Cryptocurrency This Week: Github Compromised, India To Hit Bitcoin Roadblock And More
India: The Major Roadblock Ahead
Indian Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) crypto circular, dated April 6 which had given the payment companies and banks, a 3-month window to end their dealings with all the cryptocurrency entities will come to an end on July 5.
As a result, it will be almost impossible for a cryptocurrency exchange, wallet to provide Rupee-to-cryptocurrency transfers and vice versa. And, the Indian crypto community is still not very excited with the crypto-to-crypto tradings.
A number of cryptocurrency exchanges, enthusiasts have already knocked the door of various courts asking for a stay on the circular. However, the Supreme Court of India has now directed the SC Registry to register the mentioned transfer petitions and to issue a notice fixing a returnable date within six weeks.
As the Supreme Court of India has already refused to issue a stay order against the RBI circular, and the next hearing will be on July 20, this simply implies, the Indian cryptocurrency exchanges have hardly any choice left but to shut down their rupee-to-crypto transactions and wait for the Supreme Court’s rulings as well as the Subhash Chandra Garg-led committee report on the regulations on cryptocurrencies in India.Zebpay, leading cryptocurrency exchange/wallet operator has already issued a warning/notice on its website, stating, “As per a recent RBI action, banks have been told to discontinue banking services to those dealing with virtual currencies. While our industry is challenging this legally, the outcome is beyond our control. Hence, if you are holding any rupees, or depositing any rupees in Zebpay, there could soon come a time when we may not be able to honour withdrawal requests. Please continue only if you understand this risk.”
Novogratz Invests $15 Mn In New York-Based Cryptocurrency Startup
While blockchain is fast booming here, India lags far behind in the crypto race across the world. And, huge investments continue to pour in the cryptocurrency startups in many other countriesNew York-based AlphaPoint that helps institutions launch trading platforms and tokenize assets with blockchain technology has announced a Series A funding round of $15 Mn. Galaxy Digital Ventures LLC, a venture investment firm founded by Michael Novogratz led the investment.
Commenting on the investment, Mike Novogratz, CEO and Founder of Galaxy Digital Ventures stated, “We are in the early stages of a fundamental transformation in financial markets due to the digitization of assets. This transformation started with currencies but is now changing the way we look at commodities, real estate, art, and other traditional and emerging asset classes. We are excited to partner with AlphaPoint as we continue to help drive this revolutionary change in digital markets.”
Benjamin Katz Painting Sold For 150 Bitcoin
Being a creative innovation, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies have caught the attention of the artists and art lovers around the world. Now, a painting by Benjamin Katz, a mixed media artist based in New York, just sold for the staggering sum of 150 Bitcoins, worth roughly $1.25 Mn. As per the reports, the painting was sold by Ato Gallery, an online gallery, and the entire deal was carried out through modern messaging apps, such as Instagram, Signal, and Postmates.
At a time when Bitcoin is biting the dust at $6K, this is certainly a good and a welcome news among the cryptocurrency loversGitHub Compromised
While Mac and Linux versions remained unaffected, Syscoin announced on the official Github page that the project’s official client had faced a malicious trojan attack (windows). The Blockchain Foundry team received reports of Windows Defender SmartScreen showing the syscoincore-3.0.4-win64-setup.exe by “Unknown Publisher.”
Upon investigation, the Syscoin developers found that a malicious, unsigned copy of the Windows Syscoin 3.0.4.1 installer was made available via the Syscoin Github release page on June 9th, 2018 due to a compromised GitHub account. This installer contained malicious code (Trojan:Win32/Feury.B!cl)
The announcement stated that this may affect Windows users who downloaded and executed the Syscoin 3.0.4.1 Windows setup binaries from Github between June 09th, 2018 10:14 PM UTC & June 13th, 2018 10:23 PM UTC.
In other news, as the cryptocurrency market cap is now down to $250 Bn, Peter Thiel, the Paypal founder, one of the biggest names in the startup ecosystem, who also happened to be the Facebook’s first investor (from outside) and Y Combinator partner, has now stated that there is 50-80% chance that the prices of Bitcoin will go down.
The price will go down to the extent that it will make the virtual gold useless in real world, he said.