Author: Donald Munn
Cryptocurrencies are increasingly the focus of attention in Italy. The fight against tax evasion and money laundering After the signing of the decree imposing registration in the OAM register and a series of obligations to periodically report data on transactions and customers to be borne by basically any operator dealing with cryptocurrencies, in the guiding act of the MEF for the achievement of the fiscal policy objectives for the year 2022 – 2024, one of the declared priorities is to focus on cryptocurrencies, in order to fight evasion. The document reads verbatim: “to identify, also drawing on the experience of…
BlockFi, the famous platform for the management of loans of digital assets, has closed a few days ago an agreement with the SEC, the regulator of the American stock exchange, for a dispute that arose regarding the sale of a crypto lending instrument. The company will pay a large fine. SEC vs BlockFi: fine for crypto loans In addition to paying a $100 million penalty, BlockFi will remove the product that is the subject of the legal dispute with the SEC from the market. “This is the first case of its kind with respect to crypto lending platforms”, said SEC…
A few days ago, renowned hacker Jay Freeman, aka Saurik, discovered a dangerous bug in the nano payment protocol used by Ethereum’s second layer Optimism. Last week, I discovered (and reported) a critical bug (which has been fully patched) in @optimismPBC (a "layer 2 scaling solution" for Ethereum) that would have allowed an attacker to print arbitrary quantity of tokens, for which I won a $2,000,042 bounty. https://t.co/J6KOlU8aSW — Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) February 10, 2022 The bug on Optimism, Ethereum’s second layer Exploiting the bug would have allowed a malicious user to create unlimited amounts of tokens. Saurik decided…
Meta (Facebook’s current name), has been sent a heavy envelope from the state of Texas filing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the violation of privacy and the misuse of Texans’ biometric data in connection with facial recognition. According to Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texans have been harmed for profit by the company. Facebook’s use of facial recognition Until November of last year (the date on which the service was closed down), Facebook had been using artificial intelligence linked to people’s biometrics on a massive scale for about a decade, through the use of tags, i.e. the indication of a person to…
With the weekend that has just ended, the black week of the stock exchanges has come to an end, but what led to a trasversal collapse of the stock market? Let’s see it together. The reasons for the stock market crash The Fed has communicated the value of the Consumer Price Index, or the average increase in prices of a basket of goods and services of large-scale and daily consumption established by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) compared to the same period of the previous year; in essence, the CPI is what we commonly call inflation. The figure released…
The tension between Russia and Ukraine is always sky-high, but this time a physical war could be flanked or replaced by a cyberwar. Russia, Ukraine, and cyberwar The risk has been feared by the European Central Bank, as reported by Reuters. But a similar warning would have also arrived from the Department of Financial Services of New York. The fear is that, in case of an invasion of Ukraine and retaliation by Europe and the United States, Russia could start cyberattacks directed to the US and the EU banks. For this reason, the banks would be making tests to verify…
The week that is drawing to a close has been crucial for the entire global equity sector and the American one in particular. With inflation at 7.5% and rising according to all analysts (government and non-government), the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 crashed. In this context, which entails a smoky vision that is certainly not reassuring for the future, due in part to the energy crisis and tensions between the USA, China, and Russia, some stocks are going against the tide, such as Disney and shares in the banking sector. Banks resist the winds of crisis At least for the…
Yesterday, when the news began to circulate that Meta had threatened the closure of Facebook and Instagram in Europe, many suspected that it was a bluff or even a hoax. Meta’s denial The official denial followed promptly, as Meta has stated explicitly in an official note that at present there are no plans to close Facebook and Instagram in Europe. The note, however, adds that there are some concerns. European privacy laws worry Meta Why Facebook and Instagram risk closure in Europe In fact, the company, which also owns WhatsApp, reports that it is monitoring the potential impact of the…
A few days ago, the official Twitter Support profile publicly announced that in the future both Web users of the platform, as well as iOS and Android users, will have the ability to use downvoting of responses. We learned a lot about the types of replies you don't find relevant and we're expanding this test –– more of you on web and soon iOS and Android will have the option to use reply downvoting. Downvotes aren’t public, but they'll help inform us of the content people want to see. https://t.co/g8LcTpQqDv pic.twitter.com/wm5MmdR4Xh — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 3, 2022 Downvoting on…
The Justice Committee of the US Senate approved on Thursday its second bill on technological competition, highlighting the issue concerning Apple and Google app stores and the restrictions imposed on developers. The work of the US Congress threatens to cause problems for big tech, Google and Apple in particular. The Open App Markets Act The vote pushes forward the process of the Open App Markets Act, which if approved could change many of the rules of the app stores of the big tech giants such as Google and Apple, creating many problems for a business that is constantly growing and…