Banks Won't Bite

Craig Wright's claims debunked, Ghosn's cryptic extradition and more

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July 24, 2020 By Daniel Kuhn If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.  TOP SHELF Cryptographers call out Craig Wright’s latest claims, blockchain business deposits are growing at Signature and Carlos Ghosn’s smugglers were paid in crypto. Here's the story: Cryptic Payments The son of former Renault and Nissan head and fugitive Carlos Ghosn used Coinbase to pay two men $500,000 in bitcoin to get his father out of Japan last December. U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday that Anthony Ghosn sent 63 bitcoin to Michael and Peter Taylor, a father and son team who smuggled Carlos Ghosn out. Coinbase gave evidence to Japanese investigators this week, showing a series of transactions between January and May 2020 from Ghosn's Coinbase account to one belonging to Peter Taylor. Wednesday's filing shows a bank account managed by Peter Taylor also received two wire transfers, totaling over $870,000, from Carlos Ghosn's account in October 2019. Work to Do The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said banks can provide custody services for cryptocurrencies. The move is widely praised as a step towards mainstreaming crypto. However, it’s unclear whether banks will immediately act on the regulatory clarification. Congressman Darren Soto (D-Fla.), said the letter was “an important step” to better integrate cryptocurrencies into the U.S. financial system, but cautioned “the federal government is still behind in incorporating” cryptocurrency. “I don’t expect you will see much change in the next three to four months, but then we might see some acceleration thereafter,” Trustology CEO Alex Batlin said. “This will come up as banks will be holding investment committees for funding approvals for the next year.” Assessment of the Facts  Four experts agree that Craig S. Wright’s latest claims about Bitcoin message-signing are wrong on the facts. Wright, who claims he’s Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, is embroiled in a legal battle that hinges on his purported ownership of a number of the earliest Bitcoin addresses. Recently, an anonymous user signed a public message using 145 of those keys, calling him a “liar and a fraud,” an accusation Wright countered by saying, “You cannot have a digital signature that is anonymous, by definition.” Four cryptography experts now dispute these claims, with Johns Hopkins associate professor Matthew Green saying, it “makes zero sense to me as a cryptographer… If Craig Wright is saying something meaningful here then he needs to slow down and explain it more clearly. Because the words he’s using sound like nonsense to me.” Red Wall Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB, supervises all industries related to cryptography and may be holding back the local blockchain sector. The FSB’s rigid certification process for crypto companies could cost more than $100,000 and take at least a year, according to experts on the Russian enterprise blockchain market. Further, this borderless technology is sometimes stonewalled by the watchdog, which is distrustful of foreign-developed blockchains. It works in reverse too. Russian-made systems might end up isolated from the global market due to distrust of Russian government cryptography standards. Future of the Internet A debate hosted Wednesday night featuring Protocol Lab’s Juan Benet, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan detailed competing visions for the future of the internet. While all parties agreed the world needs to move towards decentralized models – especially in social media – there were differing opinions about how and when data should be verified in distributed systems. “My impression is we are headed to a much better future where the data structures are going to be decoupled from the [user interfaces],” Benet said. “There will be many different systems built atop the same information graph.”   QUICK BITES Arca’s flagship crypto hedge fund is up 77% in 2020 Crypto bank hopeful Bitcoin Suisse raised a $48 million Series A Central bank board member says CBDCs raise more questions than answers – calling it “helicopter money” Opera’s built-in crypto wallets have 170,000 monthly active users SEC registered broker-dealer is launching a security token platform called Gladius   THE BIG IDEA Signature Bank saw $1 billion in deposit growth in the second quarter of 2020 from the firm’s digital assets team, according to its latest filing.  The New York-based bank is one of a handful – including Silvergate Bank and Metropolitan Commercial Bank – willing to take deposits from blockchain firms. And it’s a risk that seems to be paying off.   Signature’s blockchain-related business lines represented one-eighth of the firm’s total $8 billion deposit growth this quarter.  “The crypto industry is often a rich source of low-cost, non-interest bearing deposits for crypto-friendly banks like Signature,” CoinDesk’s Nathan DiCamillo reports. According to Signature CEO Joseph DePaolo on the firm’s earnings call, the cost of those deposits decreased to 56 basis points from 98 basis points because of the low interest rate environment. “This is now the fourth consecutive quarter exceeding $1 billion in both total and average deposit growth, non-interest bearing deposits of $16.1 billion still represent a high 32% of total deposits since the second quarter of last year,” DePaolo said.  For years, crypto and banking was like oil and water. Most of the Wall Street banking powerhouses – like Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo – were reluctant to enter into this poorly understood and underregulated market.  In 2017, for instance, J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a fraud. It now looks like he’s singing a different tune – with his bank taking on Coinbase as a client last May. Brian Brooks, Coinbase’s former chief legal officer and now senior deputy at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which recently issued a letter allowing crypto custody among chartered banks, said at the time the trend will likely continue.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the original lot of crypto-friendly banks will be pushed out of the market. Silvergate, which once banked Coinbase, has plans to continue expanding its crypto services.  In an industry of constant evolution, there will always be new paths to profits.    MARKET INTEL Flatlining Interest Volume and open interest on Bakkt has flatlined at $0 since June 15, according to Skew. The Intercontinental Exchange's subsidiary launched its bitcoin options market in December 2019. Open interest for the exchange’s options market has suffered complete inactivity before, but the current 38-day streak dwarfs other periods. Bakkt's options volume has also dropped to $0 since April 23, Skew said. Going Public? Digital-asset industry insiders say a move toward more public ownership of crypto firms could accelerate mainstream adoption. “By becoming publicly traded, cryptocurrency-focused companies could appeal to investors in the $35 trillion U.S. stock market. Back-of-the-envelope math shows that just a 1% allocation into crypto stocks could mean $350 billion of new investments for companies in the space,” CoinDesk’s First Mover reports. The total market value of all digital asset markets currently sits at $287 billion. According to CoinDesk Research, there’s more than two dozen publicly-traded firms, with many more like Coinbase and Ant Group rumored to be in the process of listing.   ETHEREUM AT FIVE Eth at Five Five years ago, an unlikely project went live. It called itself “the world computer” and it promised to transform not just cryptocurrencies as we knew it, but the very idea of what could be done with cryptography and consensus. Ethereum had arrived. From its technical aspirations to unicorns and memes, Ethereum is a culture on its own. It has spawned blockchain uses — from digital cats to yield farming — previously unimagined.  Ethereum is at a crossroads. But it must complete an ambitious and fraught retooling of its foundations — the long awaited move to Ethereum 2.0 — to keep up with the market’s demands. CoinDesk is marking the milestone with Ethereum at Five: a cross-platform series comprising a series of special coverage, a pop-up newsletter and live-streamed discussions. New issues and sessions launch daily from July 27-31. Register for CoinDesk Live and our pop-up newsletter. OPINION Banks Won't Bite Alex Mascioli, head of institutional services for Bequant, thinks banks aren’t likely to jump at the opportunity to custody crypto assets. Last Wednesday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced banks can offer crypto and digital asset custody to their clients, which could be a profitable new business line. However, there’s inertia standing in the way. “The bulk of banks and other sophisticated players in the old school markets don’t know much about our industry. Most of them don’t appear to have even done anything as basic as buying a fractional Bitcoin on Robinhood,” he writes.  PODCAST Big Tech’s Effect on Small Biz Sahil Bloom, an investor with Altamont Capital Partners, joins as a guest on the latest episode of The Breakdown to discuss the recent increase in joblessness claims, remote work and Robinhood traders.  WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Blockchain Bites A newsletter from CoinDesk See previous editions Copyright © 2020 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.  Our mailing address is:  250 Park Avenue South New York, NY, 10003, US  Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences here.

Elastos Bi-Weekly Update – 17 July 2020

elastOS v1.2.3 for Android was released with improved features like: Avatar support, one-click DID publishing, permanent Elastos Carrier addresses...

Elastos Bi-Weekly Update – 17 July 2020 elastOS v1.2.3 for Android was released with improved features like: Avatar support, one-click DID publishing, permanent Elastos Carrier addresses, finalized Password Manager functions, and the implementation of background services, with plans for ETH Sidechain support in wallet and capsules next.  There were lots of updates across the founding teams including Tuum Technologies launching Assist and beginning development on the desktop version of elastOS.  Let's recap.  elastOS for Android Elastos Academy Developer Portal Elastos Developer Portal Cyber Republic Elastos Community   elastOS (Trinity) – Released Android 1.2.1 version – Completed new wallet design – Optimized the logic code of SPV plug-in and Wallet, so as to use the new UI design later – Trinity background service support is implemented on both iOS and Android platforms – Completed Trinity's architecture and technical documents so that new developers can understand and start the desktop version – Discussed Trinity desktop implementation – Wallet uses new background service features to synchronize in the background to optimize user experience – Runtime now supports intent response in JWT format – Added a new API on Runtime to let dApps get started with pending intents – Implemented Trinity's Web3 provider, providing Trinity with ETH sidechain support – Upgraded Carrier plugin to support the generation of specific Carrier node ID with preset secret key – Technical communication related to iOS version application review – Fixed user bugs collected during testing and on the platform DID – Improved Java SDK: Supported local verification of unreleased DID, after DID update operation, actively invalidate the corresponding cache data in local parsing cache, supported to obtain the last modification timestamp of DID documents and credentials in DID Store – Supported setting local metadata for customized documents and credentials in Native SDK and local verification of unpublished DIDs, fixed bugs encountered during use, and optimized memory usage – Removed the dependency on txid on Swift SDK, and synchronized the Java SDK to modify the document and credential meta information to maintain compatibility Hive – Optimized the use of DID authentication and design test cases for verification – Improved the large file upload function of Hive++ service – Added file attribute setting function of Hive++ service – Synchronously adjusted and optimized the front-end Hive SDK Files API according to the back-end Hive++ Files API – Adjusted according to the back-end Hive++ Sign-in process, and updated Hive SDK synchronously using auth callback to sign-in – Added Hive SDK test files for Files and Sign-in verification – Wrote Hive++ product architecture design documents – Based on the POC version, formulate follow-up product development plan Carrier – Released Carrier Native/Android SDK version v5.6.2 – Updated dependent library libsodium to new version 1.0.18 – Created a repository source that depends on the library toxcore and updated it to the new version 0.2.12 – Supported generating carrier node ID based on external input secret_key on Android SDK – Updated log interface on Swift SDK which is publicly available – Optimized internal implementation of Carrier Native SDK – Improved the internal implementation of Carrier Swift SDK to generate Carrier node ID according to external input key – Continued to improve the stability of the Carrier Native SDK automatic test case set operation – Continued to implement and debug the WebRTC iOS SDK based on the Carrier Swift SDK and began to implement end-to-end data communication – The community development team released a new internal weekly test version of Feeds dApp – The community development team improved the log output of the Feeds Service about the RPC Service, which is convenient for runtime debugging – The community development team added support for channel avatar data in Feeds Service – The community development team added a feature to support the creation of Feeds icons for Feeds dApp and store the icon data in the back-end service – The community development team implemented all RPC service calls required by dApp Notification on the Feeds Service side – The community development team added a deep black mode display for Feeds dApp – The community development team completed the Feeds dApp to implement multi-language framework code and supported localization – The community development team fixed interface/feature issues found in Feeds dApp testing Mainchain – Supported obtaining public keys of CR and DPoS according to height via SPV – Completed the function of cross-chain nodes to dynamically sense the current CR through RPC – Tested the CR member and DPoS node state binding module – Completed the development of new types of proposals such as changing the owner of the proposal on the blockchain browser – Fixed bugs that may cause SPV to be out of sync in some cases – Fixed the bug that some transactions of web wallets were "pending" for a long time after node restart – Fixed bugs found in internal testing ETH Side Chain – When the view of the node is different from the other 1/3 nodes, the status will be reset – Modified the voting process of the on-duty arbitrator, the proponent will also send their own vote when sending the proposal – Used sealhash instead of blockhash in the consensus process – Added the logic of whether the block has been confirmed on verifyHeader – Fixed the bug that the direct connection network is abnormally disconnected in some cases Elastos Wallet – Released version v1.4.4 – Optimized Mainnet DID Sidechain synchronization speed – To unify with ETH sidechain, split up chainid into chainid and networkid – Encapsulate ETH sidechain transaction record query interface and event callback interface – Fixed the bug that the check fails and is not stored during synchronization – Fixed the bug that there is no storage in the ETH sidechain due to the failure of the block header verification – Fixed the bug where throwing an exception may cause a deadlock – Finalized design, development, and launched elastos.info – Optimization and design updates following elastos.info release – Discussed pain points of Hyper for elastOS and determined necessary short term user experience updates – Kicked off elastOS desktop development – Coordinated project management tools for elastOS desktop team – Outlined a list of tasks to focus on for elastOS desktop in Q3 – Launched Assist on elastOS – Released a video demo of Assist – Working on final bugs and tasks for Vouch dApp.  elastOS Version 1.2.3 for Android is on Google Play. We've got plenty of new developer features with elastOS Background Services support, and we've added Avatar support for users. Upgrade your App and check out our GitHub Release Note for details: https://github.com/elastos/Elastos.Trinity/wiki/Release-1.2.3 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.elastos.trinity.runtime Copyright © *2020 Elastos Foundation, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.