by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, World
Hong Kong : The death of Canadian entrepreneur Gerald Cotten, died due to complications with Crohn’s disease while travelling in India in December, has left a huge stash of cryptocurrencies locked off from the people who own them.
Quadriga, Canada’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said it’s unable to gain access to $145 million of bitcoin and other digital assets after the death of Cotten, its 30-year old CEO and Co-Founder.
Many of the digital currencies held by Quadriga are stored offline in accounts known as “cold wallets,” a way of protecting them from hackers. Cotten appears to have been the only person with access to the wallets, according to court documents cited by Canadian media and posted online by cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk, CNN reported.
The unusual case highlights the risks investors face looking after their assets in the thinly regulated industry.
Cotten’s death has plunged Quadriga into crisis and left it struggling to figure out how to refund more than 100,000 of its users. The company filed for creditor protection in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court on Thursday.
“For the past weeks, we have worked extensively to address our liquidity issues, which include attempting to locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves held in cold wallets. Unfortunately, these efforts have not been successful,” Quadriga said in a statement on its website.
Cotten’s widow, Jennifer Robertson, said in the affidavit posted online that the laptop that Cotten used to run the currency exchange is encrypted.
“I do not know the password or recovery key. Despite repeated and diligent searches, I have not been able to find them written down anywhere,” she said.
The company hired an investigator to see if any information could be retrieved but ongoing efforts have had only “limited success in recovering a few coins” and some information from Cotten’s computer and phone, BBC reported.
The Canadian High Commission in New Delhi told CNN that it was aware of Cotten’s death and had “provided consular assistance,” but declined to reveal further details.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Success Stories, World
Cannes : Singer Akon is launching his own “AKoin” cryptocurrency in an effort to grow crypto-based apps in Africa to bring economic power back to the continent.
Akon, who is of Senegalese descent and has spent years running ‘Lighting Africa’ — a project aimed at bringing solar power to African nations — presented his plan for the digital cash currency at the the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, reports billboard.com.
With the cryptocurrency in place, Akon Crypto City — a futuristic town being developed in 2,000 acres in Senegal — would come to life. The city, gifted to Akon by President of Senegal Macky Sall would run entirely on AKoin and be within five minutes of a new international airport.
“I think that blockchain and crypto could be the saviour for Africa in many ways because it brings the power back to the people and brings the security back into the currency system and also allows the people to utilise it in ways where they can advance themselves and not allow government to do those things that are keeping them down,” said Akon during a panel discussion.
Akon also mentioned running in the US presidential race in 2020 and his thoughts on rapper Kanye West as a candidate.
“I actually really want Kanye to run. I’m going to go after Trump and Kanye will get offended because he likes Trump and he is going to go after me. Then I am going to go after Kanye and then Trump’s going to get offended because he likes Kanye and he’s going to go after me,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : After Facebook and Google, Microsoft has now banned advertisements showing cryptocurrencies and related products from its Bing search engine.
“Because cryptocurrency and related products are not regulated, we have found them to present a possible elevated risk to our users with the potential for bad actors to participate in predatory behaviours, or otherwise scam consumers,” Melissa Alsoszatai-Petheo, Advertiser policy manager at Microsoft, said in a blog post on Wednesday.
“To help protect our users from this risk, we have made the decision to disallow advertising for cryptocurrency, its related products, and un-regulated binary options,” she added.
Bing Ads will implement this change globally in June, with enforcement rolling out in late June to early July.
Google in March announced that it would ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and other “speculative financial products” across its ad platforms.
The ban on such advertisements would come into force from June.
In January, social media giant Facebook banned all ads promoting cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and ICOs.
According to media reports, Twitter was also likely to ban cryptocurrency, token sales and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) advertisements on its platform.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate finance, Economy, Markets, News
New Delhi : Welcoming the RBI’s move to explore introduction of an official virtual currency in India, industry chamber Assocham on Sunday cautioned that extreme care be taken to ensure safety of the data trail that cryptocurrency transactions can leave behind.
Placing a ban on all regulated entities, including banks, from dealing in virtual currencies like bitcoins, the Reserve Bank of India said on Thursday that it is exploring a “fiat digital currency”.
“Of course the inter-departmental study group of the RBI would examine all the safety aspects when it starts working on exploration of the cryptocurrency which has been introduced by private parties in several parts of the world and has attracted a lot of attention,” an Assocham release said here.
“The need for safety is highlighted more by the recent and serious incidents of breach of the Facebook data of as many as 87 million users all over the world,” the release said.
The industry body said that “it is quite pragmatic and courageous of the RBI to initiate exploratory steps towards the world of virtual currencies”.
“A high level of coordination among all the central banks would be required along setting up some kind of a global oversight to guard against misuse of the new currency by the anti-social elements, terrorists, enemy countries,” it said.
“We cannot isolate ourselves from the ever rising number of technology platforms. Each and every individual who would be using the virtual currency must be protected against fraud, data leak, etc.”, Assocham Secretary General D.S. Rawat said.
“Needless to say, the liability of the RBI as is the case with the hard currency would be clearly defined in the case of virtual currencies,” he added.
Briefing reporters earlier this week in Mumbai, RBI Deputy Governor B.P. Kanungo said regulated entities already providing services to any individual or business dealing in digital currencies have been given three months to exit the relationship.
Noting, however, the benefits that blockchain technology, which underlies cryptocurrencies, can potentially bring for financial inclusion and in increasing financial system efficiency, Kanungo said the central bank is exploring a “fiat digital currency”.
“Several central banks are debating the possibility of introducing a fiat digital currency as opposed to the private digital tokens. These, issued by the central bank, are considered its own liability,” he said.
“They will be in circulation in addition to the paper currency and also hold the promise of reducing the cost of printing of notes,” he added.
According to investigation agencies here, with the demand and price of cryptocurrencies on the rise, cyber criminals have found innovative ways to dupe those looking to invest.
Bitcoins in India have been trading at more than Rs 10 lakh each, while people are investing amounts ranging from Rs 3,000 to several lakhs of rupees.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : After Facebook and Google, Twitter was now likely to ban cryptocurrency, token sales and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) advertisements on its platform.
According to a Sky News report on Monday, the new Twitter policy will be implemented in two weeks.
“Twitter may also ban all ads for cryptocurrency exchanges, with some limited exceptions, when the policy is launched,” the report added.
Google last week announced that it will ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and other “speculative financial products” across its ad platforms.
The ban on such advertisements will come into force from June.
“We updated several policies to address ads in unregulated or speculative financial products like binary options, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange markets and contracts for difference (or CFDs),” Scott Spencer, Google’s Director of Sustainable Ads, said in a blog post.
“In June 2018, Google will update the financial services policy to restrict the advertisement of contracts for difference, rolling spot forex and financial spread betting,” Google said.
In 2017, Google took down more than 3.2 billion ads that violated its advertising policies.
Google also blocked 79 million ads in its network for attempting to send people to malware-laden sites and removed 400,000 of these unsafe sites last year.
In January, social media giant Facebook banned all ads promoting cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and ICOs.
The new policy prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, Facebook said in a statement.
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception.
“That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith,” said Rob Leathern, Product Management Director at Facebook.
—IANS
