ICO

Millenials are Targets of Cyber Scams

According to the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), Millenials are increasingly being targeted by cyber scammers. Tech hungry young people without sufficient knowledge of prior episodes of online scams, tend to be too optimistic of how an emerging technology will disrupt legacy products and solutions, and change the world.

What NASAA discovered were that young tech savvy people were more likely to consume fintech products like ICOs, and are also highly subject to cyber fraud. Baby Boomer investors were also subject to similar tendencies and risks; but at a lower level.

All cyber investors can take adequate precautions to minimise their exposure to fraud. These include:

Avoid online offers of attaining massive wealth with little to no effort.
‘Old tricks’ repackaged for the ICO or cyber world: pyramid schemes, fake exchange scams, malware downloads and phishing

Watch this video from NASAA on how you can avoid becoming a victim of cyber frauds.

Based on a post by John Wasik for Forbes

Scotland Issues Its 1st ICO

SCOTEX, a new stock exchange company, is raising capital via a hybrid ICO in Scotland. The hybrid ICO-IPO, the first in the world, offers an equity-like structure. Token holders will have full equity-style benefits and is based on the XCAP ICO Protocols that offer many of the protections and standards of IPOs. The ICO will be based on the Ethereum ERC-20 protocol.

To find out more and potentially participate in the ICO, more details can be found at www.xcap.com.

Additional details can be found at this post in MondoVisione.

SEC Continues It’s Crackdown of ICOs

The USA’s SEC is going after potentially illicit ICO offerings from the crypto ecosystem. The commision is issuing dozens of subpoenas to ICO issuers who they suspect may be engaged in potentially illegal activities under the guise of ICOs. The trading of specific ICO tokens and equity stakes has been suspended while the SEC is looking further into their activities. The SEC’s goal is to get ICO issuers and promoters adopt compliance guidelines that traditional securities issuers need to abide by now. It is unsure if this is a realistic approach.

The SEC probably realises that it needs to act timely to avoid a systemic failure to the financial market. It has come to realise that the ICO industry is incapable of regulating themselves since interest in crypto tokens has attracted tremendous attention from regular investors looking for speedy and outlandish gains.

Based on a post by JP Buntnix of The Merkel.

Blockchain

Dictionaries Get Updated with Crypto Terms

Merriam-Webster announced this week that it has updated the following terms to its word list:

• Cryptocurrency
• Blockchain
• Initial Coin Offerings

The additions are being made after the word “Bitcoin” was added to the dictionary more than 2 years ago.

Based on reporting by Nikhilesh De of CoinDesk and Natasha Bach of Fortune.

Blockstack Launches New Token Sale

Blockstack, a decentralised infrastructure builder, is launching their second token sale targeting regular investors. It’s first token sale held in December 2017 was targeted at high net worth accredited investors. It raised about USD 50 million then. Blockstack had to take this approach to meet SEC securities exemptions in their public token offer.

Details are still sketchy at this stage. Stay tuned for the token sale in future updates.

Based on a report by The International Business Times UK.

Graphite - A Blockchain Based Document Creator

Graphite, a blockchain based document creator, that is built on the Blockstack platform, is touted as a challenger to Google Docs. Early users in the publishing trade have largely positive feedback with Graphite. They claim that it is fast, free from the Google bloat and potentially more secure.

Graphite supports word based documents (Documents), spreadsheets (Sheets), a contact database (Contacts) and an email alternative called Conversations. It enables secure, decentralized and user-owned file creation, storage, communication, collaboration and sharing.

Getting started with Graphite is not so straightforward. First you have to sign up to get a userid with Blockstack. After that is done, Graphite is apparently rather intuitive to use and early users expect the user experience to improve over time.

Based on reports by Wired and Lifehacker.

Cryptocurrency

Iceland’s Big Bitcoin Heist - 11 Arrested

In what is touted as Iceland’s “Big Bitcoin Heist”, 11 people were arrested in connection with the theft of almost USD 2 million worth of crypto-mining equipment from several data centers. These equipment are very powerful computers that are designed to generate or mine cryptocurrencies by successfully completing computational puzzles. Apparently there were four thefts: three in December 2017 and one in January 2018.
Although the perpetrators of the highly organised crime have largely been taken into custody, some of the equipment remains unfound. Icelandic police are trying to locate the missing equipment by monitoring energy usage across the island. This can be a challenge since Iceland is a popular location for cryptocurrency mining due to its cool weather and access to abundant low cost renewable power.
The “Big Bitcoin Heist” is not the first reported case of Bitcoin related crime spilling over into the real world. A few weeks ago, 4 gangsters in Taiwan violently assaulted 2 men and forced them to transfer Bitcoins into their crypto wallets.
Based on a report by David Meyer in Fortune.

The Crypto Market Dip in Early 2018

Despite regular warnings issued by regulators in 2017 to investors about investing in the volatile cryptocurrencies market, many threw caution to the wind, invested and set spectacular records in that year.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple set new records and those that invested in them felt elated, while those that did not felt that they had lost out on a tremendous opportunity. Notably, on 17 December 2017, Bitcoin’s price had reached the all-time high of USD 19,850.

The new year unfortunately has not been too kind to crypto investors. Almost USD 553 billion was lost with the crypto bloodbath at the start of 2018. This was a fall of over 66%. So what are the factors that caused this massive dip?

The main factor was a correction in response to the over inflated prices of cryptocurrencies from a large swathe of global crypto investors. This caused a chorus of refrain from most global securities regulators. Some countries enacted bans that affected the market momentum. The market that reached a valuation of USD 834 billion is taking a breather before it revives and continues its upward march.

Based on a report by Kenny Au in Forbes.

Ethereum’s Genesis Account Has a Balance of Over USD 500 million

Most of this balance arises from its popularity as a ‘proof of burn’ address, since it may be unlikely that a private key for this unique address can be generated. Some of the balance arises from erroneous transfers made by users with ‘fat fingers’.

Ethereum’s genesis address is easy to remember. It is 0x followed by 40 zeroes. It has been the unintended recipient of USD 6 million in Ether and USD 500 million in ERC20 tokens. If Vitalik Buterin or other founders of Ethereum have access to the private key of their genesis address, they could automatically return the Ether and ERC20 tokens by setting up a suitable smart contract.

The situation is unlike that of Bitcoin, where the funds that reach the genesis address are irretrievable due to its architecture and the disappearance of its enigmatic founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Get additional details from this report by Kai Sedgwick in Bitcoin.com.

That's it for this compact version of recent crypto news.

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Image Credit: Photo by Andre Francois on Unsplash.