Category: Crypto

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US Judge Ordered Hacker To Pay His $750,000 Bail In Cryptocurrency

On August 9th, a federal judge in San Francisco, California, ordered a defendant to post his $750,000 bail in cryptocurrency. Martin Marsich was accused of hacking into the website of the video game company Electronic Arts and obtaining illegal access to the records of more than 25,000 of the company’s customers.

Marsich was arrested on August 8th in San Francisco and made his first appearance in federal court the next day, according to a press release from the Northern District Attorney’s office in California. The charges filed include illegal access to financial data on 25,000 Redwood City Electronic Arts customers.

Judge Jacqueline Corley set bail at $750,000 and ordered the defendant to pay it in cryptocurrency so that he could be transferred to a supervised minimum-security center.

Judges have the power to order that bail be posted on any type of assets, said the assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of California, Abraham Simmons.

Martin Marsich, who hacked into the Electronic Arts database, ordered to pay his $750,000 bail in cryptocurrency

While the judge in the case has not told the media about the reasons for setting bail in cryptocurrency, some of the charges against Marsich did not relate to cryptos, but to the use of coins issued by some games. Those coins, which are purchased or won in competitions, allow customers to buy items to be used in such games or to create accounts with access to the games.

After Marsich’s intrusion was discovered, the affected company closed the affected accounts, which totaled a loss of $324,000, according to the Northern District Attorney’s Office of California.

Also noteworthy, the first federal sentence in the United States involving cryptocurrency, more specifically, the Bitcoin (BTC), took place in July 2016, when the Federal Court in Manhattan found Trendon Shavers guilty of federal tax fraud and sentenced him to 18 months in prison. He was also sentenced to pay back $1.2 million in BTC to 48 investors. The defendant ran a Bitcoin investment firm, where he promised weekly profits of 7%, among other offers.

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Crypto News

Public Blockchain Technologies, Including Bitcoin (BTC) And Ethereum (ETH), Adopted By 44% Of The Entrepreneurs, According To Deloitte

Deloitte, one of the most recognized consulting firms, has published the results of its latest global surveys on the blockchain technology, data that confirm that 44% of entrepreneurs have begun to incorporate public blockchain models, including those of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), to develop their services, displacing the dominance of private blockchains in the business sector.

The document, directed and written by Linda Pawczuk, Rob Massey, and David Schatsky, compiles the opinions of a total of 1,053 entrepreneurs from China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, France, and Mexico.

More entrepreneurs focused on public blockchain technologies

The survey yielded information relevant to the adoption of blockchain technology at the enterprise level, highlighting among it the entrepreneurs’ vision regarding Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in the long-term market. For example, about the blockchain model that generates more significant attention to companies to develop activities, 52% of firms focused on authorized blockchains stand out, that is to say, that they require a permit to access.

Private blockchains, with one or two nodes and coordinated by companies, continue to play a leading role with 44% of entrepreneurs focused on developing services with this model.

However, the surprise was given by the public blockchain technologies, including those of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), among others, which also have 44% of the interviewees interested in focusing their activities on their model.

Blockchain doesn’t really do anything unless it is paired with a solid use case where it can serve as a kind of Trust-as-a-Service (TaaS) for ecosystem participants. In short, it is more an enabler of business models than a technology. Understanding this is key to discerning the difference in how digital enterprise (traditional) organizations view blockchain compared to digital enterprises.

Deloitte

Respondents’ answers regarding the future of blockchain technology also stand out

84% of entrepreneurs believe that, in the future, blockchain could become a highly scalable technology adopted by a large part of the population, while 77% think that it will serve to optimize value chains.

In line with this perspective, 69% of entrepreneurs plan to have blockchain technology as a replacement for the company’s current records system, while 59% believe that Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) will have a high impact on the way the industry works.

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Crypto News

PlayKey Cloud Gaming Platform Moves Forward With Its Development

The cloud gaming platform PlayKey recently published an interim report on its achievements this year, highlighting the fact that it has so far achieved some milestones towards the implementation of a decentralized platform and forming a large community around cloud gaming.

Playkey developers continue to improve their services by combining all their components into a single application to partially integrate them with the existing infrastructure. As a result, the test phase of this new platform is planned for the beginning of 2019. Meanwhile, among the advances achieved so far, the acceptance of the Playkey Tokens (PKT) as a way of paying for subscriptions to the current cloud gaming platform, started in June 2018, has made PKT a very useful token.

In that regard, to adapt users to crypto payments, Playkey offered the opportunity to save up to 83% of the subscription price and set the internal exchange rate at a parity of 1PKT at $2, regardless of the cost of the token in the market. That helped to reduce the risk of speculation with PKT, according to the company.

As for its marketing activity, at the conclusion of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO), in 2017, and which raised $10.5 billion, Playkey defined and followed a short-term strategy, namely, to promote the product to players and miners.

The PlayKey platform makes its cloud gaming platform known in both the gaming industry and crypto-related events

In this way, PlayKey is present in specific events both in the gaming industry and in the cryptocurrency universe. Among them are G-Star 2018, Gamescom 2018, Blockchain Summit London, Esports Business Summit, Blockchain Expo Global 2018, Game Developer Conference, Digital Economic Forum, and other important events.

This marketing strategy included the launch of the platform in the German market, the gaming capital of Europe and the largest market in the region, where around $4.4 billion in revenues were generated in 2017.

Playkey has the goal to form a large community, which in the future will allow the company’s servers to join owners of powerful gaming PCs and home mining farms to rent them to players in exchange for PKT.

That would also increase the options for using the PKT token, which will be used to make payments for other services of the company, beyond being negotiated in cryptocurrency exchange platforms. PlayKey Token (PKT) is currently available in seven exchange houses, namely, HitBTC, CoinExchange, Mercatox, EtherDelta, Idex, Lykke, and YObit.

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Crypto News

Playboy Sues Global Blockchain Technologies, The Company Responsible For Developing Playboy’s Crypto Wallet

The largest global consortium of adult entertainment companies, Playboy Enterprises, filed a lawsuit against the Canadian company Global Blockchain Technologies (GBT), alleging breach of contract and fraud in the development of its cryptocurrency wallet. The platform would be integrated as a payment alternative for Playboy TV channels, websites, and games.

Playboy Enterprises sued Global Blockchain Technologies and demanded compensation

The company, which is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court, local media reported Monday, August 13th. Playboy seeks compensation for punitive damages, which translates into compensation that could amount to millions of dollars, as the company also claimed it did not receive $4 million as part of the preliminary settlement.

The cryptocurrency that would be used by Playboy as a payment method for users to view digital content is the Vice Industry Token (VIT). With this alternative, people could have paid for the service and at the same time win crypto coins to view original Playboy TV content, make comments, and vote for publications.

The deal between playboy and Global Blockchain Technologies agreed to create a payment platform to accept the Vice Industry Token (VIT)

At the time of writing, Vice Industry Token (VIT) trades at $0.005395, dropping 11.24% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. The crypto launched earlier this year and is operated by a crypto-related firm that ended its ICO on March 20th.

Vice Industry Token Inc. is also a decentralized blockchain platform that is usually employed within the adult entertainment industry. One of its particular features is that it allows producers to monetize their content while rewarding viewers.

The Los Angeles Times quoted a statement received by Global Blockchain Technologies dismissing the lawsuit as a “normal dispute” between two commercial parties. Furthermore, the company claimed, according to the media, that the allegation of fraud is “frivolous,” adding that “Global Blockchain Technologies believes that it has a strong defense in this action and will defend it vigorously.”

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Crypto Markets News

Turkish Lira Collapse Highlights Bitcoin (BTC) Relative Stability

The current currency crisis in Turkey is being used by the mainstream media to make a comparison between the national currency and the leading cryptocurrency in the market. The latest contribution to this is a demonstration of relatively low volatility Bitcoins (BTC), published by Bloomberg today, on August 13th.

Turkish lira fluctuations compared with those of the Bitcoin (BTC)

Under the heading “Turkey’s collapse is driving the volatility of the lira comparable to Bitcoin,” Bloomberg reveals the full extent of the devaluation of the Turkish currency this year and writes the following:

The 10-day fluctuations of the Turkish lira relative to the US Dollar now exceed those of Bitcoin (BTC) in the midst of the escalating currency crisis in Turkey.

Bloomberg

However, Turkey citizens turned to Bitcoin (BTC) for investment

Turkey has seen an increase in consumer interest in Bitcoin (BTC) since the lira, which has been depreciating against the US Dollar since January, fell to unprecedented lows within a brief time due to various geopolitical factors.

According to data from Google Trends, the Turkey residents’ interest in Bitcoin (BTC) increased significantly in August, while local cryptocurrency exchange platforms experienced a trading volume increase of over 150 percent, this week alone.

The situation of cryptocurrency is not yet evident in Turkey

While legislators carry out capital controls, the status of cryptocurrency in the country remains uncertain, in general. Despite Turkey’s official position that Bitcoin (BTC) is not compatible with Islam, local cryptocurrency exchange platforms have the full support of the Landesbanken, as an article released by Forbes reported earlier this week.

The markets in Turkey have seen rising volatility for some time, while operators such as BtcTurk Bitcoin are currently trading at prices with around $500 more per BTC than on the other leading foreign cryptocurrency exchange platforms.

This trend could continue, some analysts indicated, if the country’s economic situation does not stabilize and the Turkish lira doesn’t surge.

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