Donation System Receives Bitcoins to Help People with Covid-19 in Mexico

Maria Rodríguez
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Donation System Receives Bitcoins to Help People with Covid-19 in Mexico

Bitso users can donate with cryptocurrencies using their digital wallets or through the digital platform.

A donation system in Mexico will receive bitcoins (BTC) as a contribution to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. The donation fund seeks to help families affected by the coronavirus outbreak, especially in the most vulnerable sectors of the Aztec country.

A local media reported that the project arises thanks to the collaboration of the crypto exchange platform Bitso with the renowned organization Donadora. Following the idea of ​​raising funds, the organization created the tag #Dona1DespensaChallenge on social networks. The intention is to call all those who can donate any of the cryptocurrencies that they enabled for the donation.

The donation system accepts the most used cryptocurrencies in Mexico, such as Bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple, as well as users of Bitso in Mexico can make their donation in the local fiat currency. The main objective of the campaign is focused on the purchase of basic food and necessities to distribute it to the neediest people in Mexico.

Regarding the donation system, this platform of Bitso enabled a tab on its official website to conduct the donation. Besides, customers can donate using the users’ digital wallets.

Bitso published a statement where it explains in detail how to donate. In these instructions, Bitso indicates that to donate on the web platform, the user must register. Then, the user will fund the money in the account and conduct the operation. According to this method, the company recalled that this operation is free of commissions or extra charges.

To donate the user’s portfolio, the platform assured that users will only have to scan a QR code that appears on the platform’s website and automatically transfer the funds.

On its website, Bitso explained that the proceeds will allow buying food. After that, the Food Bank of Mexico will distribute the contribution. “All proceeds will go to the purchase of food pantries for the people most affected by COVID-19 and will be delivered by the Food Bank of Mexico and its 55 banks distributed around the Republic. You can donate from USD 150.00 MXN to support a family”.

The initiative will remain active until May 31st. The exchange platform will also make an important donation since, for each peso raised, the company will donate 50 % of the money back.

On the other hand, the non-profit organization Donadora detailed, in its latest report, that it has managed to serve more than 7,000 affected families to date. Donadora hopes these numbers to increase next June with the funds raised in the campaign.

To conclude, Donadora hopes to raise around USD 311,893.89. Currently, the company has collected 22% of the goal, with a total of USD 70,269.61.

Until now, Mexico has been one of the Latin American countries that have been most affected by the pandemic, accumulating around 38,000 confirmed cases and 3,926 people who died because of the disease.

By María Rodríguez

Community Is Alerted about Vulnerability in ColdCard Cold Wallets that Allows Stealing Bitcoin

Alexander Salazar
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Community Is Alerted about Vulnerability in ColdCard Cold Wallets that Allows Stealing Bitcoin

Anyone with enough resources and technical knowledge could easily obtain a wallet PIN code. Around USD 200,000 and knowledge are needed to be able to violate the security of the device.

Last May 18th, the team of Ledger, a provider of cryptocurrency cold wallets, alerted the community and ColdCard to some vulnerability in one of the latter’s devices.

Ledger’s security experts said that the ColdCard MK2 wallet has some vulnerability that would allow a person, with the necessary knowledge and resources, to steal a user’s bitcoins. They explained that, due to a problem within the memory chip, anyone can obtain the PIN code of the device and thus have access to it.

However, they note that executing the hack requires that the person use highly specialized equipment, which could be worth around USD 200,000, and have highly technical knowledge. Despite this, Ledger’s team said that anyone with all the necessary resources can easily complete the task. Likewise, they explained how they managed to detect the vulnerability of the equipment and obtain the PIN code.

Vulnerability that Affects the Market

Ledger’s team said that the attack is conducted through a method known as laser fault injection. This is a state-of-the-art attack in which a very precise and focused laser ray is used while the chip is trying to act. In the case of the ATECC508A chip, used in Coldcard MK2 wallets, by doing this at a very specific moment, it is possible to omit the access conditions and obtain the PIN code stored in the secure memory.

Ledger stated that, by detecting the vulnerabilities of the MK2, they seek to give more security to the cryptocurrency market. They believe that some critical and exploitable vulnerability can cause problems for all the participants in the cryptocurrency market. The security team says that their task is to improve their devices, and study the security of other models existing on the market.

In response to Ledger’s report, the ColdCard team wrote in their Twitter account that the report had surprised them. They said that Ledger devoted a really large amount of resources to investigate their products.

In the same vein, several Twitter users stated that they were not concerned about vulnerability. They argued that to conduct the hack, it is necessary to have equipment worth USD 200,000, in addition to physical access to the device. Some said that the latest ColdCard device, the MK3, has new security protocols that make it much more secure.

There was a report last March about a malicious Google Chrome extension that stole the recovery phrase from Ledger devices. On the other hand, investigators verified in January of this year some vulnerability in Trezor’s cold wallets that facilitated the access to users’ private keys. This makes it evident that developers who use blockchain technology should always be seeking new ways to guarantee the security and privacy of users.

By Alexander Salazar

Deactivation of New Bitcoin-Pegged Token in Just Two Days

Alexander Salazar
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Deactivation of New Bitcoin-Pegged Token in Just Two Days

The ERC-20 token tBTC was disabled for 10 days and there is no known official reason. The leader of the project Matt Luongo said that they are helping users to withdraw their funds.

The tBTC project, which has a 1:1 parity with Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain, was temporarily suspended from the mainnet. This happened two days after its launch and there is no known official reason for its cancellation.

Developer Matt Luongo, Founder, and CEO of the startup Thesis, reported on May 18th the suspension of deposits for 10 days until the team of programmers solves a possible coding problem.

According to what Luongo wrote on his Twitter account, he believes that the startup can do that in a matter of 1 or 2 days. Even though they have already fixed the problem in the code, they do not want the community to know until all the funds are withdrawn. He said that they are helping users to recover their funds in Discord. He explained that there are seven Bitcoin-pegged tokens, of a maximum of 11 BTC that there used to be. He recommended that the community that has tBTC visit https://chat.tbtc.network since they have the necessary equipment to make everything work well.

Regarding the funds kept on the platform, Luongo said that they are secure at the moment. However, he warned that they might not be unless they are withdrawn within the 10-day pause extension.

Regarding the technical details that led to the departure of the token from the mainnet, they reported that the community will receive a report when the developers confirm the data. This would leave an open range of possible causes leading to the temporary suspension of the project.

The ERC-20 token tBTC was launched the week of May 11th to 17th but was activated on May 16th on the Ethereum network. The project also includes startups Keep Network and Summa, where the detection of the problem with the token occurred.

The same as with other cryptocurrency-pegged token projects on the Ethereum network, the developers seek to allow users, particularly those of Bitcoin, to access decentralized financial (DeFi) applications that run on the aforementioned smart contract blockchain.

These types of initiatives have aroused controversy in the community due to their support methods. In August of last year, users of such services were requested to trust the tBTC developers’ honesty, an opinion that Udi Weithermer and Preston Byrne shared. On that occasion, Byrne said that he had sent his BTC to an address that he did not control and that he obtained a terrible exposure to ETH, which is worth 1 BTC according to a trusted oracle.

More recently, in April of this year, a new tokenized version of Bitcoin was also reported, this time on the Tezos blockchain. The conception of tzBTC also occurred so that there would be a type of bridge or link between Bitcoin and the DeFi services deployed on Tezos.

By Alexander Salazar

While Bitcoin Struggles for USD 10,000, Gold Hits New All-Time Highs

Alexander Salazar
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While Bitcoin Struggles for USD 10,000, Gold Hits New All-Time Highs

The price of gold has increased by 1.16% and is currently trading at USD 1,760. Since March 12th, the value of Bitcoin has increased by 145%.

The main cryptocurrency in the market is currently trading at around USD 9,645 at the time of writing this article. That price represents a gain of more than 145%, compared to the low level of USD 3,867 recorded last March 12th.

However, the cryptocurrency encountered rejection close to USD 10,000 in the early hours of May 18th, this being its third failure to cross to the five-digit figures since May 1st, and recorded a drop of USD 9,450 during trading hours in Europe. This fall represents a 0.5% decrease in price in a single day.

Meanwhile, gold is currently is trading as a haven asset, with an increase in its value of 1.16%, at USD 1,760 per ounce, this being the highest level in its price since October 2012. The price of the precious metal has increased by 4% since May 12th and is currently 21% above the low levels recorded in March.

Marcus Swanepoel, CEO of crypto platform Luno, suggests that Bitcoin could be facing exhaustion of bullish momentum. Buyer fatigue is common after large price increases, like the one that Bitcoin has unveiled in the past two months.

Gold also faced buyer exhaustion after its bullish rally from USD 1,450 to USD 1,747 in the four weeks to mid-April. This safe-haven asset was consolidated within a narrow range of prices for almost a whole month before breaking the bullish trend on May 14th.

Short-Term Setback

In this way, Bitcoin could continue to underperform in the short term, compared to gold. The cryptocurrency could also suffer a drop like the one seen after its second halving, on July 9th, 2016. The third Bitcoin halving occurred last May 11th.

However, the post-halving setback observed in 2016 was short-lived, so the cryptocurrency reached new all-time highs within one year after the event. Swanepoel noted that the dramatic growth in Bitcoin’s value after the second halving was not immediate and that growth is likely to occur after the third halving.

The US Federal Reserve (Fed) continues to expand its balance sheet through the purchase of open-ended assets, in which it boosts unprecedented inflation and stands ready to do more shortly.

The Fed’s Director Jerome Powell believes that there is no limit to what they can do with the loan programs that they have. For that reason, he says that they can do much more to support the economy since they are committed to doing everything possible as long as needed.

Keeping all this in mind, investors have a strong incentive to seek haven alternatives away from traditional assets such as gold, the US treasury, and the Japanese yen. An increasing number of investors seem to consider Bitcoin as a haven asset and a hedge against inflation. This is because the supply of the cryptocurrency is limited to 21 million and there is a reduction by half in the issuance rate every four years, at the halving events.

By Alexander Salazar

Amid the Pandemic, Paxos Standard Gains Ground against other Stablecoins Worldwide

Alexander Salazar
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Last May 5th, PAX reached the milestone of 24,000 transactions in a day, exceeding USDC. The market capitalization of stablecoins has almost doubled since the general crash on March 12h.

The cryptocurrency ecosystem analysis firm Coin Metrics recently noted that the stablecoin Paxos Standard (PAX) has nearly tripled its market capitalization, outperforming other fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, the PAX token seems to be gaining ground in the global market, since there are indications that it is being used for some non-institutional purposes, such as remittances.

The market capitalization of stablecoins has grown to more than USD 10 billion, marking an accelerated increase since the “Black Thursday” crash, despite the drop of most non-stable assets. Even though the exact cause for this rise is still unknown, Coin Metrics conducted a study aimed at ​​discovering the uses of anchored cryptocurrencies in the world. For that reason, it used heat maps to visualize daily usage patterns.

The report analyzes the usage patterns of various stablecoins and determines that they are being used for potentially different purposes, even favored in different parts of the world. For example, Tether (USDT), the most popular stablecoin today, has many more transactions during typical Asian and European business hours, compared to North American trading.

For the analysis, Coin Metrics specifically evaluated the USDT issued on the Ethereum network as an ERC-20 token. In this regard, the report states that USDT/ETH has a clear pattern of intensive use from about 2:00 to 16:00 UTC. That corresponds to the hours when the Asian and European stock markets are open. It adds that transfers darken towards the end of the day. For instance, there are very few transfers after 20:00, when the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) closes.

In contrast, Paxos has been used more widely since last April, considering that transfers for this stablecoin have almost tripled since March 12th, when the World Health Organization (WHO) classified the coronavirus as a pandemic.

Last May 5th, PAX reached a new record of 24,000 transactions in one day, thus exceeding that of USDC and DAI. Data from Coin Metrics reveal that the use of PAX is more widespread throughout the day, suggesting that it may be gaining less institutional and more global use.

Coin Metrics analysts conclude that differences in regional use of the various stablecoins indicate that they are being used for different purposes worldwide and that USDT and USDC are still the most widely used in Asia, while PAX seems to have a broader level. However, it seems that North American trades are the main users of DAI.

A month ago, the number of stablecoins in circulation with 1:1 parity with the US dollar soared by 53% in less than two months, reaching new ceilings in 2020. At that time, the total capitalization of Tether, TrueUSD, USDCoin, Paxos Standard, Gemini dollar, Dai, BitUSD and sUSD, was USD 8,373 million, whilst the volume of joint transactions exceeded USD 60,563 million in 24 hours.

By Alexander Salazar

DBS Bank Seeks to Digitize Trade Agreements with Global Blockchain Network

Maria Rodríguez
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DBS Bank Seeks to Digitize Trade Agreements with Global Blockchain Network

Blockchain technology would help the bank reduce letter of credit settlement time, decrease the amount of paperwork, and simplify the trading process.

DBS Bank, the Singapore-based banking multinational, joined the Contour commerce and finance chain to use blockchain technology in the process of digitizing trade agreements.

This trading chain is built on R3’s Corda blockchain platform. Until now, Contour’s main launch could take place later this year.

With this decision, the DBS Bank of Singapore becomes the first bank in that country to join this network. Important institutions such as BNP Paribas, Bangkok Bank, ING, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Citi Ventures support this chain of commerce. These recognized Singapore companies are part of the Contour foundation.

This blockchain solution would help the bank to reduce the time of settlement of letters of credit, decrease the amount of paperwork, and simplify the process of negotiation or trading. In this way, DBS hopes to digitize its letter of credit settlement process completely through the blockchain solutions that the platform offers.

Blockchain Technology Benefits

Another benefit Contour will offer is that it will help DBS Bank’s corporate clients to conduct negotiations between applicants and beneficiaries, in real-time, before the digital broadcast. The financial institution expects this tool to increase the accuracy of the letter of credit issuance.

Real-time tracking and audit trails of transactions that blockchain technology can implement will make the process more transparent. Blockchain technology would also help deny or resolve discrepancies and save time.

In this way, John Laurens, Head of DBS Bank’s global transaction services group, recently spoke about the benefits that Contour could bring to the commerce and finance ecosystem.

“It is about transforming the way industries work, providing greater transparency, security, and speed to build sustainable commercial ecosystems that are capable of withstanding the spikes and downturns of economic cycles and that are resistant in times of crisis”, he said.

Overcome Physical Limitations

Contour has been preparing since last year. In 2019, the chain of commerce conducted a successful test on its platform. During this test, according to local media, Contour recorded USD 30 million in a letter of credit transactions.

Ajay Sharma, HSBC regional head of global trade and receivable financing, previously stated that: “Leveraging blockchain technology for trade finance has overcome the physical constraints we are having today”. One of these physical limitations is the Covid-19 pandemic, which makes it difficult for the normal operation of some offices.

In the traditional trade finance system, most processes today require human intervention and lots of paperwork. This new system could allow finishing, more quickly, manual processes.

Due to the current Covid-19 crisis, the financial institution believes that it is now more crucial than ever to prepare to achieve a more contact-free form of the trade process, avoiding any risk of contagion from contact diseases.

The project of the DBS Bank is another example of how important institutions are adopting blockchain technology to improve their daily processes to implement transparency and efficiency in all the stages.

By María Rodríguez

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