In July 2020, downloads of the top 10 applications grew by 81% compared to July 2019. Less used applications grew, individually, up to 9,250% in one year.

Regarding the number of downloads, the most used applications related to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for cell phones surpassed their highs in July 2020. Most of those applications are wallets, but there are also exchange platforms.

The company Apptopia describes Coinbase, Blockchain Wallet, Crypto.com, BRD, Trust, Luno, Binance, Bitcoin Wallet, Bitcoin Wallet (from Bitcoin.com) and Coinbase Wallet as “the top ones”. The reason for this is that they have the highest number of active users.

All of them together had 3.5 million downloads in that month. That represents an increase of 81%, compared to the same month of the previous year.

Regarding the number of active users, there was a growth of 110% between January 1^st and August 19^th, 2020. Coinbase and Crypto.com have the highest number of users per day (969,000 and 576,000, respectively).

Madeline Lenahan, Manager of Public Relations and Content at Apptopia, says that, at the beginning of the isolation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in the installation of applications related to cryptocurrencies. They did not think that it would last long but were surprised to see that the trend persisted in the following months.

The change in daily routines seems to have led to more people taking an interest in the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

In addition to the pandemic, Apptopia attributes these figures to the growth of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in emerging markets, particularly in some regions of Africa. One of the most crypto-friendly countries is Nigeria, where Crypto.com, for example, experienced 339% growth in the last 90 days.

Some not-so-popular applications also had explosive growth individually. This is the case of ZenGo (9,250% in a year), Tron Wallet (just over 4,000%), Yellow Card (about 2,200%), and finally, Paxful and Zebpay (close to 1,000% each).

Adem Bilican, who is a mobile app developer, commented on the report. He said that those figures made him feel happy and that “the cell phone is the way forward for blockchain and cryptocurrencies to achieve mass adoption.”

It is striking that, far from the founding ideals of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, many of the applications mentioned for their growth offer, in one way or another, custody services. In other words, they are not wallets that allow the user to have control over their private keys without the need for intermediaries.

Far from being merely a matter of ideals, this represents a fundamental security aspect. For example, a court recently ruled in favor of Coinbase, which refused to give the coins resulting from a fork of BTC to a user who deposited his cryptocurrencies on this platform.

Cell phones have become very versatile tools, allowing users to conduct transactions and keep their cryptocurrencies secure through various applications. The growing interest in cryptocurrencies globally has gone hand in hand with a large number of downloads of those applications.

By Willmen Blanco

The objective of BlockSherlock is to connect different security organizations in Brazil. The website has a User Manual for cryptocurrency analysis portals.

Few law enforcement agencies have received training to understand what is behind cryptocurrency transactions. This prompted Vytas Zumas, a member of the Civil Police of Goiás, in Brazil, to launch BlockSherlock, a platform that compiles tools for the analysis of cryptocurrencies.

Zumas is a professor and contender for the Civil Police and is part of the General Coordination for Combating Organized Crime of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security of Brazil. This coordination is responsible for monitoring cryptocurrency crimes in the South American country.

For this reason, Zumas had a series of tools in the bookmarks of his browser that he used daily for his activities. Realizing about the list that he had created, he thought that it would be practical to organize these tools and make them freely available to the public on a website. That idea led to the launch of the BlockSherlock platform.

Seeing the progress of BlockSherlock, and thinking about the capabilities of other law enforcement agencies, Vytas decided to take a step forward. He contacted Ana Paula Bez Batti, Attorney General for Finance at the Brazilian Public Ministry intending to make BlockSherlock official.

Cryptocurrency Analysis Tool Belt

The launch of the website occurred in August of this year and has several important sections. One section is dedicated to blocking explorers of various cryptocurrencies, another section allows users to visualize the volume of transactions, and one has analysis tools for cryptocurrencies.

The educational nature of the page is prominent. In the “Quick Start Guide,” BlockSherlock explains what each of the analysis tools is for. Additionally, it has a User Manual where it shares the characteristics of each portal in greater detail.

Among the intelligence tools shared on the website, it is possible to find Bitaps, a Bitcoin block explorer, which provides information on fees, rewards, nodes, and unconfirmed transactions. It also has Orbit, a tool for exploring the network of a blockchain, recursively tracking the transaction history.

However, there are some resources on the website that are blocked, such as the guides for Brazilian security forces. This website also allows coordinating organizations to conduct investigations involving cryptocurrencies.

BlockSherlock redirects people to a form where institutional accounts of the Brazilian government can request support from the Ministry of Justice. In this way, they seek to connect experts in the area.

It is possible to see that the security organizations in Brazil use free software tools available to all public. This shows a characteristic of cryptocurrencies: everything is public and it is possible to understand it through education.

The Brazilian government does not have special tracking tools, but it uses the same tools as any user, as in the case of BlockSherlock. However, Chainalysis is already in Brazil and could be seeking a new space in the surveillance market of the South American country.

By Willmen Blanco

A group of users has already conducted proceedings before the Alcobendas Court of First Instance. Victims demand answers about when they will get their funds back.

The hack of the 2gether platform affected a group of Spanish users, who are preparing a class action lawsuit to recover the cryptocurrencies that they lost on July 31^st. The appeal has not yet been filed, but preliminary proceedings have already been conducted before the Alcobendas Court of First Instance, according to attorney Víctor López, founder, and director of the law firm LBO Abogados.

The firm is conducting the proceedings in conjunction with users, who have reportedly lost between EUR 20 thousand and EUR 50 thousand worth of cryptocurrencies. They decided to proceed to court after they received no guarantees from 2gether to return the funds, as they allege. That millionaire hack included the theft of 114 BTC and 267.3 ETH.

Besides, López revealed that the law firm was also affected since it maintained investments in the platform, as well as an unspecified number of customers of the firm. The lawyer revealed that there is a double concern among users.

The first and most important is related to the lost funds and how to return them. The second has to do with compensation to those affected. In other words, users want to know what will happen to the compensation for damages and lost time, as well as the money that they have invested to recover the stolen funds.

Regarding the first case, the company has offered alternatives to return the funds. These include company shares, use of the 2GT token (not yet created), and fiat money. However, most of the users are requesting the return of the same amount of cryptocurrencies that they had before the hack. As for the second case, there is no statement.

Faced with the possibility of a response from 2gether and the proposal of a scheme for the return of cryptocurrencies, López said that there could be a reversal of the judicial proceedings. However, he stressed that “they are forcing them to take the case to court” as there are no guarantees.

Message to 2gether Users in Spain

The users who would participate in the lawsuit, and other interested parties, received a communication. In the message, the law firm informs that the company cannot socialize losses for which it is not responsible and even less claim lack of solvency for being a “startup”.

The firm highlighted that 2gether is a limited liability company with more than EUR 800,000 worth of share capital and that “they will have to face, as far as possible, the full restitution of funds as soon as possible.”

Regarding the issue of security, it highlighted that centralized exchanges do not share private keys with their customers and users. In terms of the blockchain, these keys allow signing transactions and having access to the funds associated with a public address.

The company’s ability to respond to requests for information was also a reason for complaint. The firm sent a burofax three times when no one received it.

Regarding the submission of the lawsuit, the firm would only wait for the response of the Alcobendas Court of First Instance, from which it requested information on 2gether’s records. Once they have received the data, and if they do not receive a response from the company, they would proceed with the ordinary lawsuit.

By Alexander Salazar

Ronaldinho and his brother Roberto remained in detention for 171 days in the South American country. The former soccer player was allegedly involved in money laundering with Bitcoin.

After 6 months in detention between a local prison and a hotel, serving under house arrest, former Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho Gaúcho was released in Paraguay.

According to local media, Judge Gustavo Amarilla ruled the conditional suspension of the proceedings against the former player and his brother Roberto de Assis Moreira. Even though Ronaldinho was fully released, Assis will have to appear every 4 months in court in his country, Brazil, as part of serving his 2-year sentence.

As part of the judge’s sentence, the two men had to donate a total of USD 200,000 to various causes on Paraguayan soil. In total, Ronaldinho had to allocate USD 60,000 to a hospital and another USD 30,000 to “We all are Bianca”, a campaign declared of national interest that seeks to raise funds for a girl with spinal muscular atrophy.

Roberto must allocate USD 110,000 to the Ministry of Justice to provide guards and inmates in Paraguayan detention facilities with sanitary supplies to fight COVID-19.

When the two brothers were arrested, they were carrying false documentation. Furthermore, Ronaldinho was under investigation for his alleged participation in a Bitcoin money-laundering scheme.

At the time, an investor accused the former FC Barcelona star of being related to the company 18K, which offered investments with Bitcoin and daily returns of up to 2%. Ronaldinho alleges that he only lent his image and was also scammed by this organization, charged with being a pyramid scheme whose website stopped working without responding to its customers.

Shortly after that lawsuit, Ronaldinho and his brother were caught carrying false passports when entering Paraguay. The world champion stated that he was unaware that he was using false papers. However, the judge’s decision on August 24^th comes after both parties accepted their guilt, and the payment of the previously stated fine.

In July, the Paraguayan Court had already rejected an appeal by Ronaldinho’s lawyers that sought to revoke the house arrest measure. However, the authorities wanted to thoroughly investigate the Brazilian’s involvement in the alleged pyramid scam with Bitcoin.

According to local media, both he and his brother have already left Paraguayan territory for Brazil.

Ronaldinho has been linked to blockchain projects beyond the 18K scandal. In 2017, he supported an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) together with the also former player of the Brazilian team, Roberto Carlos. The following year, he launched the Ronaldinho Soccer Coin Project, an initiative that proposed the creation of “stadiums” combining virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and a blockchain.

Other famous soccer players have been involved in criminal activities with Bitcoin. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo’s name was linked to a scam with the cryptocurrency. In this case, the scam said that the celebrity has invested around USD 44 million in an alleged cryptocurrency firm. The fake news attracted victims to the platform that misused the Portuguese player’s name.

By Alexander Salazar

The growing interest from central banks and the public in so-called CBDCs began in 2019. The projects in China, Sweden, and Canada are the most advanced, according to a report from the BIS.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) describes progress towards digital payment systems (with currencies that seem to emulate Bitcoin). The agency notes that these have accelerated substantially so far in 2020 and far exceed the developments of previous years.

The BIS shows these results through the Central Bank Digital Currencies Project Index (CBDCPI), which the agency included in its most recent report in August.

The study seeks to assess the progress and motivations for the issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in different countries, as well as the interest from central banks and citizens in these currencies. Additionally, the document analyzes technical approaches and parameters behind their design.

The BIS researchers analyzed the motivations and characteristics of the different projects, based on more than 16,000 speeches by central banks in recent years. They also tracked Google Trends and Baidu searches for the term “CBDC,” as well as three related words, between January 2013 and April 2020.

The index shows a remarkable growth in public interest in CBDCs. The progress is evident with the increase in searches for information on CBDC projects on the Internet worldwide. In that sense, these searches considerably exceeded those of Facebook’s Libra project and even those of the main cryptocurrency in the market.

Concerning these data, the BIS report shows a graph in which it presents the statistics of searches in Google Trends. There is an increase in searches on CBDC.

China’s Digital Currency Is the Fastest Growing

Regarding the progress that the different CBDCs have achieved so far worldwide, there is a disparity in different countries of the world.

Although no project is complete yet, many have accelerated their research in recent months. Thus, the projects in China (Digital Currency/Electronic Payment or DC/EP), Sweden (e-Krona), and Canada (e-Dollar and Jasper) are the ones that analysts consider the most advanced.

The Chinese project is the most prominent as it has been the one with the greatest progress this year, implementing pilot tests in 4 regions of the country (which were recently extended to another 3).

With regard to the technology and design of CBDCs, the report shows preferences for blockchain platforms over the conventional technological infrastructure of banks. There is also a predominance of hybrid architectures, in which central banks issue the CBDC while the private sector manages customer service.

The analysts also determined that the interest in these currencies is higher in jurisdictions with greater use of cell phones and greater capacity for innovation.

Among other data collected through the CBDCPI, countries with a great commercial boom are seeking to implement retail CBDC (general retail payments). Wholesale CBDCs – for institutional wholesale payments – are more developed in economies with greater financial development.

Catalysts for Interest in CBDCs

Regarding the motivations for the issuance of CBDC, the BIS index indicates that they vary in each jurisdiction.

However, the main motivation in 2020 has been around overcoming payment problems. There has been a decrease in the use of cash due to the crisis in payment systems that the pandemic has caused. That has aroused the interest in cash-like retail CBDCs, which work like cash.

According to a survey that the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures conducted in late 2019, financial inclusion has been one of the main motivations in most countries. Additionally, central banks in advanced economies seek to promote security and solidity alongside domestic payments. In emerging economies, the desire is to achieve greater stability.

By Alexander Salazar

Binance could be failing to prevent hackers from collecting ransomware funds. By saying that it has a “variety of customers”, the exchange disassociates itself from that issue.

According to an anonymous investigation, cryptocurrency exchange Binance could be failing to prevent hackers from converting into cash the Bitcoin that they obtain through extortion. The criminals reportedly exchanged USD 1 million worth of Bitcoin after hijacking information through ransomware attacks using Ryuk malware.

In the report, the investigators highlighted that the funds belonged to various BTC addresses linked to multiple attacks. In the last three years, the criminals have made the transfers to a wallet on Binance that is still active.

The work of these anonymous investigators seems to be based on a previous FBI investigation. The sample for the analysis consisted of 63 transactions that amounted to around USD 5.7 million. The hackers sent more than USD 1 million of that money to Binance for the collection of the ransoms, while they keep the rest at other addresses outside of Binance.

According to the FBI, hackers have stolen more than USD 61 million using Ryuk malware since its creation in 2018. Last February, the federal police said that criminals had received payments of around USD 144 million worth of Bitcoin in six years for this type of attack.

In this regard, Binance responded that “when it comes to tracking illicit activity on the chain, the attribution is not always black and white.” The exchange disassociated itself from what happened, adding that “the recipient may be unaware of the fraudulent origin of the transaction since Binance has a wide variety of customers operating on its platform.”

The anonymous investigators also sent the disclosed report to Binance as proof of what had happened. Their purpose could be to make Binance aware that they need to improve the detection of funds of doubtful origin, which occurs despite the platform complying with know-your-customer (KYC) regulations.

Since the beginning of the quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an increase in ransomware attacks. The aforementioned report highlighted that 51% of the 5,000 companies analyzed had been victims of malware until last May.

Hackers can use ransomware to remotely lock computer systems and encrypt information. Once they manage to encrypt the data, they can only decrypt them with the software that is in their hands.

This crime is related to the trend of data leakage. Hackers use this strategy to disclose some of the information that they have hijacked. They do this to lobby for the payment of the ransom, usually in the form of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Monero.

This type of situation should make cryptocurrency exchanges aware that they need to seek ways to detect funds that come from fraudulent actions. Likewise, developers should take advantage of these events to create security systems that guarantee the protection of data, for both individuals and companies.

By Alexander Salazar