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Topics - mlawson71

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1
According to a recent comprehensive survey, Slovenia is currently the most cryptocurrency-friendly country in the world.
The Slovenian capital Ljubljana is considered to be also the most crypto-friendly in all of Europe. Currently in the city there are over 137 companies and 584 locations that accept digital coins as means of payment. The local government also allows 72 shops and 33 sports venues to provide crypto-based payment gateways. The largest shopping center in the country has even been named BTC.
In the second and third place are, respectively, the Czech Republic and Argentina. After that are Spain, Japan and Columbia. Malta, on the other hand, is the least friendly jurisdiction in Europe.
Source
I love the idea of a shopping mall called “BTC”, that’s such a cool idea.

2
Financial regulators have long warned that Youtube and social media provide fertile ground for crypto scammers, and here is a good example for that, unfortunately: a Youtube cryptocurrency giveaway scam was recently exposed by cybersecurity company based in Singapore. The scammers apparently were promising high returns from crypto investments, which resulted in them making off with some 1,680,000 million USD, according to preliminary data, though the full sum they stole is unknown at the moment.
The scammers ran 36 falsified crypto giveaway using Youtube’s streaming services. Their streams showed notable rich people and influencers like Elon Musk Vitalik Buteran and others and were edited to make a believable video to make people invest in the scam. Each stream apparently attracted between 3000 and 18,000 viewers.
Source
These scammers seem to love using Elon Musk’s face for their scams and people keep falling for it, sometimes I don’t get it.

3
Binance / Binance Launches Payment Tech Company Bifinity
« on: March 10, 2022, 04:26:07 PM »
Binance launched Bifinity, which is a a fiat-to-crypto payments solution. Bifinity is a separate payments tech company that aims to connect users and businesses across blockchain and cryptocurrency spaces.
According to Binance, Bifinity will provide cost-effective solutions using APIs (intermediary communications software) that will immensely facilitate transactions. At the moment Bifinity supports more than  50 digital currencies and Visa and Mastercard are being onboarded on the project. The company said it intends to partner with other big names in the cryptocurrency industry.
The President of Bifinity, Helen Hai, said that the constantly increasing demand of the crypto-based ecosystem pushes innovation, with increasing demands for “improved fiat-to-crypto on-ramps to bridge the gap between traditional finance and the decentralized and centralized crypto economy.”
Source
That seems like a pretty great project, let’s see what will come of it.

4
Facebook had great plans and great hopes for its Libra stablecoin project, but in the end, that project amounted to nothing.
According to recent reports, the Libra project, which was later renamed to the Diem project, is now apparently over. The Diem association, which was developing the project, is now in talks with various investment banks, seeking to sell its intellectual and other assets. What is more, the Diem Association is also apparently looking to relocate the software architects who created the Diem technology to different positions.
It appears that the Association is selling off its assets in order to return sufficient capital to its initial investors.
Source
Frankly, I think that project was doomed from the start – the pushback against it from various financial and political institutions was monumental. I’m just surprised it took this long to end.

5
The United Kingdom has implemented new rules aimed at dealing with cryptocurrency fraud. According to a speech by the Head of Civil Justice in The Court System of England and Wales, Sir Geoffrey Vos, t the Civil Justice Council (CJC) will be updating its provisions and legislations to make it much easier for courts to trace and tackle down cryptocurrency fraud. According to said new rules, the power of the courts will be expanded so they can tackle similar issues outside the jurisdiction.
The new legislation will include rules about the courts being able to demand documents and  cases that connect individuals to fraud from exchanges and various other similar entities, so that the courts could find evidence that companies are aiding and abetting fraud.
Source
Personally, I imagine that in the light of the current situation those court powers will be expanded significantly in the future.

6
The European Commission is expected to begin public consulations on the digital Euro in March, according to recent reports. What is more, the EC will also start outlining the laws that will govern the digital Euro. The first results are likely to come out in 2023.
The European Commission is likely to introduce the draft in 2023, but before that is completed they apparently wish to hold a public consultation on the project, since they are interested in the practical use of the coin in everyday transactions.
The EC also intends to synchronize the bill with the governments and legal framework of all its member states before the legislation gets adopted. The ECB is apparently already conducting tests on the digital Euro and they hope to have a prototype for it by the end of 2023.
Source
It looks like a digital Euro is inevitable. I am curious when the American government will start testing the idea of a digital Dollar too.

7
The company Jump Trading, which acquired Certus One, which is the developer of Wormhole, apparently restored all 320 million US dollars that were stolen from the Wormhole protocol earlier this month in what was the fourth biggest cryptocurrency hack in his history, when hackers made off with 120,000 wETH.
Wormhole themselves announced that all funds had been restored while their parent company announced that the decision to restore the funds was “to make community members whole and support Wormhole now as it continues to develop.” They also added that they believe in a multichain future and that Wormhole is essential infrastructure.
Source
I think it’s great that the money were restored by the parent company, but that doesn’t change the problem with security Wormhole had to begin with. Such hacks shouldn’t be happening if the industry is to be taken seriously.


8
According to initial reports, attackers exploiting deficiencies in the Wormhole Network’s Ethereum – Solana bi-directional bridge apparently stole some 93,750 Ether. At the current prices that makes about 250 million US dollars. However, according to other sources some 120,000 ETH were syphoned, which ups the damages to 320 million US dollars.
Earlier the Wormhole Network tweeted that they were down for now, but other as it turned out, the damage was already done. Wormhole later comfirmed that. The network previously claimed that they have 1 billion US dollars in TVL.
This attacked would be one of the largest DeFI crypto thefts so far, but unfortunately it is also one of many.
Source
Sadly, the situation with the crypto hacks seems to be getting worse and not better.


9
The crypto exchange Huobi conducted a survey in the US among some 3,144  American adults about their views on cryptocurrencies. According to the report of the survey, it was “an in-depth survey to learn how the average person views cryptocurrencies, their thoughts on emerging trends, and if they plan on investing in the space in the future”.
The results were certainly interesting. According to the survey:

-47% of the people say they don’t own cryptos and do not plan on investing in it.
-28% say they currently do have crypto
-25% say that  “while they don’t own crypto at the moment, they plan to in the future, indicating that they remain curious about the emerging field”

The survey also asked people about their confidence in the cryptocurrency industry. Here are the replies:

-42% say that they are “ambivalent/don’t know much about it”
-23% are pessimistic and are not confident, I think it’s all a scam/bubble and going to collapse”
-19% are overly optimistic andthink that “the industry will transform the definition of money”
-16% are neutral and think that “it will grow, but not by much”

And finally, people were asked about their reasons to buy crypto:

-18% believe cryptos have a “short-term investment potential”
-6% bought cryptos because people close to them, like friends and family recommended it
-7% bought it out of fear of missing out (FOMO)
-27% bought it out of “general interest”
-40% think it’s has a “long-term investment potential”
-just 2% ticked other

Source
I think this is a pretty excellent summary of the sheer popularity cryptos have gained in the mainstream in the past few years and that popularity will likely only increase further.

10
Cryptocurrency popularity surged in the past year, and with them surged the fraudulent laundering of cryptocurrencies. In 2021 said laundering was worth some 8.6 billion US dollars, which is over 30% more than the sum for 2020, which was 6 billion US dollars.
According to a recent report, cyber criminals have laundered about 33 billion US dollars since 2017. That said, in 2021, the money laundering of digital assets was only 0.05% of all global cryptocurrency transactions.
Even more importantly, according to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, between 800 billion and 2 trillion US dollars in fiat currencies are being laundered every year, which is 5% of the global GDP.
Source
Frankly, in comparison, the laundered cryptocurrencies are not even a drop in the bucket.

11
The Russian Central Bank – which is also the country’s chief financial regulator – has proposed a ban on the use and mining of cryptocurrencies. According to this recent report, the reasons behind this proposal are concerns about the overall financial stability, people’s safety, and monetary policy independence.
Russia has long been quite hostile towards cryptos, from insisting that they are used to launder money to being used to finance terrorism and other anti-government movements. That said, the country legalized cryptos for the first time, but did not allow their usage as a payment method.
The Russian Central Bank also stated that cryptos rallied as much as they did to speculative trading and that they exhibited the features of a financial pyramid, and, on top of everything else, warned of market bubbles that put people’s financial stability at risk.
Source
This may end up having a chilling effect on the industry, since a lot of the crypto miners moved to Russia after the ban in China.

12
News related to Crypto / Kim Kardashian sued for promoting EthereumMax
« on: January 20, 2022, 04:28:20 PM »
Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather are being sued for allegedly promoting token EthereumMax in a misleading way. The lawsuit was filed on January 7th in a Los Angeles Federal Court.
EthereumMax(EMAX), which is a token which actually has no legal or business relations with the Ethereum cryptocurrency, has disputed the allegations. The token was built on the same blockchain tech and much like many other similar tokens, turned out to be pump and dump scheme. At the beginning of June last year it formed a massive rally and then lost 98% of its value over the course of only a few hours.
According to the lawsuit the company’s executives collaborated with a few celebrities to promote their token and misled the public through social media. Kim Kardashan had an Instagram post promoting EthereumMax back in June saying “Are you guys in crypto?” and then she stated that this “is not financial advice but sharing what my friends just told me about the Ethereum Max Token”. Then she continues: “a few minutes ago Ethereum Max burned 400 trillion token- literally 50% of their admin wallet giving back to the Emax Community”.
Source
Yet another case of an influencer promoting a scam coin and then forced to take responsibility for it. Or at least I hope she'll have to take responsibility for it.

13
Crypto dot com announced that it has paused all withdrawals following  “a small number of users reporting suspicious activity on their accounts” then they reassured that all funds on the platform were safe.
One of the people who reported the problem was Billy Markus, who is the founder of Dogecoin. Marcus noticed a suspicious transaction pattern on the ETH network. Following the reports, the platform immediately ceased all withdrawals to conduct a security check.
A crypto investor named Ben Baller reported that he had lost some 4,28 Ethereum currently worth about 15,000 USD because of an unauthorized transaction from his account.
Even more alarming is the detail that Baller used two-factor authentication, which means that the hackers had breached the platform’s cyber security protocol.
Source
At least it looks like they caught this hack on time. If they hadn’t, who knows how many millions would have been stolen.

14
The American regulator SEC charged an Australian man named Craig Sproule, as well as his two companies – Crowd Machine and Metavine – with fraud and raising some 40.7 million US dollars through illicit ICOs. According to the charges, said Initial Coin Offerings funds were raised between January and April of 2018.
Said charges were filed at a Californian court. According to them Sproule allegedly lied to users about the ICOs being offered, which turned out to be unregistered. He also allegedly falsely promised them that their investment would be used for developing new tech for Metavine, which would allow the platform to function on a decentralized network for the investors’ own personal use.
Sproule then diverted some 5.8 million USD of the invested money to a gold mining operation in South Africa without notifying his clients.
Source
I just hope that justice will be served, sooner or later.

15
According to a new report, 2021 was the year with the most illicit cryptocurrency transactions so far. A dubious new record was set, as some 14 billion USD in cryptos have been received by off-the-grid crypto wallets. In comparison, back in 2020 that number was 7.8 billion USD.
That said, the total transactional value of cryptos for 2021 was an astounding 15.8 trillion US dollars, up a whopping 567% from 2020. Compared to that the illegal transactions are tiny drop in the bucket – only 0.15% of the entire volume.
Although cybercriminals have been more active than ever in the past year, legitimate cryptocurrency operations are outpacing the illicit ones by an order of magnitude that “might be the biggest surprise of all.”
Source
Personally, I think that comparison is very good news for cryptos, showing that the vast, vast majority of the industry is, in fact legal and part of the mainstream.

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