Weekly News Overview: Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin Under 1k Is Possible

Bitcoin dipped below $4000 today, for the first time since the depths of crypto winter — and one veteran market analyst believes it could have even further to fall.

Crypto markets have been in freefall following the announcement of travel bans yesterday between the U.S. and Europe, and ongoing volatility in all financial markets.

Veteran trader Peter Brandt — who is famous for correctly predicting the market crash from the all time high — today tweeted an answer that no one wanted to hear in response to an inquiry about the new ‘bottom’ for Bitcoin due to coronavirus.

Brandt said that if he looks at the Bitcoin chart “without bias” the new bottom is potentially “sub-$1,000”. That’s almost 80% below the current price, which is just under $5000.

Travel Bans Around The World Crippling Crypto

In the United States, President Trump announced new travel restrictions today in response to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The Commander in Chief signed a Presidential Proclamation suspending the entry of most foreign nationals who have been in certain European countries during the 14 days prior to their scheduled arrival to the U.S.

These countries include Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The United Kingdom is exempt.

Huobi Releases New Mobile App

Huobi Group is a global blockchain company founded by Leon Li in 2013. Currently, the crypto exchange has an accumulative turnover that exceeds USD $3 trillion and offers its services to users from more than 170 countries.

Huobi Group has officially announced the launch of its new mobile application, Huobi Lite. Per a March 10 announcement, the new app will allow anyone to trade major cryptocurrencies on Android and iOS without fees or commissions.

Robinhood Crypto And Stock Trading App Is Down For A Second Monday

After experiencing a major outage last week, major stock and cryptocurrency trading app Robinhood is troubled again.

Robinhood encountered another technical outage on Monday, causing its platform to halt trading services, according to a March 9 tweet by Robinhood’s support team.

The firm announced earlier on the day:

“Trading is currently down on Robinhood and we’re investigating the issue. We’re focused on getting back up and running as soon as possible and we’ll update the status page with the latest.”

Subsequently, Robinhood has partially restored trading, noting that they are working to get the platform back up and running fully. According to online reports, the platform was partly functional after just an hour of downtime.

COVID-19 Plagues Crypto Conference

There has been a rapid escalation of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak worldwide. Two major crypto conferences in the US have been affected by the epidemic so far.

“Bitcoin 2020”, originally scheduled for March 27 and 28 in San Francisco, has moved to Q3 of 2020. The Chamber of Digital Commerce also postponed next week’s “DC Blockchain Summit 2020” conference. The rescheduled dates are not yet confirmed, according to the announcements on March 6.

Weekly News Update: Cryptocurrency

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ICE Reveals Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has revealed the existence of a Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program (CIP) in the agency’s 2021 budget proposal.

The proposal states that the CIP seeks to identify unlicensed capital flows taking place across peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces, online forums, and darknet markets. The CIP was developed by ICE’s Bulk Cash Smuggling Center (BCSC).

Lloyd’s New Insurance Offering Covers Crypto Held in Hot Wallets

Insurance giant Lloyd’s of London now provides a new type of liability insurance policy to protect cryptocurrency in hot wallets that is lost by theft.

Lloyd’s new offering was developed by Lloyd’s syndicate Atrium together with crypto will-focused firm Coincover, with limits from as little as £1,000 ($1,275), Lloyd’s announced on March 2. The policy is also backed by an array of other Lloyd’s insurers, including TMK and Markel, all of whom are members of Lloyd’s Product Innovation Facility.

SC Rules In Favour Of Crypto Trading In India

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the curb on cryptocurrency trade in India put up by the RBI.

ETNow reported quoting:

“SC rules curb on crypto currency trade illegal,” the report said while adding that the order lifted ban on trading in virtual currency, cryptocurrency and bitcoins.

Bitcoin, the most valued cryptocurrency in the world, was down 0.39 per cent at $8,815. The market cap of the currency stood at $161 billion.

The Reserve Bank of India had virtually banned cryptocurrency trading in India as in a circular issued on April 6, 2018, it directed that all entities regulated by it shall not deal in virtual currencies or provide services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling those.

Whistle-Blower Outs “Wolf Of Kyiv” For Bitcoin Scam

A whistle-blower has revealed the existence of a 200-employee Ukrainian Bitcoin (BTC) trading scam that netted $70 million in 2019.

The whistle-blower outed the scam by providing footage and internal company documents to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, which reported the news on March 1.

The scam predominantly targets investors based in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom by using fake news articles advertised on Facebook and some mobile game platforms.

Bitfinex to Delist Nearly 50 Cryptocurrency Trading Pairs

Bitfinex, the 11th largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, will remove dozens of cryptocurrency trading pairs later this week.

According to a March 2 blog post, Bitfinex will remove 46 crypto trading pairs on Friday, March 6 due to low liquidity on the platform.

The cryptocurrency exchange noted that the delisting of the trading pairs is a common measure that is expected to improve liquidity on Bitfinex platform and lead to a “more streamlined and optimized trading experience for our users.”

Bitfinex to Delist Nearly 50 Cryptocurrency Trading Pairs

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Bitfinex, the 11th largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, will remove dozens of cryptocurrency trading pairs later this week.

According to a March 2 blog post, Bitfinex will remove 46 crypto trading pairs on Friday, March 6 due to low liquidity on the platform.

The majority of trading pairs that are planned to be removed on Friday include a wide list of altcoins trading against Ether (ETH), the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. That list includes about 30 trading pairs including altcoins like OKEx token (OKB), Verge (XVG) and Nucleus Vision (NCASH).

Another 16 trading pairs include altcoins trading against Bitcoin (BTC), including pairs like Hydro Protocol (HOT)/BTC and Medicalchain (MTN)/BTC. Other trading pairs include two altcoins traded against Dai (DAI): OmiseGO (OMG)/DAI, 0x (ZRX) /DAI, and one trading pair with Japanese Yen, XVG/JPY.

Bitfinex recommended users to cancel any open orders with the above trading pairs before March 6 10:00 AM UTC, noting that all remaining open orders will be automatically canceled by the system.

According to data on cryptocurrency tracking service CoinGecko, Bitfinex currently supports about 350 trading pairs on its platform. As of press time, Bitfinex’s daily trading volume accounts for about $118 million, according to data from Coin360.

Cointelegraph reached out to Bitfinex for additional comments but did not receive an immediate response. This story will be updated should they respond.

As reported by Cointelegraph, liquidity in cryptocurrency refers to the level of ease with which a crypto asset can be exchanged for cash without affecting the price of that asset. Delisting is a common measure for increasing liquidity for cryptocurrency exchanges. Back in 2019, Binance delisted about 30 trading pairs in a move to improve liquidity and user trading experience,

ICE Reveals Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program

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The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has revealed the existence of a Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program (CIP) in the agency’s 2021 budget proposal.

“The BCSC has developed a Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program (CIP) which identifies unlicensed money services businesses in the form of independent cryptocurrency brokers’ use of peer-to-peer (P2P) sites, online forums and classified advertisements, and darknet markets (DNM) to engage in unlicensed money services businesses (MSB) activity.”

ICE states that “a large portion” unlicensed MSBs operating with cryptocurrency on darknet markets and P2P marketplaces are engaged in the laundering of narcotics proceeds.

The agency adds that it has increased its training and cyber analytics capabilities for “cyber investigations targeting darknet illicit marketplaces where fentanyl and chemical precursors are often sold.”

Darknet markets have been a target of numerous ICE enforcement actions in recent years, with ICE agents receiving “advanced darknet training” since at least September 2019.

ICE partnered with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in mid-2017 to conduct a year-long nationwide investigation targeting darknet vendors, leading to over 35 arrests. ICE also executed a week-long internationally coordinated action during October 2016.

The revelation of ICE’s Cryptocurrency Investigations Program amid increasing efforts to crack down on darknet activity globally.

On Feb. 25, the government-owned Austrian Institute of Technology announced it had partnered with French blockchain security company NIGMA Conseil to collaborate on blockchain forensics.

The companies are working to provide blockchain forensics services to governments and businesses, including dark web scraping and wallet clustering.

Weekly Cryptocurrency News Update

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Bitcoin To Hit $100K In 2025, Says Justin Sun, Founder Of Tron

Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of Tron (TRX), the 15th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, is investing in a number of cryptos other than Bitcoin (BTC).

In a Feb. 23 interview with CNN, Tron CEO said that he is a long-term believer in cryptocurrencies and owns a stake in many altcoins, including the two largest coins after Bitcoin — Ether (ETH) and XRP.

Iranian Cell Calls For The Use Of Cryptocurrency

This week an Iranian general called for a unique way to bypass the sanctions on his country enforced by the United States.

Saeed Muhammad, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, called for Iran to use cryptocurrencies to evade the economic sanctions. According to the Telegram channel of Coinit.ir, a crypto news organization based in Iran, the general addressed a crowd on Feb. 26 (translated from Farsi):

“We are demanding the creation of a more sophisticated mechanism to bypass sanctions. To circumvent sanctions, we must develop solutions such as the exchange of products and the use of cryptocurrencies with our partnerships [in other countries].”

Lawsuit Alleging Ripples XRP Moves Forward

A United States federal district court has decided to allow a lawsuit alleging that Ripple’s XRP crypto asset is an unregistered security.

Court documents filed on Feb. 26 reveal that Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the Court of the Northern District of California ruled to only partially grant Ripple’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit against it.

The lawsuit in question was initiated in August 2019 by XRP investor Bradley Sostack, who alleges that the firm misled investors and sold XRP as an unregistered security in violation of federal law.

Binance’s CZ Overtakes Bitmain Co-founder In New Hurun Rich List

While China now has more billionaires than the United States and India combined, Binance CEO might have more money than any crypto person, a new report says.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has overtaken a co-founder of cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain in the latest Hurun Global Rich List, an annual ranking of the world’s biggest billionaires published Chinese media Hurun Report.

Issued on Feb. 26, the new Hurun Report’s list of 2,816 global billionaires includes six individuals who made their fortune from blockchain and crypto industry.

South Korean Tax Policy Association Proposes Two Step Tax On Cryptocurrencies

Wooden house figurine and money bag with a dollar symbol. Budget, subsidized funds. Mortgage loan for purchase housing, construction or modernization. Tax, building maintenance.

South Korean tax experts have advised the Korean government to apply a low-level trading tax on cryptocurrency profits before subjecting citizens to a transfer income tax, according to a Business Korea report. The Korean government is expected to announce its tax reform plan in late 2020.

The low-level trading tax was recommended because there is a lack of legal infrastructure to enact transfer taxation.

During a seminar on Feb. 21, members of the Korean Tax Policy Association advised the South Korean government to enact this two-step plan, arguing that taking a deliberative approach to implementing a cryptocurrency income tax will be most effective.

Iranian Cell Calls For The Use Of Cryptocurrency

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This week an Iranian general called for a unique way to bypass the sanctions on his country enforced by the United States.

Saeed Muhammad, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, called for Iran to use cryptocurrencies to evade the economic sanctions. According to the Telegram channel of Coinit.ir, a crypto news organization based in Iran, the general addressed a crowd on Feb. 26 (translated from Farsi):

The people of Iran have seen the value of their currency drop significantly in the wake of the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, following the withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018.

Sanctions have effectively isolated Iran from foreign trade and investment and the use of cryptocurrencies has been on the rise ever since as a way to circumvent them. Bitcoin has been described in interviews as one of the only ways to get money in and out of the country.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s administration announced it would launch a national cryptocurrency back in 2018. More recently, Iran’s Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade issued more than 1,000 cryptocurrency mining licenses to domestic operations.

Earler this week the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force added Iran to a blacklist of countries not complying with anti-terrorism financing requirements.

Explained: Confidential Transactions

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Confidential Transactions keep the amount and type of assets transferred visible only to participants in the transaction (and those they choose to reveal the blinding key to), while still cryptographically guaranteeing that no more coins can be spent than are available.

This goes a step beyond the usual privacy offered by Bitcoin’s blockchain, which relies purely on pseudonymous (but public) identities. This matters, because insufficient financial privacy can have serious security and privacy implications for both commercial and personal transactions. Without adequate protection, thieves can focus their efforts on high-value targets, competitors can learn business details, and negotiating positions can be undermined.

Confidential Transactions (CTs, the general idea of which was proposed by Adam Back on BitcoinTalk in 2013) aims to make the content of a transaction private — as Greg Maxwell explains in a 2017 talk, the amounts transacted are often more valuable to spies: if you wanted to spend 500 sats on a coffee but broke up a 1 BTC UTXO to do so, the barista would now know that you owned at least 0.999995 BTC (which could be problematic for your security if coins hit new highs in dollar value).

With CTs, both the receiver’s address and the amount transferred are hidden from any observers, in such a way that only parties to the transaction (and those they share it with) are aware of the value sent/received. For this to work, a cryptographic technique known as a Pedersen commitment is used.

I’m not a cryptographer, and it would be a waste of everyone’s time for me to try to explain how they work. I’d recommend this outstanding primer by ecurrencyhodler, or Maxwell’s initial investigation. Suffice it to say, a Pedersen commitment functions similarly to a regular commitment scheme, but allows for some mathematical manipulation that enables the verification of data without it being divulged.

Why is this important? Remember that, in order to work, the Bitcoin ledger needs to be balanced (inputs need to match outputs). That’s straightforward enough when every transaction is made public and nodes can verify it. Given that the purpose of Confidential Transactions is to redact amounts from the blockchain, however, a more creative approach is needed (the Pedersen commitments, paired with a few other tools) to ensure no one’s playing central bank and secretly printing off more money.

Bitcoin To Hit $100K In 2025, Says Justin Sun, Founder Of Tron

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Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of Tron (TRX), the 15th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, is investing in a number of cryptos other than Bitcoin (BTC).

In a Feb. 23 interview with CNN, Tron CEO said that he is a long-term believer in cryptocurrencies and owns a stake in many altcoins, including the two largest coins after Bitcoin — Ether (ETH) and XRP.

When asked whether Sun has its crypto portfolio diversified, the Tron CEO answered:

“I own a lot of XRP and Ethereum, too. I’m like a long-term believer of the crypto so I want all crypto assets to succeed. So that’s why I own a lot of other different cryptos as well.”

As a major believer in crypto, Sun is bullish on the price of cryptocurrencies and confident that cryptos like Bitcoin are the future of money. In the interview, Tron CEO predicted that Bitcoin will cross $100,000 mark in 2025, emphasizing that other cryptocurrencies will follow the trend.

Justin Sun’s $100,000 Bitcoin prediction in his own words:

“I definitely believe Bitcoin will pass $100K in 2025. I believe we can achieve this price before 2025. At the same time, I think a lot of other crypto projects like Tron, Ethereum and XRP will also see the bull market.”

In line with his bullish stance on crypto, Tron’s Justin Sun claimed in the interview that he invests all of his money to crypto. However, Sun still converts his crypto in fiat currencies like the United States dollar. In the interview, Tron CEO said that he only withdraws crypto to fiat when he needs to spend money in his daily life.

The news comes about a month after Sun had his charity lunch with Berkshire Hathaway chairman and known Bitcoin critic Warren Buffett. On Jan. 23, Tron CEO met with Buffett to finally have a long-awaited luncheon after postponing the event for medical reasons previously in 2019.

In the latest interview, Tron CEO revealed that he didn’t exactly try to convince the famous billionaire investor that crypto will massively surge in the coming years. Instead, Justin Sun was trying to explain some crypto potentials to Buffett as he wanted him to understand basic fundamentals of blockchain and crypto such as instant crypto transactions.

Tron CEO also outlined that Buffett was “very open” to new technologies like crypto and blockchain, noting that the the known investor accepted Bitcoin and TRX from him. However, Buffett has claimed that he doesn’t own any cryptocurrency and doesn’t plan to invest in any crypto in a Feb. 24 interview with CNBC. In the interview, the billionaire investor reiterated his negative stance on crypto, arguing that cryptos have “zero” value and don’t produce anything.

In another CNBC interview in 2018, Buffet predicted that crypto will come to a “bad ending,” declaring that Bitcoin is “probably rat poison squared.”

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Email Extortion Scam Targets Googles AdSense

A new extortion scam targeting website owners serving banner ads through Google’s AdSense program has begun circulating the Internet. The malevolent scheme demands Bitcoin (BTC) in exchange for preventing an attack, which would purportedly lead to the users’ AdSense account suspension.

The email-based extortion scheme was reported by security news and investigation blog KrebsOnSecurity, on Feb. 17. The blog post detailed that some site owners received a message as their site had been spotted by the malicious program as one seeking revenue from publishing an ad.

The message appears as a warning, wherein the cybercriminals demand $5,000 worth of BTC to deter the attack.

“Very soon the warning notice from above will appear at the dashboard of your AdSense account undoubtedly! This will happen due to the fact that we’re about to flood your site with huge amount of direct bot generated web traffic with 100% bounce ratio and thousands of IP’s in rotation — a nightmare for every AdSense publisher. More also we’ll adjust our sophisticated bots to open, in endless cycles with different time duration, every AdSense banner which runs on your site.”

The user who shared the message with KrebsOnSecurity said that their recent AdSense traffic statistics had detected a substantially increased invalid traffic. Google ostensibly called the scam a classic threat sabotage, where a fraudster tries to trigger an enforcement action against a publisher by sending invalid traffic to their inventory.

The news came on the heels of Google’s new policy regarding its ads, wherein the team behind AdSense said that it will stop showing ads before invalid clicks happen. “This year, we’re enhancing our defences even more by improving the systems that identify potentially invalid traffic or high-risk activities before ads are served. These defences allow us to limit ad serving as needed to further protect our advertisers and users,” Google explained.

Previously, Google took a hard line on decentralization and cryptocurrency. The most prominent example of hostility from Google occurred in June 2018, when the company announced that it would ban all crypto-related advertising in accordance with an update to its Financial Services policy.

Most recently, Google blacklisted keywords mentioning Ethereum (ETH) on its advertising platform, Google Ads. Google confirmed that “Ethereum” had been blacklisted as a keyword “regardless of the nature of the service that is being promoted.”

The leading cryptocurrency has been gaining popularity among criminals around the world. Earlier in February, two letter bombs exploded in the Netherlands and an anonymous criminal asked for a Bitcoin payment to prevent future attacks.

In Thailand, Singaporean Mark Cheng was kidnapped and tortured for a $740,000 ransom in BTC. After transferring all his available funds of $46,000, he allegedly made a daring escape as his captors prepared to murder him.

Weekly News Overview: Cryptocurrency

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Ukrainian Regulations States That Mining Does Not Require Governmental Oversight

Ukrainian’s powers stated that crypto mining does not require regulatory activity from governmental oversight bodies or other third-party protocols.

In its legal article on virtual assets published on Feb. 7, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine specified that mining does not necessitate directives by state authorities as this activity is measured by the protocol itself and network members.

Internet Surges 300% In North Korea Over The Past 3 Years

North Korea’s internet use saw a 300% surge over the past three years, as the country’s regime has continued to rely on cryptocurrencies for various activities.

Misuse of crypto and blockchain technology is among the primary tactics for the country to generate revenue as well as transfer and use illicitly obtained funds, a new study says. Blog

U.S. Think Tank Contradicts Need For Federal Digital Currency

Conservative United States think tank the Heritage Foundation argues that instead of launching a central bank digital currency (CBDC), the government should ensure that the public can use the currencies they prefer, including private ones.

In a commentary piece published on Feb. 12, the Heritage Foundation notes that Facebook’s Libra global stablecoin project “is just the latest reminder that providing money does not have to be a centralized function of government.” The report answers to the idea that the public sector must ensure that sovereign currencies stay at the centre of each nation’s financial system.

Blockchain Education Is Becoming Popular Than Ever Before

As blockchain weaves its way deeper into the world economy, more American universities are teaching the technology, offering more courses and expanding delivery methods.

Kevin Werback, a professor and blockchain club mentor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Cointelegraph, “Even if they aren’t pursuing a career in the area, most students aren’t confident they can figure it out on their own. Blockchain is just so darn weird.”

US Intelligence Community Sees Crypto As A Threat

The United States intelligence community is seeking a researcher to model risk scenarios for how and why the dollar could lose its global supremacy, and how best to respond. The role was advertised on Feb. 14 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The successful candidate will be tasked with evaluating threats to the dollar’s status as world reserve currency — most notably cryptocurrencies and the rise of major new economies such as China and India.