Crypto Briefs is your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
Blockchain news
- United Russia, Russia’s ruling political party, which has been using blockchain-powered voting for its primary elections, says it has suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, reports news agency Tass. The move will come as a major blow for the party, the biggest in the Duma. United Russia was debuting its new blockchain-powered voting system in the preliminaries, with a view to integrating more blockchain democracy solutions throughout its operations. The news agency states that party authorities believe that they will not be able to trace the attacker, as voting on the new platform is anonymous.
- The LG Group’s IT services subsidiary LG CNS says it will launch a global blockchain-powered ID platform, reports Kyunghyang Shinmun. The company has been active in a number of blockchain-powered decentralized ID (DID) projects for the domestic (South Korean) market but says it is now also co-working with Canada’s Evernym, as well as ATB Financial and Mastercard, on creating a set of global standards for blockchain-based ID developments. LG CNS is also hoping to roll out a blockchain platform that will use DID technology to manage LG Electronics devices’ logistics and repair history data.
Crypto adoption news
- San Francisco-based crypto company Bitwage, in partnerhship with Leading Retirement Solutions, Kingdom Trust and Gemini, launched “the first company sponsored Bitcoin 401k.” “What this means is that companies can offer employees the ability to invest traditional/pre-tax and roth/post-tax 401k dollars into Bitcoin,” the company said, adding that their “vision includes integrating a trading engine directly inside of the 401(k) Plan.”
Legal news
- Pavel Durov, the CEO of chat app Telegram, says he will not fight United States regulators and the court ruling that has blocked the Telegram’s TON network from launching its proposed Gram token. Per Vesti, Durov has now officially withdrawn Telegram’s appeal against the ruling, instigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Durov has previously stated that United States global financial dominance allows American regulators to “close any account in the world,” and claims that American courts can arbitrarily remove apps from app stores – a fact that would make resistance exceptionally difficult.
- Chile’s Orionx crypto exchange has taken its case to the nation’s industry watchdog after its bank accounts at BancoEstado were closed, per Diario Financiero. The exchange’s lawyer has told the watchdog that Orionx’s current accounts were “blocked” by the bank on May 16 “without prior warning or explanation.”
- Responding to a Right to Information (RTI) query, the Reserve Bank of India told crypto exchange Unocoin that there is no prohibition on banks in providing accounts to traders dealing with virtual currencies, reports The Economic Times. The RTI was filed on April 25, questioning whether the RBI had prohibited banks from providing accounts to crypto exchange companies or crypto traders.
Investment news
- India’s crypto exchange CoinDCX has announced that it raised USD 2.5 million from investors including Polychain Capital and Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange Coinbase. Per the press release, the funds will be used to encourage mass adoption of cryptocurrency in India through the exchange’s “TryCrypto” initiative. CoinDCX invested USD 1.3 million in this initiative, which will be used for educational purposes, meetup events, community engagements, and consumer campaigns to provide knowledge on blockchain and cryptocurrency.
- Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings will invest CNY 500 billion (USD 70 billion) over the next five years in technology infrastructure including blockchain, servers, big data centers, supercomputer centers, internet of things operating systems, 5G networks, quantum computing, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, reports Reuters, citing Dowson Tong, senior executive vice president of Tencent.
Stablecoins news
- The credit card arm of major South Korean bank NongHyup (NH) and telecoms giant KT have signed a local stablecoins cooperation deal, per The First Media. KT, one of the nation’s biggest mobile carriers, already operates some of the country’s leading stablecoin projects in conjunction with several local government administrative bodies. The new deal will see local governments co-issue NH Card-branded stablecoin cards, while NH is also reportedly working on a separate local stablecoin project in conjunction with Sejong, a town that has become an administrative hub for central government agencies and ministries.
