Hackers have breached over 50,000 servers across the world to mine cryptocurrency using unusually sophisticated tools, according to Guardicore Labs. The large-scale "Nansh0u campaign" malware effort has been ongoing since February, mostly targeting firms in the healthcare, telecoms, media and IT sectors.
2019 looks to be the year of the stablecoin. Since the beginning of 2017, 122 stablecoin projects have been announced but are still in development. We took a look at the projects with a stablecoin that have received the most outside funding.
The founding shareholders of Fnality comprise: Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, CIBC, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, ING, KBC Group, Lloyds Banking Group, MUFG Bank, Nasdaq, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, State Street Corporation, and UBS. Clearmatics continues in its role as the technology partner to Fnality.
Thirteen of the world's biggest banks are preparing to launch digital versions of major global currencies in 2020 after years of research convinced them that the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies could be used to make trading less risky and cheaper.
Whilst governments can take different approaches to implementing SIM registration, we have asserted that 'Capture and Validate' (C&V) processes give the highest level of confidence that the person registering a SIM 'is who they claim to be'. This is because C&V enables mobile network operators (MNOs) to validate their customers' ID against a central government database, usually in real time. Globally, only 16 countries follow this approach.
Hester Pierce, aka the US SEC's "CryptoMom", has called on fellow supervisors to abandon their cautious approach to approving controversial new exchange traded funds (ETFs) and allow innovation to flourish.
The Utility Settlement Coin (USC) project - led by some of the world's largest banks - has announced the creation of a new firm (Fnality International) and closure of an accompanying £50 million Series A financing round.
SIM swapping, also known as SIM jacking, is a type of ATO (account take over) attack during which a malicious threat actor uses various techniques (usually social engineering) to transfers a victim's phone number to their own SIM card.
Facebook has begun talks with the top US derivatives regulator over its plans for a digital currency, in a sign of how the world's largest social media platform is laying the groundwork for an ambitious push in to payments.
The President of Germany's central bank, Jens Weidmann, has warned that implementing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could lead to the destabilization of global financial systems, especially during times of fiscal crisis.
A newly-proposed relay protocol called Erlay could reduce the transaction bandwidth used up by bitcoin nodes by up to 75%. The proposed protocol alters the way transactions are relayed, for example, by sending transaction announcements directly only over a small subset of connections. The authors include Greg Maxwell and Pieter Wuille.
The CEO of NZIA, the tech firm behind the Central Bank of the Bahamas Project Sand Dollar, has said the key to making it a reality is by engaging with local banks, SMEs and entrepreneurs to create new products and solutions around the new digital currency.
PIN numbers and contactless cards have greatly eased the ability of mules to share their crypto-backed debit cards with those they are working for. And that is why crypto cards pose such a risk.
Digital currencies store balances using anonymous addresses. This Bank of Canada paper analyzes the cost, safety and convenience trade-offs between aggregating balances versus safeguarding a large number of passwords of many small accounts.
The legislation amending the Payment Services Act and Financial Instruments and Exchange Act was formally enacted on May 31 and will take effect in April of next year. Among the notable changes, the Act will limit crypto-asset margin trading.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) published new initial coin offering (ICO) and cryptocurrency guidelines on its official website on May 30.
The Congressional Research Service examined the decline in cash usage in the United States and the potential rise of alternative payment systems, including bitcoin or other digital assets, in the purchase of goods and services.
SBI Ripple Asia is launching a store settlement service using the consumer-focused XRP-powered payments app MoneyTap, jointly developed by SBI and Ripple. MoneyTap implements Ripple's blockchain solution xCurrent to enable near-instant domestic bank-to-bank remittance services.
Hardly anyone is using Bitcoin for anything beyond speculation. Data from Chainalysis show that only 1.3% of economic transactions came from merchants in the first four months of 2019, little changed over the boom and bust cycles of the prior two years.