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Decentralized finance protocol Pickle Finance lost almost $20 million in DAI in an exploit on Saturday.

Pickle Finance is a yield aggregation service similar to the yEarn protocol. The exploit on Saturday appears to involve Pickle Finance’s DAI pJar product, which leverages the Compound protocol to harvest yield with DAI deposits. Funds from the exploit have been transferred to address 0x70178102AA04C5f0E54315aA958601eC9B7a4E08 where it currently sits.

It is currently unclear how this exploit happened. 

This is a developing story…

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Xi Jinping, the president of China, remarked during a G20 meeting this week that the group should adopt an “open and accommodating attitude” on central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.

His remarks on November 21 are notable, given that China is on the cusp of launching its own digital currency system, dubbed DC/EP. Testing is underway in Chinese jurisdictions and thousands of citizens have taken part in such trials to date.

Xi referred to CBDCs in the context of “the sound development of the digital economy,” according to a transcript published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

“The G20… needs to discuss developing the standards and principles for central bank digital currencies with an open and accommodating attitude, and properly handle all types of risks and challenges while pushing collectively for the development of the international monetary system,” Xi was quoted as saying.

The Chinese president has previously called for the country to take “the leading position” on the public-sector application of blockchain tech. Meanwhile, China’s cryptocurrency sector has been swept up in a broader crackdown on money laundering, as reported earlier this week.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Payments giants Visa and Mastercard run more stringent checks on crypto firms than on other prospective card issuers.

Would-be crypto partners must produce detailed information about their fraud and money laundering checks before being approved to offer cards to their customers.

Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, described the process as “enhanced diligence on top of what we do for typical issuers”.
With a growing number of wallet and exchange businesses launching cards, the crypto sector has become a fresh battlefield for Visa and Mastercard. Both businesses have advertised advancements in the sector in recent months.

In July, London-based wallet provider Wirex became the first native crypto firm to be granted a principal membership license by Mastercard — a development that came not long after the collapse of Wirex’s former payments partner Wirecard. Mastercard said in a press statement at the time that the expansion of its crypto efforts would make it “simpler and faster for partners to bring secure, compliant” cards to market.

Not to be outdone, Visa announced the expansion of its Fast Track programme in November, giving a wider range of fintech firms access to its network of 61 million merchants. Crypto.com and eToro, both UK-based, were identified as crypto partners that had been given the green light.

“Visa is committed to being the preferred network for crypto wallets. Fast Track is really the first step for having an easy way for having a next generation and new wave of issuers to be able to come to us and get card programmes off the ground,” said Sheffield.
Before getting off the ground, however, crypto companies must convince the card networks that the crypto they hold – which they convert into fiat money when a customer tries to pay for something using their card – arrived on their platform from a reputable source.

“They give you a heightened review process which is effectively, ‘I want to see everything you put towards your regulators in terms of anti-money laundering’,” said Mark Hipperson, whose London-based crypto wallet and exchange platform Ziglu recently launched a Mastercard debit card. This includes information on ‘know your customer’, anti-money laundering and fraud checks, as well as transaction monitoring.

Wirex chief executive Pavel Matveev, who has experience working with both Visa and Mastercard, said Visa homes in on individual transactions using tools such as Chainalysis and Elliptic – which Wirex also uses – to ask whether they originate from “legitimate sources”.

“They both [Visa and Mastercard] ask about how we store crypto, what security measures we have in place, what are our screening policies, but it’s fair to say that Visa goes a bit deeper. They even ask about specific cryptocurrency transactions… which was quite surprising for us to be honest,” he said.

A Mastercard spokesperson pointed to principles established in October 2019, which dictate that the company’s crypto partners must provide “strong consumer protection, including privacy and security of the consumers’ information and transactions”.

These principles also require “full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, including those applicable to anti-money laundering,” according to the company.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

A proposed rule from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency seeks to provide a particular kind of equitable relief to affected businesses: fairer access to banking services. 

Published on November 20, the OCC’s stated position is that “banks should provide access to services, capital, and credit based on the risk assessment of individual customers, rather than broad-based decisions affecting whole categories or classes of customers,” according to the US banking regulator’s statement on Friday. 

Essentially, the proposal will stop banks from limiting the access customers or businesses have to banking services. Instead, banks would be required to make their products available to everyone in the community they serve. However, it is still up to the bank to deny services to a customer based on their creditworthiness, ability to pay, and other risk-based factors. 

The move was quickly hailed as a boon for cryptocurrency industry businesses. And while the proposal itself makes no specific mention of this particular sector, there’s little doubt it would have a positive impact on such firms, given the long-standing barriers between them and bank accounts in the US.

Such issues date back years. impacting not only companies that offer crypto services but, in at least one 2014 case, companies that even hint at a casual relationship with cryptocurrency.

“No bank is willing to help them out,” Robby Houben, a lawyer and professor, told American Banker in 2019.

To be sure, some US-based banks such as Silvergate have generated significant business by maintaining more of an open-door policy with respect to banking crypto businesses. But the problem persists, and the OCC policy — far-ranging in scope — holds the promise of providing some equitable relief to not only crypto firms but others caught in the proverbial web of banks’ risk decisions.

“Today, the OCC, led by @BrianBrooksOCC is making a bold effort to curtail the practice by prohibiting banks from discriminating against politically disfavored but otherwise legal businesses,” lawyer Marco Santori wrote on Twitter. 

Brooks himself said in a statement:

“This proposed rule would ensure that banks meet their responsibility to provide their services fairly since they enjoy special privilege and powers because if the system fails to provide fairness to all, it cannot be a source of strength for any.”

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.