Bank of China, one of the four largest banks in the country, will increase its research and development budget for fintech projects, including blockchain.?<!–more–>

Liu Qiuwan, the chief information officer of Bank of China announced plans to increase spending for technological research with blockchain as one of the key points.

He noted that BoC’s investment in this areas will reportedly be more than 1 percent of the bank’s operating annual income, which in?the fiscal year 2017 was 483.7 billion yuan ($70.9 trillion). Currently, Bank of China has been applying technology in the pilot blockchain of 12 projects, mainly focusing on data sharing, cross-border payment, digital currency, digital bills, etc. according to the statistics of the global blockchain enterprise patent rankings in 2017. Bank of China has 11 patent applications for blockchain, ranking 20th in the global business and ranking first in the domestic banking industry

It should be noted that according to International Data Corporation (IDC), blockchain technology? research? funding will reach 11,7 billion USD by 2022.

Cory Fields, Bitcoin Core developer of MIT Media Labs, revealed a critical vulnerability in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) code in April. About this he wrote a post on the blog platform Medium.?

According to the developer, this vulnerability could lead to fatal consequences for the fourth on the capitalization of the cryptocurrency. Despite the fact that the vulnerability was revealed several months ago, the developer only recently decided to make this information public.

He stated that the error could serve as a reason for separating blockchain into two incompatible chains, as well as making it impossible to carry out transactions. The Bitcoin Cash team rewrote part of the transaction confirmation code. However, in the new code, a critical error was made – it did not check a certain bit in the signature type. The vulnerability pointed out by Filsom as SIGHASH_BUG.

First Fields decided to let Bitcoin Cash developers know. However, he also thought that the usual channels of communication can lead to the leakage of information about the vulnerability, as well as its falling into the hands of scammers. He created anonymous channel GitHub through Tor and contacted BCH developers requesting a confidential method of communication.

At the end he suggested to developers to join forces to improve current tools, rules and procedures to avoid this situations in the future.

The information about the bug was spread very fast and caused the same questions about the open source code? as before.

Earlier ForkLog reported that Bitcoin Cash developers activity went down to critical level.? It should be reminded that the next? BCH update is taking place in November this year, according to the road map.

Only 10% of the transactions have illegal roots. Bloomberg reports it with the reference to Lilita Infante, special agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.?

This information clearly runs counter to the opinion that cryptocurrencies? are used only by the criminals.

According to Infante, the Administration started to keep an eye on Bitcoin? five years ago when 90% of Bitcoin transactions were handled by criminals. Right now the number of fraudulent transactions is 10%.

However, it doesn’t mean that criminals stopped usig it at all. Starting with 2013 the number of illegal transactions online went up due to the increase in deals cut in the network.

British police also uses Bitcoin for its own purposes. In criminal investigation of criminal group who? was accused of drug dealing and money laundering, British police confiscated 295 Bitcoins and sold it.

Police can keep 18,8% of the money they got for their operational costs.

A 22-year-old Finnish man called Aarni Otava Saarimaa lost a total of 5,564.4 bitcoins (worth roughly 24 million dollars at the time) to scammers in Thailand.?According to Bangkok Post, several a group approached and solicited Finnish businessman Aarni Otava Saarimaa in June 2017 over investment in several Thai stocks, a casino in Macau and a new cryptocurrency called Dragon Coin.?

The group of fraudsters had at one point brought Saarimaa to a Macao casino in order to convince him the Dragon Coins would be used there.?Saarimaa, who bought into the scheme, transferred a total of 5,564 bitcoins to the group, the report indicted.

Having seen no returns months after the investment, Saarimaa filed a complaint to Thailand’s Crime Suppression Division (CSD) in January, together with his local business partner who believed the investment plan was a scam. Although it is unclear when the group sold the bitcoin assets, the CSD said the fraudsters made off with nearly 800 million baht, or around $24 million.

The group of fraudsters, which the police believe numbers nine people, allegedly includes Thai actor Jiratpisit ‘Boom’ Jaravijit, who was arrested in July, and two of his siblings, one of which has left the country and probably hiding in the USA.? The siblings face money laundering charges and, potentially, fraud charges.

It’s worth noting that according to the US Federal Trade Commission (FRC), investors are going to lose $3 billion due to scammers by the end of the year.

Any Price Above $6000 Support Level ‘Remains Positive to Our Eyes for Future Price, says Rivemont Investments, which manages the Rivemont Crypto Fund (the?“only actively managed cryptocurrency fund in Canada”), in a note to?investors posted on Facebook, discussed Bitcoin’s recent price action, and stressed?the importance of the BTC price staying above the $6,000 support level.?

The Fund analysts, made a conclusion that investors were pretty calm during August 2-9.? The market is extremely sensitive? when it comes to the news about Bitcoin-ETF. The authors of the report quote what Dan Morehead, CEO of the Pantera Cryptocurrency Fund, says, one could even call the market players’ reactions exaggerated. This reality may be due to a lack of understanding of the complexity of introducing such a financial product, or to the large number of projects currently under study by SEC.

Much more positive news was virtually ignored in comparison to the reaction created by these ETF projects. Indeed, ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced the creation of its cryptocurrency platform named Bakkt last Friday. The company is working with Microsoft to put this new ecosystem for digital assets in place. Strategic partnerships with BCG and Starbucks have already been signed. After the rapid correction of the last two weeks, a rebound that could be described as technical rather than fundamental is predictable. This is also the action we can observe since Thursday. It is too early to know if this will translate into a rebound on the strong support around $ 6,000, or if it is only a temporary relief from the current trend.

It goes without saying that the support around $ 6,000 is crucial. A period of consolidation is normal and even desirable after the incredible rise seen in 2017. Any price above this threshold remains positive to our eyes for future price action.

The “technical” rebound Rivemont talked about seems to be in progress, with Bitcoin currently well above that “crucial” $6,000 support level; at press time, BTC is trading at?$6,475, up 2.17% in the past 24-hour period, according to data from CryptoCompare.

Squire Mining Ltd. recently announced the closing of a non-brokered private placement equity financing of Canadian $25,500,000 to fund the developing, manufacturing, and selling data mining infrastructure and system technology.?

By the end of the fourth quarter of 2018, Squire Mining Ltd? developers are going to finish design, development, testing, and mass production of the initial next generation application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips, as well as a mining rig for mining Bitcoin.

In March, Squire Mining Ltd entered into a binding agreement with Peter Kim to form the company that will focus in the development of 10 nm ASIC chips. The company is going to initiate the sale of bitcoin and crypto-mining systems as well as developing its own mining facilities.

According to the company, by the end of 2018 crypto market might attract almost $1 trillion and over $10 trillion by 2030.

It’s worth noting that Canaan Creative company presented AvalonMiner A9 mining hardware with 7nm chip and 30 Th/s hash rate.

Chief strategy officer of blockchain company Blockstream Samson Mow published documentation for potential investors of the largest manufacturer of mining equipment Bitmain. It turned out that the company sold most of its bitcoins and significantly increased its position on Bitcoin Cash.?

Given the ongoing deep correction in the digital currency market, Bitmain could have lost nearly half a billion US dollars due to the decline of the BCH rate over the past three months. The documentation for possible IPO participants includes the average price of BCH – $869 (March 31). According to CoinMarketCap, as of 10: 27 UTC, on August 13, the average asset rate was $587.

Mow stressed that the upcoming IPO Bitmain is very risky for investors, as the company purchased BCH, without even knowing about the critical vulnerability in the protocol, which was discovered by Bitcoin Core developer Cory Fields.

Samson Mow also noted that potential investors were only shown the performance of the first quarter, when Bitmain’s profit had amounted to $1 billion. He believes that results of the second quarter are being concealed on purpose because of the significant losses as a result of increasing positions in Bitcoin Cash and drop of Antminer S9 price by 85%.

Mow estimates Bitmain’s potential losses in the second quarter at $600-$700 million. He says that if the price of bitcoin remains at current levels, the situation for the company will only get worse, because they have already ordered a huge batch of semiconductor materials from TSMC.

A little later, Mow wrote that there was a possibility that all profits for the first quarter had gone to cover the losses of the second.

A twitter user under the name Crypto Herpes Cat published an article in which he explained that, the company would not be able to get rid of BCH after March 31, because the market of this asset is illiquid, and OTC transactions are insignificant.

Holding a major IPO, in his opinion, is the only way for the company to improve its position at the expense of investors who should not find out that Bitmain’s assets in the current market situation are extremely illiquid.

Crypto Herpes Cat also suggested that Jihan Wu had seen opportunities in the cryptocurrency market in the near future, and that a new round of growth could begin in the run-up to the IPO.

A well-known crypto-enthusiast Whale Panda published the full documentation of the company for potential IPO participants. However, it is available only in Chinese.

Recall, Bitmain intends to raise $18 billion in the IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange, after which the company’s capitalization can reach $40-$50 billion.

Companies and residents of Vietnam have stopped importing mining equipment in accordance with the order of the Ministry of Finance. The decree of the Ministry was supported by the Central Bank of Vietnam. This is reported by the local newspaper Viet Nam News.?

The first reports that the Ministry of Finance wants to forbit import of mining equipment appeared in early summer. At that time, the agency said that the crypto-industry was hard to regulate and that there were frequent cases of fraud. The official ban on the import of mining equipment has been in effect since July.

According to the Ministry of Finance, for the six months of 2018 more than 3.5 thousand units of equipment have been imported in Vietnam. Of these, three thousand devices were bought by four mining companies. Basically, these are the ASIC-miners Antminer from the Chinese giant Bitmain.

Recall, since January 1 the decision of the Central Bank of Vietnam to ban the issue and use of bitcoin as a means of payment came into force.

According to Yuri Gugnin, the Chinese authorities show interest in cryptocurrencies, but act with discretion in this matter.?

The People’s Bank of the country is studying the possibility of legalizing digital money and holds consultations with experts on this issue.

Gugnin stressed that the Chinese government is going towards the legalization of the market. The authorities of the country understand that digital money can no longer be ignored.

Recall that in September 2017, China banned trading cryptocurrencies and conducting ICOs. Then the government started blocking online platforms and mobile applications for working with digital money. They try to get miners out of business.

Earlier it became known that the state agency, which is responsible for censorship in Chinese media, opened a vacancy of a cryptographer with experience in the field of blockchain. Its description is published on the website of the department.

Why this is important

The Chinese government is not against digital money, it understands that this is outside investments and a chance for companies to enter the international market. But since the Chinese economy is too large, they have to take a wait-and-see position.

Recently, the developers of ZenCash reported that the number of nodes of this cryptocurrency focused on increased privacy reached 17,000. According to them, this makes the ZenCash network the largest and most decentralized.?

For comparison, the bitcoin network is currently represented by 9612 nodes. Most of them are located in the United States.

According to the developers of ZenCash, a large number of nodes makes the network more secure, as well as resistant to failures, attacks and other malicious effects. They also believe that the number of nodes is more important than the amount of hash power.

The developers note that recently the team has been actively working on the development of the platform’s ecosystem. The project participants have conducted several surveys among the community and have also carefully analyzed the market and its competitors.

In the future, the ZenCash team will focus on supporting the network and working products, countering “51% attacks”, and developing side-chain solutions.

A few days ago, a mandatory update of the Super Node software was conducted.

ZenCash is a fork of the more famous cryptocurrency Zcash. With a capitalization of only $88 million, it currently ranks 74th in the Coinmarketcap ranking.

Recall that in April, the Digital Currency Group added ZenCash to an investment portfolio.

Barbados-based fintech startup Bitt Inc. has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Central Bank of Cura?ao and Sint Maarten (CBCS) to research the possibility of issuing a digital guilder, according to an August 12 press release.

The purpose of the partnership is the study designed to determine the viability and functionality of using a central bank-issued digital guilder within the financial ecosystems of each member, and across both members of the monetary union. The parties announced that they were focused on KYC/AML testing.
The CBCS recognizes the transformative potential of innovation and technology and is committed to exploring solutions regarding efficiency of cross-jurisdictional transactions and digital payments whilst ensuring compliance and security assurances obtained by these state of the art (fintech) solutions. This would be beneficial to everyone.
Earlier, Bitt received additional investment of $3 million from Medici Ventures.
In 2016, Bitt created digital blockchain based Barbados dollar that was supported by the central bank of the country and was included in bitcoin wallet.

Mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain presented two new types of Wi-Fi routers for cryptocurrency mining designed with X11 algorithms (Dash) and blake2b (Siacoin).

As soon as the router is on, mining process starts in one of the biggest mining pools in the world — Antpool. Router that is set to blake2b will mine Siacoin on 11.54 GH/s, consuming 22.6 W of energy while X11 router mines Dash on 300 MH/s consuming 24.37 W of energy. Users can set their routers for mining other cryptocurrency based on these algorithms but performance will be worse in this case.

The cryptocurrency mining router is not the first time a common piece of household technology has been turned into a cryptocurrency mining rig. Canaan, the second largest manufacturer of crypto mining equipment, has created a TV that mines cryptocurrency. A French company, Qarnot, has produced a cryptocurrency mining rig which acts as a heater. This might not really be anything new though, since all cryptocurrency mining equipment generates a lot of heat.

American cryptocurrency company Coinbase announced in the blog that fees for index fund management are going down from 2% to 1% on an annual basis.

According to Coinbase representatives, the decision was taken in order to attract investors who invest their money into other index funds based on different assets. The company believes that will attract institutional investors into crypto industry.

It was also noted that Coinbase index fund was rebalanced and Ethereum Classic was included. The company states that they will continue adding new types of assets (right now they provide only 5 types of assets).

Coindbase index fund allows the US accredited investors to invest their funds into the most liquid crypto assets depending on their market capitalization. The minimum investment is $250 thousand and the maximum amount if $20 million.

We note that last week, Ethereum Classic bidding has started on Coinbase Pro crypto exchange.

Perhaps the most common scam in the history of cryptocurrency is the “free crypto” scam. In these massive, yet simple, schemes, scammers convince victims to send Ethereum or Bitcoin to the scammer’s account, often with the promise that they will send back the amount, plus a hefty bonus. It’s a simple variation of an age-old scam, such as the Nigerian Prince scam, where a trapped “prince needs money to escape jail and will pay back the victim and give them a percentage of his wealth.

Cryptocurrency evangelist and YouTuber Adam Guerbuez ran into the popular “Free ETH Giveaway” scam on Twitter. However, he took the chance to ask the scammer a few questions.

While the information is unverified, the scammer has claimed that they manage to collect between $50,000 and $100,000 every day.

The majority of the process is automated and the outrageous amount of money is also made in a fairly simple manner.

Well, the process from generating accounts, to tweeting to rotating ETH wallet address is all done automatic by our bots. The only manual process is cashing out.

The interesting part is, conmen don’t even purchase verified (blue-ticked) Twitter accounts.

The conman said that people, whom he refers to as “mooches”, would send their ETH to any account, regardless of whether it’s verified or not.

Recently Duo Security researchers studied 88 million accounts on Twitter and found botnet that consisted of 15 000 bots divided inro 3 categories in order to promote their offers.

During the first half of 2018 the crypto market crashed and Bitcoin lost 3 times its value while Ethereum lost 4,7 times its value. It’s well known that the wide majority of ICO projects accept investments in Ethereum because it provides high demand for cryptocurrency but at the same time it causes problem when people start selling it. That’s what is happening right now.

Within the last month ICO startups sold 100 000 Ethereum coins that equals $40 million. Atonomi wallet sold 12 000 ETH, AppCoins — 8400 ЕТН. It’s worth noting that some projects don’t sell Ethereum but simply transfer it to new addresses. Nevertheless, Ethereum lost 40% of it’s value and hit a new minimum of 2018 — $300.
Not only Ethereum loses its positions due to high selling rates. Last week, the owner of giant Ripple account sold 10 million XR.