According to a recent report by the Canadian police cryptocurrency scams in the countries spiked by a shocking 400% between 2017 and 2020.
In the first 8 months of 2020 alone Canadian citizens lost CAD $11 million, or some USD $8.73 million to a disturbing number of cryptocurrency scams. Sgt. Kris Clark, a federal organized crime officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) commented on the matter and said that scammers would pressure or even extort their victims to deposit, going as far as to threaten them with violence if they don’t pay.
“They will often identify themselves as a government official or police officer to increase the level of jeopardy if immediate action is not taken by the target to pay” he added.
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I am not surprised that crypto scams have increased in number so much in recent years, considering cryptos increased popularity, but I am shocked that the scammers would resort to threats of violence. Wouldn’t that give up the scam?

In 2020, due to the COVID19 pandemic, online trading (and gambling, for that matter) increased immensely. To be more precise, in the second half of the past year, in Australia alone there were 3.4 times more accounts opened at Forex and CFD brokers compared to the same period in 2019. That prompted the Australian regulator ASIC (the Australian Securities and Investments Commission) to introduce new regulatory rules for the local brokers.
Those rules are, essentially, the same as the ones ESMA introduced in the European Union back in 2018. Maximum leverage is being capped at 1:30 for major Forex pairs, 1:20 for exotic and minor pairs, gold and major indices, 1:10 for commodities and minor indices, 1:5 for stocks and finally, 1:2 for crypto assets. ASIC also introduced negative balance protection and banned trading bonuses which encouraged customers to trade excessively.
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ASIC claims the reason for this move is the pandemic, but I, personally, I think they would have introduced such regulation with or without the pandemic.

South Korea’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), has integrated a new penalty system aimed at cryptocurrency providers. The regulator will use these new powers to impose significant penalties on the crypto exchanges in the country when they don’t report suspicious activities on their platform.
The FSC requires all South Korean crypto exchanges to keep a separate and scrupulous record of all transactions that occur between them and their customers. What is more, all exchanges are supposed to verify their clients’ identities.
If any financial institutions  and virtual asset service providers violate data maintenance procedures and internal protocol duties then they will receive hefty penalties by the regulator.
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South Korea has embraced cryptos but is also introducing some stringent regulation, which, I think, is the right approach.

Kraken is poised to raise new capital will more than double its valuation to over 10bn US dollars.
Apparently Kraken is negotiating with Fidelity, Tribe Capital and General Atlantic to raise a yet unknown amount of cash. Kraken’s current valuation is 4 billion US dollars.
According to anonymous sources, if the investors’ demand remains high, the company’s valuation may end up rising to the staggering 20 billion US dollars.
This report comes on the heels of news that Kraken users were threatening the company with lawsuits due to a recent flash crash that occurred on February 22nd, when Ether was traded for just 700 USD while on other exchanges its price was over 1300 USD. That, in turn, led to cascading liquidations on Kraken.
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What do you think guys, is this a genuine effort or a pr move?

A new bill has been introduced to US Congress – a bill targeting stable coins like Facebook’s Diem (that used to be called Libra).
The bill is called Stablecoin Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement Act and is proposed by Rashida Taib (D, Michigan), together with Congressman Jesus García and Stephen Lynch. The purpose of the bill is to protect consumers from new threats related to the crypto market. The bill require entities offering stable coins to seek approval by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and other relevant government agencies.
In other words, without such regulatory approval from relevant authorities, offering such financial instruments to the public will be illegal.
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This will likely make the industry safer, but will it also stiffle its development?

The Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid announced that it has become a victim of a security breach.
The actual breach took place back on 13th November and while the exchange managed to contain financial damages, the hackers did obtain Know Your Customer Information which includes names, passwords and user emails.
The CEO of the exchange, Mike Kayamori directly addressed users  and warned them that they might experience raudulent emails and/or soliciting attempts, also known as phishing.
Liquid also stressed in its announcement that their client base is safe and there is no immediate danger to user funds, then went on to praise its strong password encryption, while also recommending that users change those as well as their credentials as fast as they can.
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I find it really irresponsible that they took this long to warn their users about this. Who knows how many phishing attempts have already occurred and were successful.

Binance, which is among the largest crypto exchanges in the world, announced that it will begin blocking American clients from its main platform. All clients in that jurisdiction have 90 days to withdraw their money.
The exchange will enforce this rule by blocking people based on their IP-address. American clients who click on the “I’m not American” box in the registration form will receive the following email:
We noted your account may be associated with the U.S. due to an IP address you connected from in the past. In-line with regulatory requirements, we are unable to provide services to U.S. citizens or residents”.
Binance has been hinting at these intentions for over a year now, apparently
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I wonder why they did that and whether there will be other US exchanges that will do that.

The owner of two Bitcoin exchanges was fined by the American regulator FinCEN with 60 million USD because he laundered cryptocurrencies that were subsequently used in illegal activities.
Bitcoin has often been criticized for being so easy to use to pay for nefarious activities and unfortunately this turned out to be another example of this stereotype. Larry Dean Harmon laundered cryptos worth 300 million USD. He was behind a pair of cryptocurrency exchanges that operated without complying with generally accepted anti-money laundering policies. He processed over 350,000 BTC transactions and for each of them he charged a fee of 2.5%.
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It is incidents like this that give exchanges and cryptos a bad name, unfortunately.