Mr Chao joins Binance to oversee its global strategy, ranging from the company’s venture capital (VC) arm, Binance Labs, to its strategic fiat-to-crypto gateways, including the creation of new partnerships and banking relationships.

“We are thrilled to welcome Gin as our latest leadership hire to strengthen our business ventures and strategy across our global ecosystem,” said CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ). “He will play a key role in driving our strategic business goals that span across the globe, and we are confident that he will help realize new avenues of opportunities alongside the core executive team.”

Mr Chao brings an extensive background of developing and managing strategic investment opportunities as well as overseeing cross-regional business growth opportunities in Asia and the US.

As former Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at the National Basketball Association (NBA), Chao led new asset and investment opportunities, including scalable business models, and will leverage his previous experience for Binance.

“I am honoured to be joining CZ and the team during this incredibly exciting time for the industry,” said Gin Chao, Strategy Officer at Binance. “I’ve followed the growth of the senior executives at Binance over the years and it’s a testament to CZ’s vision and leadership to have formed such a talented and accomplished group. I’m looking forward to working with the team on building and providing sustainable blockchain-based services that accelerate cryptocurrency adoption and support our overall mission.”

The post Binance names new strategy officer first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The signing ceremony marks the exponential growth of the Binance for Children initiative, according to the company. In fact, the first pilot project called “Binance Lunch for Children”, kicked off at Jolly Mercy Learning Center at Kampala, Uganda, in February 2019,

By the end of May 2019, Binance for Children had reached 3,990 children, and that number is constantly increasing, given the increase in children going back to school thanks to this simple act of providing food, according to the press release.

Gume Fredrick Ngobi, Minister of State for Cooperatives in Uganda, said that the project would contribute to the government’s efforts towards the achievement of the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) 2 indicator on quality education, having achieved the national MDG 2 indicator on access to education after introducing universal education at both primary and secondary levels.

“The adoption of blockchain and crypto in charity is not as easy as many people might think,” said Athena Yu, Executive Director of Binance Blockchain Charity Foundation (BCF), during the signing ceremony, “We are inspired by the Ugandan government, which is willing to work closely with us to explore various possibilities in blockchain-enabled solutions for children’s education and health. Together, we will enhance this new way of charitable giving with more transparency and sustainability.”

BCF is honoured to work with the government of Uganda in using blockchain and cryptocurrency to provide better transparency and efficiency throughout the traditional charity processes. The organisation is grateful for the government’s acceptance and enthusiasm for blockchain-powered philanthropy.

BCF Executive Director Athena Yu and the Safe Future CEO Mula Anthony said that the Binance for Children project will be responsible for project implementation and will ensure the delivery of meals, solar panels, sanitary pads, school supplies, LED screens, and other items to 160 schools in Uganda.

The post Binance signs MoU with Ugandan NGO first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“We are excited to finally launch Binance.US and bring the security, speed, and liquidity of Binance.com to North America,” said Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance. “Binance.US will be led by our local partner BAM and will serve the U.S. market in full regulatory compliance.”

BAM Trading Services will support Binance.US to launch, with a focus on the trading of mainstream cryptocurrencies with liquidity.

“It is an honour to partner with Binance to launch the U.S. extension of Binance, leveraging its tier-one security and technology in tandem,” said a representative from BAM Trading Services. “We are committed to providing a secure and compliant platform, and beginning the start of a fruitful alliance with Binance.”

The post Binance partners with BAM to launch US exchange first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

After the API keys have been removed in full, API users can choose to recreate their API keys now to receive the full functionality of API usage going forward, Binance said. These newly created API keys will not be removed, the press statement added.

Hackers withdrew 7,000+ bitcoin (BTC) — worth of more than €36m — and obtained a large number of user API keys, 2FA codes, and potentially other information through a large scale security breach on Malta-based digital asset exchange Binance’s platform.

Hacker(s) appear shuffling funds

After the hacker(s) stole the funds, 1,214 BTC was moved to new addresses, followed by another 1,337 BTC moved to two new addresses, according to the Twitter feed of blockchain services company Coinfirm that monitors the movement of the funds.

Given the transparent nature of the bitcoin blockchain, transactions are easy to follow, however it difficult to perform real forensics on the wallets in order to understand who — or what — created them, according to a report by online crypto daily Coindesk.

Citing crypto journalist Amy Castor, Coindesk writes that the compromised funds are most probably being broken up and transferred to several wallets in smaller amounts to make tracking of the transactions more difficult.

The post Binance blocks APIs after breach while hacker(s) shuffle stolen funds first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The breach was discovered May 7, 2019 at 17:15:24 (UTC), caused by hackers using a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses and other attacks.

Binance says all the 7,000+ bitcoin was compromised in one transaction, being the only affected transaction. “It impacted our BTC hot wallet only (which contained about 2% of our total BTC holdings). All of our other wallets are secure and unharmed,” the press statement says.

“The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time. The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed. Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that,” the press statement adds.

Binance said after the incident that they will conduct a thorough security review, which will include all parts of their systems and data. The review should take a week, according to Binance’s estimates. During this period, deposits and withdrawals will need to remain suspended. “We beg for your understanding in this difficult situation,” Binance says. Trading remains enabled, though.

“Please also understand that the hackers may still control certain user accounts and may use those to influence prices in the meantime. We will monitor the situation closely. But we believe with withdrawals disabled, there isn’t much incentive for hackers to influence markets. In this difficult time, we strive to maintain transparency and would be appreciative of your support,” the Binance press release says.

The post Hackers steal BTC 7,000+ from Binance, exchange promises to recover lost funds first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The most recent introduction comes as part of Binance’s mission to become a crypto wallet app of choice for using the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world by market cap, the press statement says.

In addition, Trust Wallet has launched support for four more cryptocurrencies: Aion (AION), Kin (KIN), Nimiq (NIM) and Thunder Token. Here are more details about these additions.

The post Binance’s crypto wallet adds Stellar Lumens first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“As part of Trust Wallet’s ongoing commitment to privacy projects, we have integrated Zcoin and Zcash to build on our larger mission for the cryptocurrency community to benefit from their unique privacy features,” the blog entry says.

Zcoin’s integration follows Trust Wallet’s acquisition from leading global cryptocurrency exchange, Binance last year. Since then, Trust Wallet has developed its integration for the launch of Binance Chain and its corresponding decentralised exchange (DEX) to provide the first native decentralised wallet for DEX and support the new native Binance coin (BNB) on Binance Chain.

“Privacy is one of our core values, as it is an inherent human right and should be maintained to preserve personal rights and dignity. For us, it is very important to support as many privacy feature coins as possible, so our users can have the power to make there own choices,” says Trust Wallet Founder Viktor Radchenko. “Our initial release of Zcoin will allow sending and receiving functionality with plans to support the Zerocoin protocol in the near future and therefore providing the highest level of privacy for our users,” he adds.

Zcoin is the privacy coin which first pioneered the use of the Zerocoin Protocol, and is the first to implement Merkle Tree Proofs on its network for egalitarian mining, as well as the Dandelion protocol which protects user identities by obscuring their IP addresses.

“We are excited to bring Zcoin to Trust Wallet users everywhere, ” says Reuben Yap, COO of Zcoin. “One of Zcoin’s goals is to deeply embed ourselves into the crypto ecosystem and make our coins easy to store and use where Trust Wallet aligns. We are looking forward to adding more integrations as Trust Wallet is the native decentralised wallet for Binance’s DEX and excited about their support for Zcoin and other privacy coins, and for Zcoin to be among the first non-Ethereum based coins to be added to the wallet,” he adds.

Zcoin (XZC) is an open source, decentralised privacy coin that focuses on achieving privacy and anonymity for its users while transacting on the blockchain. It is the first full implementation of the Zerocoin Protocol, which allows users to have complete privacy over their transactions via zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs.

Trust Wallet is the official wallet of Binance. Trust provides a secure wallet to send, receive and store digital assets, and its built-in dApp browser can be used to communicate with dApps and trade crypto and collectables directly from a smartphone or tablet.

Binance was launched in July 2017 and is based in Malta.

The post Binance’s Trust Wallet adds Zcoin support first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“Binance DEX is a decentralised exchange with a decentralised network of nodes, where you hold your private keys and manage your wallet,” says Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance. “With Binance DEX, we provide a different balance of security, freedom, and ease-of-use, where you take more responsibility and are in more control of your assets,” he adds.

Binance Chain is a new blockchain and peer-to-peer distributed system developed by Binance and the community. Binance says DEX is a secure and native marketplace built on its blockchain, allowing the exchange of digital assets that are issued and listed on the DEX. “Matching happens within the blockchain nodes, and all transactions are recorded on-chain, forming a complete, auditable ledger of activity,” the press statement says.

Binance Coin (BNB), currently an ERC20 token, will be migrated to Binance Chain to become the native asset. Traders will be able to issue, send and receive new tokens on the blockchain, and also propose new trading pairs to list.

“Binance Chain has near-instant transaction finality, with one-second block times. This is faster than other blockchains today,” says Mr Zhao, noting that ether takes about 20 seconds and bitcoin averages 10 minutes for network confirmations, with the possibility of rollbacks that do not occur on Binance Chain. “With the core Binance Chain technology, Binance DEX can handle the same trading volume as Binance.com is handling today. This solves the issues many other decentralised exchanges face with speed and power,” the CEO says.

Binance DEX was announced to support proven secure and decentralised software and hardware wallets. Binance says that its Trust Wallet is fully integrated with the DEX, as well as the Ledger Nano S. The company says more wallets are planned to be supported over time.

“We’re working toward decentralised accessibility to cryptocurrency,” says Viktor Radchenko, Founder of Binance’s Trust Wallet. “We want users to have full control over their private keys, and easy access to decentralised applications, to maximise the potential and mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency. Binance DEX is one step further to realising our vision for greater freedom of money,” Mr Radchenko adds.

Binance was launched in July 2017 and is based in Malta.

The post Binance launches DEX Testnet first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.