BlockFi is excited to announce today that it has dropped all minimums in the BlockFi Interest Account (BIA). BIA clients will no longer have to meet a minimum deposit amount in their Bitcoin, Ether, or GUSD balances in order to earn interest. Additionally, BlockFi has removed the early withdrawal penalty from the account and is now offering one free withdrawal per month to all clients.

When BlockFi first launched the BIA, the price of one Bitcoin was significantly lower than it is today. In March 2019, one Bitcoin cost around $4,000. Since then, the price has more than doubled. Due to client feedback and increasing demand for the BlockFi Interest Account, the company has decided to remove the minimum to earn interest and make its products more widely available to all crypto investors.

“We’re thrilled to see the growth in platform activity from crypto investors leveraging our wealth management products. This update to our terms will make our products more widely accessible – which is a key theme of the crypto sector and part of our mission at BlockFi.” – Zac Prince, CEO and Founder.

“Earlier this year, we expanded into new markets such as India. By making BIA open to all, we plan to target clients in Latin America, where banking services and credit reporting are limited. U.S.-grade financial products have typically only been available to high net worth individuals in countries like Argentina and Costa Rica. BlockFi’s platform leverages blockchain rails to make wealth management products available on a much broader scale.” – Flori Marquez, Co-Founder and VP of Operations.

Having recently raised its Series A financing round, led by Valar Ventures, BlockFi is currently focusing its efforts on rapidly scaling its core business, making its current products (BIA and crypto-backed loans) more accessible to a wider crypto audience, and developing new products to expand its addressable market. To this end, BlockFi is actively working on innovative approaches to bring more value to its current clients and crypto investors at large. For example, BlockFi recently added a new feature to the BIA, Interest Payment Flex. With Flex enabled, clients holding Bitcoin, Ether, or GUSD in their BIA can select which of the three offered currencies to receive all their interest in. Dropping the minimums to earn interest is the latest step in this process: this change will allow crypto investors holding any amount of Bitcoin, Ether, or GUSD to benefit from BlockFi’s wealth management offerings.

Although there is no longer a minimum balance required to earn interest, accounts are still subject to Gemini’s withdrawal minimums: 0.003 BTC and 0.056 ETH. Withdrawals for balances smaller than these amounts may take up to 30 days to process.

Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project is seeking a Swiss payment system license, financial watchdog FINMA said on Wednesday, noting the breadth of the planned services would require broad oversight. The world’s largest social media network announced plans in June to launch a cryptocurrency as it seeks to expand beyond social networking and move into e-commerce and global payments, though the plans have drawn intense scrutiny from global financial officials.

“Due to the issuance of Libra payment tokens, the services planned by the Libra project would clearly go beyond those of a pure payment system, FINMA said, noting this mean it would be subject to such additional requirements.

These would extend to capital allocation for credit, market and operational risks, risk concentration and liquidity, and the management of the Libra reserve, it said. “We are engaging in constructive dialogue with FINMA and we see a feasible pathway for an open-source blockchain network to become a regulated, low-friction, high-security payment system,” the Geneva-based Libra Association said.

It has asked FINMA to clarify the status of the association and the Libra coin under Swiss supervisory law, the regulatory said. [bit.ly/2kEP7bk]

U.S. Under Secretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker told reporters in the Swiss capital on Tuesday that cryptocurrency project must meet the highest standards for combating money laundering and terrorism financing if it is to get off the ground.

“Whether it’s bitcoin, Ethereum, Libra, our message is the same to all of these companies: anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism has to be built into your design from the get-go,” Mandelker said.

Caliber Home Loans, Inc. (Caliber), one of the nation’s leading mortgage companies, has become the first lender outside of Figure to originate loans directly on Provenance, the industry’s leading blockchain platform.

By originating, servicing and financing loans on Provenance, Caliber looks to deliver an outstanding consumer experience while lowering costs, reducing risk, and improving financing execution throughout the entire loan process.

Caliber is originating Caliber Home Equity Line of Credit loans as the first customer licensing Figure SaaS, a best of class loan origination system natively integrated into blockchain. Figure SaaS offers loan origination platforms in home equity and mortgage, and will soon offer multiple other asset classes and product offerings. All will feature full integration into Provenance to deliver origination, servicing and financing benefits.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Figure and offering our customers a distinctive, industry-leading product,” said Sanjiv Das, CEO of Caliber Home Loans. “We think the ease and speed of this process is truly unique. Unlike traditional home equity lending timeframes which often stretch out for weeks, our borrowers can now complete the entire process digitally and access their funds in days. We think that’s a great solution and gives our customers tremendous flexibility.”

Mike Cagney, CEO of Figure, said, “Figure is excited to inaugurate our third-party Figure SaaS platform with Caliber, one of the world’s leading mortgage lenders. Caliber’s customers are now experiencing our fast, customer-friendly process as well as the efficiencies of the Provenance blockchain platform.”

Facebook’s (FB.O) proposed Libra currency could undermine the European Central Bank’s ability to set monetary policy and Europe should ignore its siren call of “treacherous promises” ECB board member Yves Mersch said on Monday.

Facebook announced Libra — a new digital coin backed by four official currencies and available to billions of social network users around the world — earlier this year, saying it hoped to launch next year.

“Depending on Libra’s level of acceptance and on the referencing of the euro in its reserve basket, it could reduce the ECB’s control over the euro, impair the monetary policy transmission mechanism by affecting the liquidity position of euro area banks, and undermine the single currency’s international role,” Mersch added.

Like regular currencies, Libra would be highly centralized, an “extremely concerning” setup since it is not backed by a lender of last resort and it is ultimately accountable to shareholders, who are not seen as repositories of public trust, Mersch added.

“It is scheduled for release in the first half of 2020 by the very same people who had to explain themselves in front of legislators in the United States and the European Union on the threats to our democracies resulting from their handling of personal data on their social media platform,” Mersch added.

Given these challenges, European regulatory and supervisory authorities need to assert jurisdiction over Libra and also need global cooperation to mitigate its risks.

“I sincerely hope that the people of Europe will not be tempted to leave behind the safety and soundness of established payment solutions and channels in favor of the beguiling but treacherous promises of Facebook’s siren call,” Mersch added.

Facebook has hired a Washington-based lobbying firm in light of increased Congressional and regulatory pushback the social media network has received due to its forthcoming cryptocurrency offering, Libra

The social media giant in August retained consulting shop FS Vector for support on “issues related to blockchain policy,” according to lobbying registration documents filed with Congress.

Facebook formally unveiled the details of its planned blockchain digital currency initiative in June, which could potentially bring the world’s “unbanked” billions into the digital economy by allowing anyone to securely buy, sell or send money to others via Facebook. The proposed digital currency, which has yet to meet regulatory approvals, is set to launch sometime next year.

Announcement of the social network’s forays into the digital asset space has since raised serious concerns among lawmakers. Congress in July drafted a bill, titled “Keep Big Tech Out of Finance Act,” which would prohibit “large platform utilities”—defined as a tech company that earns annual global revenues of $25 billion or more—from being a financial institution or operating “a digital asset that is intended to be widely used as medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, or any other similar function, as defined by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.”

House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA) in June called for a moratorium and Congressional review of Facebook’s Libra project, “given the company’s troubled past.” Appearing in July on CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” Waters likened Facebook’s cryptocurrency venture to “starting a bank without having to go through any steps to do it.”

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell in July posited that “Libra raises many serious concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.”

President Trump raised concerns about Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency as well, tweeting in July that “if Facebook and other companies want to become a bank, they must seek a new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations, just like other Banks.”

FS Vector, which was founded in 2018, bills itself as a regulatory compliance, public policy and business strategy advisory firm that specializes in the fintech, cryptocurrency, blockchain and financial services markets.

FS Vector partner John Collins leads the Facebook account. Collins formerly served as vice president of international policy at the American Bankers Association’s international subsidiary, the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade. Prior to that, he was a staffer on the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and also led Congress’ first work into digital currencies in 2013.

South Korean blockchain startups are listing their cryptocurrencies on overseas exchanges one after another. Foreign exchanges have opened the Korean won money market to attract South Korean cryptocurrency projects.

The number of South Korean companies listing their early-stage blockchain projects on foreign exchanges is steadily increasing, industry watchers said on Aug. 18. Medibloc and Temco, which have already listed their blockchain projects on South Korea’s major exchanges are seeking to list their projects listed again on overseas exchanges, including those in the United States and Singapore.

Leading global foreign exchanges are scrambling to open the Korean won market to enter the domestic market. Some foreign exchanges, including Binance Labs, are directly accelerating Korean blockchain projects to attract Korean startups.

BW.com, which recently attracted domestic blockchain projects such as Ziktalk, Storichain, Payexpress and Sigma Chain, is planning to absorb domestic cryptocurrency investors by opening the won market by the end of this month. BW.com is a China-based cryptocurrency exchange which ranks among the top 10 in the world in terms of transaction volume. The exchange is regarded as useful for domestic projects to make inroads into the Chinese and Southeast Asian markets.

Sigma Chain, the developer of South Korean blockchain platform Futurepia, undertook the initial exchange offering (IEO) of its own cryptocurrency PIA on BW.com in May, becoming the first Korean company to do so.

Bitholic, which is to change its name to “Bithumb Singapore,” also owns a large number of domestic blockchain projects in its portfolio. In particular, BOScoin completed the listing of its cryptocurrency on Bitholic in June. The exchange also supports trading of the cryptocurrencies of such projects as Bezant and Medibloc.

Experts point out that domestic blockchain projects are flocking to foreign exchanges largely due to tougher domestic cryptocurrency exchange market conditions. Investors cannot make or withdraw deposits in the Korean currency at Korean exchanges. Excluding the nation’s four largest exchanges, some 200 smaller exchanges cannot open real-name virtual accounts. This is one reason cryptocurrency investors cannot benefit from investor protection.

A low transaction volume is another reason Korean blockchain startups avoid listing on domestic exchanges. Only five or six South Korean exchanges rank among the top 100 in the world in terms of transaction volume. It is no exaggeration to say that 97 percent of domestic exchanges are in danger of going bankrupt due to their low volume of transactions.

Prixbit, a cryptocurrency exchange which closed its operations as of Aug. 9, has failed to overcome its financial difficulties and suspended its cryptocurrency trading services. Many investors criticized the shutdown of the exchange as they were worried about withdrawing their investments.

Binance announced its plans to initiate an open blockchain project, Venus, an initiative to develop localized stablecoins and digital assets pegged to fiat currencies across the globe. Binance is looking to create new alliances and partnerships with governments, corporations, technology companies, and other cryptocurrency companies and projects involved in the larger blockchain ecosystem, to empower developed and developing countries to spur new currencies.

With its existing global blockchain ecosystem, Binance has already reserved its public chain technology and cross-border payment system for secure operations of new stablecoins. Since its launch last April, Binance Chain has been running securely and robustly and has issued a range of stablecoins, including a BTC-pegged stablecoin (BTCB) and the Binance BGBP Stable Coin (BGBP) pegged to the British Pound. Binance will provide full-process technical support, compliance risk control system and multi-dimensional cooperation network to build Venus, leveraging its existing infrastructure and regulatory establishments.

Binance welcomes additional government partners, companies and organizations with a strong interest and influence on a global scale to collaborate with us to build a new open alliance and sustainable community. We encourage like-minded people and organizations to contact us and discuss the infinite possibilities of the digital world together: venus@binance.com.

Data Gumbo Corp., a Houston-based technology company that has developed a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform to streamline smart contracts for oil & gas, today announced Antelope Water Management, the Austin-based company providing sustainable water solutions for the extractive industries in oil & gas, has adopted Data Gumbo’s blockchain network GumboNet™. This is the industry’s first use of a blockchain platform for total water management services in US shale plays. Antelope will tap the power of GumboNet to provide customers and vendors across its water infrastructure, treatment, sourcing and disposal services with real-time data transparency, and automation of contract executions and payments.

GumboNet insights allow all of Antelope’s customers and vendors in a transaction to be certain of immutable data and measurement accuracy for guaranteed and secure transactions. Antelope’s stakeholders and local regulators will benefit from the data certainty to lower overhead costs, reduce outstanding payments between parties, and ensure data certainty for all business transactions.

“As an integrated water management company in the Permian Basin providing tailored management services for water infrastructure, we look forward to incorporating Data Gumbo into each of our business units,” said Dustin Brownlow, CEO of Antelope. “Data Gumbo is a game changer enabling us to provide customers, vendors and regulators the best experience that smart contracts can offer. We are excited to add transparency to our operations while removing needless expenses and duplications of efforts to eliminate incorrect data and DSOs through Data Gumbo’s blockchain for all stakeholders.”

Antelope’s deployment moves Data Gumbo into the Permian Basin, the largest producing oil field in the world and into another sector of oil & gas — total water management. Antelope’s customers will for the first time be able to derive benefit from self-executing contracts on a secure blockchain platform catering to complex, 24-hr operations without the need for manual oversight.

“Data Gumbo was the first blockchain in offshore drilling and now we are the first in oil & gas water management. We anticipate continuing to break ground across the industry as companies realize the vast benefits we afford them such as security, certainty of data and, most of all, savings to the bottom line,” said Andrew Bruce, CEO of Data Gumbo.

Data Gumbo’s executives have more than 200 years of oil & gas industry experience across midstream, drilling and completions operations. Built initially for oil & gas but applicable to a multitude of industrial applications, GumboNet is offered by subscription, and uniquely frees companies from building and sustaining stand-alone, in-house blockchain solutions. With an immutable and auditable record that enables counterparties to trust transactions, no party can unilaterally change details, all stakeholders have the same level of transparency and results, and payments can finally be automated for savings and efficiencies.

Last week, cryptocurrency exchange Binance, was at the center of a controversial KYC data leak that resulted in a massive portion of its customer’s personal data, privacy, and identity being put at risk.

While the company was quick to dismiss the leak and ensuing panic from its users as nothing more than FUD, calling it a “false KYC leak,” in the same official blog post Binance admits that their investigation is still ongoing, and while that the allegedly leaked photos didn’t include the crypto exchange’s digital watermark, all photos appeared to be tied to a month when Binance had outsourced their KYC process to another third-party firm.

Binance appears to be minimizing the situation in the public eye and deflecting any accountability of their own for not ensuring the third-party firm secured its customer’s data.

Hundreds of customer photos uploaded during Binance’s KYC process could be seen being scrolled through on a video recording of a Telegram channel where the photos were uploaded as part of a 300 BTC ransom hackers demanded from Binance – that they ultimately did not pay.

The once poster child of the crypto industry known for thwarting hackers and keeping funds “SAFU” has recently come under fire for barring US users from its exchange, only offering 2x margin on crypto trading, and now, leaking potentially thousand of customer’s data without taking any responsibility or apologizing to those affected in order to save its image.

Cyber Crime: Over 3 Billion Private Personal Records Leaked Last Year

The leak highlights the ever-increasing importance of personal data privacy in the digital age. Over 3.3 billion people were affected by personal data leaks in 2018, and the trend is only growing. In 2018, the equivalent of 291 different people’s personal data was leaked per second. Over 15 billion personal records have been leaked since 2013 when benchmarking first began.

As much as 65% of these leaks involve identify theft, which can involve credit issues, criminal allegations, tax liability, or worse. As much as 13% involve financial access, meaning that cyber criminals were able to directly access financial data and accounts, potentially draining accounts of their holdings – an incident that has become common in the cryptocurrency industry, and elsewhere on the internet.

In 2018 alone, the cryptocurrency industry was exposed to over $1 billion in exchange-related hacks, with nearly all of them involving some kind of data breach or lax security protocol. The rest of the internet is by no means different, with nearly every major internet company or publicly traded corporation experiencing some sort of major data leak over the last decade.

At the start of August, the Entertainment Software Association – a powerful company in the video game industry – leaked the personal data of thousands of industry professionals, journalists, and executives alike. The most alarming issue is that the ESA didn’t even hide this information behind any type of security, and ignored repeated attempts from users notifying the company of the security failure.

Neglect like the case with Binance or the ESA exists everywhere in the world and on the internet. Uploading personal data to platforms that aren’t secure is at the core of the issue.

Personal data is also easy to come by for cyber criminals, making the matter far worse and widespread. According to data, personal records can be obtained for as little as $30 on the dark web. This includes full name, social security number, date of birth, bank account numbers, and more. Driver’s licenses are only $20. Passports fetch up to $2,000 – still relatively cheap to access such important personally identifying data.

How To Protect Personal and Private Data in the Digital Age

Because the issue is so widespread and the trend is only growing each year, personal data protection will only become more important and difficult. Methods and tactics of cyber criminals will improve, and so should the security and safety that companies provide their customers. Better yet, personal data should be kept private, and not required over the internet where sensitive documentation can so easily be leaked.

New systems must ultimately be developed, but many companies can start improving their processes today by accepting responsibility and taking necessary steps to protect their customer’s personal data.

One example of a company taking additional steps to protect customer data is PrimeXBT. PrimeXBT is a Bitcoin-based margin trading platform featuring crypto assets (with up to 100x leverage) similar to Binance but also features traditional assets such as forex, commodities, stock indices, and more. The two worlds of digital and traditional finance coming together under one roof make PrimeXBT unique.

PrimeXBT combines the bank-grade security and focus on customer safety from traditional finance with the value of privacy that is the ethos of the crypto industry.

PrimeXBT requires no personal data to be uploaded at all, and ditches the time-consuming KYC process in favor of offering their customers privacy. The company has even in the past taken steps to move its trading infrastructure to Switzerland to ensure customer privacy remains the highest priority. It’s one of the few places that exist on the internet where there zero risk of personal data loss or leak, because no personal data is ever required.

Conclusion

In the digital age, personal data and privacy are constantly put at risk unnecessarily. Corporations and companies carelessly require this data, then don’t give it the proper protection or care that personal data and privacy deserves.

But until the public begins to vocalize their concerns over personal data and privacy and avoid companies that do not prioritize safety and security, or companies themselves begin to take additional steps and make investments in security, the issue will only grow more severe.

For now, all internet users must do due diligence when using any platform or website which requires personal information to be uploaded, and whenever possible, select a company or website that doesn’t require any personal or private information be uploaded at all.

TRON, one of the world’s largest blockchain projects, announced today the V1.0 code release of TRON’s side chain solution, Sun Network. Sun Network is a scaling solution built to expand the capacity of the TRON MainNet, incorporating a series of scaling projects such as DAppChain, a smart contract optimized application side chain, cross-chain communications and many more. Among these projects, DAppChain is a side chain scaling project designed to provide unlimited scaling capacity for the TRON MainNet, enabling DApps to run with lower Energy consumption, higher security and efficiency on TRON.

Compared to other scaling solutions, Sun Network has two notable features. Firstly, it supports smart contract transactions, focusing on improving the TPS of the smart contract transactions on the MainNet, as well as lowering the transaction fee. Secondly, the side chain can support more customizable requirements, such as setting side chain incentives, transaction rates, transaction confirmation speed and other parameters, catering to the needs of different developer groups.

The overall solution of the Sun Network will provide unlimited scalability to the TRON MainNet, allowing for more possibilities to the development of TRON DApps and the entire ecosystem. The solution also strives to bring positive impacts to the whole blockchain industry while flourishing the TRON network.

TRON’s founder Justin Sun says, “As time goes on, lots of projects have made great progress. We launched the TVM in October 2018. In just 7 months, nearly 500 quality DApps are running on the TRON network. TRON’s total account number reached 3,000,000. A total of 410 million secure transactions took place since the MainNet launch. Moving on, the energy-saving, highly secure and efficient Sun Network will contribute to a more active ecosystem of TRON. Community developers will benefit from the network as well. In addition, a series of scaling projects such as DAppChain and cross-chain communications will further expand the overall capacity of the TRON network, as well as improving the TPS and smart contract execution efficiency on TRON.”

Sun Network Github Code Overview

This code version of the Sun Network is as follows:

* Side Chain The core code of DAppChain is compatible with the features of the TRON MainNet, Developers can easily migrate DApps on the TRON main chain to the side chain.

* Oracle A relay that supports the interaction of the main chain and the side chain; the TRON main chain will interact with the side chain through the Oracle relay.

* Contracts Managing digital assets across both the main chain and the side chain through contracts, ensures safe transfer of assets between the TRON network and the side chain.

* JS SDK The Javascript-version SDK supports simultaneous interactions with both the main chain and the side chain on TRON, similar to TronWeb of the MainNet.

* JAVA SDK The Java-version SDK supports simultaneous interactions with the main chain and the side chain on TRON.

* SideChain Wallet Cli An implementation of the side-chain command-line wallet based on the above-mentioned Java SDK; interacts with the main chain and the side chain simultaneously through the terminal, similar to Wallet Cli of the MainNet.