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The longest shutdown in history is over Alas no big beautiful wall, but there was a cave

Outside of the White House, the 2020 election is already heating up, Democrats are entering the race as well as some independents So while it might not be possible to buy Starbucks with Bitcoin, it might be possible to use Starbucks to buy the presidency Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, this week flirted with running for POTUS, but might reconsider after this exchange Don’t help elect Trump! You egotistical billionaire a**hole! Go back to getting ratioed on Twitter! A considerably more popular proposition was BitTorrent this week, which sold-out of all of their tokens in under 15 minutes, raising over $7 million Also this week, a $1 billion hack Chainalysis report, Iran avoids sanctions with crypto, Hamas accepts crypto and gold vs Bitcoin

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Molly Jane and this is your weekly Hodler’s Digest, Let’s take a look at the latest market updates Two sophisticated criminal organizations are responsible for stealing over one billion dollars in cryptocurrency hacks, says a report published by crypto analytics firm Chainalysis This amount accounts for the majority of funds stolen in such hacks in the last few years The two groups, dubbed Alpha and Beta, are still active and appear to have very recognizable patterns of behavior The Chainalysis report provides a description of the techniques used by the two groups to hide their tracks, by transferring stolen funds thousands of times before cashing out from multiple exchanges

A method to stop the hackers, the study says, could be through a tighter collaboration among crypto exchanges We talked to Philip Gradwell, chief economist at Chainalysis, to give us more details about the report So we identified these two organizations by looking at the patterns by how they cash the money out once they've committed a hack So we didn't know that there would be only two Instead, we have these investigators who follow the money from the scene of the crime to the point where the hackers change that for fiat or for other cryptocurrencies

And what we did is we then took a systematic approach where we were able to analyze those flows of money over time And when we did that across a number of hacks we saw that there were two very clear patterns which suggest to us that there's two groups behind this And given the scale of the number of hacks that they had done and the complexity by which they moved the money around, it suggests that both of these are large professional organizations When Alpha hacks an exchange they then move that crypto around thousands and thousands of times in a very short period of time and they cash out to lots of different places And that means that they're actually paying quite a lot in fees

They risk losing some of their crypto They might cost them more to try and cash out at least different areas They've kind of got almost higher cost of business through the way that they cash out So they're not as efficient as group Beta, which doesn't move its funds around as much and then cashes out all at once, often through one single exchange It really looks like group Alpha is trying to create confusion

It looks like on purpose they're making this really complex web that's harder to follow through The hackers are always trying to cash out at the place where they can swap their crypto into fiat That's in other exchanges So the cooperation really comes from one exchange saying: “OK, we had a hack Can everyone else be on the lookout for funds that come from us? And if you get those funds deposited at your exchange can you perhaps freeze them?”

So we can investigate, asking questions and hopefully get some of those funds returned Stepping up the challenge for hackers, New York-based crypto exchange Gemini completed a SOC 2 Type 1 examination, giving proof of its high-level security standards Gemini is reportedly the first crypto exchange to receive such certification, released by audit firm Deloitte and designed to meet the trust services requirements of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Such requirements include security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy We talked to Gemini Head of Risk, Yusuf Hussain, and asked him to explain how this represents a significant milestone for the company and for the crypto industry as a whole

Major American investment firm Fidelity will launch its own custody service for digital assets in March, as sources close to the matter told Bloomberg this week The company’s new services will be targeted at institutional investors, such as hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries, but for now they will not be available for retail investors Bitcoin will be the first crypto to be stored by Fidelity, but Ethereum storage is expected to follow soon Fidelity reported in a statement: “We are currently serving a select set of eligible clients as we continue to build our initial solutions Over the next several months, we will thoughtfully engage with and prioritize prospective clients based on needs, jurisdiction and other factors

” Fidelity manages trillions of dollars in client assets and it has been in the business for over 70 years The launch of its crypto custody service responds to an increasing demand for security in the crypto sphere and is likely to attract more and more institutional investors into the space Iran has lifted the nationwide ban on Bitcoin, albeit with some restrictions; Iranians can trade the leading crypto, but are prohibited from having holdings above 10,000 euros or just over $11,000 In addition to this, Iranians are not allowed to accept payments in crypto within Iran Despite the restrictions, the crypto community, which transacts up to $10 million in BTC a day, cautiously welcomed the reversal of the ban

The restrictions are part of draft regulations, so could be subject to change The reversal was announced by the central bank just before the electronic banking and payments systems conference earlier this week The theme of the conference was “blockchain revolution,” likely the only revolution the country will see for some time to come Another announcement that was expected at the conference was the launch date of the state-backed Crypto-Rial, but so far, radio silence from the central bank on that particular topic All of these crypto-related projects both at the state level and amongst ordinary Iranians are ostensibly efforts to circumvent crippling sanctions

The US Treasury has sought to “aggressively pursue Iran and other rogue regimes attempting to exploit digital currencies” However, ordinary Iranians are using crypto to accept foreign payments and conduct business in Bitcoin to get around restrictions imposed by US

banks Of course, not everything is aboveboard Recently the US Justice Department indicted two Iranian men on charges related to SAMSAM ransomware, which compromised American hospitals and government agencies in Atlanta

On the state level, Iran is reportedly in talks with eight countries including Switzerland, South Africa, France and the United Kingdom to discuss the possibility to conducting financial transactions in crypto At this point, it is unclear whether the negotiations concern crypto in general or are about the Crypto-Rial Iran is not alone in its attempt to circumvent sanctions using a state-backed crypto, Russia is currently engaged in similar efforts, and yet both countries should perhaps use Maduro’s Petro as a cautionary tale, or take Max Keiser’s advice: Text from Tweet: “It’s great states (Iran, Venezuela, China, Russia) are trying state-crypto currencies It’s an important step All theirs will fail and they’ll realize only #Bitcoin gives them what they seek: Escape from $USD

” We spoke to Gevorg Avetikyan, an academic scholar of Iranian studies from the Yerevan State University, currently at the European University in St Petersburg, about how sanctions are affecting Iran On February 11 it will be exactly 40 years that they have done a revolution ever since there have been various kinds of sanctions imposed on Iran I mean the most distraught indeed the most effective was that we now know of that are tied to the nuclear policy in Iran that have started in mid-2000s Nevertheless in November 2018 the sanctions resumed their direction and soon after that Ian Central Bank and most of its banks most of its banking institutions were switched off from the SWIFT network which means that Iran was really left with no real realistic legal option of Internet or some money transactions which means that they cannot pay for the inputs and they cannot also get the money for their exports The price of Rial does not really affect that much the local population

But there's very important things And the first one that comes to my mind is medicine Iran does have its own industry of pharmaceutical etc But they still depend on many medication which is imported to the country and the population at this moment is just unable to pay for it Last year during the new year there were large protests all over the country which started from a spark

Chicken eggs the price of eggs had arisen for several percents And that was the first sparkle to bring some people into the streets to protest against the growing prices etc Hamas is crowdfunding, but due to the fact that, amongst others, the US and the E

U consider them a terrorist organization, they likely fall foul of the Gofundme and Kickstarter terms of service Thus, the de facto ruling party of the Gaza strip has turned to Bitcoin in order to raise funds The request for BTC was sent out on Abu Obeida’s Telegram channel, a spokesman for Hamas The funds would go to their militant faction, which is widely considered a terrorist organization with the exception of Russia, Turkey and China, who do not take this position

The Telegram message reads: “all lovers of the resistance and the supporters of our righteous cause to support the resistance financially using ‘Bitcoin’ currency” The message goes on to accuse the so-called “Zionist enemy,” Israel, of trying to cut all means of financial support The Gaza strip is currently under a land, air and sea blockade imposed by Egypt and Israel; furthermore, Benjamin Netanyahu recently froze several million dollars in Qatari aid, $15 million of which was intended to pay the salaries of Hamas civil servants Spokesman Abu Obeida did not detail how exactly supporters could donate Bitcoin to the militant wing of Hamas, which is telling because actually receiving funds in BTC is most of the battle Last year, U

S Congress concluded that “cash was still king’”when it came to terrorist financing and crypto was a “poor form of money” in this regard They reached this conclusion after studying Al-Qaida’s efforts to raise illicit funds In September of last year, the US

House of Representatives passed the “Financial Technology Protection Act” in order to set up a task force to combat terrorist financing Early in January, Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss confirmed their bullish view on Bitcoin, encouraging hopes that the main cryptocurrency will eventually replace gold as the most trusted store of value “I think investors who have gold in their portfolio of other precious metals are now starting to look at Bitcoin as a better store of value, it has better money characteristics than gold itself, so it is actually better at being gold than gold” “Bitcoin is better at being gold than gold itself,” said Tyler It is clear, however, that we are not there yet After briefly turning to Bitcoin as their preferred store of value during the 2017 bull run, many investors are now returning to gold

At least that’s what Jan Van Eck, CEO of investment management firm Van Eck Associates, pointed out in a recent interview He said: “I do think that Bitcoin pulled a little bit of demand away from gold last year, in 2017 Interestingly, we just polled 4,000 bitcoin investors and their number one investment for 2019 is actually gold So gold lost to bitcoin and now it’s going the other way” Van Eck’s analysis was supported by a recent report by market development organization World Gold Council, which points out that, while Bitcoin has behaved as a risky asset amidst the stock market crisis of 2018, losing much of its value, gold’s price rallied and confirmed itself as the safest store of value in troubled times

According to the same study, Bitcoin’s strong correlation to Nasdaq proved its close relation with technology stocks, thus not suitable for replacing gold as a safe haven However, it doesn’t need to be a throw the baby out with the bathwater situation Several stablecoins backed by the precious metal are already available on the market For instance, the Digix Gold token, launched in September 2018, is based on the Ethereum blockchain and backed by physical gold Shaun Djie, CEO of Digix, said the gold-pegged token is likely to gain popularity in a crypto winter, the end of which is still out of sight

We talked to Shaun Djie, asking him to comment on the advantages of a gold-backed cryptocurrency With Iran circumventing sanctions and Russia de-dollarizing, do think more countries will, in Max Keiser’s words, “escape the USD”? Or does that have as much chance as a 43-7 Rams Super Bowl victory? Let us know in the comments