Blockchain News

Tencent Will Build Virtual Bank After Getting A New License

Published

3 months ago

November 9, 2019

Tencent will build a new blockchain-based virtual bank after the Chinese internet giant got its new license approval by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. In our cryptocurrency news today, we are reading more about this great news.

Speaking at the world blockchain summit in Wuzhen, China back on Friday, the blockchain chief of Tencent Yige Cai stated that the company’s virtual bank received the greet light form the Securities and Exchange Commission in Hong Kong. The company will also form a team that will support the blockchain-based banking platform according to the Chinese media site Sina Finance.

“Hong Kong’s new regulations and supervision on digital assets transactions validates the importance of blockchain technology and digital assets, which is good news for the whole industry,” explained Cai during his speech at the summit.

The SFC granted virtual bank licenses to 12 entities so far and on the list is Infinium Limited which is a joint venture between Tencent, Commerce Bank of China (ICBC) and Industrial, but also two more institutional investors from Hong Kong. Tencent renamed the Infinium to Fusion Bank back in July after they got one license in May.

Cai didn’t provide any further details about the virtual bank but he stressed that Tencent will build further projects and will also work on the already existing ones, including the offering of a supply chain financing for the global fast-food chain restaurant McDonald’s, according to the reports.

According to another report, Cai is now leading the consortium blockchain group away from the three blockchain development groups in Tencent. The other two groups are responsible for blockchain infrastructure and its blockchain-based cloud services, respectively. Other companies include Alibaba’s fintech arm Ant Financial and SC Digital Solutions Limited which have a 65 percent stake that is owned by Standard and Chartered Bank. The SFC issues more details about their new licensing system that will regulate virtual asset transactions on Wednesday, by creating a much similar framework to the one that is currently overseeing the security brokers in the country.

China is going hard into blockchain technology as we saw previously when president Xi Jinping stated that the country should invest more and embrace it which was one of the catalysts for the spike in prices on the market.

DC Forecasts is a leader in many crypto news categories, striving for the highest journalistic standards and abiding by a strict set of editorial policies. If you are interested to offer your expertise or contribute to our news website, feel free to contact us at editor@dcforecasts.com

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Stefan

Stefan is a full-time member and has been a Bitcoin Specialist for over 6 years. Providing daily news and updates for DC Forecasts.

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Blockchain News

Crypto And Blockchain Firms Are Trying To Help Coronavirus Victims

Published

1 day ago

January 26, 2020

Stefan

A couple of crypto and blockchain firms are now pitching in to help victims of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Today, the Binance news also showed that the exchange pledged to donate 10 million Chinese yuan ($1.44 million) to the effort.A tweet on January 25 by the head of the exchange Changpeng Zhao said that Binance made the pledge but did not make any announcements after a Twitter user tagged him in a news article where they talked about cryptocurrency donations accepted for the cause.

“For #Wuhan, not realistic to do crypto to end beneficiaries. Binance pledged 10m RMB ($1.5m USD) to help #coronavirus victims. We didn’t make any announcements. But [Binance Charity Foundation] BCF/Binance team has been busy for the last few days. Still need help to arrange logistics locally,” he said.

The initiative of many crypto and blockchain firms trying to help the victims has been praised by many in the crypto news world.According to a WeChat post by the blockchain marketing service firm Krypital , the firm also launched a charity donation effort to acquire medical supplies for the coronavirus victims. Krypital also said that it will create a blockchain based donation system which allows for greater transparency and efficiency. The firm also accepts Tether (USDT) on the Ethereum blockchain.Krypital also said that they are recruiting volunteers for group administration, as well as material purchases, sorting and transportation management. They are also hiring graphic designers and are in the media with a lot of announcements. According to analysts, many other crypto and blockchain firms will take this initiative as inspiration to commit to the coronavirus cases.As the media reported, Bitcoin (BTC) slumped 6% on the Chinese New Year and a lot of uncertainty surrounding the spread of the virus. On January 26, Fox News said that the current death toll of the virus is 56.Today, we can see a good influx of capital in the cryptocurrency market as Bitcoin comes closer to $8,500. The altcoin news also show new increases as Ethereum (ETH) rises to $164 and XRP is stable at $0.2239 again. The biggest gainer is Bitcoin Cash (BCH) which surged by 9% and is now trading at $336.The total cryptocurrency market cap is at $233 billion and finally moving above the $230 billion mark.

Blockchain News

NedBank Won’t Shut Down Crypto Exchanges Accounts

Published

2 days ago

January 25, 2020

Stefan

Contradicting reports that a closing down is considered for the accounts of cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, the well-known South African bank, Nedbank is not up to this as we are reading more about it the latest cryptocurrency news today.According to the SACrypto, a South African cryptocurrency news media, the reports that Nedbank has plans to close down bank accounts of cryptocurrency exchanges are not true. Speaking about the issue, the CEO of AltcoinTrader, the well known South African cryptocurrency exchange platform said:

“I commented in the IT Web article about Nedbank closing crypto accounts. But I believe it has turned into media hype. The reality is: Nedbank is no longer taking on new accounts for crypto-related companies, but they are not closing current accounts.”

As it was reported in a previous occasion by DC Forecasts FNB closed down accounts that were linked to cryptocurrency exchanges in November of 2019. But stakeholders at a major South African cryptocurrency exchange claim that the friendly Nedbank that is among the big five in South Africa does not have plans about adopting policies of that kind.On Friday, January 24, 2020, the South African tech publication ITWeb had reported that Nedbank will probably follow the actions of FNB in closing the accounts of the cryptocurrency exchanges. According to ITWeb, officials from Nedbank told the tech publication that the bank was in the process of internal discussions on how to act towards their clients from the cryptocurrency sector. With the reports about the searching ways to withdraw support for cryptocurrency exchange platforms by the banks in South Africa, the people involved in the industry are asking the government for the faster enacting of clear cryptocurrency regulation in the nation.In December of 2019, there were reports that the South African government had the intention to enact new laws to regulate the cryptocurrency market. This new regulation will mainly focus on regulating the use of cryptocurrencies in illegal money transfers. The government in South Africa has remained limited to be tax compliant and to track crypto transactions and bitcoin is still popular in the country as the data from Google trends shows. Bitcoin’s popularity in South Africa made the country the perfect climate for elaborate scams as well.

Blockchain News

US Military Gets Under Threat From Crypto Ransomware Malware

Published

3 days ago

January 24, 2020

Stefan

The US military I snow under threat according to cyber-security researchers who are warning that a powerful email ransomware malware is targeting their systems. The Emotet malware is used as an attack vector which allows Trickbots and ransomware attacks as we are reading further in the crypto news today.Last year in December we saw that the Emotet malware was the biggest threat and it seems that it remains that way since its main attack vector is through spam email campaigns that have malicious links or Microsoft Word document in it. By clicking the link or simply opening the document will download the malware to the computer and at this point, the malware will propagate itself by harvesting the email contacts and continuing the spam cycle. It can also analyze the regular contracts and respond to ongoing email threads which make it harder to recognize as a threat.Over the past few months, Emotet managed to successfully compromise a few targets in the US government and this led to an increase in infected emails that target the addresses with .gov and .mil which are the top-level domains in 2019. After the brief break for the Orthodox Christmas, the trend continued throughout the month. The malware can also mimic the email language and as an example, an email was sent targeting a staff member to the US Senator Cory Booker. This email contained signatures indicating that it originated from someone else that uses booker.senate.gov tag.The US Military got this kind of malware since Emotet is financially motivated according to the researcher Cisco Talos, ick Biasini. There are a lot of examples of Emotet being an initial infection vector that can be seen but then you can see a Trickbot is dropped and that’s followed by the ransomware. If you have seen there is a lot of this huge malware that can do a lot of harm and Emotet plays a huge role as well. The ransomware aims to access the encrypted systems’ data with operators demanding payment in crypto or bitcoin for the decryption key.The other malware in Check Point Research that was noted in the report for 2019 is the XMRig. This was an open-source software for hijacking the CPU resources for mining Monero and in many ways is really impressive that this malware rates highly.

Blockchain News

Hack Attacks On Crypto Exchanges Are Increasing: Report

Published

4 days ago

January 23, 2020

Stefan

The hack attacks on crypto exchanges are now becoming a norm according to a recent report by Chainalysis but this also means that the platforms are now much better prepared which explains why the total value of the stolen funds dropped in 2019 so let’s read more about it in the latest crypto news.According to the reports, the 2020 crypto crime report shows that 2019 saw 11 hacking attacks on crypto exchanges compared to the 6 ones in 2018 which was a record at that time. However, the hackers doubled their previous records in regard to how many platforms they reached and the amount of stolen funds is three times lower than it was in 2018. The charts show contributions of each hack to the total amounts stolen in a year and there was no major hack comparable to the Mt.Gox in 2014 or Coincheck in 2018. The total amount that was stolen from exchanges dropped to $283 million worth of crypto in 2019 and this figure is only half of the amount of the stolen funds from the Japanese Exchange, Coincheck.Chainalysis went through all kinds of hacks including those implementing the exploitation of technical vulnerabilities as well as those that only rely on social engineering or other forms of manipulation. Another important thing to know is that the report covered attacks that were related to exchanges only meaning that it ignored payment processors, wallet providers, and investment platforms. The largest crypto hack last year was the one against Coinbene where the Singapore-based exchange lost about $105 million worth of ERC-20 tokens. Binance, Upbit, and BitPoint were next, having lost more than $49 million, $40 million and $32 million worth of crypto.The hack attacks on crypto exchanges started after cryptocurrencies started gaining attention and becoming popular especially with the enabled anonymous transactions. Chainalysis monitored the movement of the stolen funds and figured out how the cryptocurrencies get liquidated and in most cases, the coins reached other platforms and were then converted to cash. The percentage of illicit services used as a liquidation tool in 2019 dropped to the lowest level in the past few years which suggests that the effects of the increased regulation are real.