BitGo's new compliance officer / BlockVest's SEC fine / Finland's liquidation / quantum cryptography

The U.S. Treasury announced that BitGo would pay $93,830 to settle 183 "apparent violations" of sanctions...

Inside.com Part of   Network January 13, 2021

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Bitcoin $34,792 7 day: +0.2% Ethereum $1,075 7 day: -6.3% All crypto $943B 7 day: -1.7% Bitcoin dominance 68.3% 7 day: +0.5% Prices as of 11 a.m. EST

Jeff Horowitz BitGo has a new Chief Compliance Officer. In December, the U.S. Treasury announced that BitGo would pay $93,830 to settle 183 "apparent violations" of sanctions. More: The cryptocurrency custodian has hired Coinbase's former chief compliance officer, Jeff Horowitz. Horowitz left Coinbase in October. Prior to Coinbase, he worked 12 years at a clearinghouse owned by BNY Mellon. One of crypto's oldest companies, Mike Belshe and Ben Davenport co-founded BitGo in 2013 in Silicon Valley. Coindesk

A judge orders Blockvest (BLV) and its founder to pay $700,000 to the SEC for lying to investors during its ICO. California federal judge Gonzalo Curiel ordered Blockvest LLC and its founder Reginald Buddy Ringgold III to pay approximately $700,000 to the SEC, including a civil penalty of $332,370, $332,370 as disgorgement, and prejudgment interest. The SEC charged Blockvest with a fraudulent securities offering and lying to investors about various approvals that it did not possess. On Oct. 3, 2018, the SEC originally accused Blockvest LLC and its founder, "Ringgold" (actual name: Rasool Abdul Rahim El), with falsely claiming that the project was the "first licensed and regulated crypto exchange and index fund." The SEC also noted Blockvest's wild projections, such as its aim to raise $100M. The perpetrators lied about partnering with an auditor, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. Ringgold faked acquiring regulatory approvals from the SEC and a non-existent agency called Blockchain Exchange Commission (BEC), created to give credence to the fraudulent claims. The Blockvest founder fabricated evidence and filed a forged declaration in court, as determined by Judge Curiel in May 2020. The final judgment bans Ringgold from further violations of federal securities laws. Law360

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Finland's custom agency plans to sell more than 1,900 seized bitcoin from drug traffickers in 2016. A local news outlet reported that the Customs Agency of Finland is looking to sell approximately $65M worth of bitcoin which Finnish authorities seized in 2016. The Finnish agency, known as Tulli, has reportedly been concerned that the sale would compromise the agency's reputation. Director Pekka Pylkkänen told the media that the sale could attract the wrong kind of attention.  According to the report dated Jan. 5, Tulli is actively considering the proper method for liquidating the assets. Coindesk

The National Security Agency's (NSA) Cybersecurity Directorate has released its 2020 Year in Review. Among other things, the directorate has been working to reduce ransomware threats to national security systems (NSS) and critical infrastructure. Last year, the NSA directorate worked with other U.S. government agencies and the private sector to identify techniques that would make cryptocurrency ransomware attacks more difficult and less lucrative. More from the report: In October 2020, the directorate launched an initiative to review the cybersecurity challenges of the NSS sector, which is expected to come to fruition in Q1 2021. The NSA also partnered with military agencies to boost the cybersecurity of 12 strategic weapons and space systems. The NSA has begun an effort to modernize the Department of Defense's cryptography so it is resistant to quantum computing exploitation. This story first appeared in Inside Security. Note: Bitcoin's cryptography is vulnerable to quantum computing. NSA

Pew Research Center More than one-third of Americans (36%) regularly get news from Facebook, according to a Pew Research survey. Facebook is the most popular source for news among all social media sites – 23% of those surveyed said they regularly get news from YouTube, and 15% listed Twitter as a source for staying updated on current events. That being said, Twitter came out on top in the proportion of its overall user base who use the platform for news. 59% of Twitter users say they regularly get news from the site, compared to 54% of Facebook users, 42% of Reddit users, and 32% of YouTube users. Despite the popularity of social media platforms for news consumption, a majority of users believe the information found on those sites is "largely inaccurate." Other results from the survey: Facebook and Instagram are more popular news options for women, while men prefer YouTube and Twitter. 92% of Reddit users who say they get news from the aggregation forum are under the age of 49. 50% of those who say they consume news regularly through Facebook are Democrats or lean Democratic. 46% are Republican or lean Republican. A majority of news consumers on every other platform also said they are Democrats or lean Democratic. Writer's note: This story first appeared in Inside Daily Brief, our twice-daily newsletter covering major U.S. headlines. I selected it for inclusion because the cryptocurrency industry relies heavily on social media news. Informal platforms like WeChat, Weibo, Telegram, Twitter, GitHub, Reddit, and Medium are often the primary news sources for many cryptocurrency projects. There are over 8,000 cryptocurrencies. Pew Research Center

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Curated by Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, and bitcoin follower since $1, Aaron Wise. Temporarily listening to news squawk boxes in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. Editor Charlotte Hayes-Clemens is an editor and writer based in Vancouver. She has dabbled in both the fiction and non-fiction world, having worked at HarperCollins Publishers and more recently as a writing coach for new and self-published authors. Proper semi-colon usage is her hill to die on.

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