Crypto.com is a Visa Program Manager and they issue MCO Visa Cards to customers around the world by partnering with local card issuers — such as collaborating with Metropolitan Commercial Bank in the United States to make cards available to its customers. The business claims to have over 1 million users — of whom not all are cardholders —, and with cards being available to users in Singapore and across the United States, the firm’s eyes are now set on Europe.

“Our vision is ‘cryptocurrency in every wallet’ and to achieve that we started with a financial product the average consumer is most familiar with; the Visa card,” Kris Marszalek, Cofounder and CEO of Crypto.com, tells Business Malta. “The card is linked to a wallet where you can not only buy, exchange, sell or track cryptocurrencies, but you can also satisfy all your banking needs with products that cover savings, investments, and loans. Users can easily convert their crypto to fiat within the wallet and spend it through the MCO Visa Card anywhere Visa is accepted,” the cofounder CEO adds.

The crafted metal card sports no periodical or delivery fee at the time of the publication of the present article. The service offers up to 5% cashback on all spending — local or overseas — up to 100% purchase reimbursement for Spotify and Netflix, and up to 10% purchase rebate on Airbnb and Expedia, according to the company.

Furthermore, the business says that holders of their Visa cards are entitled to free and unlimited airport lounge access, to free ATM monthly withdrawal up to US$1,000 and can earn up to 8% per annum on their crypto investments.

“With this bridge between the fiat and crypto worlds, crypto will finally be able to make an actual impact for everyday consumers in the real world.”

“All in all, we see ourselves as a ‘crypto super app’ that has every aspect relating to crypto covered, at the same time making it easy and not intimidating to people who are new to crypto. Every product we build is designed to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency. With this bridge between the fiat and crypto worlds, crypto will finally be able to make an actual impact for everyday consumers in the real world,” adds Mr Marszalek.

Crypto with KYC

Crypto.com says it is committed to compliance, and as such, they follow know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) guidelines; highly unlikely practices for a vertical that initially used to be stigmatised for its anonymity, as well as for shadow economy having been among the early adopters of Bitcoin — the very first cryptocurrency. Users of Crypto.com services, however, are required to identify themselves upon registration, and they are verified before gaining access to their accounts.

“As a fintech company, we enter markets in a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction process, which means that we must have a deep level of understanding of compliance with each jurisdiction’s local rules and regulations,” the cofounder CEO says.

The company has ISO27001:2013, PCI:DSS 3.2.1, Level 1 and CCSS certifications. As the Mr Marszalek says, the company takes the highest measures to ensure that customers are exposed to top-notch data security and privacy standards. At the end of the day, the company’s services are trusted with the very finances of users.

“We do understand that privacy is of utmost importance to users, which is why Crypto.com is fully General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant, and that our KYC and AML processes have been reviewed by a Big Four* firm to ensure we comply with local rules and regulations. We only retain personal data for as long as necessary, and users also have the option to request us to delete all their data if desired,” Mr Marszalek says.

Pivotal Malta

The company has an office in Malta and are currently in the process of being licensed here. “We are looking to expand our team here next year to focus on compliance and security efforts, as we are gearing up for expansion to Europe. This will be an area that can be spearheaded out of Malta,” Mr Marszelek tells BM.

Malta — that internationally markets itself as the “blockchain island” — is widely considered to have a well-established and thriving technology ecosystem. Having passed blockchain and distributed ledger technologies legislation roughly a year ago, Malta is often seen as a key player in the development of crypto and DLT solutions in the European Union, as well as globally.

“The cryptocurrency industry is going to be tightly regulated in the near future, so there’s plenty of opportunities in compliance and regulatory roles in this space. There is also a tremendous demand for cybersecurity professionals. Crypto.com is committed to working with local institutions to drive education efforts to help nurture local talent and allow it to thrive in the blockchain space,” the cofounder CEO says.

“We believe in giving people the ability to regain control of their money, data and identity via the power of blockchain technology. In order to help mass consumers gain access to crypto, we work hard to ensure our products are fully compliant in each market, which is where the KYC and AML processes come in,” Mr Marszalek underscores.

*EDITORIAL NOTE: On the query of Business Malta, Crypto.com did not disclose whether it is was Deloitte, EY, KPMG or PwC that reviewed its KYC and AML processes as the official public announcement has not yet taken place.

The post Crypto.com marries Visa card with crypto wallet, eyes Malta expansion first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Digital payment has come a long way since Edward Bellamy first conceptualised a card used for payment instead of cash in his utopian novel entitled Looking Backward, published in 1887. When the first bank cards were introduced by the end of the 1960s, people appeared to be reluctant to shift habits and pay with a piece of plastic instead of hard cash. Nowadays, producing, updating and using cash — in some cases — can be costlier than card payments. With the spreading use of non-cash payments, hacking the online systems of banks started pacing out movie-like robberies of brick and mortar branches. Security is of elevated importance today in online finances. The blockchain and crypto world strive to disrupt this space; time will tell if hype can solidify.

Transactions in blockchain systems and the storage of tokens — let them be cryptocurrencies or any data — happen in wallets. The access for these wallets — for enhanced security purposes — is through a long private key of haphazard words or symbols. NGRAVE CEO Ruben Merre believes that, while this is a crucial part of the inherent strength of blockchain technology it also is the Achilles heel of the whole ecosystem, at least for the time being.

“The problem lies in how well private keys are managed and protected. Blockchain is an incredible technology and provides a lot of previously unseen security points. It has at least one big Achilles heel though: the private key(s).”

While private keys are part of the inherent strength of the technology, they are often seen as the single-point-of-failure when we look closer at blockchain wallets. A party that gets its hands on the private key can immediately assume full ownership of the wallet’s contents. Moreover, if one loses the private key to their wallet, they lose access to their funds forever, because of the inherent asymmetric (statistically unbreakable) cryptographic relationship between private key (password) and public key (address).

“Hence, security can be improved by optimising the way private keys are managed and protected. First of all, they should be created offline. That way, no third party can know what the key actually is. After that, the associated addresses — which themselves contain no sensitive data that can be tied back to the private key(s) — can be communicated to an online source,” Mr Merre describes. “It is crucial to be able to sign transactions with the private key, but without exposing the private key to an online connection. If you can do all of this offline, you have a very secure solution.”

Another aspect that needs extra thought is improving the backup procedure of one’s private key. “In today’s crypto space, over 90% of people keep their private key on a piece of paper. Completely paradoxical, considering this new and hot technology called blockchain. It almost feels like going back to the stone age. Yet it is a vast reality,” Mr Merre says. He proposes that the solutions offered by his company might be able to bring peace of mind to this space.

Blockchain hurdles

Whether blockchain and crypto can move beyond its hype is truly in the future yet, hopes are high. Nevertheless, the online space must ante up in general in terms of security, whether we talk about finances or the handling of personal data. Today, regardless of trying to offer greater security, the crypto world is still loud of investment scams and compromised funds. Therefore, distributed ledger technology-based solutions still need to live up to their potential.

“In my opinion, one of the most crucial hurdles today is security. With several million stolen each day from crypto wallets, it is a very real barrier for new investors to join the market and existing players to increase their investment exposure. If we can make investing in crypto more secure, potential new market participants will be less wary of joining in,” Mr Merre weighs in on the troubles the distributed ledger technology-based solutions face.

“If we can make investing in crypto more secure, potential new market participants will be less wary of joining in.”

NGRAVE CEO Ruben Merre

“Another scalability hurdle is the off-chain to on-chain translation. We also know this subject as ‘oracles’. Ultimately, blockchain often translates off-chain events to an online version,” Mr Merre adds. “For example, if you are insured against earthquakes and the smart contract of your insurance determines that as soon as there is a quake of six on the Richter scale you automatically get money on your account. In such a case, where does the consensus come from that actually defines what six on the scale of Richter means? Oracles, or dedicated offline parties oriented towards reaching a consensus on such rules, play an important role. As one can imagine, there is significant complexity in doing this right,” the CEO explains.

At the same time, blockchain evangelists, enthusiasts and experts are all concerned about scalability, i.e. the more people use a blockchain-based system and the more transactions they initiate, the longer the execution of the transaction would take. “This is a scalability challenge, yet many players are having a look at it as we speak. Then there is cross-chain compatibility/interoperability: How do you make two different blockchain infrastructures interact? Another point is the energy consumed by the network to reach consensus / to mine blocks. Here as well, solutions are investigated including Proof of Stake, Proof of Ownership, etc. moving away somewhat from the traditional energy-heavy proof of work consensus algorithm(s). Overall maturity on the developer side is another facet. We are still in the early days of this technology, which also means that we still have to develop a lot of code to make specific applications work. All of this needs to grow, evolve, mature, in order to make it easier and faster to scale. Finally, standardisation is one of the aspects that would likely benefit the overall crypto space greatly,” Mr Merre says.

Eyes on Malta

NGRAVE aspires to offer a breakthrough in cryptosecurity, by enabling users to do every single step of the user journey without ever exposing the private keys. The company says that their solution has been developed in close collaboration with the end user to ensure seamless ease of use.

NGRAVE has recently entered the second phase of their product development and expects to have a fully-functional version soon. “We will then perfect that version up to the very details and make it ready for industrialisation. People will be able to pre-order starting in September 2019. Expanding towards Malta is something that would make the most sense for 2020,” Mr Merre tells BM about their plans.

After stating the obvious attraction points of Malta — the breathtaking culture, beaches and weather — Mr Merre looks deeper into the ecosystem of the island nation, underscoring the supportive and innovative attitude of the tech and blockchain community in here.

“Malta is looking at crypto with a long-term perspective, and therefore set up three major regulatory bills last October to attract more cryptocurrency companies. This by itself shows that Malta is pioneering important frameworks to further foster blockchain adoption,” Mr Merre says.

He backs up his view with companies such as  Binance, Bitbay, OKex having set up a base in Malta. He also takes time to praise the Malta Blockchain & AI Summit for its support. “In short, Malta is an ideal tech and entrepreneurial hub and we are committed to being a part of and developing the ecosystem on this small, but a powerhouse of an island,” the CEO concludes.

The post Managing private keys better can foster more security in crypto first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Therefore, the upgraded system showcases three main elements, which are the Mark Price, the Tiered Maintenance Margin Ratio (TMMR) — in order to avoid liquidation of large positions and its after-effect on market liquidity —, and the Forced Partial Liquidation Mode — introduced to eliminate the market impact caused by a large number of liquidated orders.

In addition, the new risk management system has brought balance to the risks and users’ interests. When at risk, positions will be liquidated closer to the bankruptcy price, allowing users more opportunity to remain solvent and recover from the risks.

OKEx reports an example to demonstrate the performance of the upgraded system, focusing on the bitcoin (BTC) flash crash incident that happened in May 2019. The incident was caused by a BTC5,000 dump at an oddly low price of US$6,200 on other exchange. The massive sell order caused the BTC price plunge from US$7,800 to US$6,100 in only ten minutes and created a short-time arbitrage opportunity, as the press release says.

However, thanks to the OKEx mark price of BTC, which is formed by the market prices from the other five major exchanges, GEMINI, Coinbase, Bitstamp, Kraken, and OKCoin, a price crash in one particular exchange would not cause devastating effects on OKEx markets, the company insists.

During the incident, the enhanced risk management system has demonstrated stabilized the quarterly contract price at around US$7,000 and no clawback took place at OKEx.

The post OKEx launches risk management system 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.

“As environmental problems threaten agriculture and jobs in rural communities decrease, it has become essential to change the way we live and eat and Zoegi believes that the crypto community can lead that change,” the press statement sent to BM says.

Saying that modern agriculture is responsible for one-quarter of pollution that affects habitats around the world threatening biodiversity, Zoegi believes it has become essential to grow organic and improve the world’s food supply.

“We know that we cannot keep living as we do. Something has to change and food production is in the centre of that change. We cannot keep on polluting the planet, taking resources out of small communities the way we do. It’s simply not sustainable,” says Yelena Kensborn, founder of Zoegi.

Utilising blockchain and cryptocurrencies, Zoegi aims to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers, allowing the user to scan every product to see exactly where it comes from.

Having gained traction in Malta with a deal to supply restaurant Caviar and Bull, Zoegi expects to soon close further deals around Europe this year.

Fighting global crisis

The company wants to change the way food is produced and distributed and “to fight the global environmental crisis at the same time as bringing the economic power back to rural, economically deprived areas,” the press statement adds.

Zoegi says that by helping local farming communities they improve the environment with increased organic farming. The startup’s long-term goal is to create a decentralised economy where every community in the world would realise the value of their work and can sell their products to the international market.

Charging in crypto, not fiat, the startup is looking to identify the key influencers in the space who do not just see their crypto tokens as a digital asset to trade on an exchange but are looking at them as a means towards an independent economy, the press statement says. The team believes that this will make the public think of crypto as it was originally intended; a means to trade independently of a central authority and fix the problems of existing systems.

“The Mediterranean is the original hub for trading. Here, deals were made between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Because of this, it has always been open to new currencies, and millions of different coins have passed the ports of Malta. It is, therefore, not surprising, that Malta has been the most prominent player in the crypto scene, with a clear eye to the future and where the world is heading,” the startup concludes in the press statement.

The post Startup Zoegi to use blockchain for supporting agribusinesses first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“Poor regulation enables corruption to flourish,” the Nauticus chief says, directing special attention to Pyramid and Ponzi schemes. “Unregulated exchanges are often hacked or shut down without returning the funds of users,” the chief warns.

Nauticus, however, mentions in its press statement that a handful of countries, including Switzerland, Malta and Australia, have embraced “well-designed regulations” for encouraging innovation while also protecting users.

“Verifying every user helps to fight corruption and criminality, and not only protects the business but protects our users themselves from fraudulent practices,” says Jonathan Chang, Chief Operating Officer of Nauticus, underscoring the gravity of know-your-customer (KYC) protocols.

Melbourne’s Nauticus Exchange is a digital financial marketplace offering 17 currencies and the Australian dollar. Nauticus is registered with the Australian Government’s AUSTRAC as a Digital Currency Exchange and an Independent Remittance Dealer. Headquartered in Melbourne, the company is a registered representative of an Australian Financial Services Licensee enabling it to tokenise assets in the form of security token offerings.

The post Nauticus CEO says good legislation can protect users from scams first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

With their initiative, XDAT aspires to create a new wave of cryptocurrency adoption among users. “A bullwhip initiates a ripple effect, and in XDAT’s case this would be the first step towards achieving their vision of ‘Crypto for All’,” the company says.

XDAT’s new movement wishes to build a community where users earn while trading. If a user, for example, becomes a “Node” and helps XDAT propagate the movement by adding new users through their referral link, they will receive Community Token (XCTY) when they achieve €1,000 cumulative trading from their referred users, in return for their participation. A “Node” can earn incentives of up to €2,000 through KYC [know-your-customer] and transaction incentives, by encouraging participation on the platform.

“In this bearish market, crypto needs as many ambassadors as we can gather to increase participation in this space,” said Prashanth Swaminathan, Founder and CEO of XDAT. “To manifest this belief, XDAT is investing over €1m to create the world’s largest inclusive crypto ecosystem. Through this initiative, we want to create a positive wave that leads to an amplified nature of adoption and trading,” he added.

XDAT stands for Exchange of Digital Assets with Trust, a global cryptocurrency trading exchange that allows users to transact fiat-to-crypto-to-fiat and also crypto-to-crypto. Based in Malta, XDAT hosts bitcoin, ether, litecoin, ether classic, bitcoin cash, EOS, ripple, dash, TrueUSD, and euro. XDAT is the creation of Prashanth Swaminathan, an investment banker who spent over a decade with Morgan Stanley London.

The post Malta’s XDAT launches Bullwhip Movement first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The USD Coin is an ERC20 Ethereum protocol token, which means that it is classified as non-mineable, with the total supply capped at USDC 215,193,466, the press statement adds.

“USD Coin (USDC) is a stablecoin (currency designed to minimise price volatility) representing a value of 1 US Dollar (USD) per coin. USD Coin is a faster, safer solution for active crypto trading and better alternative to international wire transfers in US Dollars. It’s also a great way to make deposits on a cryptocurrency exchange, as USDC takes mere moments while maintaining a great level of security,” BitBay says.

BitBay was created in 2014 in Katowice, Poland. At the beginning of 2016, the company started working on the BitBay 3.0 version of the platform, extending its team to 70 people. In 2018, the company announced to have decided to suspend the activity of BitBay exchange in Poland and moved to Malta, tagging the latter’s jurisdiction as “cryptocurrency friendly”.

The post BitBay lists its first stablecoin USDC 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.

The most common criminal activity last year comprise of theft from cryptocurrency exchanges. Hackers stole more than $950m (€840m+), a 3.6 times growth as compared to 2017, the report finds.

Users and investors also fell for fraudulent ICOs, phoney exchange hacks, and Ponzi schemes in 2018, losing at least $725m (€640m+) in cryptocurrency. “A cryptocurrency exit scam is a confidence game where the promoters of a cryptocurrency ICO or other venture fails to execute — or executives of exchanges say they cannot return users’ assets — and then abscond with the money. This finding indicates that a new breed of cybercriminals is shifting their techniques from hacking to insider jobs,” the press release announcing the report says.

Despite the downturn in the prices of many cryptocurrencies, the total American dollar value of falsified tokens was higher in 2018 than the preceding year. According to the report, this talks of the sophistication of cybercriminals, as well as the increasing need for better online security.

The report also compiles the coming wave of global regulatory enforcement and emerging money laundering schemes “By 2020 most modern economies — including the US, EU and G20 as well as Gibraltar, Bermuda and Malta — will have deployed strict cryptocurrency AML and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations,” the press statement says. However, the report notes that cryptocurrency laundering activities can bypass these regulations by obscuring the source of funds with new and innovative money mixers, unregulated crypto-to-exchanges, and privacy coins.

“Cryptocurrency criminal activity continues to evolve and accelerate. Fortunately, pending global legislation will hamstring many criminals, global gangs, and terrorist groups by greatly reducing their opportunities to launder,” says Dave Jevans, CEO of CipherTrace and co-chair of the Cryptocurrency Working Group at the APWG.org. “These tough new laws will drive bad actors to not only innovate but also flock to jurisdictions with weak regulatory oversight, as we have shown in earlier research. CipherTrace’s blockchain intelligence and anti-money laundering technology helps exchanges, financial services firms, regulators, and law enforcement work together to create trust in the crypto ecosystem,” he adds.

CipherTrace develops cryptocurrency anti-money laundering, cryptocurrency forensics, and blockchain threat intelligence solutions. Its CipherTrace Cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering Report is published quarterly. CipherTrace was founded in 2015 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs involved in cybersecurity, eCrime, payments, banking, encryption, and virtual currencies. The US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology (S&T) and DARPA initially funded CipherTrace, and it is backed by leading Silicon Valley venture capital investors.

The post Crypto scams, theft increase in 2018, says AML report first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.