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Category Archive : Crypto News

Pakistan Announces Fresh Ban on Crypto, but Adoption as a Hedge Remains Popular

Pakistan’s government has hardened its stance against cryptocurrencies, with Minister of State for Finance and Revenue Aisha Ghaus Pasha saying they will “never be legalized in Pakistan.”

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Author: Amitoj Singh

Bitcoin NFT marketplace using RGB protocol launches, CEO calls BRC-20 tokens a dumb ‘experiment’

With interest in tokenized assets on Bitcoin at an all-time high amid massive growth in both the trading volume of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens market capitalization, a Tim Draper-backed NFT marketplace has announced its launch.

U.S.-based DIBA, an acronym for Digital Bitcoin Art and Assets, said it’s rolling out what it calls “the first Bitcoin NFT marketplace” to leverage RGB smart contracts. The RGB protocol is designed to provide “enhanced security, privacy, scalability, and reduced transaction fees” while making it easier to tokenize assets on Bitcoin, said DIBA’s founder and CEO Gideon Nweze.

“This marks a major milestone in the transition of the internet onto Bitcoin,” Nweze said. “This will revolutionize Bitcoin since it is highly compatible with existing Bitcoin infrastructure. You can think of DIBA as a gateway to what’s possible on Bitcoin.”

Nweze, although bullish on Bitcoin’s potential, hasn’t been thrilled by recent innovations like Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, though they demonstrate “there is demand for such assets” on the popular blockchain, he said.

“BRC-20 is the dumbest technical experiment in crypto, and I have been around for some time,” said Nweze. “Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens are basically trying to force Ethereum on Bitcoin. In practice, it’s inefficient, clunky, and not as effective as it could be.”

DIBA’s launch includes promoting BitMask, a “Bitcoin-only” crypto wallet that can “hold music and art unique digital assets,” or UDAs, the company said in a statement. With the backing of Draper Associates, a venture capital firm, one of DIBA’s missions is “to bring Bitcoin utility to the masses through enabling the exchange of UDAs,” the company also said.

Another of Nweze’s main goals includes fostering a mass migration of tokenized assets like NFTs from Ethereum to Bitcoin. He also thinks the move could help avoid regulatory complications in the U.S.

“Bitcoin is the only asset considered not a security by the SEC, and smart contracts that inherit Bitcoin’s properties might be viewed favorably by the regulators,” he said.

© 2023 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.

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Author: RT Watson

U.S. Hearing Highlights Stablecoin Rift in Competing House Bills

U.S. lawmakers aren’t yet able to reach across the chasm between Republicans and Democrats’ very different ideas for how to oversee stablecoins, despite notes of hope from both sides evident in a Thursday hearing of the House Financial Services Committee’s digital assets panel.

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Author: Jesse Hamilton

Coinbase expands subscription service to UK, Germany and Ireland

Crypto exchange Coinbase is expanding its Coinbase One subscription product, which offers zero fees on each trade in return for a $29.99 monthly payment, to the UK, Germany and Ireland.

Coinbase One subscribers also receive 24/7 customer support, boosted staking rewards and introductory offers to crypto data services, the U.S.-based exchange said in a blog post. The company told TechCrunch it plans to launch the service in an additional 31 European countries in the coming months. 

For Coinbase, a subscription product offers a predictable income stream over the lumpy revenue that comes from traders diving in and out of fickle crypto markets. The exchange’s subscription and services revenue more than doubled to $362 million in the first quarter of 2023 from the same period a year earlier. 

“Through the bull market 18 months to two years ago, there was tons of growth, but we wanted customers to stay… That was the inspiration. How do we build a longer, deeper relationship with our customers and make it a win-win?” Phil McDonnell, Coinbase’s senior director of product management, told TechCrunch.

Coinbase’s international expansion

Coinbase has been attempting to reduce its reliance on its home market following a string of unwelcome moves by U.S. regulators, including a legal spat with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Earlier this month, the company announced plans for an international trading venue for perpetual futures contracts, run out of Bermuda, and this week it unveiled an expansion in Singapore

© 2023 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.

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Author: Andrew Rummer

Ledger CTO on Recover software’s access to private keys: ‘The tradeoff, I think, is acceptable’

Executives at cryptocurrency hardware wallet maker Ledger struggled yesterday to explain to loyal users that its new Recover product may allow access that can unlock the device, but in a way that still remains secure. That resulting public relations mess continued today, as the company deleted a tweet that had said Ledger’s firmware “facilitates key extraction” — which is usually the opposite of what people want from a hard wallet. 

Customers had clearly assumed that there was no way for their private keys — a 24-word seed phrase used as a password to unlock a wallet — to ever leave a Ledger hardware wallet.

But Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet said yesterday that with Recover, users can now permit the software running inside a Ledger wallet to allow private keys to leave the device in the form of encrypted “shards” that can be recombined to recreate the seed phrase. Ledger has said that the Recover tool is optional for users.

Some users “were a little bit surprised to understand that,” he said on the Bankless podcast. “The software running inside the secure element is something that can be changed, is something that has access to the secret.”

“The tradeoff, I think, is acceptable,” he said. This, Guillemet contended, is because Ledger Recover is aimed at people who want more security than that provided by an online exchange or an online wallet but are still too inexperienced to want to own an offline, hardware, cold wallet from which a password can never be recovered if lost.

Ledger customer support has a bad day on Twitter

Earlier in the day, before Guillemet’s podcast appearance, the Ledger customer support Twitter account pointed out to users in a since-deleted tweet that the software on Ledger wallets has always permitted “key extraction”:

 

That statement caused a sharp reaction among hardcore users, so the company later added a second tweet:

Now, the original tweet has been deleted. The support account said it did so because “we don’t want people to continue to be confused by this, and are replacing it with Tweet threads which address all frequently asked questions and concerns in the most understandable and accurate way possible.”

Recover isn’t a replacement for Ledger’s traditional product 

Guillemet explained on the podcast that the Recover product was not intended as a replacement for Ledger’s traditional product, which maintains the keys on the device, can never be accessed remotely, and requires an owner to store their seed phrase with no backup if lost.

Rather, he said, “most crypto owners are using exchanges to custody their assets or are using software wallets. The reality is that self-custody seems a little bit complex, maybe is a little bit complex for newcomers, and people can be afraid of it. … When you are not tech savvy this thing can be frightening.”

“We need to find a way for newcomers in order to enable mass adoption,” Guillemet continued.

Guillemet went on to say that “in self-custody there are different shades of grey, different levels of trust.” At one end you have accounts on centralized exchanges where the customer’s wallet is in full custody of the exchange. In the middle you have online wallets accessible only with a seed phrase — they are more secure but they are still online “hot” wallets. And then at the other end are hardware, or “cold” wallets, disconnected from the internet.

It’s all about the shards

Ledger Recover splits a user’s seed phrase into three encrypted “shards” which are then shared with three different companies: Ledger, Coincover, and a third unnamed provider. Anyone who loses their seed phrase can recover it by proving their identity to two of the companies and combining two shards to recreate the third, thus regaining access to the wallet. The original seed phrases do not leave the wallet, only encrypted pieces of them.

It “gets one step closer to self-custody and self-sovereignty,” Guillemet said. “When you use this feature, I agree you are doing a small tradeoff where you are saying, ‘I am not completely self-sovereign, I am not the only one able to manage my backup’. But the tradeoff, I think, is acceptable because … you have to have at least two out of the three shards to be able to combine the secret. … So this is the tradeoff you have.”

Guillemet also added that the cryptographic element only operates inside the secure element of the wallet so that extraction of the seed never has to leave the device if users do not want to use the Recover feature. “This part is really, really important and it never changed.”

© 2023 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.

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Author: Jim Edwards

Climate Finance Firm Solid World Opens Forward Carbon Liquidity Pools With Polygon

The pool will enable the purchase of mangrove-based carbon credits.

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Author: Eliza Gkritsi

Galaxy Executed its First OTC Options Trade as Demand for On-Chain Options Ramps Up

In 2022, “DeFi performed exceedingly well while CeFi and some traditional methodologies for transacting had some challenges,” Jason Urban, Galaxy’s global head of trading, told CoinDesk TV.

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Author: Lyllah Ledesma

Hector Network Fight Centers on Efficacy of DAO Governance

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Author: Danny Nelson

Expect Ripple Deal to Set Off Crypto Custodian M&A, Says Advisory Firm

Ripple purchased custodian Metaco for $250 million, and regulatory and market conditions could lead to further deals, says Architect Partners

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Author: Brandy Betz

NFT Trading Volume on Track to Drop Below $1B, But Does That Metric Matter?

When looking at the health of the NFT market, it’s important to consider multiple metrics that provide insight into trader behavior shifts.

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Author: Rosie Perper


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