Author: Anna Galvez

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Crypto News

Bank For International Settlements (BIS) Thinks Cryptocurrency Payments Will Collapse Everything From Mobiles To The Internet

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) believes that cryptocurrencies are not yet ready to come to the forefront for logistical reasons because they do not yet have the characteristics to be a reliable means of payment. If cryptocurrencies were used with the same intensity as fiat money as a means of payment, mobile phones, computers and even the Internet could collapse.

In a large article within its annual economic report, the BIS states that Bitcoin and other such cryptocurrencies suffer from “a number of shortcomings” that would prevent the crypto coins from meeting the ambitious expectations they have generated. However, the BIS recognizes that there is a strong interest in these digital assets, the capitalization of which has soared in percentage terms in recent years.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an 88-year-old institution based in Basel, Switzerland, which serves as a central bank for other central banks. This prestigious institution believes that cryptocurrencies are too unstable, consumes too much electricity and are subject to too much speculation to ever serve as a reliable means of payment in the global economy.

Also, BIS has identified the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies as a fundamental disadvantage and not as a key strength, because this type of operation would create logistical problems if crypto coins were to be extended as a method of payment.

Cryptocurrencies will be an environmental problem, Bank for International Settlements thinks

The BIS has analyzed what would happen to the blockchain software if it were to reach the size that traditional payment systems in each country currently handle. Accordingly, Bank for International Settlements believes the cryptos would eventually overwhelm everything from smartphones to servers.

But the problem goes far beyond storage capacity, and extends to processing capacity, as only supercomputers could keep up with the verification of incoming transactions.

The researchers say that the competition between the so-called crypto miners already consumes approximately the same amount of electricity as Switzerland.

“In short, the search for decentralization has quickly turned into an environmental disaster,” economists from the Bank for International Settlements said.

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Crypto News

Cryptocurrency Community Experts Weren’t Late To Comment Hinman’s Claims That Ethereum (ETH) Is Not A Security

The Director of Corporate Finance of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), William Hinman, said on Thursday, June 14th, that he would not categorize Ethereum (ETH) as security. Afterward, some experts from the cryptocurrency community came out and shared with their social networks followers their opinions on the issue, expressing their support for and opposition to the Hinman’s announcement.

Peter Van Valkenburgh, the Director of Research at the Coin Center, said that Hinman’s claim is a reasonable reading of the legislation, in line with earlier pronouncements. In his view, this is encouraging news for the decentralization process.

After the SEC announcement, Valkenburgh was glad that the agency concurred with the analysis he exposed in an article, and said to TheVerge.com the following:

With this guide, the SEC is showing that taking a pro-innovation approach does not have to come at the expense of protecting investors.

Peter Van Valkenburgh, Research Director at Coin Center

Other cryptocurrency community experts expressed opinions on the SEC announcement that Ethereum (ETH) will not be cataloged as a security

A very different perspective was voiced by Preston Byrne, a member of the UK’s Adam Smith research institute and a blockchain technology researcher, on his website. Byrne blogged that it was obscure to him how, as the SEC puts it, tokens start their existence as investment contracts, and then they lose that status by avoiding enforcement action for four years with success.

Marco Santori, the President & Chief Legal Officer at Blockchain.com, pointed out that the SEC provided very straightforward guidelines on what it considers to be a security, however, the vast majority of tokens circulating today fall within the definition. Consequently, cryptocurrency exchange platforms, OTC operators, and custody wallets that handle these tokens must first be registered as Alternative Exchange Systems (ATS), and then not accept unauthorized customers, he said.

However, it is essential to bear in mind that Hinman’s declarations were not made in an official statement and did not constitute a revision of the U.S. Securities Act or the opinion of SEC as an institute.

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Crypto

Rawtx Lightning Network Bitcoin (BTC) Wallet Rolled Out For iOS

Rawtx released its Rawtx Lightning Network Bitcoin (BTC) wallet for iOS, on a test network. The wallet has been developed with LN Daemon, a software created by Lightning Labs that allows the use of the LN micro-payment network.

On May 9th the wallet development team announced its launch. It was then only available for Android devices. Today, the Rawtx Lightning Network Bitcoin (BTC) wallet is available on the App Store.

The application allows multiple wallets, and each wallet has two types of accounts, namely, a payment account and a savings account.

Rawtx opens and closes payment channels by transferring money from the savings account to the payments account, for the opening, and from the payments account to the savings account, to close the channel.

Lightning invoices can be paid by scanning QR codes, and Lightning receipts can also be generated and show incoming and outgoing money on the Lightning Network. It also provides information on the status of the LN network, such as the number of nodes, channels, and so forth.

With the release of the Rawtx Lightning Network Bitcoin (BTC) wallet on iOS, the project became open source

The team reported that they are working on bugs related to crashes and lost backgrounds, although, at the moment, the application only runs on a test network.

“Performance/bandwidth and storage utilization is our other priority,” the Rawtx team reported.

Since now, as the Rawtx Lightning Network Bitcoin (BTC) wallet is released on iOS, the development of the wallet will be open source.

To privilege privacy in the relationship between the wallet and the blockchain, the developers used Neutrino, a client of interaction with the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain from Lightning Labs.

The developers have proposed a series of tasks to be done, where they have asked for the collaboration of those members of the community who have the necessary skills. Thus, integrating autopilot, API development, Litecoin (LTC) integration, improving the GUI for payments, and even performing translations into other languages are some of the elements that the team hopes to grow with the help of the crypto community.

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Crypto Markets

London Block Exchange Ready To Deal With ClearBank, An UK-Based Bank

London Block Exchange is the largest cryptocurrency provider in the UK, and now it looks decided to team up with ClearBank, also an UK-based bank.

ClearBank is a new and innovative UK-based clearing bank which set the goal to come up with modern standards regarding transparency and market competition. In this regard, its clients can transact faster, more cost-efficient, and more transparent, in comparison to the traditional banking systems. ClearBank works with e-payments, liquidity controlling, agency banking, and transactions banking.

The concept of clearing banking is somewhat new and, according to InvestorWords, a clearing bank is “a commercial bank that is part of a network of banks that can clear checks for its clients regardless of whether or not the check originates from the same commercial bank.”

Recently, in a report published by Reuters, two sources close to London Block Exchange and ClearBank affirmed that the two firms met up and are ready to partner up to merge the cryptocurrency payments with clearing banking.

London Block Exchange is ready to deal with ClearBank, an UK-based clearing bank

“This will make it easier for British customers of the exchange to buy and sell cryptocurrencies by making transactions faster and cheaper,” the Reuters report reads, citing one of the sources.

If this partnership will eventually happen, then it would be the first partnership between a cryptocurrency provider and a regulated bank, be it a clearing bank one. Typically, banks are ditching blockchain technology from the start, fearing of the possible frauds and money laundry both characteristics describing a big part of the crypto-verse, unfortunately.

On the other hand, the possible London Block Exchange partnership with ClearBank would benefit the British customers, whether they are crypto enthusiasts or not. Accordingly, that is beneficial because would speed up the transactions and reduce the fees.

Last but not least, this movement would benefit the cryptocurrencies market because the crypto adoption might increase.

 

Categories
Crypto

About 700 Ethereum (ETH) Scams Are Currently Active And Making Victims, According To The EtherScamDB

The Ethereum Scam database (EtherScamDB), which records and documents Ethereum (ETH) scams, recently filed about 700 active scams, out of a total of 4,237 detected since its inception in 2017. The addresses specified for receiving the funds from the fraudsters have so far accumulated more than 8,140 ETH, the equivalent of more than $3.87 million at the current ETH price.

EtherScamDB was created in 2017 to document the various scams linked to Ethereum (ETH), and also as a means of trying to stop them. Currently, the database is managed by the MyCrypto team.

When each of the ongoing scams is examined in detail, EtherScamDB allows you to access the respective website. It is also possible to view in Etherscan the transactions of the recipient wallet, or at least those made more recently by the person carrying out the fraud.

One of the programmers who analyzed the data through EtherScamDB’s APIs, John Backus, published on his Twitter account the amount accumulated by the scams so far, which reaches 8,140 ETH.

From the date of the tweet, it appears that more than 200 additional active Ethereum (ETH) scams were added in only five days prior to his tweet.

About 700 Ethereum (ETH) scams are active and rise thousands of ETH

On the other hand, Brandon Arvanaghi and Bryce Crawford processed all transactions for each wallet involved in the scams and, through the use of the Etherscan APIs, obtained information for each fraud from those reported by EtherScamDB, such as the total scam, the most affected victims, and the most recent victims.

Arvanaghi and Crawford’s interactive report shows, for example, that the most affected victim lost 880 ETH, and the most successful scammer (OmniseGO.com) scammed people of 3,291 ETH.

Assuming that two other scammers identified as OmiseGO.net (1,731 ETH) and omisegotoken.com (1,694 ETH) are associated with the most successful scammer, then the group’s spoils rise to 6,718 ETH, 82% of the total scammed amount.

The scammers’ preferred resource, a website where the misleading offer appears, is promoted through social networks, predominantly with Twitter ads, after Facebook and Google adopted cryptocurrency ads bans.

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