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2021-02-12 22:00:41 ​​India’s Crypto Community Fights Back As Ban Bill Turns Into Tiresome Soap Opera

Crypto enthusiasts in India have run out of patience with unsourced reports of the government’s alleged forthcoming crypto crackdown – and have challenged New Dehli to come clean with its intentions.

On Twitter, Indian crypto community members say that they are tired of the government allegedly leaking info to reporters about crypto “bans” – and want a high-level official to make the government’s stance on the matter clear at the earliest possible opportunity.

Speculation about a possible crackdown has been almost relentless in India for years now and has reemerged in recent weeks.

One exasperated observer wrote,

“I’m honestly getting tired of every news platform using ‘sources.’ Please, government, if you want to do something, just do it!”

He was reacting to this report:

However, if unsourced reports are true, the government is edging ever closer to doing just that.

Per India-based media outlet Bloomberg Quint, an unnamed "senior Finance Ministry official said on condition of anonymity” that a bill enforcing “a ban on transacting directly via foreign exchanges” was heading for parliament, and would seek to enforce a “complete ban on investment in cryptocurrencies.”

The proposals would allow crypto holders a transition period to “exit their holdings,” before closing the door on “all forms” of crypto usage – and come after weeks of speculation that New Delhi was planning a move of this sort.

But while no official statement has yet been made on the matter, the nation’s crypto community does not appear keen to sit idly by and allow the government to enact a China-style shutdown without a fight.

Nischal Shetty, the founder and CEO of Indian crypto outfit WazirX, owned by crypto giant Binance, is one of the many India-based critics of the bill, and has been one of those seeking to re-popularize the #IndiaWantsCrypto hashtag, first rolled out in 2018 in opposition to the central bank’s attempted crackdown on bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins.

That was a battle that the community, ultimately, won.

Shetty urged crypto advocates to write to their MPs to make their opposition to the bill known.

He wrote,

“Competitors of India will be secretly hoping India bans crypto. India is a strong competitor in the field of software. Banning crypto gives others an edge over the Indian software sector. I’m sure no elected MP would want India to lose its innovative edge.”

Many replied that they had taken up his call to contact their local political representatives – the hope of driving up resistance to the bill in parliament.

And Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor and entrepreneur, the former Chief Technology Officer of crypto exchange Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, hit out at the government, tagging Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a post urging a policy u-turn.

He wrote,

“India should support crypto as a pillar of its foreign & domestic policy. It defends national security by preventing deplatforming, deters fraud via on-chain accounting and offers a decentralized alternative to a new Cold War.” Open / Comment

2021-02-09 20:00:38 ​​Attacked Blockfolio To Spend Up To USD 10M on Fixing Damage

Popular crypto portfolio tracker and trading app Blockfolio claims they are nearly back to business as usual and are offering up to USD 10 million in credits following this morning's scandalous attack. (Updated at 13:10 UTC: with additional comment by FTX CEO.)

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said that an unnamed competing exchange is behind this attack.

Blockfolio, which was acquired by crypto derivatives exchange FTX last year, has issued a couple of statements this morning (UTC time), profusely apologizing for the "offensive messages" posted on the tracker. Though there is no confirmation that it was in fact a hack as many commenters presume, Blockfolio has announced that, following the incident that had occurred this morning,

"the tracking parts of the app are coming back online momentarily and all Blockfolio users with trading enabled have been credited with USD 10 free, as will anyone else who signs up this week (max 1m people)."

The hack has left many in the Cryptoverse baffled after users started reporting receiving numerous push notifications, stating that all services would be closed to "all black people," using the derogatory N-word as well, "with immediate loss of all funds."

And while it initially appeared that it was Blockfolio's notification system that was breached, users quickly noticed other changes being made to the tracker, such as altering the coins' names and logos to offensive words and images.


Per Blockfolio's tweets:

the only infected portion was the displayed information;
no funds were affected;

there was no interaction with any trading features;

the access to the compromised Signal submitter has been revoked;

and the messages have been removed.
Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted that "the affected portion was around display and news/Signal," that no member of the Blockfolio team wanted this to occur, but that they are all responsible, and that he'd be leading a security review over the next month "of the old, non-trading-related parts of Blockfolio to bring them in line with the standards set by trading, and by FTX more generally."

But it seems that all these messages haven't reassured quite a few people. There are those reporting that they still can't trade, arguing that, therefore, trading has been affected, while others are more worried about a potential exploitation of users data. Some are even mentioning the hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger's major user data breach in this context, saying "hope this doesn't end a la Ledger." Open / Comment

2021-02-06 20:00:33 ​​Can't Beat Crypto Regulators? Educate Them

Crypto industry players urge each other to focus more on educating regulators to avoid overregulation and help authorities to foster financial innovation.

According to Dave Hodgson, Chief Investment Officer at NEM Group and Managing Director at NEM Ventures, “one primary obstacle that we are facing going into 2021 is regulations that remain inconsistent and often unclear across national boundaries.”

However, some major companies are working with regulators in order to help them shape a more friendly environment, hopefully, not only for themselves.

For example, the CEO of major crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, hopes for more regulatory clarity this year and expects to see "more positive results" of their efforts of working with regulators and helping them make better tools to improve compliance.

“The natural evolution of financial markets requires that regulation must be imposed to protect those that don't really understand the risks,” argued Monica Singer, the South African Lead for Ethereum-focused major blockchain company ConsenSys. As the regulators understand the products and the risks, they will be able to issue regulations and taxes where it’s applicable, she said, adding that taxes will “have to be imposed,” given that any transaction in the production of income should contribute to the government finances – as is the definition of taxes.

Bo Oney, Chief of Compliance of Bitcoin ATM operator Coinsource, stressed that regulation “should be crafted to foster continued financial innovation, without damaging the value accrued by consumers or investors. He hopes to see “a closer negotiation between regulatory authorities and virtual assets service providers in the near future.”

Meanwhile, Matthew Gould, Unstoppable Domains founder and CEO, told that it seems like “there's going to be another attempt to over regulate crypto” this year, but that “hopefully the crypto industry can come together to educate lawmakers and ensure innovation isn't halted from overburdensome regulation on our young industry.”

"Industry leaders will have to be proactive in educating policymakers on the ins and outs of these technologies to ensure that the regulations introduced help the space continue growing," added Erick Pinos, Americas Ecosystem Lead at Ontology (ONT).

However, while regulators are still learning, the industry might see some old-fashioned attempts to regulate this nascent space that targets the foundations of the traditional financial system.

'A flurry of challenges'

Philippe Bekhazi, CEO of stablecoin platform Stablehouse estimates that "we will see a flurry of regulatory challenges in both the US and EU markets, particularly in relation to AML/KYC compliance.”

“Overly onerous regulations will choke the free markets, and prevent the self-reporting that has ultimately bolstered the likes of Tether. Market corrections already present a high enough barrier, and any additional hurdles will discourage competition in the free markets,” Bekhazi warned.

Meanwhile, Anthony Lauriola, Chief Operating Officer at blockchain portfolio company Dan Holdings, which is currently in the process of expanding its scope globally and working to refine its know-your-customer (KYC) requirements, estimated that enhanced regulation is likely coming, especially in the US, while more North American cities and local governments may adopt payment of taxes in crypto. Furthermore, the rest of the world will “actually take a more relaxed role to regulation which might foster more adoption in emerging markets for crypto than more established ones,” he said. Open / Comment

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2021-02-04 19:59:55 Ripple Partner SBI Holdings Launches XRP Lending

https://coingape.com/ripple-partner-sbi-holdings-launches-xrp-lending/

For more updates: https://twitter.com/CoinGapeMedia Open / Comment

2021-02-03 20:00:33 ​​Binance Pay Launched 'Softly' and Binance Card 'Going Strong' - CEO

Major crypto exchange Binance has "softly, quietly launched Binance Pay" last Friday, currently in beta, said the CEO, discussing several other developing projects as well.

While it's relative hidden now, "if you can find the product, you can try it," joked CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao during the virtual Binance Blockchain Week, referring to the quiet launch of Binance Pay.

This is a basket product that the Binance plans to spend "a lot of effort on" this year, said CZ. While there is no announcement, the website's support section states that "Binance Pay is a contactless, borderless and secure cryptocurrency payment technology which allows you to pay and get paid in crypto from your friends and family worldwide."

It currently supports six currencies: binance coin (BNB), binance USD (BUSD), bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), swipe (SXP), and one fiat, EUR.

"We think that payments is one of the most obvious use cases for crypto," CZ said. However, it's much easier for merchants to accept cash and credit which people commonly use every day than currencies which the large majority of their customers do not use. "This way their business doesn't have to fluctuate with crypto," said CZ.

Meanwhile, users pay in crypto directly, allowing them "to stay completely in crypto," he argued.

Per the website, users can receive or pay up to USD 10,000 (equivalent) or 10 transactions in 24 hours, while funds received in Binance Pay will only be available for transfer to other wallets after 24 hours.

Binance Card, which works on the same 'user pays crypto, merchant receives fiat' premise, is one of the projects in Binance Pay, the CEO stated, while they launched an app-to-app payment prototype as well.

"Binance Card is still going really strong," he said, without providing numbers. Active Binance Card users are "growing really, really quickly ... at double-digit rates." While all European customers can sign up for the card now, more markets are "launching very soon."

The second to last update the CEO mentioned is that Binance launched the easy-to-use Lite mode in their app a while ago, geared towards new users "who may not be super-active traders," CZ said, while users in the countries where it's available can toggle between the Lite and the Pro version.

Lastly, Binance announced the 18th project on Binance Launchpad - SafePal (SFP) - which they said will follow a new Launchpad subscription format, with the recording of user BNB balances starting on February 2. CZ said that the exchange is a minority investor in the project, as it was a Binance Labs incubation project two years ago.

The new subscription format allows holders to commit an amount of BNB towards a token sale, said the exchange, "where their final allocation of the new token is determined by the ratio of their committed BNB against the total committed BNB by all participating users." There is a max cap of token allocation per user. Open / Comment

2021-01-31 20:00:57 ​​Visa Wants to Work with Exchanges, Wallets on ‘Digital Gold’ Bitcoin

The CEO of payments giant Visa has stated that the firm wants to “work with wallets and exchanges” on handling crypto, in order to make its own card solutions interoperable with digital tokens – and has called bitcoin (BTC) and other “cryptocurrencies” “digital gold.”

The remarks were made by Visa supremo Alfred Kelly in a earnings call yesterday. During his talk, Kelly spent a significant amount of time discussing crypto. After differentiating a divide between “cryptocurrencies that represent new assets such as bitcoin” and “digital currencies and stablecoins” backed by fiat holdings, he stated,

“We see all [cryptocurrencies] as digital gold. They are predominantly held as assets that are not used as a form of payment in a significant way at this point. Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make fiat purchase[s].”

The Visa chief appeared to be keen to leave the door open for all crypto projects that show promise, pledging that should “a specific digital currency become a recognized means of exchange, there’s no reason why we cannot add it to our network, which already supports over 160 currencies.”

And Kelly appeared ready to court the custom of stablecoin issuers – as well as digital currency-issuing central banks. He said,

“For [...] stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, these are an emerging payments innovation that could have the potential to be used for global commerce, much like any other fiat currency. We think of digital currencies running on public blockchains as additional networks […] we see them as part of our network of networks strategy. […] We are the clear leader in this space.”

Kelly was also keen to point out that it already has 35 partnership deals in place with what he termed “leading digital currency platforms and wallets,” with name-checks for Crypto, BlockFi, Fold and BitPanda, and was eager to add,

“The next leading network has a fraction of that.” Open / Comment

2021-01-29 12:02:01 ​​ Cybersecurity company Hacken reports a breach to the hackaton's website. After the recent announcement of the community-hosted First Grey Hats Ideas Competition hackaton, it seems that hackers took notice of it.

According to company's report, the website is now operational and user data is completely unaffected. After the hack, a message was found announcing a project with plans to improve security of DeFi products.

Hacken team members reached out to hackers to learn more about the project.

Official statement from Hacken: https://hacken.io/hacken-news/official-statement-regarding-the-hacking-of-the-first-grey-hats-ideas-competition-site/ Open / Comment

2021-01-24 20:00:22 ​​Bitcoin Spikes Above USD 32K as MicroStrategy Boosts Morale With a New Deal

The world's number one crypto moved up and above USD 32,000 again as US-based business intelligence company MicroStrategy revealed its relatively small USD 10m bitcoin (BTC) deal.

On Friday afternoon, 14:37 UTC, bitcoin climbed from the USD 29,400 level to which it had dropped earlier in the day, and is trading at USD 32,565, after it appreciated almost 3% in the last day. It dropped 12% over the course of the past week, and went up nearly 37% in a month.

This rise comes as MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor announced that the company made an additional purchase of bitcoin: they bought approximately BTC 314 for USD 10m in cash in accordance with its Treasury Reserve Policy, at an average price of approximately USD 31,808 per bitcoin, said the CEO. BTC trading volume reached USD 62.77bn in the past 24 hours.

He added that MicroStrategy now holds approximately BTC 70,784, which at the current price translates to the value of USD 2.3bn.

In December last year, MicroStrategy confirmed it raised USD 650m by selling convertible senior notes due 2025 in order to buy more bitcoin. By that point, the company had already acquired approximately BTC 40,824. Meanwhile, in October, MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor revealed that he spent around USD 175m on his personal BTC stash.

The Cryptoverse was quick to comment on this major purchase. "Seems like a lot of people don't get it," argued popular BTC enthusiast and investor WhalePanda. "You keep selling your Bitcoin to large institutional investors on every dip hoping we'll go back down to USD 20k or lower. That's not going to happen. Make them all market buy."

Per the CEO of major crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, "those 314 bitcoins are as good as gone from circulation, for a long long time," adding that this is the result of BTC "moving from weak hands to strong hands." This is the same opinion Jameson Lopp, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of crypto security specialist Casa, shared.

Others, however, are bringing up potential market and people manipulation again.

Meanwhile, four days ago, major US-based digital asset manager Grayscale Investments added BTC 16,240 to its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), bringing up the total amount to BTC 632,800 (USD 20.6bn). Since then, they added some BTC 9,850, per bybt, to make the total holdings of BTC 642,610.

"Tensions around an alleged Bitcoin double-spend combined with a generally insecure stance between BTC’s bears and bulls sent the currency teetering all the way down to USD 30,000. But what was perceived as an ill-natured manipulation was in fact a perfectly normative blockchain event, wherein the network functioned in accordance with its protocol – a clear as day sign that Bitcoin is, simply put, "doing just fine," Antoni Trenchev, Co-founder and Managing Partner of major crypto lender Nexo, said in an emailed comment.

According to him, the broader outlook is promising for a shorter dip in prices and a BTC recovery.

"The new Biden administration has frozen all agency rulemaking, including a controversial proposal on “unhosted wallets.” Hand in hand with this comes BlackRock’s toe-dipping into crypto – another signal of the positive institutional interest dominating the “Bitcoin big picture,” he said, adding that "news like this is what we should be focusing on in our industry vs. bickering over false claims of double-spent BTC." Open / Comment

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