Gimme The Coin

2021-01-28 21:00:27 ​​ Hackathon has been hacked

Hacken, a cybersecurity leader, has reported an unauthorized access to the First Grey Hats Ideas Competition hackathon website. The event was created by the community members and supported by team Hacken.

Company stated that they restored an access to the website almost immediately and user data remains intact. However, it was discovered that hackers had left a message stating that they are planning to create an innovative project, which could improve the security of all DeFi products.

Hacken representatives have already contacted the hackers to find out more about the project.

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

2021-01-28 16:00:45 ​​S Korean Lawmaker Wants To Criminalize Crypto Manipulation

A South Korean MP has announced the creation of a draft private members’ bill that seeks to criminalize crypto market manipulation.

Per News1, the measure is the brainchild of the opposition People Power Party MP Lee Ju-hwan, who has criticized architects of the existing legal framework for being overly focused on anti-money laundering protection in all things crypto-related.

Courts and prosecutors in the country have previously charged individuals who have been accused of market manipulation under existing fraud laws, but Lee claims that there is no specific legal basis to address unethical trade practices in the crypto sphere for market price manipulation, crypto speculation offenses or the imposition of excessive fees by virtual asset service providers (VASPs).

Lee, gave the example of a domestic crypto exchange whose executives agreed to list a token in exchange for crypto payments worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” – as part of a wider plan to drive up token prices. He also spoke about a company whose CEO was sentenced to prison time after “arbitrarily manipulating” trading figures.

However, the lawmaker claimed that existing regulations did not specifically pertain to the crypto sector.

If passed, the legislation would also seek to punish the perpetrators of insider trading and purposeful info leaking on forthcoming listings.

And the MP added that “frequent” abuses of power were now common in the crypto industry, claiming that his bill would help promote “fair trade and investor protection in the virtual asset market.”

The bill will head to the financial or legal committee of the lower house. If approved, MPs could vote on it in the first half of this year. Open / Comment

2021-01-26 16:01:02 ​​Chinese Central Bank Governor Signals USD 37B Ant IPO May Still Happen

What was set to become the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in the world – the floating of Chinese business giant Alibaba’s fintech and blockchain arm Ant Group – could well be back on at some point in the future, the nation’s central bank boss has hinted.

Yi Gang, the governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), was speaking during a session named Strengthening the Financial and Monetary System at the World Economic Forum today. The moderator of the panel – Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf – asked him why the Ant Group IPO had been “stopped.”

Yi Gang replied,

“It’s a complicated issue. Everything is ruled by law, we must follow legal procedure.”

He added that an investigation of monopoly issues was ongoing and added that IPO regulatory authorities had likely “found a problem,” insisting that “all must be done according to the legal framework.” He also suggested that privacy-related issues may have played a role.

But when Khalaf asked him directly if the Ant IPO would “go ahead,” the governor refused to rule out the possibility, suggesting that “once problems are solved,” and “legal framework was “followed,” “you will have the result.”

Beijing officially stated that IPO, which had been on course to raise a projected USD 37bn, had been blocked due to new regulations that require internet platform providers to stump up a greater amount of the funding for loans they arrange.

But observers have claimed that the government was actually worried about Ant’s growing influence in the financial sector. The firm runs Alipay, which, along with WeChat Pay, is already responsible for a combined 15% of the current Chinese payments market.

And the international community has also speculated that the growing influence of Alibaba boss Jack Ma, who has all but vanished from the public view since the IPO was blocked late last year, barring a brief and inconclusive video appearance last week. In October, he made comments critical of the government, a move that is thought to have sparked ire in Beijing.

The tech world – and blockchain sector – has been asking “What happened to Jack Ma?” If Yi Gang’s comments are to be taken literally, we may all be on the verge of finding out. Open / Comment

2021-01-24 16:01:00 ​​Green Markets, Red Markets, Meh Markets and 20 Crypto Jokes

This was quite a week for ethereum which reached its ATH territory in USD, though it remained far from its ATH against BTC. But some mining pools banded together to try and stop the EIP 1559. Meanwhile, as the bitcoin snowball is expected to hit more institutions in 2021, JP Morgan strategists told us to look at the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust inflows for the USD 40K breakout signs, but when Grayscale made a major purchase, BTC went ‘meh’. And though the markets went red, altcoins may be set to receive some of the money going into BTC and ETH. As Bitcoin block 666,666 showed a Biblical message, and a battle was on over publishing Bitcoin whitepaper, investors who cashed in on their holdings before BTC hit USD 20K have been eating humble pie, while Lyn Alden said she invests in BTC but not in ETH because the latter is an unfinished product. Meanwhile, carmaking giants teamed up with auto insurance providers and tech heavyweights to work on a blockchain-powered vehicle history platform, while BlackRock revealed its intentions to invest in cash-settled BTC futures.

There's more. US Treasury Secretary nominee hinted at a new crypto environment and a potential unrealized gains tax, while stating that crypto has some benefits. While a former Coinbase exec might be replaced with a former Ripple advisor at the OCC, BIS announced work on a new blockchain-powered tokenization incentive, Japan’s reportedly gearing up to move into the second phase of its three-part digital yen project, the UAE financial watchdog is set to regulate crypto by 2022, and a British financial advisor’s petition to ban bitcoin transactions in the UK garnered just 124 signatures. Major South Korean carrier SKT launched blockchain-powered certification app, while the Upbit operator Dunamu launched a real-time digital assets “fear-greed” gauge. Maps.me took the DeFi plunge with a USD 50m fundraising effort, a Spanish football club said that it completed a transfer entirely in crypto, and a South Korean video games giant created a blockchain-powered tool for parents to monitor their offspring’s gaming time. And another Hong Kong crypto trader got robbed. Open / Comment

2021-01-22 17:00:28 ​​First Grey Hat Hackers Ideas Competition

The high-profile event in 2021! Mr Leo Andreo leads the Hacken community in organizing the First Grey Hat Hackers Ideas Competition

The prize pool will be 35,000 USD.

The leading cybersecurity company Hacken will support the community’s initiative First Grey Hat Hackers Ideas Competition by providing 50% of the prize pool and applying its expertise at the ideas’ valuation stage.

Submit your product or service idea and get the attention you deserve by winning the competition! Who knows, maybe your project will become the next great sensation! Open / Comment

2021-01-22 16:00:50 ​​Idea Of Taxing Unrealized Gains Resurfaces As Money Printing Intensifies

United States President Joe Biden's Treasury secretary nominee Janet Yellen has once again become a topic of discussion in the Cryptoverse - this time over her comments suggesting she may look to tax of unrealized gains. And this has led some to question if the US is demonstrating a sign of what is to come in other countries that are printing fiat money at an unprecedented speed in an attempt to help economies.

Crypto advocates today said they were stunned by one of the many comments Yellen made during her hearing Tuesday before the Senate's Finance Committee.

Per Reuters, the nominee "raised eyebrows of some senators and Wall Street when she said that Treasury would consider the possibility of taxing unrealized capital gains - through a "mark-to-market" mechanism - as well as other approaches to boost revenues."

Unrealized capital gains are the increase in the value of assets that an investor is holding. These are then realized when that investor sells the asset at a higher price than they paid for it.

In 2019, the possibility of taxing wealthy investors on gains like these was also raised by Senator Ron Wyden, who will likely become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, according to CNBC.

Appreciation would reportedly be taxed at the same rate as all other income - up to 37%.

However, none of the videos currently in circulation appear to show exactly what Yellen had to say on the subject.

But when asked about taxing realized appreciation of assets, she replied that she does "believe that capital gains should at some point be taxed," and she does mention the mark to market approach (MTM). Frustratingly, though, the audio becomes unintelligible at this point.

The billionaire investor and co-founder of Oaktree Capital, Howard Marks, was quoted by CNBC as saying that Yellen's plan to tax this type of gains is not practical, adding:

"I think that would hit sentiment. It would obviously make it less attractive to be an investor, all things being equal."

The only way investors would be able to avoid that taxation is by not making any profit from their assets, Marks added.

Many commenters seem to be quite puzzled about the idea that Yellen would suggest taxing unrealized gains, with some wondering how that could even work.

As reported, Yellen has also suggested that there may be tax increases on wealthy Americans and corporations, but stressed that the focus now was firmly on providing relief to mitigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The issues of further taxation and providing more aid would almost certainly involve Washington deciding to print more money. As reported, the need for more funding and stimulus measures announced last year prompted many to accuse Washington of 'money printer go brrr' tactics. Some believe that the combination of printing trillions of dollars and taxing unrealized gains would take a catastrophic toll on the economy. Open / Comment

2021-01-18 16:00:07 ​​Bitcoin Snowball Is Expected To Hit More Institutions in 2021

Institutionalization, professionalization, commercialization, and inclusion of bitcoin (BTC) in portfolios of hedge funds, treasuries and others is likely to continue its upwards trajectory, providing BTC with endorsement, recognition, and validation, further leading to adoption and price appreciation, according to industry insiders talking to Cryptonews.com.

The institutionalization of cryptocurrency was the emerging theme of 2020, said Seamus Donoghue, VP Sales and Business Development at METACO, a provider of security-critical digital asset infrastructure for financial institutions, adding that, while the investment focus has largely been focused on BTC, ethereum (ETH) “will likely be a high beta alternative to the dominant narrative of Bitcoin as an institutional investment asset class.“ He said it’s possible for the same Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) which pushed retail into crypto and BTC’s price to its all-time high in 2017 to be replicated in 2021 as institutional FOMO.

He added that an acceleration in institutional money coming into BTC would have “a much larger and profound impact on the long term valuation of bitcoin--the risk is for a parabolic move in Bitcoin’s price in 2021.” It’s Donoghue’s opinion that,

“We are now at an inflection point where allocations to bitcoin will accelerate into the mainstream in 2021 and bitcoin will become an essential allocation for any institutional portfolio.”

2020 was the year when bitcoin started being taken seriously by some large corporations, retail investors, and institutional investors.

“This has set us up for a huge 2021 and beyond,” when we may see crypto investment "exploding in growth as more funds start adding it to their portfolio, more companies start accepting it as a payment method, and governments putting some positive regulation around it,” according to Tim Bos, CEO of ShareRing, a decentralized sharing economy and self-sovereign identity platform.

And Sinjin David Jung, Managing Director of IBMR.io (International Blockchain Monetary Reserve), stated that “adoption will be meteoric in 2021 now that bitcoin has been adopted by institutions.”

“Ultimately the true added value is simply that when people or institutions are buying into bitcoin, not because they mined it, but with actual cash at the current valuation, that creates a very established monetary system which really bitcoin now has become. The world’s immutable global independent sovereign ledger,” he said.

There are many more positive expectations shared by experts. Eric Wall, the Chief Investment Officer of the crypto hedge fund outfit Arcane Assets, told Cryptonews.com that “it's quite clear that bitcoin is making rapid progress in that it's becoming an asset class that's suitable addition to many investors' portfolios.” Wall finds that the professionalization of bitcoin, as well as its inclusion in the portfolios of hedge funds, high-net-worth individuals, family offices and corporate treasuries is likely to only accelerate in 2021. “Retail investor adoption is likely to track this development,” he said.

Speaking of which, Erick Pinos, Americas Ecosystem Lead at open source blockchain Ontology (ONT), said that more large financial institutions will publicly announce that they have moved funds into BTC in 2021, which “will create a snowball effect not only for other large institutions to follow with their funds but also for the retail market to start moving more personal wealth into bitcoin.”

Seamus Donoghue added that retail will “play no small part in crypto” as they are given increasingly easier access to the markets. It’s bitcoin’s performance that will drive the narrative and, if the institutional market evolves as expected in 2021, rapidly expanding on-ramps will only add fuel to the fire. “Institutional investor adoption drives the build out of institutional infrastructure to support bitcoin’s adoption. This in turn provides the foundation for retail investment vehicles and retail on-ramps,” he said. Open / Comment

2021-01-16 16:00:44 ​​Lack of Crypto Regulations a Turnoff for Japanese Investors – Coincheck

The head of the Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck said there are relatively “few” crypto-keen institutional investors in Japan – and has complained of the lack of a framework to help foster professional crypto investors.

In an interview with IT Media, Satoshi Hasuo, the Representative Director and President of Coincheck, warned that “there is a possibility that the entire Japanese community will lose out on investment opportunities,” while their counterparts in the West begin to step up their crypto investments.

Coincheck is currently the only major domestic exchange that offers over-the-counter (OTC) transactions for large-scale customers and Hasuo stated that factors such as American regulators allowing banks to take charge of crypto custody had helped sway investors toward crypto. In Japan, meanwhile, banks are yet to receive the green light to offer such services.

Hasuo explained,

“There is no legal framework for domestic institutional investors. There are also accounting problems. The government needs to introduce regulations.”

And the Coincheck boss stated that a rush of investors to the market may have helped drive up prices, although bigger Japanese investors have seen little or none of the action.

He said,

“Overseas, a considerable number of institutional investors are coming in, which is spurring the market on. There is no equivalent movement from corporations and institutional investors in Japan. We do have OTC customers, but these are few in number. And almost none of them are listed companies.”

Meanwhile, another Coincheck expert stated, per the same media outlet, that some Japanese companies would likely eventually pursue bitcoin (BTC) and altcoin-buying strategies like those executed by the likes of America’s MicroStrategy – but hinted that regulatory clarity could also help expedite this trend. Open / Comment

2021-01-14 16:00:21 ​​This Is The Biggest Risk To Crypto Market According to Pantera Capital CIO

Leveraged trading is the biggest risk to the crypto market in terms of what could cause “something to pop down the line,” according to Joey Krug, Co-chief Investment Officer (CIO) at US-based major crypto investment company Pantera Capital.

He was speaking during Pantera Capital’s conference call yesterday.

According to Krug, some people get complacent when they realize crypto is here to stay. As a result, they lever up on it, thinking it can’t go down that much because institutions will swoop in and buy, saving the day. But eventually, when the lid blows off and bids are not there, liquidations of levered longs will drive the price down.

During the market crash on January 10-11, more than USD 3bn worth of long positions were liquidated, according to bybt.com data. To compare, on January 12, over USD 200m worth of short and also more than USD 200m long positions were liquidated.

As reported, crypto researcher and analyst Willy Woo argued that "unlike previous crashes in the past 2 years, where over-leveraged markets lead by trader liquidation, this one started on spot markets, then was greatly amplified by a single exchange partially failing, yet did not turn itself off for the good of the ecosystem."

Leveraged trading refers to borrowing funds so that you can take a larger position than you would be able to with your existing funds so that you can potentially generate a higher profit. However, while margin trading enables traders to amplify their returns, it can also lead to increased losses and liquidations, which is why experienced traders tend to advise newcomers to stay away from leveraged trading.

Meanwhile, during the call yesterday, Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead described the global macro environment as “off the charts,” pointing to the unprecedented pace at which the United States is printing money each month and “pushing it like crazy.”

As a result, the main two cryptoassets - bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) - have soared, which illustrates the next point, which is that “this rally has consolidated around bitcoin and ethereum,” according to Pantera slides. Open / Comment

2021-01-12 16:00:26 ​​South Korean Banks ‘Play to Their Strengths’ with Bitcoin Custody Moves

South Korean commercial banks are now in “fierce competition” with each other in the race to launch bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptoassets custody products that they believe will prove a lucrative market for them, per a new report.

According to media outlet Newsis, industry sources claim that the cryptoasset management market “is expected to grow even larger” when a landmark legal amendment that requires all virtual asset service providers (VASPs) in the country to impose anti-money laundering protocols comes into force in March this year. The media outlet claimed that this would lead to “fierce competition” in the crypto market among banks.

The new legal measures will also hand banks considerable power when dealing with crypto exchanges, effectively granting them the authority to decide whether trading platforms are granted real-name banking contracts. Only platforms that abide by real-name, social security number-verified banking regulations will be allowed to continue trading.

As such, it appears that banks now hold all the aces in the crypto sector, and are looking to take advantage.

As previously reported, NongHyup, Kookmin and most recently Shinhan, three of the nation’s biggest commercial banks, have recently announced their intention to begin offering crypto custody services, and will likely look to woo custom from domestic crypto exchanges. Rival Woori Bank is also reportedly keen on entering the sector.

The Newsis report’s author quotes In Ho, the head of Korea University’s Blockchain Research Institute, as saying,

“There have even been hacking accidents at Bithumb and Upbit, the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Korea, so some people think that if banks take charge of crypto custody, they will be compensated in the event of further hacks. Banks will be able to play to their strengths in this manner.”

And the professor added that banks are also keen to offer their services to an “increasing” number of professional investors with a penchant for crypto.

In concluded,

“Things have changed. In recent times, not only individuals, but also institutional financial companies and institutional investors are increasingly starting to invest in cryptoassets. This may be a contributing factor.” Open / Comment