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Blockchain-Powered Scratchcard Lottery Set to be Launched in Cambodia

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The new system described as the world’s first ‘paper-based blockchain-powered lottery‘ guarantees greater transparency in the embryonic Cambodia gambling sector. Chinese lottery solution provider Hongbo has been granted a license to partner with Cambodian lottery operator Jinxiang to develop a blockchain-powered scratchcard lottery.

The Chinese lottery solutions firm’s initial offer will be a paper scratchcard product known as Goldvalley KHR. Lottery participants will be able to confirm the legitimacy of the lottery scratchcards and the amount payable by scanning the QR code on the card pegged to the blockchain record.

In addition, the printing and distribution of lottery tickets will be monitored through a blockchain-based supply chain dubbed Scratchblock. The production of random digits determines the payoffs of the lotteries. The numbers determine the deployment of symbols that should be matched in order to win a prize on the scratch card product.

Blockchain-powered scratchcard lottery to enhance transparency

In the majority of administrations, the algorithm that decides the administration or randomness of these digits; are strictly supervised by the authority mandated with overseeing gambling in the region. Notably, lottery gambling has only been validated just recently in Cambodia. Additionally, the rush to establish the sector and set up nationwide lotteries has been met by complaints that it runs in a black box.

In addition, the blockchain-powered scratchcard lottery will be monitored using some crucial metrics provided by Scratchblock. The blockchain network will enable data comparisons, such as comparing the prize return rates and the batch numbers of the scratchcards. The metrics help exhibit that the odds are uniformly dispensed out.

Application of blockchain technology in lotteries

The new blockchain-based lottery in Cambodia is not the first time blockchain technology has been applied in the lottery system. Shenzhen’s Welfare (Charity) Lottery system conducted its initial test on the blockchain technology application back in 2019. However, the lottery is electronic and not paper-based.

In conclusion, Cambodia has made use of technology in other areas as well. The Asian nation’s central bank announced that it is creating a central bank digital currency just recently. The central bank aims to improve the liquidity of Cambodia’s legal tender, Riel.

Bitcoin Still a Favorite as Fidelity Reveals Large Chunk of Institutional Investors Hold Crypto

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The cryptocurrency market has grown stronger over the years, and industry supporters have asserted that institutional investors will give it a much-needed break. Although many mainstream organizations have attacked the digital asset world because of its instability, it turns out that a big chunk was actually in the field.

A recent Fidelity analysis showed that one-third of all large-scale institutions were involved in cryptocurrencies or crypto-related products. The survey also noted that Bitcoin was the preferred cryptocurrency among organizations.

Fidelity has been a key player in the financial sector for the longest time and made major news when they announced their interest in cryptocurrency research and development. According to research, the United States had a maximum number of institutions invested in crypto. Thirty-six percent of the 774 strong sample size across the US and Europe revealed that they owned cryptocurrencies or some form of cryptocurrency derivatives.

Focusing on the United States alone, almost 27 percent of all institutions are involved in digital assets. These organizations included pension funds, family offices, digital funds, traditional hedge funds, and investment advisers. The same survey conducted a year ago showed that only 22 percent of institutions dealt with any form of virtual assets. In 2019, Fidelity surveyed 441 institutions, a long way from the most recent 774.

Bitcoin has been a key target for many institutional players due to its strong presence in the financial market. Over a quarter of the sample size surveyed hold Bitcoin while a decent 11 percent hold the Vitalik Buterin co-founded Ethereum. In the year to date spectrum, Bitcoin has jumped by a massive 36 percent due to its strong grip on the coronavirus face. At the same time, traditional stocks have plummeted across the board, causing widespread panic.

Tom Jessop, the President of Fidelity Digital Assets recently said in an interview that Europe was more supportive and accomodating than the US when it came to digital assets. He believed that Bitcoin outshone the traditional assets in terms of return or overall value. Jessop added:

“Europe is perhaps more supportive and accommodating, That could be just things going on in Europe right now, you got negative interest rates in many countries. Bitcoin may look more attractive because there are other assets that aren’t paying return. These results confirm a trend we are seeing in the market towards greater interest in and acceptance of digital assets as a new investable asset class.”

At press time, Bitcoin was trading for $9774 with a total market cap of $179.85 billion. After a relatively bullish run over the past week, Bitcoin’s 24-hour trading volume had risen to $22.794 billion. Bitcoin was not the only cryptocurrency that witnessed a decent price action over the past week as Tether rocketed up the charts to become the third-largest cryptocurrency, overtaking XRP.

Hong Kong Hedge Funds Consider Pulling Out as Regulations Tighten

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Traders and fund administrators in China are panicking after the Chinese Communist Party has approved a decision to enforce national security laws intended to scare away foreign investors. Hong Kong hedge funds are exploring the possibility of shutting down their operations in the Asian financial hub.

Hong Kong is an important Asian spot whose main function is to generate investment income. Unfortunately, fund managers and traders are now worried that the sector might be the center of attention in China after the communist party approved the plan to deploy the national securities laws.

Notably, the securities laws are targeting what is known as “subversion of state power” or “interference” from foreign nations. However, if Hong Kong hedge funds were to withdraw operations, it would be at risk due to its renowned reputation as the world’s top target.

Besides, investors are scared of limitations to free internet access, social media freedom, acquisition of visas, and the capital control rates, said a top investment officer via FT.

Nonetheless, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive officer Carrie Lam, stated that people worried about the new law should wait for more information. She adds that the rules should not harm anyone as Hong Kong is a free society.

Singapore expected to overtake Hong Kong ‘s dominance of hedge funds?

As stated by FT, Hong Kong hedge funds command roughly $91 billion assets more significant than hedge funds in Australia, Singapore, and Japan combined.

Nevertheless, a third of US businesses in Hong Kong were contemplating moving them out. The business insider stated that analysts informed them that Singapore was expected to overhaul the city as operations start deviating from Hong Kong.

In conclusion, Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst in Asia – pacific said that if Hong Kong is initiating Chinese laws secretly then, it makes hedge funds feel insecure operating in Hong Kong. Furthermore, he stated that if businesses didn’t want to work under Chinese laws, they could move to Singapore.

Moon Marketing and Coin Liquidity Solutions Announce Strategic Partnership

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Moon Marketing is extremely excited to announce that Coin Liquidity Solutions has become an official Moon Marketing partner and will be providing special services to projects within the Moon Marketing Network from now, forward.

Who is Coin Liquidity Solutions?

“Coin Liquidity Solutions is a team of experts & professionals. We dedicate ourselves to providing crypto-projects with complex trading assistance, forming suitable trading conditions, providing in-depth consultancy, and sharing wide opportunities within this eco-system.”

How can CLS help?

“Our main goal is to make the token and project itself more attractive for users on exchanges and push for better involvement of the community in your project’s eco-system. You will receive quality assistance in elaboration & implementation of your trading strategy, which will reflect your company’s priorities and help to match your specific goals. Build up liquidity within your markets, reduce the amount between buy/sell orders, add an additional revenue stream, and satisfy your community with a more accessible trading environment.”

Why do projects need CLS?

“We have a wide experience in trading, both at stock markets and in the crypto-industry. We’ve been working with projects of different sizes and stages of the development, from TOP-100 to brand-new start-ups. We’ve been adjusting & upgrading our instruments, collecting project feedback/suggestions, facing challenges, and solely concentrating on the trading side of the industry. We suppose that a strong long-term partnership comes only a certain level of transparency, openness, and mutual respect, which we would be glad to provide you with.”

CONTACT CLS HERE: HELLO@COINLS.IO

Bitcoin’s Network Health Improve Despite Price Stagnancy but Miners Continue to HODL

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After spending the previous week under a shroud of bearish sentiment, Bitcoin’s on-chain fundamentals indicated a state of recovery according to glassnode’s recent weekly insights.

The report suggested that the price of Bitcoin continued to keep moving sideways between $9,500 and $9800 in the charts, and on Tuesday, the pattern gave rise to the “Bart Simpson” pattern. As we all know, prices spike above $10,000 after that, but only 15 hours later, a massive correction took place in the charts.

GNI

Now, according to the Glassnodes Network Index, which evaluates the overall improvement of Bitcoin’s fundamentals, an uptick has been suggested after a few downward trends. The GNI index increased by 6 points, as shown in the chart above, bringing the largest digital asset back to the strong zone at 62 points.

In addition, over the past week, Network Health identified a 5-point hike that suggested improvements in network growth and network activity. This is a significant highlight of this week, as the number of active and new entities reduced by 10% at the end of May. The report also added,

“Liquiditysaw a 7 point increase last week, bringing it back into the neutral zone after having dropped down into the weak zone the previous week. This increase was mainly driven by an 18% increase in transaction liquidity as on-chain transactions increased and fees continued to decrease after experiencing a post-halving spike.”

However, the report indicated that it is imperative to observe these improvements over the current week to understand whether the positive sentiment will trigger an uptrend or whether this week’s recovery was an uncorrelated period of growth.

Miners continue to hold Bitcoin

Bitcoin miners

One of the trends that have not changed since the 3rd Bitcoin halved is the holding sentiment among Bitcoin miners. As shown in the chart above, since the reduction of block rewards, the volume of BTC moving from the miner’s wallet to the exchanges have been extremely low over the last 4 weeks.

Historically, it has been observed that in the past two halvings, the flow of BTC from miners to exchanges has usually decreased by 50%, but at present, the number of BTC sold by miners has plummeted to 65.

It can be speculated that either the miners are in a position to keep up their expenses without cashing in their pre-halving accumulation, or that they are waiting for the price to surge in order to cash in at higher profitability.

However, the narrative would be turned on its head if Bitcoin were faced with a massive correction due to its inability to break past $10,000. Over the past month, Bitcoin has tried to overwhelm the mark for a total of four times, only to face a pullback a few hours or days later.

Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority Injects Liquidity into Local Banks Using Blockchain Technology

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On 8 June, the Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA) announced that it had transferred funds to domestic banks through blockchain technology. The money was part of the central bank’s effort to inject SAR 50 billion ($13.3 billion) of liquidity into the country’s banking system announced last week.

According to the statement, the use of distributed ledger technology in the financial sector is part of the authority’s efforts to explore and experiment with various upcoming technologies. Indeed, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority is inclined to twiddle with any upcoming technology in order to keep pace with emerging global technology trends. The statement reads:

“SAMA is one of the pioneer central banks to experiment with blockchain technology for money transfers, this move was one of the key innovative initiatives launched by SAMA in its program to enable and develop Fintech in the Kingdom. This includes, among others: The Fintech Saudi Initiative in cooperation with the Capital Market Authority, the introduction of SAMA Regulatory Sandbox, and an array of digital banking services and payments.“

 

 

The adoption of blockchain technology in the finance sector is surging in the entire Middle-East region. Notably, earlier in the year, SAMA and the central bank of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) disclosed a joint digital currency dubbed Aber, that would be distributed in the local banks in the to Arabian nations.

Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority to explore emerging trends 

Furthermore, the latest move by the Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority is a big declaration by the authority to the growing use of blockchain technology by central banks all over the world. Blockchain technology is known for its security and transparency traits, which SAMA experienced in the banking liquidation exercise.

In conclusion, the adoption of blockchain technology has been adopted by different central banks and financial institutions across the world. Just recently, a bank in Turkey successfully completed its first trade finance transaction using blockchain technology. Moreover, nearly 40 percent of fintech firms based in Hong Kong leverage blockchain technology.

Ethereum’s Josep Lubin Dives into Compliance; Consensys Develop Product for DeFi

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Consensys, an organization providing solutions to Ethereum(ETH) based blockchain applications is ready to launch a compliance service that will assist various exchanges and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects to analyze and keep track of trading activities on Ethereum.

According to Bloomberg, Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum(ETH) and head of Consensys, indicated that the company is looking forward to developing a product that would focus on the regulatory requirements of the know-your-customer, which has been a significant hurdle for various digital asset firms.

Compliance services have been a major issue in the past as the lack of standardized rules has led to various illegal activities in the industry. In order to avoid various money laundering transactions, various cryptocurrency firms have to rely on analytical firms such as Chainalysis and CipherTrace to identify users and tokens that are linked to criminal activity.

Lex Sokolin, ConsenSys’s global fintech co-head said,

“There are more and more people building decentralized apps that need this as a Lego piece. What we are trying to do is make activity on the decentralized financial infrastructure much more safe, transparent, much easier to trace.”

Since Consensys is focused on Ethereum, the new services launched by the organization would track up to 280,000 different tokens, those which are built on the ERC-20 or ERC-721 standard. According to their press release, the objective remains to implement a more stable and regularised compliance in crypto, usually tagged with the traditional payments sector.

Ethereum(ETH) continues to be the development Hub

It is hard not to pin-point that the entire system continues to under Ethereum. Sokolin has mentioned last year that the improvement of the DeFi space in terms of functionality and now, compliance is highly important for the ever-improving space of Ethereum. When the number of unique numbers rose nearly up to 530 percent in 2019, according to DappRader report, Sokolin had stated,

“Providing robust AML/CFT compliance for Ethereum-based digital assets is a keystone step in bringing the institutional financial industry to decentralized finance. Code Compliance is the next module in our product suite to eliminate complexity and risk in using DeFi, and help any business benefit from using digital assets.”

Cardano Set to Open Shelley Testnet Today as Price Spikes by 60 Percent

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It is an extremely important day for the 10th ranked Cardano. After days of anticipation and development over the last few years, Cardano Shelley’s testnet is about to go live, as the ADA phase will open to its stake pool operators on 9 June. Back in May, the test was only open to a specific group of people considered to be ‘Friends and Family,’ which included about 50 stake pool operators.

The announcement on Twitter was made by the Input-Output HK(IOHK) official page, where Tim Harrison, Marketing, and Communications Director of Cardano revealed the ecosystem plan to open its stake pool and preparing the mainnet staking and delegation for later this summer.

However, Harrison pointed out that the system is far from perfect, as though it will be a mirror representation of the Shelley manner, it is a testnet for a reason to identify other bugs and issues.

Cardano Price and Social Engagement

With a sense of excitement surrounding the Cardano space, the start of June has been extremely positive from a valuation perspective. Since May 28th, Cardano’s price has spiked by a massive 64.09 percent as the valuation stretched an uptrend from $0.055 to $0.090. The momentum might have slowed over the past two days at $0.09 but continued to consolidate right under at $0.085.

Other data sets also suggested that the recent announcement has spiked Cardano’s social engagement according to LunarCrush. The organization recorded over 1 million interactions for the 10th ranked digital assets across multiple social media platforms.

ADA

However, according to intotheblock’s analysis, the recent surge might have been due to the influence of large investors. Around $7 billion worth of digital asset, which is almost 3 times more than Cardano’s market cap was transacted by the large ADA holders on May 31st.

Although the volume of large transactions continued to taper off since the peak, these price of ADA remained at high levels, as mentioned above.

“Crypto is a political movement”

The ever-active founder of IOHK, Charles Hoskinson recently stated in his Live AMA that all the crypto-fueled disruptions that have been indicated which respect to monetary relations, with not arrive in the space with hiccups as the digital asset industry is slowly becoming involved in a political cobweb. On June 5th, Hoskinson said,

“Crypto is as political as it gets. We are going to re-invent the concept of money and take it out of the government’s hand and control int ourselves.”

Illegal Crypto Mining in Russia Costed Taxpayers $6.6M in Over 3 Years

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Illegal crypto mining operations in the Russian Federation have stolen electricity worth nearly $6.6 million in the last three years. According to state-owned power distributor,  Rossetti, illegal mining farms, compromised power meters and underground mining farms helped illicit cryptocurrency miners to illegally consume 450 million Russian rubles ($6.6 million) worth of electric power from the domestic power providers.

The electricity firm disclosed the figure on its official Telegram channel. The firm has been hunting ‘black mining sites’ that do not have any sort of deal with power companies, but still use the national electricity grid to mine digital currencies without paying. 

According to the firm, black mining sites are usually based in the office of already established businesses including factories where the owners want to earn extra funds. Additional black mining sites include actual food farms, garages, strategic sites in the woods and leased offices.

According to Rossetti, the illegal miners would pull an electric cable to the closest electricity line and develop their own power transformation stations. For instance, in one of the discovered black mining sites; the power transforming station was found underground buried under a public forest; as per the power distributor.

The state-owned power company has discovered 35 illegal mining operations from 20 different regions in Russia since 2017. According to Rossetti, each of those cases have been reported to law enforcement. 

“We closely analyze the consumption patterns looking for anomalies, inspect the power lines and measure the workload of the stations. Sometimes it’s easy to notice a mining farm by visual signs, like when a building has powerful air conditioning devices and fans installed,” said Rossetti. 

Illegal crypto mining has been rampant in Russia

Over the past one year, people have been minting digital currencies illegally in Russia at a nuclear research institute and utilizing the website of a domestic utilities solution provider. On the other hand, Rossetti has been researching on how to utilize the same technology; to discover new ways of using distributed ledgers to effectively amass power consumption data. 

Beware of Fake Decryption Tool Exploiting Desperate Ransomware  Victims

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Cyber criminals can be really annoying. This time round hackers have created malware in the shape of a decryption software that helps ransomware attack victims by encryption. The fake decryption tool will actually double encrypt your compromised files, not knowing you ‘re jumping from the frying pan to the actual fire.

A recent report by information security and technology news publication, Bleeping Computers, fake ransomware decryption software by STOP Djvu Ransomware, double-encrypts files that create a much bigger victim problem. According to the report, it lures already desperate victims with the guarantee of a free malware decryption tool, infecting them with another ransomware instead.

The malware dubbed “Zorab” was uncovered by the creator of ID Ransomware, Michael Gillespie. There are existing decryption tools that don’t charge huge amounts of money to decrypt files, exactly what the fake decryption tool is trying to do. The malware promises to decrypt files at no cost, but it eventually encrypts them multiple times.

 

Ransomware operatives such as REvil, Netwalker, DoppelPaymer and Maze are popular due to their high profile victims and attracting huge ransoms. Now there is another ransomware, STOP Djvu, which is already infecting more victims than the aforementioned popular operatives combined together on a daily basis.

How the fake decryption tool works

When a victim downloads the fake decryption tool and starts scanning his computer system by clicking the ‘start scan’ button, the ransomware draws out an executable file dubbed crab.exe; this is the zorab malware itself. Once this file is deployed, the fake decryption software double encrypts the entire files in the system with a .ZRB extension.

Fake Decryption Tool

Additionally, the ransomware creates ransom notes in every encrypted folder labeled ‘–DECRYPT–ZORAB.txt.ZRB.’ Inside the notes, there are details on how to reach the ransomware attackers to pay the ransom. The creation of a fake decryption tool was a clever idea to easily and quickly spread malware. Indeed, the Bleep Computer’s report described STOP Djvu Ransomware as “the most actively distributed ransomware over the past year.