who deal in token exchanges and the like to use products confined on an application-specific blockchain from a completely different blockchain.

“At its core, IBC is a method of securely exchanging data between two independent (sovereign) blockchains. This means that any two blockchains that support IBC can send communication back and forth in a permissionless manner. Previously, ATOM was relegated to the Cosmos Hub with regard to its utility as a governance token. It is now transferable and interoperable with all blockchains that support IBC.”

Like with any technology, the adoption of a new protocol may have a domino effect. For every Cosmos that decides to adopt IBC and open up for more DeFi business, there are probably 2 more companies waiting in the wings to see if it catches on. Hopefully, this trend will catch on – and DeFi banking will gain on traditional banking systems in leaps and bounds.

Categories
Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Scams

UK National Ordered By US Court To Pay Millions To Defrauded BTC Customers

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has ordered Benjamin Reynolds – assumed to be based out of Manchester  – to pay a total of $571 million due to his alleged scamming of BTC buyers back in 2017.

The court order in question was decided upon in cooperation with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and consists of $143 million to be paid back to scammed customers, as well as a civil monetary penalty of $429 million.

False Representation

Reynolds allegedly used multiple social media channels, a website and email address – among other methods of communication – to request at least 22,190.542 bitcoin – which were worth around $143 million at the time, from over 1,000 customers around the globe. 169  of these individuals are assumed to be living in the U.S., although there may be others who remain unknown.

Allegedly, Reynolds pretended to be running a company that traded the Bitcoins customers sent him, which were traded around by “specialized virtual currency traders” on a variety of platforms and who generated “guaranteed trading profits”.

No matter how great a trader is, everyone takes a loss sometimes – so this line should have tipped off most people regarding the nature of the “business”.

The CFTC also stated that although they have done their best to help victims of the purported scam recover their funds, they cannot guarantee the return of any funds – seeing as the accused may not have enough funds to cover the payments, if any.

“The CFTC cautions victims that restitution orders may not result in the recovery of any money lost because the wrongdoers may not have sufficient funds or assets. The CFTC will continue to fight vigorously for the protection of customers and to ensure wrongdoers are held accountable. “

The CFTC also thanked the British Columbia Securities Commission and the UK Financial Conduct Authority for their help in the investigation.