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Lawmakers have sent a letter to DLive and BitTorrent executives in the wake of last month’s storming of the U.S. Capitol, “expressing concern” about the way some users have utilized the platform to incite violence.

BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol, acquired DLive in October of 2020. The blockchain-based video platform is known to be more lenient with content restrictions compared to competing platforms like YouTube. 

Multiple right-wing commentators who were present at the January 6 event have followings on the DLive platform and earned the BitTorrent token (BTT) on content related to the storming of the Capitol. Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence allege their content encouraged extremist actions. The committee’s letter, addressed to BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun and DLive CEO Charles Wayn, says DLive isn’t doing enough to combat extremism on its platform. 

“As members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, our concern is that online platforms such as DLive are being used to promulgate extremist views that incite offline conflict and violence,” said the letter.

DLive said it has since removed these accounts and restricted the use of BTT for “non-gaming” content. However, lawmakers say gaming content is also a threat, since Southern Poverty Law Center found it to be just as influential in converting young people to potentially extremist actions.

In response, lawmakers are requesting information from DLive and BitTorrent. These questions include information about their strategy to combat extremism and more detailed question about the use of its token.

Congress is specifically inquiring if there are any mechanisms in place to identify foreign blockchain donations and if any such donations were made in relation to the events of Jan. 6. Chainalysis already identified one foreign-based bitcoin donation to right-wing extremist commentators present at the Capitol. 

DLive has made new rules to curb online extremism on its platform, but Congress wants to know how effective they are, according to its letter.

“We have worked with other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to reform their governance practices around extremist content and that work is still ongoing,” said the letter. “But it is clear that DLive is well behind its peers in platform governance and needs to take serious reformative actions.”

© 2021 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.

Last week, DeFi yield aggregation platform Yearn.Finance suffered an exploit, resulting in the loss of $11 million worth of crypto from one of its vaults.

Now, the team has moved to restore funds to the affected vault, according to a tweet posted Tuesday, in the form of the stablecoin DAI. 

“yDAI vault restored! Yearn has opened a Maker Vault with YFI from the Treasury to mint 9.7m DAI and make the yDAI vault whole.”

The team characterized the move as “a one-off celebration of going through this DeFi rite of passage,” adding: “Don’t count on it happening again. Make sure to buy Cover next time.” Alongside the announcement tweet, the Yearn team posted the transaction showing the approximately 1,591.529 YFI used as collateral to mint $9.69 million worth of DAI tokens.

As previously reported, the attacker made some $2.8 million in profit after using a multi-stage transaction involving flash loans to drain the funds from the vault. Vaults are used by users for deposits, through which they can obtain yield from a variety of DeFi protocols accessed via Yearn. 

© 2021 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 new analyst report from the Royal Bank of Canada thinks that with a small investment Apple could disrupt the crypto exchange place and pay for it by buying bitcoin.

Some Nigerians plan to continue using bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies despite a directive issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) last week ordering banks to close down accounts associated with cryptocurrencies.

JP Morgan, the financial services giant that has prominent crypto clients such as Coinbase and Gemini, has put Signature Bank on its focus list. 

A focus list involves which stocks the firm’s research department proposes as most promising. JP Morgan’s move to include Signature Bank suggests the bank can “ride the crypto wave,” JP Morgan analyst Steven Alexopoulos told MarketWatch today. 

Signature Bank has historically been crypto-friendly, and previously maintained a list of crypto firm clientele like Bittrex, ConsenSys, BitFlyer, and Polychain. 

Signature faces competition with another leading crypto-friendly bank, Silvergate, which offers banking services to the likes of Circle, Paxos, and Kraken. However, Signature held more than 25 times the assets Silvergate held in 2020 and has now surpassed over $10 billion deposits, says Alexopoulos.

Perhaps the banking tool that sets Signature apart is Signet, a digital payment platform based on blockchain technology, that was launched in June of 2020. Signet contributed $200 million to Signature’s $8 billion deposits in Q2 a month after launching.

© 2021 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.

Quick Take

• Curv is a pioneer in multi-party computation, an emerging vein of cryptography that is now being applied to cryptocurrency security.
• The past three years have been an “uphill battle” to persuade potential customers that MPC is better, says Malinger, but the message may be starting to sink in.

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In open-source development, where there’s little privileged intellectual property, intangibles like brand and community matter more.

The letter also asks whether DLive identified any crypto donations from foreign entities to the individuals present on Jan. 6.

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