Welcome to The Blockchain Report, your daily rundown for the latest in crypto, with your host Taylor Nikolai.
First up, Cryptojacking is on the rise. Cryptojacking is where hackers “hijack” your computing power to mine for crypto. The money is then sent to the hacker without you knowing it happened. During this process, your computer becomes a lot slower, as an app is running in the background without your knowledge. This also uses a lot more power, which you won’t realize until it’s time to pay your electric bill.
The Cyber Threat Alliance states there is 459% this year of this happening. Forbes is reporting that McAfee Labs discovered that something called WebCobra has been infecting computers. Depending on your computer’s architecture, it installs either a Cryptonight miner or Claymore’s Zcash miner.
Make sure you guys have up to date security systems installed on your computer!
Next up, the head of the IMF just praised Bitcoin.
According to BitcoinExchangeGuide, Christine Lagarde, who is the head of the International Monetary Fund (or IMF) said Bitcoin should not be dismissed. She mentioned how the distributed ledger could lead to transactions being faster and cheaper, as well as keeping records more secure. She also mentioned how fewer delays would occur as a result of smart contract tech.
But, she of course she weighed in on the risks. There’s a need to stop tax evasion and fraud, as well as simply protect the stability of the financial system as a whole. That being said, there’s a crucial necessity to not stop innovation from taking place. Regulators need to engage with the market in order to figure out the right approach.
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Everything’s just baby steps right now with blockchain, but they’re baby steps in the right direction.
Next up, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia demonstrated Welfare Payments on Ethereum.
According to ZDNet, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has announced that it is running a trial that will help manage a portion of Australia’s welfare payments using a permissioned Ethereum network. The welfare payments will be for Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
CBA’s head of government Julie Hunter had this to say about the trial: “We’re excited by the potential to enable NDIS participants to exercise greater choice and control over their disability support services, while streamlining budget management and removing the need for paperwork”
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She also stated that the blockchain trial showed that blockchain technology has a wide range of applications for government, non-profit, and business organizations.
Next, 25,000 Metric tons of Russian Wheat sold on the blockchain.
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According to Coingeek, 25,000 metric tons of Russian milling wheat were sold using a smart contract on the Cerealia grain trading platform. This is an especially large amount considering that Cerealia was launched last October 19th. A blog post from the CEO of Cerealia, Andrei Grigorov, states that this was the first-ever transaction for Black Sea grains recorded on the blockchain.
He did mention that although this was the first time a smart contract was used to buy wheat, Bitcoin futures were used last December to pay for 3,000 tons of wheat.
Grigorov also said, “The next stage is to support emerging market traders in their local domestic currencies using fintech.” Along with trading wheat, the Cerealia platform currently allows traders to trade barley, corn, millet, oats, rye, and rice.
And finally on today’s show, XRP is legal and endorsed in Thailand. According to AMBCrypto, the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, stated at a Singapore Fintech conference that Singapore has put in effort to be a leader in the cryptocurrency field. Garlinghouse also praised other countries, stating: “Thailand would be another country that we’ve seen that is expressly and explicitly legalized and endorsed digital assets including XRP. We’ve seen some of that same activity in the Philippines.”
Garlinghouse believes that more regulatory certainty will allow for more innovation and adoption of cryptocurrencies to occur. Garlinghouse said, “Ripple now sees 50 percent of all of our global customers here in the Asian markets, our Singapore office has grown dramatically about 200 percent last year.”
Thanks for watching The Blockchain Report. If you want to stay up to date on all the latest crypto news and trends, be sure to follow us on Instagram, @BlockchainReport. We’ll see you tomorrow.
