According to Deutsche Bank, the pandemic has accelerated interest in digital currencies. The financial institution considers that adopting digital currencies is a natural step to follow.

Renowned financial institution Deutsche Bank (DB) considers that a future in which central bank digital currencies (CBDC) replace cash is increasingly closer. The German bank even referred to the move towards digital currencies as “the next era of money”.

The entity says that the context of the pandemic that the world is experiencing, along with the risks of virus transmission through cash, has accelerated “the digital money revolution” worldwide.

“After centuries of cash economics, we are finally ready to move into the next era of money,” says DB. In a recent study, they focus precisely on the steps to take after overcoming the pandemic.

However, the bank believes that the transition is taking a long time, particularly in the most advanced economies. In the opinion of the financial institution, one of the factors that delays the process is the concern about the privacy aspects that the move to centralized digital currencies entails.

Similarly, the institution considers that adapting monetary policies to the digital environment is another detail that lengthens the process to move to the implementation and widespread use of CBDC.

Data from DB indicate that there has been a major stumbling block to advance the widespread implementation of CBDC in certain countries. The study reflects that there is still some preference for cash in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Meanwhile, China is moving faster in its digitization, with most of its citizens already using digital wallets for their everyday purchases.

Race for Digital Currencies and Privacy Concerns

According to DB, there is much less concern about privacy in China than in countries like the United States, Germany, and France. Of a group of respondents, only 10% showed interest in this aspect, thus reflecting the payment preferences mentioned above.

The German bank believes that this difference has allowed China to move faster in terms of implementing its digital yuan. China is the country that is the closest to launching its own CBDC. They have already conducted various tests on its use in shops with real users.

Users have raised concerns not only about privacy but also about the convenience of the digital yuan.

Despite what Deutsche Bank has said, the general position of governments regarding their potential central bank digital currencies is quite clear. With these, they do not seek to respect the privacy of their citizens.

CBDCs appear as the solution to various cash problems and even as the next step in the evolution of money. Some are those who are directly interested in their ability to control people.

That seems to be the case with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Agustín Carstens, general manager of the entity, believes that “a digital currency will allow central banks to have absolute control.”

By Alexander Salazar

The project ensures the safety of cryptocurrency users. One of the objectives of this initiative is to combat tax evasion.

Liliana Schwindt, deputy of the “Frente de Todos” (Front of All) party, recently introduced in the National Congress a bill that seeks to regulate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This occurred after it became public knowledge that the “Juntos por el Cambio” (Together for a Change) party will introduce a bill with similar objectives in the legislative palace.

Like the opposition party’s bill, Schwindt’s initiative seeks to “create a comprehensive regulatory framework applicable to civil and commercial transactions and operations of crypto assets as a means of payment, savings or investment”.

Besides, this new bill refers to the establishment of “provisions for the protection, surveillance, inspection, and control of said operations.”

If the law receives approval, as one of its articles establishes, the National Securities Commission (CNV) will prepare and maintain a national register of cryptocurrency operations. The Financial Information Unit (UIF) must receive information from exchanges about the operations that users conduct on them.

Platform operators that provide services with crypto assets must register with the “application authority”. Companies already registered cannot conduct any transaction that violates the requirements of the law. If they do, they will receive a sanction consisting of “the cancellation of the commercial registration, the suspension or revocation of the corresponding authorization to act, or penalties of fines.”

Two articles of the bill referring to the tokenization of goods seek to establish the possibility of executing collective financing contracts. Also, they clarify that the tokens can grant their holders rights to participate in the profits that the investment project has. The UIF will analyze the white papers of these tokens and will decide whether or not to approve their launch.

The bill also promotes the creation of a training program for public officials on the treatment of crypto assets. This program, which the CNV runs, will be mandatory for all officials in charge of crypto-related matters.

The Deputy Considers It Necessary to Legislate Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies

Deputy Schwindt alleges that “the current international scene shows a dizzying growth rate of crypto asset markets.” She considers that “the need arises to legislate aspects related to the safety of the actors involved in the processes.”

The also graduate in social work refers to the “supposed anonymity that crypto assets offer” in a natural way. She declares that it is necessary “to be able to determine the origin and destination of the funds with which this global crypto asset market will operate.”

On the other hand, it supports the possibility that there will be cases of tax evasion “when it is impossible to detect the registration of operations.” Also, there could be “tax avoidance if the parties agreed on a ficto value of the transactions.”

There Is No Head or Tail

The CEO at Signatura and former president of the NGO Bitcoin Argentina, Gonzalo Blousson, described the bill as ridiculous and said that there is “no head or tail” to it. He regretted that they had not consulted representatives of the local community, such as attorneys Daniel Rybnik and Ricardo Mihura Estrada. They are specialists in jurisprudence applied to the field of cryptocurrencies.

Schwindt said that she is willing to listen to local ecosystem players and expects them to participate. She said that “it is time to start discussing issues that emerge and expand rapidly and on which there is no legislation.”

By Alexander Salazar

Users will be able to send bitcoins without revealing their computer address or personal data. The function is built into the wallet; customers will only have to activate it to take advantage of it.

Trezor Suite, the new desktop application from wallet firm Trezor, promises its users a greater privacy experience when transferring bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

The company is offering this new privacy feature by adding Tor, one of the best-known private browsing networks on the Internet, to its services. In this way, Trezor users will now be able to carry out any operation with their cryptocurrencies without leaving traces of their IP addresses or personal data on the Web.

Tor services are available to users by a single click since the network is incorporated into the operation of the wallet itself. In this sense, it is only necessary for the person to activate the Tor button in the upper right part of the application, so that he begins to carry out transactions with greater privacy.

To understand how private Tor can be, one must take into account that it is a network made up of thousands of servers in management by volunteers and not by a centralized service. Likewise, Tor has a protocol capable of encrypting all the data its users share at different levels, so they can send that information without the need for a third party to know the identification number of the computer where said data originated.

After starting the year with one of the largest security controversies in the hardware wallet market, Trezor decided to start getting more and more on the security and privacy of its products. Last October, it announced the launch of its Trezor Suite application which will be in a trial version to the public until 2021, and they assure that it is a safer option to manage funds in crypto assets.

How does Tor work?

Tor prevents third parties from knowing the IP address of a user by distributing operations between different places on the Internet through random routing and message encryption; attackers take advantage of this anonymity to generate spam on the web without any trace. The Foundation says it is challenging to filter “good customers from bad” due to the private nature of the network, which limits the ability of operators to react to these attacks.

Although the service improved its circuit management and protected its host from CPU exhaustion, the problem is still present. Due to this, the organization considers that it is necessary to make “fundamental changes” in the constitution of Tor, highlighting among them the use of anonymous tokens as a reward or the imposition of a Proof of Work consensus algorithm that increases the costs of an attack Denial of Service.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis today announced the launch of a new service to help authorities track, safeguard, and sell cryptocurrencies associated with a crime after completing the legal process known as the Asset Realization Program.

“Chainalysis created an end-to-end solution for tracking and tracing, pre-seizure planning, handling, storage, completion and monitoring of assets seized by law enforcement,” said the general manager of Chainalysis EMEA, Duncan Hoffman

With its new program, Chainalysis aims to help clients in several ways, including filing and selling confiscated digital funds, shutting down assets that were once used illegally, and making them flow legally back into the ecosystem, according to Hoffman’s comments.

Agencies of the Department of Justice (DOJ) return their cryptocurrencies to the public through semi-regular forfeiture auctions. These sales can raise tens of millions of dollars for the government.

Help for the government

But the US Marshals Service, which runs those auctions, has been soliciting a private-sector partner since April to help manage and dispose of the confiscated cryptocurrencies to improve the auction process. Recently, they were able to link and seize more than $ 1 billion from the now-defunct drug market of the deep web Silk Road thanks to someone moving them.

The United States Department of Justice, DoJ, subsequently filed a request to seize control of the funds from the person who moved them and thus be able to seize the money. The Chainalysis Asset Realization Program is specifically targeted at government agencies, as well as insolvency practitioners or players representing insolvent entities, although the program is also open to other interested individuals.

The global standard in blockchain analysis

Chainalysis is the global standard for cryptocurrency-related intelligence. Its products and expertise open doors to governments all around the globe to build sanctions, fight terrorism, and prevent money laundering.

By combining the expertise in Chainalysis software, open-source data analysis, and the latest investigative techniques, Chainalysis  work as a team that makes the cryptocurrency space way safer by tackling the most challenging and difficult cases.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The software sends Apple a report of the activity of the equipment, said Jeffrey Paul. The data would not be encrypted, so Internet providers would be able to see them.

Apple’s new operating system, macOS 11 Big Sur, might be compromising the privacy of users. It records and transmits anything they run on the computers where they install it, according to computer security researcher and hacker Jeffrey Paul.

In recent days, the analyst said in an article entitled “Your computer is not yours” that the software sends Apple a unique hash in which they review all the programs that users have run. Paul stressed that users would not be able to use a text editor or e-book reader without the company receiving that piece of information.

The software operates as follows: when using the Internet, the server sees the user’s IP address and records all the information. This could include the geographic location of the users and the Internet provider that they use. Next, it would generate an information table with the date, time, and type of computer, Internet provider, city, state, and hash of the application.

Paul remarked that Apple or anyone can calculate these hashes for all kinds of programs in the App Store, the cloud, and the Tor browser, among others. According to the expert, the company would know when users are at home, when they are at work, which applications they open and how often.

Exposure of Privacy to Everyone on the Internet

The analyst sent a message to inadvertent users who do not believe that the situation is risky. He warned them that “it is not just Apple, since they do not keep that information. Those OCSP requests (revocation status of a digital certificate) are transmitted without encryption.”

It is possible to deduce that those people with an Internet connection would have access to these data. Besides, the information would pass through a CDN (content distribution network) controlled by third parties.

The analyst claimed that Apple had been a partner in the clandestine PRISM spy program of the US military intelligence community since October 2012. The California-based multinational has rejected the above claim in the past.

“Your computer now serves a remote master who has decided that he has the right to spy on you. If you have the most efficient laptop in the world, you cannot turn this off,” the analyst emphasized.

User Reactions on macOS

It was not necessary to wait for users to express their opinions on the operating system. There were views on two fronts: the first, on Paul’s report and privacy, and the second, on the delays in downloading and updating its systems.

On his Twitter account, user @M1K33EE questioned what Apple would be running. He wrote that users might want to “think twice before buying that new shiny Apple Silicon Mac with macOS Big Sur, especially if they value their privacy.” He added that “Apple watches and records every application that they open with a new operating system.”

Another Twitter user, @JuarezVega22, criticized the slowness to upgrade to the new operating system and the errors that trying to install them have generated. He said that he believed that he was the only one who had been waiting for the update since September, to then come across this situation. He commented that “most Apple’s services are down.” Also, he stressed that “those who are not slow must have gone through something very ugly.”

By Alexander Salazar

In a new report, Deutsche Bank called on Europe to accelerate the development of central bank digital currencies.

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest banking institution, is confident that the central bank’s digital currencies, CBDC, will replace cash in the future.

The bank’s research arm, Deutsche Bank Research, published a new report of economic estimates and proposals to help global economies affected by the coronavirus pandemic titled “What We Must Do to Rebuild,” on November 10.

In the report, Deutsche Bank claims that the current COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the “digital cash revolution”. According to the bank, this revolution will eventually allow CBDCs like China’s digital yuan or Sweden’s e-krona to replace cash in the long run.

 Deutsche Bank called on national governments and private companies to work on alternatives to credit cards, stating:

“Global lockdowns and social distancing measures have only increased the use of cards rather than cash. To respond, businesses and legislators must design alternatives to credit cards and eliminate middleman fees. […] For now, the priority should be on regional digital payment systems. In the long term, central bank digital currencies will replace cash”.

Indicate payment platforms such as Swish, Alipay, and WeChat Pay as good role models

In the report, Deutsche Bank Research also said that many countries, such as the United States and European countries, lag behind CBDCs. He added that both Europe and the US remain much tied to cash:

“According to our survey, a third of Americans and Europeans ranked cash as their preferred payment method, and more than half of the people in developed countries believe that cash should always be close”.

He warned European and American policymakers about the risks of not developing their digital currency project in response to active progress by China and Sweden in the field. The bank argued that lagging behind other jurisdictions could force policy adoption by pioneers:

“If other countries do not catch up, they may find that their companies are forced to adopt the digital currencies and policies of other countries as means of payment.”

The bank asked Europe to develop a digital currency solution to strengthen the euro and in the existing geopolitical situation. “To do this, we must have a separate European payment solution,” wrote Deutsche Bank Research.

He compared the processes of Sweden and China, as first in the CBDC career. He says they have these factors in common:

• Both countries have adopted digital payment technology for many years;
• Cash payments in both nations were declining long before Covid-19;
• Their governments play a critical role in promoting and supporting a digital payments infrastructure.

It highlights that although both countries share these factors, each motivation is different when it comes to developing a CBDC: China explicitly established its digital currency to improve financial inclusion; while Sweden, which has a very high financial inclusion rate, pursues its CBDC directly as a next step; After all, Sweden already has one of the lowest cash payment rates in the world, about 1 percent of GDP.

By: Jenson Nuñez.