Facebook-backed Diem Association reportedly to launch stablecoin pilot in 2021

April 20, 2021 Coin Telegraph

An anonymous source has told reporters that the first Diem pilot will focus on transactions between individual consumers.

Facebook-backed digital currency project Diem could launch its first stablecoin in 2021 as a small-scale pilot, according to an anonymous source.

Cited in a CNBC report published on Tuesday, the source claimed that the Switzerland-based nonprofit The Diem Association is still intending to launch its pilot for a United States dollar-backed stablecoin later this year.

Back in November 2020, the association had already announced its plans for a limited launch of a U.S.-dollar stablecoin in January, yet as the months have since passed, the currency is yet to see the light of day.

Diem’s stablecoin is a significantly scaled-back and rebranded version of Facebook’s initial vision for a global digital currency, native to its platform, that would be tied to a basket of multiple fiat currencies. Aside from shedding the name Libra, commentators have pointed to the thoroughgoing changes to Diem’s evolving project in response to a striking pushback from global regulators and nation-states.

Ran Goldi, CEO of First Digital Assets Group, told CNBC that Diem’s underlying technology has “changed dramatically over the past year and a half from a naive blockchain to a very sophisticated blockchain that you can see is trying to answer some of the questions that regulators had.” First Digital Assets Group is currently building infrastructure for merchants to facilitate Diem’s use as a means of payment.

Diem, meanwhile, continues to await regulatory approval and the granting of a payments license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Organization. Commentators speaking to CNBC were optimistic, with Chainalysis CEO Michael Gronager saying:

“I think it [Diem] will get past the gates this year. It would be a missed opportunity if not.”

COIN recap: Comparing Coinbase’s first day to other major public listings

April 15, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Airbnb

From price volatility to becoming the most valuable U.S. exchange, here is how well Coinbase’s first day of trading tracks with other companies.

American crypto exchange giant Coinbase went public on Wednesday with a direct listing on Nasdaq.

The company’s performance on day one has been hailed as being positive overall, with Coinbase becoming the most valuable exchange in the United States ahead of legacy players such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Coinbase’s first day of trading was seen by market commentators as a watershed moment for the crypto space, but how does its performance compare with that of other major companies to go public in the last decade?

Trading under the ticker “COIN,” Coinbase stock opened at $381, which. as expected, was significantly higher than the $250 pre-listing reference price.

COIN reached a price high of $429.54 before slipping to $310.44 on a rocky and volatile first day. Coinbase stock closed out on the first day of trading at $328.28.

In terms of valuation, Coinbase is currently sitting on $85.8 billion in diluted market capitalization. This figure puts the company more than $10 billion ahead of the CME — the second-most-valuable exchange in America.

Coinbase’s listing on the Nasdaq was arguably a major win for the stock exchange, much like Facebook almost a decade ago.

Back in May 2012, the social media giant went public via an initial public offering on Nasdaq. Like Coinbase, Facebook’s first trading day saw volatile stock price action as the listing coincided with a downward slide in the U.S. stock market.

An 18% rally in Facebook stock price on the back of initial enthusiasm soon gave way to a massive drop. At closeout on day one, FB was trading only $0.23 above its IPO price.

While Facebook failed to pop, Airbnb, another major Nasdaq listing, got off to a flying start on its first trading day back in December 2020. The holiday rental behemoth saw its stock price surge over 110% at closeout on day one.

Singapore PM tells followers to ‘remain vigilant’ on crypto after seeing name used to sell tokens

April 4, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

"I have nothing to do with the platform," said Lee Hsien Loong. "It is misleading and done without my permission."

Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, claims someone set up a profile on the social token platform BitClout to sell tokens using the information from his Twitter account.

In a Facebook post Friday, Loong urged Singaporeans to “to remain vigilant when dealing with cryptocurrency platforms.” He said that someone had used BitClout to create one of the platform’s Creator Coins using his name, Twitter account bio, and photo. According to the screenshot Loong posted, there were 27.4088 of his tokens with a market capitalization of more than $9,800, with at least one user holding $4.77 worth.

“I have discovered that my Twitter profile (and others as well) has been used without my permission or knowledge on a blockchain platform that allows users to buy and speculate with its proprietary cryptocurrency,” said the prime minister.

He added:

“The site’s creators are anonymous, but I have sent an open tweet out to ask that my name and photo be removed from the site immediately, as I have nothing to do with the platform. It is misleading and done without my permission.”

Loong’s account has since been removed, but could have been added to the platform at launch. According to BitClout, the site pre-loaded the top 15,000 Twitter influencers — purportedly based on the number of followers — allowing users to “buy and sell their coins even though they’re not on the platform yet.” The Singapore PM has more than 792,000 followers.

However, it appears that the figures behind the BitClout accounts do not have to reserve their profiles for the buying and selling of the tokens to start. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s BitClout profile shows he has not officially joined the platform, but many users are currently holding his tokens, worth $89,379.39 each at the time of publication. When creators activate their accounts by tweeting out their BitClout address, they’re entitled to claim a certain number of their own tokens.

I’m going to be upset if I’m listed on bitclout without my consent.

But I’m going to be furious if I’m not.
— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) March 22, 2021

The prime minister’s warning went out to his 1.6 million Facebook followers in addition to his Twitter followers, but was purportedly intended for all 5.7 million people living in Singapore. Loong seemed to imply investing in the crypto platform was akin to “falling prey to scams,” and encouraged users to only deal with companies regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

BitClout has also attracted the attention of former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, who is handing out signed copies of her final 2016 Playboy magazine cover to the three biggest holders of her Creator Coin. Anderson’s token is currently valued at $6,749.89 with a market cap of more than $800,000.

Half a billion people just had their Facebook data leaked

April 3, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Leaked information includes phone number, Facebook ID, full name, location, past locations, birthdate, email address, relationship status, and bio.

According to a security analyst, sensitive personal information for over half a billion Facebook users was leaked on a well-trafficked hacking forum earlier today — a potential risk to millions of cryptocurrency traders and hodlers who now may be vulnerable to sim swapping and other identity-based attacks.

The trove of information was first discovered by Alon Gal, CTO of security firm Hudson Rock, who posted on Twitter about the leak earlier today:

All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free.

This means that if you have a Facebook account, it is extremely likely the phone number used for the account was leaked.

I have yet to see Facebook acknowledging this absolute negligence of your data. https://t.co/ysGCPZm5U3 pic.twitter.com/nM0Fu4GDY8
— Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) April 3, 2021

According to Gal, the leak is related to a security vulnerability first discovered in 2019. In January 2021, it became known that hackers were able to use the information to access user's phone numbers; the leak has now expanded to include “Phone number, Facebook ID, Full name, Location, Past Location, Birthdate, (Sometimes) Email Address, Account Creation Date, Relationship Status, Bio.”

According to Gal, the information could now enable hackers and scammers to deploy a variety of social manipulation exploits and other nefarioustactics:

“Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing.”

Cryptocurrency users are at particular risk of such attacks. Earlier this year, a victim of a sim-swapping attack sued mobile phone company T-Mobile for $450,000, and in 2018 Kaspersky Labs found that hackers were able to steal 21,000 ETH, currently worth over $43 million, in social engineering attacks over a 12-month period.

The data breach is also orders of magnitude larger than the Ledger breach late last year. Shortly after over 270,000 users’ information was leaked online, users reported extortionist threats, and considered lawsuits against the hardware wallet company.

European Central Bank tries to quell Germans’ doubts about digital euro

March 25, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Banks

A future digital euro wouldn't be a threat to savers, say officials from the European Central Bank.

The European Central Bank, or ECB, has been investigating the possibility of launching a digital euro project within five years to complement existing central bank money. But whereas high-profile leaders such as ECB president Christine Lagarde have been largely positive about the prospect, officials from Germany's Bundesbank have remained unconvinced.

In a new op-ed for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ECB board member Fabio Panetta and fellow official Ulrich Bindseil attempted to tackle some of the Germans' misgivings head on:

“The ECB is by no means planning to use a digital euro to enforce interest rates that are significantly more negative. As long as there is cash, it will always be able to be held at an interest rate of zero percent.”

Panetta and Bindseil's comments picked up directly on the Bundesbank's previous suggestions that a digital euro could be "catastrophic for savers," and economist Richard Werner's opinion that the ECB's interest in a digital euro would wrest crucial deposit-taking business away from commercial banks.

Yet Panetta and Bindseil argued that the digital euro's design could ensure that it would not compete with bank deposits, in reference to earlier proposals for caps on digital euro holdings for citizens. Most crucially, they stressed the project's importance for securing the Eurozone's financial autonomy and resilience against overseas corporations and other regional actors:

“We have to prevent European payment transactions from being dominated by providers outside Europe, such as global technology giants who will offer art currencies in the future. [...] By preparing for a digital euro, we are also securing the autonomy of Europe. It is a safeguard in the event that undesirable scenarios occur.”

Panetta and Bindseil's emphasis clearly alludes to Facebook's longstanding attempts to launch a stablecoin backed by fiat currency. Meanwhile, ascendant economic powers such as China are already well ahead of the game with their own central bank digital currency.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has recently critiqued Facebook's Diem stablecoin proposal, rebranded from its former name, Libra, as being a “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” He reiterated that the German government would "not accept its entry into the market,” citing inadequately addressed regulatory risks.

Dan Larimer Reveals New Project to Combat “Tyranny” of Twitter

March 3, 2021 The Crypto Briefing

After quitting his role as EOS CTO in January, Dan Larimer has announced a new censorship-resistance social media project called Clarion.

Larimer Takes on “Big Tech”

Larimer made a GitHub post explaining the concept of his new project. He described a censorship-resistant “friend to friend” network that mirrors the “performance and reliability of a centralized service with the freedom and independence of a decentralized service.”

Larimer claimed that his project would free friends and family from the so-called “tyranny of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and Google.”

The project drew inspiration from RetroShare, Hive (formerly Steemit), and Voice, with Larimer saying RetroShare is much closer to the desired level of centralization. Clarion will facilitate email, video chats, and other forms of message propagation.

Larimer wrapped up his announcement by claiming “Big Tech” has locked its users into its services and no longer produces tools to empower people.

Far-Right Politics on the Blockchain

In January, Larimer indicated that his interest in censorship-resistant technology was due in part to Twitter banning former U.S. President Donald Trump from Twitter.

Trump was banned on January 08 for inciting violence at the U.S. capitol, with Larimer stating that it was “time to abandon Twitter” the next day.

It’s time to abandon Twitter. If you want to follow me then join https://t.co/epHnV9y13Y and subscribe to my mailing list on https://t.co/q79po8kITh. Meanwhile, this may be your last chance to download certain apps from Apple.

— Daniel Larimer (@bytemaster7) January 9, 2021

Larimer also appeared to encourage users to download the Parler social media app from Apple before it was removed. Parler gained notoriety as a hub for white supremacists and far-right extremists marketed as a censorship-resistant social media platform.

Parler was banned from Amazon and other platforms, as Larimer seems to reference in his cryptic GitHub post.

However, Parler suffered a major security breach when hacktivist @donk_enby scraped the platform and extracted publicly available metadata revealing extensive information on Parler users, including identities and metadata.

The information could potentially identify many of the people who were involved in the storming of the U.S. capital.

I am now crawling URLs of all videos uploaded to Parler. Sequentially from latest to oldest. VIDXXX.txt files coming up, 50k chunks, there will be 1.1M URLs total: https://t.co/YUl8CtoeEA

This may include things from deleted/private posts.

— crash override (@donk_enby) January 10, 2021

Far-right social media platform Gab was also breached recently, including Donald Trump’s personal account. With Gab and Parler both out of action, the far-right social media presence is limited to more centralized platforms. Larimer announced his project the day after the Gab hack was made public.

Disclosure: The author held Bitcoin at the time of writing.

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Larimer Takes on “Big Tech”

Far-Right Politics on the Blockchain

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