Bitmain announces a new expansion plan in South America looking to establish a strong presence with two Bitcoin mining consulting firms. In the meantime, the co-founder Jihan Wu continues to strengthen his hold on the company as per the recent reports in our blockchain news.In a press release, Bitmain announces that the new partnership with Bit5ive and Fastblock will help the company to fulfill the new expansion plan. The crypto mining consultants and Bitmain will use them as an official distributor of the flagship Antminer Bitcoin mining hardware in South America. Bitmain aims to leverage the extensive contracts that both of the companies have in the region and the mining giant also noted that it choose companies that are experts in logistics and customer service. The executive at the company Irene Gao remarked:

‘’South America continues to be an important region for the cryptocurrency mining sector. Our collaboration with Fastblock and Bit5ive will help us to build on the relationships we have with the mining community on-the-ground and instill trust in the sales process of Antminers.’’

Jihan Wu announced back in November, the new addition to the Antminer 17 series and during the announcement the Bitmain co-founder said that the new miners included a hash rate and power efficiency-enhancing features. In the meantime, Wu continued to solidify the control over the company with the co-founder reportedly holding a meeting with a few Bitmain executives. At the meeting, Wu outlined the most important objectives of the company and the current projects that are under development in the company.This move is a part of the fights with Wu and the fellow co-founder Micree Zhan. Zhan is now aiming to take legal action against Wu accusing other officials at the company of betrayal. After a difficult 2018 and a bad start of 2019, Bitmain lost most of the mining dominance on the market. The company, however, will file an IPO in the US with its fellow competitor Canaan already completing a similar public sale. After the departure from the operational downsizing in 2018, Bitmain began developing expansion plans with the new 33,000-acre bitcoin mining facility in Texas. The company also aims to increase the hash rate capabilities by about 50 percent.

The Big South Korean Exchange that we reported about recently in our blockchain news, is facing hundreds of accusations after allegations of the mysterious CEO emerged of harassing the employees and even a kidnapping case emerged.There is supposedly a politician involved in the entire drama with an assault and kidnapping case now unraveling but also artificially inflated trading volume figures. As per the previous reports, the head of the Bit South Korean Exchange has been charged with assaulting one of his employees earlier in February this year. The police said that the CEO refused the let the employee in question leave the company office for up to 10 hours and physically attacked and extorted the employee as well as verbally threatening other staff members. The SEO with the last name Choi is thought to have suspected the employee in question was doing insider trading.The details further from the case show that the news agency Yonhap and the media outlet Money Today reported that an unnamed politician is in the heart of the entire issue. The politician who once had a top administrative role in the presidential office served on the company’s managerial board and has left to found a new crypto exchange later. While the politician was serving as the manager at the exchange, the board was complicit in a scheme that involved a lot of employees that made trades on the platform driving the volume numbers up.The police also said that a group of customers had also launched a civil case against the exchange and that it has reneged on promises to reward the buyers of certain tokens with airdrops in the major cryptocurrencies. The company is said to have run these issues from August 2018 until January this year and the customers alleging, they are yet to receive their rewards. The South Korean media outlets have been restricted from providing further details such as the name of the exchange and the CEO’s full name. however, the news agencies describe the exchange as one of the most famous and ‘’top-level’’ exchanges in the country.Yonhap stated that they contacted the exchange in question but they do not want to inform the customers yet as no wrongdoings have been proved. Choi the CEO of Bithumb didn’t respond to previous requests for comment and Upbit confirmed that their CEO has not been arrested.

The Cryptopia liquidators from the New Zealand crypto exchange successfully recovered about $11 million in the past six months but they claim that the process is still very difficult so let’s find out more in the upcoming crypto news.In the reports by the Cryptopia liquidators, Grant Thornton confirmed that the receipts from May up to November reached about 10.9 million New Zealand dollars which are approximately $7.18 million. The expenses including the payments to a few preferential creditors came to 3.71 million New Zealand dollars or $2.46 million which later resulted in a net recovery of $4.74 million. As we can read in the report:

 “We continue to investigate the affairs of the Company and its directors in the period prior to our appointment to determine if there are any further avenues of recovery available to the Company.’’

Grant Thornton didn’t comment further on how much longer will the creditors need to wait for reimbursement saying that ‘’at this stage it is not practicable to estimate the completion date for the Liquidation.’’ Cryptopia shut down in January 2019 years after the hackers stole funds worth about $16 million. The prolonged process has seen the liquidators tease out the details of the user transactions with the reconciliation of funds ongoing. The report adds:

 “No detailed reconciliation process between the customer databases and the crypto-assets held in the wallets has ever been completed.’’

Grant Thornton is right now focusing on the accounts of more than 900,000 active users potentially involving more than 900 different cryptocurrencies. The reports show that the exchanges worldwide continue to battle hack attacks and they focus mostly on a much larger loss involving the ex-Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX. Earlier this month, a cryptocurrency worth $340,000 mysteriously left the books of the South Korean platform Upbit and some analysts claimed that it was an inside job. The users, however, will be compensated by the company’s funds.As per the previous reports, Cryptopia co-founder and ex-former developer VCDragon revealed evidence that shows that the exchange hack was an inside job with an intention to destroy the exchange. Also, according to the documents, the assigned liquidator Grant Thronton, released the estimation statement for the financial state of the hacked crypto exchange, stating that Cryptopia owes a total of $4.2 million to the creditors.

The latest blockchain news show that the technology is booming and continues to be a global phenomenon everywhere. The adoption and utilization cases emerge in almost every corner of the globe and digital technology is right now so popular that it is now a major talking point - not only in the financial sector but also in governance and politics. New reports show that the central Asia region is using blockchain in many industries, from healthcare to mining.Yes - the seven "-stan" countries of Central Asia including Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are all part of the sweeping digital phenomenon. Even though our cryptonews section rarely includes advances in blockchain coming from this country, they show that central Asia is using blockchain in numerous fields.Some stakeholders in the nations argue that more still needs to be done if this region continues to enjoy a similar level of cryptocurrency and blockchain commerce - as seen in Eastern and Southeast Asia. Below, we are listing some of the most notable crypto and blockchain developments from central Asia.We can start with Pakistan's central bank which banned cryptocurrency in the country. However, this does not stop blockchain startups from running. The government of Pakistan is now looking to implement robust digitization policies.Kazakhstan, on the other hand, is looking to exempt crypto miners from tax obligations. As a new draft law shows, the central Asia located country wants crypto mining to be recognized as a "purely technological process" only for tax purposes.Afghanistan's health sector is transformed with blockchain adoption. A new memorandum signed by the country's Ministry of Public Health shows that the government "is committed for the institutionalization of electronic government in the health sector and the block-chain technology would help the ministry bring transparency, acceleration and effectiveness in the related affairs."The other region in central Asia is also benefiting from blockchain technology - and there are many countries which are practicing different cases of adoption. In Uzbekistan, for instance, the government increased the electricity tariffs for crypto miners by 300% - but also legalized cryptocurrency trading in the country with tax breaks for traders and miners.All of this shows that central Asia is seriously gearing towards blockchain and crypto across various sectors - and it is definitely a key region which could influence Asia towards greater acceptance of the technologies as a whole.