The Libra Association, the non-profit organization overseeing Libra, has established a five-member Technical Steering Committee (TSC) to oversee and coordinate the technical design and development of the Libra network. The responsibilities of the TSC are to direct the technical roadmap of the Libra network, form working groups to fast track research into specific issues, guide codebase development, and build a healthy and engaged community of developers. The association has said that the establishment of the oversight committee is an important step forward in realizing its vision of a self-governing and…
Day: January 17, 2020
Tether Claims to Be Okay With Merger of Class-Action Lawsuits Against It
Currently facing multiple lawsuits, cryptocurrency stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT) received a request from prosecutors asking for consolidation, combining three lawsuits into one, which Tether has not denied. “We did not oppose the plaintiffs’ requests to combine these frivolous claims, originally filed, respectively, in October in New York, in November in Washington and in January in New York,” reads a Tether statement shared with Cointelegraph via email on Jan. 17, 2020. Multiple lawsuits Various parties have suspected Tether, alongside related exchange Bitfinex, of foul play numerous times over their years in…
Plaintiffs Move to Combine Their Market-Manipulation Lawsuits Against Bitfinex and Tether
Plaintiffs in three separate putative class action lawsuits against Bitfinex and Tether have moved to consolidate their cases, according to a Thursday court filing. Court filings by David Leibowitz et al, Eric Young et al, and Bryan Faubus et al, accuse the sister companies of manipulating the crypto markets. Their cases share common threads, filings show, including allegations that Bitfinex and Tether manipulated the price of bitcoin and bitcoin futures in violation of federal law. All three cases were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of…
Plaintiffs Combine Their Market-Manipulation Lawsuits Against Bitfinex and Tether
Plaintiffs in three separate putative class action lawsuits against Bitfinex and Tether have moved to consolidate their cases, according to a Thursday court filing. Court filings by David Leibowitz et al, Eric Young et al, and Bryan Faubus et al, accuse the sister companies of manipulating the crypto markets. Their cases share common threads, filings show, including allegations that Bitfinex and Tether manipulated the price of bitcoin and bitcoin futures in violation of federal law. All three cases were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of…
Grasping Lightning: Mapping the Key Players in Bitcoin’s Next Phase
You might have heard of bitcoin’s “lightning network,” but don’t know what’s going on with it right now. Who are the mysterious big players behind this magical technology that allegedly solves all of bitcoin’s problems? Lightning is one of the most promising technologies in the space right now, even drawing in Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Given current technical constraints, blockchains don’t support many users, let alone the world’s population. Lightning could multiply the transactions possible, while making transactions faster (like a millisecond) and cheaper. Nerds have eagerly been…
Uncovering the Motives Behind North Korea’s Crypto Conference
On Jan. 15, the United Nations warned that attending North Korea’s cryptocurrency conference in February will likely constitute a sanctions violation. According to Reuters, this notice was issued in a confidential report that will be submitted to the U.N. Security Council later this month. The warning comes after a series of events sparked suspicion around North Korea’s growing interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency. In August, a panel monitoring the enforcement of U.N. sanctions reported that North Korean agents have generated about $2 billion by stealing money from financial institutions and…
Cointelegraph Partners With Oxygen7 to Raise Funds for Australia Relief Efforts
January 16, 2020 — As a company, Cointelegraph cares about the environment and the world in which we all live. The wildfire crisis in Australia has mobilized us as an organization to take action to help the current recovery efforts down under. Cointelegraph is pleased to announce a partnership with ecological preservation organization Oxygen Seven. We have created a bitcoin donation fund with all money raised going directly to the Australian Wildfire Fund (https://aussieark.org/). Helen Vitalie Lang, Deputy CEO of Cointelegraph: “After seeing the horrific scenes coming out of Australia…
Chainalysis Finds Terrorists Are Refining Crypto Financing Operations
A new study by Chainalysis finds that terrorists are refining their financing operations using cryptocurrencies. Faster and broader funding Earlier today, Jan. 17, the blockchain analysts identified Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (AQB), Hamas’s military arm and noted terrorist organization, as the first confirmed case of terrorists using cryptocurrency to aid their activity. AQB used a website to generate a new Bitcoin address for each donor to deposit funds. It included a how-to video on donating with maximal anonymity. Compared to similar earlier campaigns, AQB raised as much money and garnered…
The Prospect of Building a New International Monetary System Is Getting Real
This is part of a series of op-eds previewing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. CoinDesk will be on the ground in Davos from Jan. 20–24 chronicling all things crypto at the annual gathering of the world’s economic and political elite. Follow along by subscribing to our pop-up newsletter, CoinDesk Confidential: Davos. Jeremy Allaire is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Circle, which, with Coinbase, pioneered the open standards CENTRE Consortium and USD Coin (USDC) – a dollar-backed stablecoin used in millions of financial transactions around the world. He has also been named…
Ugandan Victims of Dunamiscoins Scam Petition Gov’t for Lost Investments
Over 5,000 victims of the alleged cryptocurrency pyramid scheme Dunamiscoins have petitioned the Ugandan Parliament asking to refund money lost in the scam. Arthur Asiimwe, the leader of the petitioning group who presented the request to the Parliament’s speaker Rebecca Kadaga, claims that the government has licensed the alleged scam firm, according to an official announcement by the Parliament of Uganda on Jan. 16. Dunamiscoins victims are not satisfied with investigation results First spotted in early December 2019, Dunamiscoins is allegedly involved in defrauding over 10,000 people, causing them losses…