China is considering government blockade decisions

The state auditor of China believes that the blocking team can "open a window for more orderly data storage."


An article published on the website of the National Control and Revision Office of the People's Republic of China discusses the use of a blockade to facilitate data storage. Currently, the office is responsible for a huge amount of data, which, in his opinion, can be stored more efficiently in a decentralized registry.

The National Audit Office, which includes 29 departments at the cabinet level in the State Council of China, reviews all financial transactions related to the government, from administrative expenses to individual government programs. It also manages the provincial and municipal level auditing bureaux, which have their designated authorized representatives.

The decentralized system is expected to be used in every office of an accredited auditor as a separate node. The article says that "a blockage can reduce the workload of the central government while providing a trackable register that will mark each transaction at all levels."

In fact, the article suggests "a window into a new form of thinking of government bodies working at the state level in China" using the use of blocking technology. It remains to be seen whether any development of this theoretical system will really be launched.

According to the published article, "the need for decentralization is linked to the existing operating model adopted by the central office, which is the only department that stores all the data submitted by its commissioners at the provincial and municipal levels."

Management writes in conclusion:

Since the bureaus do not store data themselves, the National Audit Office faces a situation where we must unlimitedly expand our software and hardware capabilities - which is a "vicious circle". The concept of a block of flats will offer us a window for solving the basket of problems mentioned above.

Crypto-exchange OKEX has encountered an error for ERC20 tokens

The OKEX, the third largest crypto-exchange in the world in terms of trading volume, suspended all transactions with ERC20 tokens after the opening of trading on April 25; developers say that a "new mistake of a smart contract" was discovered.


In his blog, crypto-exchange confirmed that the bug, called BatchOverFlow, allowed malicious parties to "generate a very large number of tokens and put them on a regular address."

Crypto-exchange says:

This makes many of the ERC20 tokens vulnerable to the manipulation of prices by attackers. To protect the public interest, we decided to suspend deposits with ERC20 tokens until the error is corrected.
New events followed just a day after the DNS server substitution resulted in some users of MyEtherWallet purses used to store and exchange ERC20 tokens, inadvertently being redirected to phishing websites, compromising their login data and opening access to personal assets.

Although some sources mistakenly attributed the attack to weak points in the infrastructure of MyEtherWallet, the developers subsequently refuted these claims.

As of the time of printing, the source of the OKEX problem remains unknown.

Crypto-exchange "contacted the teams representing the affected tokens to investigate and take the necessary measures to prevent the attack." OKEX adds that the operations already performed by the clients will be restored after the normalization of the situation.

Tom Lee: "I will prefer bitcoin altoquin"

Co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors Tom Li told the media that he preferred the purchase of Bitcoin (BTC) alternative - Bitcoin Cash (BCH), as markets strengthen the second week of profit.


Speaking to CNBC, Lee, who is well known for his bullish position towards bitcoin, said that although he would not mind "accepting the side," he would prefer to invest "new money" in bitcoin rather than in altcoyins.

Li explained:

I think that both options have their merits. But if I were investing money today, I would be much more interested in buying a lagging currency that could attract an inflow of funds, and not what is potentially overbought.
Lee's statement appeared against the backdrop of a continuing verbal skirmish between bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash supporters.

When asked why BCH managed to achieve significant successes in the previous days, Lee said he believes that the Bitcoin Cash's hard-core network is part of the cash flow motivation. CNBC host Brian Kelly, who recently spoke about investing in Bitcoin Cash, also added that it "is somehow connected with improving sentiment in the market."

Nevertheless, Lee continues to defend his position vis-à-vis a brighter future for bitcoin. He referred in an interview to the fact that a poll conducted this week by various financial companies showed that more than 80% believe that the decline in prices in the I quarter of 2018 ended.

Thomas Lee writes:

CRYPTO: We took a small group of institutional investors in 4/23, among which were crypto and traditional macro [companies] interested in shopping. The results are below. Key institutions believe that # BTC pushed off from the bottom. We see this as a leading indicator of the influx of big money in Crypto.

According to the data provided by Lee, by the end of the year, most respondents believe that BTC / USD will be at the end of 2018 between $ 10,000 and $ 20,000.

The law on the regulation of the crypto currency in Russia will come into force on July 1, 2018

To date, the regulation of the crypto currency in Russia and all the related discussions on this topic have come to the fore. In social networks and the media, discussions are constantly taking place on the account of the blocking by Roscomnadzor of the Telegram messengers, which resulted in a significant number of other services being damaged.

Earlier, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin for the implementation of the program "Digital Economy of the Russian Federation" approved some recommendations for the Government and the Central Bank. Before July 1, 2018, all necessary amendments to the legislation of the Russian Federation should be introduced, which provides for the introduction of such concepts as "digital mortgage", "crypto-currency", "token", "smart contract" and so on.


However, it is worth noting that the national currency, the Russian ruble will retain the status of the only legal tender in Russia. In addition, it is necessary to revise the requirements for organizations and companies whose activities are related to crypto-currencies, in particular, registration of their activities and the procedure for paying taxes.

Another important issue that remains open until July 1 is the creation of regulatory rules for ICO projects.

Activities of illegal exchange points of crypto currency in Russia
Social networks and news media now and then report on the activities of illegal crypto-currency enterprises in the country. Some sources reported that near the central station in the city of Kursk, the exchange service "Sberkoin" was opened. He allowed anyone who wanted to buy or sell a crypto currency.

It is worth noting that this exchange of crypto currency in Russia has no connection with Sberbank. Residents of the capital appealed to the State Duma deputy Dmitry Ionin with the requirements of checking the activities of the service.

A few days later, Yuri Polupanov, director of the Department of Financial Monitoring and Currency Control of the Bank of Russia, said that several trading crypto-currency services are operating in Moscow, which have no license.

Specifically, there were indicated such retail outlets as TC "Moscow", TC "Sadovod" and "FoodCity." There are exchange points on their territory, the activities of which do not comply with the current legislation of the country. Earlier it was reported that Chinese traders from these outlets moved most of their income to crypto-currencies.

"Their revenue in the crypto currency is nowhere taken into account. Most of the proceeds are instantly transferred to the home of the owners and converted into local currency, "the Bank of Russia said.

However, information on the three trading markets related to crypto-currency transactions was just the tip of the iceberg. To see the real picture helped the application Bitmap. According to his data, in Russia there are about 70 exchange points of the crypto-currency, some of which are located in Moscow. The capital has 16 points, including bokoyn-ATM and cash desks.

Many users believe that crypto-currencies are comparable to financial pyramids, however, there are those who see in them an excellent opportunity to get rid of sanctions from the West. For example, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea Georgy Muradov suggested reducing the dependence of the peninsula's economy on EU sanctions, by legalizing the crypto currency.

He explains that the creation of a specialized investment fund in the Crimea will allow accumulating crypto-currency resources. They can be translated into Fiat and sent to the creation of new projects.

MarketWatch began tracking the prices of Ethereum, Litecoin and six other crypto-currencies

MarketWatch, the publishing department of the Dow Jones Media Group, announced on Wednesday, April 25 that it is beginning to track the market movements of eight more crypto-currencies, CoinDesk writes.


The MarketWatch website tracks the bitcoin price from 2014, but from now on, users will also be offered data on Ether, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, Monero, Dash and Zcash.

The new service will publish real-time quotations of these altcoys against the US dollar and the euro, as well as historical trends in the price movement, using the data from the Kraken crypto exchange.

"There is no doubt that our readers, as the world's most sophisticated investors, are following digital currencies, and we are happy with Kraken to extend real-time tracking to nine crypto-currencies," said MarketWatch general manager Dan Shar.

Recall last week, the financial news agency Dow Jones Media Group announced a partnership with the startup Brave. Within its framework, DJMG will test the possibilities of a blockbuster-developed platform for online advertising developed by a start-up, and will provide access to premium content of Barron's MarketWatch publications to about 2 million users of the Brave browser.

Binance Labs invested $ 30 million in MobileCoin

MobileCoin, a new confidentiality-oriented crypto currency, announced that Binance Labs invested $ 30 million in the fundraising round.


The MobileCoin blog says that the incubator of blocking technology, connected with one of the largest crypto-birch Binance, tops the investment round of $ 30 million, expressed in bitcoins (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). According to TechCrunch, the new crypto currency can "enjoy priority consideration, and include it in the list of currencies traded on Binance."

In addition to working with Binance Labs, the MobileCoin team includes Moxi Marlinpike, the founder of the Signal messaging application. Shane Glynn, who has worked as a product consultant with Google since 2010, works as a project legal adviser, ensuring that MobileCoin complies with regulatory rules.

In the MobileCoin Whitepeper project published in December 2017, the project developers described their intention to develop a "fast, closed and easy-to-use crypto currency that can be deployed in environments with limited resources for users who can not reliably keep secret keys for an extended period of time ".

It is reported that MobileCoin will use the Stellar network consensus protocol to synchronize with the network and provide scalability and speed, while the end product will be integrated into applications for mobile messaging:

MobileCoin is designed so that the mobile messaging application, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Signal, can integrate with the MobileCoin purse.
Binance Labs commented on its participation in the financing:

MobileCoin is the first user-friendly crypto currency that plays an important role in making decisions on the implementation of crypto-currency systems. The MobileCoin team and Binance Labs share a common vision, and we are proud to support what they are doing.
Recently, Binance collaborated with Ugandan Blockchain Crypto Savannah. Cooperation intends to support the economic development of Uganda, East Africa, by creating jobs and attracting investment in the country.

Analyst of Saxo Bank forecasts growth of Crypto-currency

The influential investment bank Saxo released a 35-page outlook for the second quarter of 2018. In it, cryptanalyst Jacob Pouncey (Jacob Pouncey) noted the risks faced by companies in the first quarter of this year with respect to digital assets. Taking into account several factors, he believes that the next three months can become breakthrough for digital assets capable of provoking a "bullish" market.

In his forecast, Poncey notes that "the crypto-currencies returned to the ground in the first months of this year, after a sharp increase in late 2017. The situation remains unstable, given the prospects for strengthening regulation and bans on advertising in social networks. Nevertheless, we can not rule out the possibility of their return. "

Ponsi also notes that "in the market there have been several major acquisitions of crypto-instruments by financial companies such as Goldman Sachs, who is an investor in Circle, which bought the Poloniex exchange, and Monex Group, which bought Coincheck and Yahoo Japan." In addition, crypto-exchanges, such as Coinbase, were able to hire talented professionals from Silicon Valley, and they are in key management positions.

Ponsi concludes: "Several events can serve as springboards for the crypto-currency" bull market "in the second quarter through fundamental drivers [...]. In my opinion, in the end, we will see the end of the fall of the Crypto-currency. "

Many finance gurus expect that a light credit market will run out in the coming months as part of a hedge against inflation. This may mean that traditional shares will become less attractive, and the search for "uncorrelated assets" will begin.

These are "assets that lie beyond the reach of the traditional financial system, in which crypto-currencies are a potential alternative," insists Ponce. "Historically, many prestigious crypto currencies have grown in the face of global uncertainty and [...] the inflow of institutional capital into the crypto-currency market due to increased regulation and protection of investors could lead to a positive dynamics in the second quarter of this year."

Last December, Saxo Bank made an awesome forecast for bitcoin for 2019. Then analysts of the bank predicted that in 2018, the cost of bitcoin is expected to rise to $ 60,000, after which it will collapse to the fundamental "manufacturing cost" of the $ 1,000 coin in 2019.

Wikileaks calls for a boycott of Coinbase

Wikileaks announced on Friday that Coinbase had unblocked the official Wikileaksshop store, which sells various souvenirs: clothes, accessories, phone cases, stickers, posters, books and cryptocotics. In response, Wikileaks offered to declare a global boycott to the crypto exchange and to the operator for receiving payments "as a worthless member of the crypto community".

The organization also published part of the letter that was sent to them from Coinbase. In it, the operator for receiving payments refers to a warning from the US Financial Crimes Network (FinCEN). The letter says that "Coinbase is a cash services company, whose work is regulated by FinCEN, which obliges the company to implement compliance mechanisms." The letter also says:

"After careful analysis, we came to the conclusion that your account is involved in prohibited activities, which contradicts our terms of service, and we regret to inform you that we can no longer provide you access to our service."

Further, the letter contains instructions for Wikileaks on the derivation of the remaining balance. "We ask you to follow the on-screen instructions provided to enter your Coinbase account to move the remaining balance to an external address." In response to the action of Coinbase Wikileaks stated:

"Wikileaks is calling for a global boycott of Coinbase from next week, as the company is a worthless member of the crypto community. Coinbase, a large California operator for receiving crypto-currency payments, reacting to hidden influence, blocked the completely secure @Wikileaksshop by a decision approved by its management. "

Andreas Antonopoulos commented on the recording on Twitter of Wikileaks, noting:

"We passed a full circle. The interest of many people towards bitcoin emerged when Wikileaks came under the ban of Visa, Mc, Paypal and banks. Now Coinbase followed suit. Unfortunately".

He further clarified: "This is a purely symbolic ban, unlike the first embargo. Now they have many options. But this symbolism is a rather sharp reminder of what centralization and banking regulation means. "

Antonopoulos refers to the global boycott of payments for Wikileaks 2010, which forced the information resource to turn to receiving payments in Bitcoin. Six days before Satoki Nakamoto mysteriously left the community, a discussion took place at the Bitcointalk forum between Nakamoto and those who want Wikileaks to take bitcoin. It is believed that this event was one of the reasons why the creator Bitcoin left the project.

Recently, the Coinbase crypto currency platform announced the imminent opening of the coin fork coin output, as well as the addition of support for ERC20 tokens.

MyEtherWallet's online purse is hacked

April 24 MyEtherWallet, one of the most popular online purses of the Etherium, was attacked. Hacked DNS servers redirected users to a phishing site. At the time of this writing (21-30 Moscow time), one case is known of theft: 215 ETH (about $ 150,000) have been stolen. Users who visited myetherwallet.com via Google DNS (8.8.8.8./8.8.4.4) were redirected to an intruder server with an invalid certificate that could steal their private keys.

Apparently, Google resolved the problem at 20-30 MSK: the SSL connection indicator on the site shows that everything is in order (the name of the company is green and the lock symbol in the upper left corner of the address bar of the browser). However, there has been no official statement so far, so it can not be said with complete certainty that the problem has been eliminated.

A former employee of MyEtherWallet, and now a developer of the competing project MyCrypto in a post on Reddit gives users the following tips:

What to do in a similar situation
If you visited MEW within the last four hours, entered a private key or opened an account using a key file, or a sit-phrase - check the balance on etherscan.io to make sure that you did not become a victim.

Transfer funds to a new wallet, even if nothing has happened yet, but without going to the site. Create a MEW transaction offline, according to the instructions.

If you visited MEW within the last four hours via Metamask, Ledger Nano S or Trezor, your money is safe, because keys, key files and passwords were not sent to the network even when sending the transaction.

In any case, do not go to the MEW website until there is confirmation that the problem has been resolved.

As a result of the February conflict between the co-founders of MyEtherWallet, most of the team (according to some sources, 19 out of 20 people) moved to the MyCrypto project. It is possible that the hacking was a consequence of the fact that MEW has almost no developers left, although nothing can be said so far. So far only the unknown intruder can say what really happened.

Attacking DNS is not a new phenomenon. In the same way, the decentralized Exchange EtherDelta was hacked in December. It is interesting that even then, a DNS hacking with redirecting to a phishing site occurred against the background of a dark and still incomprehensible story with the sale of EtherDelta to unknown persons.

MIT found three ways to destroy Bitcoin

The MIT Technology Review at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published an article titled "Let's Destroy Bitcoin," which describes three ways to eliminate the most popular crypto currency.
State crypto-currencies
The first is to create the so-called fedcoin (Fedcoin, federal coin): the national digital currency on the basis of the Federal Reserve System (FRS).

"It's like paying taxes without filling in declarations - a special algorithm writes off the necessary amount from your electronic wallet in fedkoins," the authors of the article say.

In the Fedcine blockade, authorized nodes will be certified, trusted financial institutions, which will replace the model of P2P networks.

This concept was presented by the FRS researcher in St. Louis David Andolfatto and supplemented by Bachelor of Yale University Sahil Gupta. In the opinion of the Yale graduate, the digital currency of the central bank will allow the payment network based on the block account to be much more efficient and faster, and also to save considerably. The article also notes that the Bank of Canada built an imitation of such a system on the basis of the Etherium in 2016.

Crypto currency of popular social networks
The second way suggests issuing your own crypto currency or creating a bitcoin-purse for every user of the largest social networks in the world - Facebook and Telegram.

"If they convince most of the users of bitcoin and miners to use their blockrooms, they will be able to establish rules that will turn bitcoin into a corporate version of fedcoin," the article says.

Niche Crypto-Currency
The third way to make bitcoin irrelevant is to create a lot of new crypto currency for each product or service.

"You are at the grocery store. In the digital purse of your phone you will find not only Fedcoin and Facebook Coin, but also AppleCash, ToyotaCash and coins, which this particular store uses. There will be a coin, which you can pay for certain types of services, for example, the metro ", - the researchers write.

According to MIT Technology Review, this option is already being implemented, as companies create their own coins or tokens that will be used only for their services, for example ICO Kodak, which issued its own token-share for the licensing of photographs.

In this case, the obvious advantage of bitcoin will be the anonymity and impossibility of censorship, although, according to Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency (ANB) has long been monitoring the users of bitcoin.

The authors of the article insist that if in the future the crypto currency is used universally, it is the masses, and not the pioneers of bitcoin, that will determine the viability of the first crypto currency and modify the idea of ​​Satoshi Nakamoto.

Taiwan plans to introduce the regulation of the Crypto-currency until November 2018

In the framework of preventing money laundering through crypto-currencies, Taiwan's Minister of Justice Qiu Taisan called for the regulation rules of the crypto-currency to enter into force until November of this year.

A number of country departments have participated in the development of regulatory rules: the Financial Control Commission, the Central Bank, the Ministry of the Interior, the Bureau of Investigation, and other agencies.

In April of this year, the Ministry of Justice appealed to two internal crypto-exchange exchanges, which will advise the department on the operation of mechanisms for controlling operations of crypto-currencies. In November, a mission of the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering arrives in Taiwan, and by this time it is necessary to prepare complete information on the processes taking place on the crypto-exchange markets.

The situation was also commented on by the Chairman of the Financial Control Commission, Gu Lixiong. He said that the control of the regulator over crypto-currencies will focus mainly on preventing money laundering. In addition, the commission asked banks to transfer the accounts of crypto-exchange exchanges to the category of "high-risk accounts" in order to prevent the use of crypto-currency in doubtful financial transactions.

In addition, last month, Taiwan once again stressed that the FSC is guided by the experience of Singapore, and not China or South Korea, which went along the path of limiting trade in crypto-currencies.

Crypto-exchange Bithumb will release its own tokens

Bithumb, the largest crypto-exchange in South Korea, recently unveiled plans for the production of Bithumb Coin tokens, and ICO.


According to the report, the sale of Bithumb tokens will be conducted in Singapore, since ICO is banned in South Korea. It is reported that Bithumb focuses on large, and not on individual investors. Bithumb has not yet officially confirmed when the sale of tokens and the amount of the amount collected will be launched.

Bithumb is not the first crypto-exchange, which has its own token. In January, the Chinese crypto-exchange Huobi announced its plans to launch Token Huobi (HT), with a limit of 500 million tokens. Representatives of Huobi noted that they will not conduct ICO, arguing that only active users of the trading platform will be able to buy HT tokens.

South Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC) announced the banning of the ICO in late September 2017, citing increased risks of financial fraud. In March, it was reported that the South Korean government had disclosed plans to local financial authorities to legalize the ICO. While the FSC is skeptical of the ICO, local financial authorities are trying to resolve them, with restrictions in the form of compliance with the rules of "Know Your Customer" (KYC) and AML (Anti Money Laundering).

Some South Korean crypto-exchanges are already trying to open branches abroad. Earlier this week, Coinone, the third-largest trading platform for crypto-exchange in South Korea, announced plans to expand Indonesia to Indonesia in June.

The government of Crimea will create a crypto fund?

The government of Crimea is considering the possibility of creating a crypto-currency fund for foreign investors in order to avoid sanctions.


Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea Georgy Muradov told reporters on Wednesday:

We are discussing ways to avoid sanctions. One of these methods is the creation of an investment fund in the Crimea, where we will accumulate resources, exchange them for normal money, and then use them to implement any investment projects in the Crimean land.
Muradov said that this issue will be raised at the Yalta International Economic Forum and that foreign investment in the economy of the Crimea will be one of the key points for discussion. Muradov added that throughout the conference they hope to secure ten investment agreements between various foreign and Crimean companies.

The Fourth Yalta International Economic Forum "The Future of Peace. The future of Russia "is held from 19 to 21 April. The organizers say that 3,000 people from 60 countries take part.

Earlier this week, the Russian government blocked the Telegram application. To ensure compliance with the ban, the Roskomnadzor Communications Authority has blocked almost 20 million IP-addresses. Despite all the government's efforts to disable the application in Russia, most users report that it operates without the use of additional means to circumvent the blocking, for example, proxy servers or VPN services.

Meanwhile, dozens of other websites do not work as a result of blocking the IP network of Roskomnadzor. Xbox Live, Microsoft updates, and even for the Roskomnadzor site itself, there is no access periodically.