News from Cryptopia: As announced by the Bitcoin exchange via Twitter, the website will be launched next Monday, 4 March. In a series of updates, the social media team also announced the damage height of the hack. Thus, the attackers could steal up to 9.4 percent of total assets.

On January 15, it was announced that the New Zealand Bitcoin Exchange Cryptopia had fallen victim to an attack. Since then, BTC-ECHO is constantly reporting on the latest developments in the matter. Also today, Thursday, February 28, there are updates.

After the analysis company Elementus brought light into the darkness about the possible amount of damage, even Cryptopia itself seems to make no secret of the scope of the attack. As the New Zealand Exchange said on February 27 on the short message service Twitter, “in the worst case, up to 9.4 percent of total assets have been stolen.” You should now keep an eye on the website for further updates.

 update:
”  We are continuing to assess the impact of the hack in January. Currently, we have calculated that worst case 9.4% of our total holdings was stolen. Please keep an eye on our page for further updates today.

– Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) February 27, 2019

Coinbase announced on February 19 that it had bought Neutrino. Neutrino specializes in analyzing blockchains and tracking digital assets. But the acquisition has an unpleasant aftertaste.

For Bitcoin to establish itself in the mainstream, in the eyes of Coinbase, one thing is vital: legitimacy. This means that the reputation of “anonymous hacker money” has to give way and give way to a reputable image. After all, Bitcoin is actually not anonymous. This provides the opportunity to track the transactions on the blockchain, leaving little doubt about the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies.

The U.S. Federal Reserve could soon include a cryptocurrency market crash as one of the risks to take into account when conducting supervisory stress tests.

The Fed’s board of governors on Thursday announced amendments to a policy statement on the scenario design framework for stress testing, saying that “the collapse of the bitcoin market” may be considered as one of the “salient” market risks.

According to the document, the crypto amendment was recommended to the board by a commenter who proposed it should be seen as one of several “extraordinary shocks,” such as a war with North Korea and major losses caused by trader misconduct.

The IOTA Foundation has launched a competition on Smart City. The goal is to promote innovative solutions for the networked cities of tomorrow using distributed ledger technology from IOTA.

Smart City – the intelligent city – is a trend topic, with which industry, politics and crypto companies are increasingly engaged. By linking and sharing data quickly, life in cities should become safer, healthier and more energy efficient.

The British blockchain start-up Electroneum is about to turn the concept of mining on its head: Just in time for the Mobile World Congress, the company has introduced its new Android smartphone M1 – and provided for a bang. With a price of just under $ 80, the device is incredibly cheap and especially in developing countries a real competition for top dogs such as Samsung. But the real thing is: The M1 allows the mining of cryptocurrencies by app. A look into the future of mobile payment?

Electroneum introduced the smartphone to the public on Monday, February 25th. At first glance, the M1 is a standard Android entry-level model that comes with Google Mobile Services certification. Purely from the technical data moves M1 in similar terrain as the Samsung Galaxy J5: The smartphone has 4G, 8 to 32 GB of storage space and two SIM card slots. Inside sits a quad core 1.3 GHz processor. The two cameras have five megapixels (rear) and two megapixels (front) and thus trigger probably no major tempests.

On 25 and 26 February, the second Crypto Assets Conference took place at the Frankfurt School of Finance. Representatives of the classical finance world, the regulatory authorities and the crypto sector met here. Visitors could therefore look forward to an agenda that looks at the topics of blockchain and cryptocurrency from different angles.

No question: The Frankfurt School of Finance has established itself as one of the most important think tanks in the blockchain sector. Accordingly, the Crypto Assets Conference is an important annual event for those interested in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Similar to last year, representatives from the banking world, regulators and the crypto-ecosystem met at the Frankfurt School of Finance.

Many a critical eye off the world of crypto currencies saw this sector as dead after the 2018 bear market. The courses of the crypto currencies fell into the cellar, some ICO turned out to be a scam and various companies had to slim down extremely. It was interesting to see if “Kryptoferne” still has any interest in the subject and how the mood among enthusiasts is.

Despite the bear market, many visitors came. Of course, the “no-coiner” were in the minority, but some still went to the event. In general, the mood among the participants was quite optimistic, despite the price losses last year. Especially the developments around Security Token Offerings (STOs) are for many a glimmer of hope. Technological innovations around the crypto market as well as the growing interest of institutional investors did the rest for a good mood at the conference.

Continental, Commerzbank and Siemens announce their first successful “Blockchain” transaction. Thanks to the Corda technology of the banking syndicate R3, the test transaction could be completed within a few minutes.

The number of companies discovering Distributed Ledger (DLT) technology for transaction processing continues to grow. The tire manufacturer Continental announces its first securities business, which ran completely through the DLT. In a test transaction, Siemens acquired as investor a money market security with a volume of € 100,000 from Continental. The process, which usually takes several days, was completed by Commerzbank in just a few minutes. The companies announced this on February 21 in a joint press release.

”    While markets and technologies are constantly changing, the partnership relationship with the customer remains an important asset. We are happy to be able to accompany our customers through transactions like these on the path of digital transformation.

the Board of Directors of Capital Markets of Commerzbank states.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg discussed the use of Blockchain on the Internet in an interview with Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain. One topic was the handling of the personal data of the users. It became clear that decentralized data storage has advantages and disadvantages.

Mark Zuckerberg regularly announces publicly at the beginning of the year which challenges or themes he will focus on. In 2019, he sees the future technologies, the Internet and their influence on society. On February 20, he met with Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of international law at Harvard. Zuckerberg spent more than two hours answering questions about data exchange and privacy, encryption, decentralized services and countering misinformation.

Spanish bank giant Banco Santander has signed a technology agreement with IBM. The deal, which is expected to cost $ 700 million, provides for the bank to use the technology company’s blockchain infrastructure.

It is an elephant wedding as it is in the book: The Spanish banking giant joins forces with the technology group IBM to make common cause. In order to broaden its sphere of influence, Banco Santander said in a press release available to BTC-ECHO, it intends to use IBM technology in the future. With the signing of the contract, Banco Santander is now under the technological hood of IBM for the next five years.

Craig Wright, self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin, is beating around. In some remarks to the US Securities Authority Commodity Futures Trading Commission, he finds little positive words for the Ethereum project of Vitalik Buterin.

Craig Wright can not resist. The man who pretends to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto knows how to make media attention. Now, Wright has told the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This had asked the population for information on the evaluation of crypto projects.

Then it was the – we just quote – “designated serial counterfeiters” not to take his opinion on the project of Vitalik Buterin leave. Accordingly, he first stated his identity in his answer:

The JPM Coin should make it possible to complete transactions of customers of the largest bank in the USA without delay. This brings the first token into the ecosystem, which is supported and published by a US bank. A use case is likely to cause trouble at Ripple.

Bitcoin is well known to revolutionize the international monetary system. Cryptocurrencies use a decentralized framework to redistribute the power of individual corporations to a centralized system. But the latter seem to recognize the potential of blockchain technology and digital tokens.

So it is no one less than bank giant JPMorgan Chase, which publishes its own cryptocurrency. The JPM Coin is to process the processing of payments for customers of JPMorgan Chase in the future without delay. The largest US bank moves $ 6 trillion daily and now wants to optimize this transfer with the JPM Coin.

Two major US pension funds are entering the crypto industry. As announced on Tuesday morning, the two public pension funds support a crypto venture capital fund worth $ 40 million. This is the first participation of US pension funds in virtual currencies. Will others follow?

The two pension funds that are registered in the state of Virginia are a fund for policemen and an employee fund – together the funds manage around 1.2 billion US dollars. The pension funds are participating in a new venture capital fund of Morgan Creek Capital. The majority of the capital is invested in companies from the blockchain industry, including Coinbase and Bakkt. But part of the money goes into cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Pension funds invest in crypto industry and Bitcoin: “Great potential for the future”

Anthony Pompliano, founder of Morgan Creek Digital, told Bloomberg that this is not about short-term profit, but long-term prospects.

   “Smart investors can not be distracted by the prices, but look to longer trends.”

Anthony Pompliano

The credit company Bitbond is allowed to carry out Germany’s first security token offering (STO). The sale of tokenized bonds by Bitbond received the highest regulatory blessing from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). The STO has an issue volume of 100 million euros.

Bitbond may hold Germany’s first security token offering (STO). This was announced by the crypto start-up on February 15 on its website. The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority has approved the securities prospectus of the company. Thus, it is now also open to private investors to participate in the STO.

BB1: Token-based bond

The first virtual round of investment will start on March 11. The security token offered is called Bitbond1 (BB1) and, according to the prospectus, is a “token-based bond”. A BB1 should have the equivalent of one euro. The issue volume amounts to 100 million euros. Whoever participates in the first round of financing receives a discount of 30 percent.

Lawyer Eric Romba of the law firm lindenpartners was responsible for preparing the prospectus. In a press release available to BTC-ECHO, Romba praises the innovative power of the new investment product:

    “The product of a tokenized and prospected bond offered by Bitbond Finance GmbH is an innovation that allows bonds to be issued in the future with regulatory compliant documentation, but without intermediary intermediation and without a centrally held certificate to liquidate previously illiquid assets via blockchain tokens. ”

Eric Romba, lindenpartners

Indonesia officially recognizes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as merchandise. By defining crypto currencies as a “trading commodity”, the Indonesian stock market regulator provides cryptocurrencies with the necessary framework to be recognized on a broader social level. However, the central bank still blocks payments with cryptocurrencies.

While there are no secure legal guidelines for bitcoin trading in Germany, other countries are making significant progress in the area of ​​crypto regulation. Accordingly, for example, the Austrian Post has recently opened to set up Bitcoin machines. Elsewhere, in Malta, for example, blockchain is exploding, as it has a clear (and crypto-friendly) regulation. Now there are also positive signals from Southeast Asia.

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk considers Bitcoin to be “brilliant”. In his opinion, this could even replace paper money in the future. Tesla on the other hand keeps a distance to Bitcoin. Due to environmental concerns, it is not a strategic decision for the company to turn to the cryptocurrency, Musk said in a podcast this week.

A colony on Mars, the dubious intervention in Thailand’s cave rescue, the supposed influence of cryptic tweets on the Tesla stock – hardly anyone in the tech business sees genius and madness as close together as Elon Musk.

This week, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is venturing on the next controversy that is currently being disdained by the general public: Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is apparently facing the next adaptation push. Because the latest release from Samsung has the potential to push crypto currencies further towards the company’s center. With its latest smartphone model Samsung Galaxy S 10, the technology giant offers the possibility to manage its private keys on the phone.

There is one key element that is often called a possible increase in the bitcoin price: the spread of cryptocurrencies or their arrival in the middle of society. It has not been quite enough in the past. Because there are many problems that many face when dealing with cryptocurrencies. These include the technical refinements, lack of technical know-how and the unwillingness to deal with the topic. But that could change soon. With the new smartphone model from Samsung, users should be given the opportunity to manage their crypto currencies on their mobile phones.