Telegram open network, the long-awaited blockchain of Telegram will finally launch at the end of October according to the reports in the coming altcoin news we have today. The gram tokens of the network are still yet-to-be issued and are now trading in an unauthorized secondary market. The company still has to publicly acknowledge the project but the investors in the last year’s $1.7 billion token offerings are now seemingly selling their gram allocations via the OTC desks, exchanges and similar. Buying tokens this way could be very risky according to investors as Telegram prohibited investors from re-selling their allocations under a penalty when terminating the contract. The secondary market has improved for the future token of the Telegram open network and between the OTC desks, sales on small crypto exchanges and investments funds, the opportunity to buy tokens before launch date are hard to find. The investors who bought into the Telegram’s $1.7 billion offerings back in February and March are now not allowed to pledge or sell their tokens in any way before the launch. The original purchase agreement says that if some investors dispose of their future tokens before the Telegram Open Network or TON is life and the allocation can be canceled. One of the investors stated:

 “Telegram was the first big project that legally prohibited investors from selling their allocation. Investors usually just share their allocations with friends, without signing documents.’’

The purchase agreement which was written for Telegram by the US legal powerhouse Skadden, Slate, Meagher, and Glom LLP according to one investor stipulates that the buyers of grams may not offer pledge, swap, sell and encumber or dispose of their tokens directly and indirectly. The investors may sell any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for the investment contract between an investor and the company. The issuance of the tokens is conditional upon the investors’ compliance with the rule. One investor stated for the latest cryptocurrency news:

The future issuance of tokens is conditional upon the investor’s compliance with this rule. If Telegram learns the investor broke the agreement, it can cancel the allocation.

Blockchain CEOs are tired of the South Korean regulations since the blockchain projects are now leaving the market because of the headaches from the regulators according to the coming altcoin news reports we have today here on DC Forecasts. According to some industry experts, the local news outlet Business Korea noted that there is an increasing tendency for Blockchain projects born in South Korea to find easier funding across the world. Major international exchange is now the focus of the Blockchain CEOs looking to raise cash and mainly those with high volume residing in a pro-crypto jurisdiction. The reason lies in south Korea’s problems with the implementation of the controversial cryptocurrency regulations and it says:

‘’Experts point out that domestic blockchain projects are flocking to foreign exchanges largely due to tougher domestic cryptocurrency exchange market conditions. Investors cannot make or withdraw deposits in the Korean currency at Korean exchanges’’

If we don’t include the nation’s four largest exchanges, some of the 200 smaller exchanges cannot even open real-name virtual accounts and this is one of the reasons why crypto investors cannot benefit from the protection systems. The international players such as China’s BW.com, Bitholic and Binance Labs sense the demand from South Korea hence they are either opening Korean won markets or in this case, Binance Labs is only sponsoring the blockchain efforts. Only this week, Japan as one of the governments that openly claim to foster crypto exchange innovation while still has a strict licensing scheme added another platform to its domestic economy in the form of Rakuten Wallet. These moves are also impacting other exchanges and market players' share of the market. As a result the South Korean exchanges are less appealing in 2019 because of the low volume and out of the top one hundred in the world, there are only a few exchanges that are located under the jurisdiction in Seoul. Other issues faced by the local include added responsibility for loss or theft of the customers’ funds. Earlier this month, the commentators warned that the existing restrictions on cryptocurrency by the regulators will throttle attempts to foster blockchain innovation as read in the latest cryptocurrency news:

 “It is no exaggeration to say that 97 percent of domestic exchanges are in danger of going bankrupt due to their low volume of transactions’’

Coinbase confessed that it had put the funds of the traders at risk and stated that they could have lost funds in the latest blog post as we read in the latest cryptocurrency news today. The largest cryptocurrency exchange revealed that an error in the system has managed to save the customer’s information on Coinbase internal web server logs so when someone had a password that looks like ‘’123456’’ it turned up to look like ‘’123465’’ to the staff of the exchange so they ideally been hashed into non-readable text. According to the exchange, the Bug affected about 3,420 customers:

‘’Under [a very specific] and rare error condition, the registration form on our signup page wouldn’t load correctly, which meant that any attempt to create a new Coinbase account under those conditions would fail. Unfortunately, it also meant that the individual’s name, email address, and proposed password (and state of residence, if in the US) would be sent to our internal logs.’’

The exchange noted that the users who resubmitted the form had their usernames and passwords and other details kept securely. Unfortunately, more than 3,000 customers as mentioned logged their private data onto the servers. Coinbase pretended to be the good Samaritan and fixed the issue on top priority. The company traced the entire line of storage to confirm that they are not holding any more information from the customers’ personal information. According to the blog post:

‘’We have an internal logging system hosted in AWS, as well as a small number of log analysis service providers. Access to all of these systems is tightly restricted and audited. A thorough review of access to these logging systems did not reveal any unauthorized access to this data.’’

The company also started a password reset for affected customers and asserted that a password alone could not have a hacker potentially stealing their bitcoins because they protect each account with mandatory email and 1FA authentications. Coinbase confessed:

‘’We maintain incredibly high standards for securing the Coinbase platform, and any time we fall even slightly short of those standards, we mobilize a team to figure out what went wrong, and how we prevent it from happening again. We also believe in being transparent with our customers, which is why we’re sharing the results of our investigation today.’’

As we can read in the coming altcoin news today, the alert came in a time when the institutional investors are taking huge steps into introducing bitcoin in their portfolio because security is still the top of their concerns.

Data privacy and data leaking have become the most important questions for the users in the crypto space in the past couple of years right when things started to get worse. In today’s latest cryptocurrency news, we take a closer look at what kinds of systems can we build in order to protect our digital information using blockchain technology. The centralized companies leak information more often than people think. Having a simple error in the network configurations results in millions of people’s passwords getting available to malicious actors and their emails getting leaked on a regular basis. A website named haveibeenpwned.com allows you to enter your email address and check whether you have been a victim to a data breach. If you use the same password on a few sites and one leaks it, your login credentials are already out for everyone to find. What is even worse is the biometric data that starts to leak from centralized companies. Just this month, a huge data leak was found in the system of many banks but also the UK police and many defense contractors which means that the data privacy is at a low point. The 23 gigabytes of data that contained people’s fingerprints and personal information was leaked. Once it is in the system, the vulnerability allows the hackers to change the fingerprint associated with a login which could make them able to access secure locations that they usually don’t have the access to. If your password is leaked it is very easy to set up a new one to your account. However, it is hard to change your fingerprint or your face when you make a scan for an ID or passports. The scary part is that this data is being held by centralized companies so whether the store the data in house or third-party servers, it creates a huge target for data thieves. Using the blockchain technology people can take back control of their data with the help of the decentralized identity control that can cut down on identity theft. This means that you will be able to hold a private key on your device which is tied to your identity and open the gap with your fingerprint or a QR code once you have proven your identity without filling out forms.  As per the altcoin news today, hacks are becoming more common so the consumers will try to find systems that offer protection and online safety.