Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 50

Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 50

Five Minute Blockchain – No. 50

24.02.2023

Estimated reading time: 6 min 23 seconds

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

“Everybody says, ‘We don’t want to talk with the banks, we don’t want to know what they’re doing, etc.’ But they’ve actually been around for 300 or 400 years. They have a lot of experience on how to do things actually, or how not to do things.”

Cointelegraph reporting from European Blockchain Convention in Barcelona

TRUST

Top search results could lead to online scammers; FBI recommends ad blockers when using search

Cory Doctorow, a well-known journalist, author and activist, recently published a screenshot of a search via Twitter where the top search result for a restaurant led to a fake website designed to scam users. The actual restaurant was also showing up in the search but ranked lower.

This new approach by scams is hard to detect by Google. As one result, the FBI recommends using an ad blocker to shelter against such falsified and malicious links.

“…cyber criminals are using search engine advertisement services to impersonate brands and direct users to malicious sites that host ransomware and steal login credentials and other financial information.”

Cory Doctorow on Twitter

Malware Bytes Lab

AI-generated voice used to break into a bank account

Many banks offer the option to enter an account using a voice command. A reporter for VICE managed to trick a bank system using a free choice to cheat the system. Experts suggest that banks re-consider and switch to different methods of identity verification.

VICE

Signal warns it might stop services for the UK should “Online Safety Bil” undermine message encrypt.ion

The Online Safety Bill is currently passing through the UK parliament. Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, introduced it. The government and child protection have argued that encrypted messages make it difficult to fight child abuse.

The UK Home Office said in a statement: “It is important that technology companies make every effort to ensure that their platforms do not become a breeding ground for paedophiles. The Online Safety Bill does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption but makes clear that technological changes should not be implemented in a way that diminishes public safety – especially the safety of children online”.

Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, told the BBC it was “magical thinking” if government agencies in the UK want to provide privacy, but “only for the good guys. Encryption is either protecting everyone or it is broken for every. one.”

Apple had previously suggested a system where content where photos on phones or tablets could scan for child abuse but had abandoned the plans after much criticism.

BBC

Mozilla study: Developer privacy claims on Google Play can not be trusted

A study by Mozilla calls the labels used in the Google Play Store “a joke” and “useless”:

“The study looked at the privacy information that app developers are supposed to fill out in the Google’s Play Store and compared those details to the apps’ privacy policies. The privacy labels are supposed to give you information about an app’s data practices so you can make informed choices, but the study found the labels are close to useless. Just six apps of the 40 apps in the study got a passing grade.”

Gizmodo

Wired

Using new AI platforms, the next generation of “deepfakes” could leada  to a whole new level of damage

The people in the videos look r, and they speak compellingly. But they are not real, and their words might be a believable lie. This is the scenario experts say could be the next level of “deepfakes”.

The combination of several AI platforms “…can also be used to more quickly and cheaply build an army of people who don’t exist, fake actors capable of fluently delivering messages in multiple languages. That makes them useful, says Gregory, for the “firehose” strategy of disinformation preferred by Russia, along with everything from “deceptive commercial personalization to the ‘lolz’ strategies of shitposting at scale.”

Fast Company

It is tempting to use generative AI for legal documents. What could go wrong?

Without the help of technology, lawyers spent hours over hours in legal research and the gradual writing of contracts and other legal documents. Now, generative AI has arrived. And it is quite tempting to use the technology to generate legal texts. On one side, experts consider legal documents to be a good use case for generative AI.

There is already a dedicated an AI platform for this use case called Harvey. Law experts created the company behind Harvey using ChatGPT and received $5 million in funding from OpenAI in November 2022 (TechCrunch). The platform describes itself as a “copilot for lawyers”.

Wired has a story with statements from several prominent law firms. Most are optimistic about the use cases for generative AI, for example, for standard documents or early-stage research. But at the same time, there are worries about current platforms making things up and tending to “hallucinate” about topics poorly defined in the learning material. The significant risk is that some law providers signed not to be more cautious and deploy AI to mass-produce certain legal documents – only to find out later that it was a big mistake.

https://www.harvey.ai (Waitlist)

TechCrunch

Wired ($)

CONTENT

European Union starts consultation on whether some companies should pay more for using internet traffic

The EU considers demanding a contribution from the largest tech companies. The money would then be deployed for upgrades for phone lines both at home and mobile. Currently, a document aims to collect opinions in a survey as public consultation. The EU internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, will discuss the plans at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress (MWC). The critical argument that big traffic generators should pay more has been part of lobbying by larger telecommunication companies for some years. Now the EU seems to agree with this view. Opponents are highly critical of such different pricing. They say that the move might open a box of pandora because telcos will be free to draw the line for heavy traffic and enable them to charge all kinds of companies.

EU Commission: Exploratory Consultation – The future of the electronic communications sector and its infrastructure

Thierry Breton on Twitter

TechCrunch

NFT platform Dapper labs to loff off 20% of its staff

Dapper Labs laid off 134 people, or 22% of its staff, in November 2022. Now the company has announced a second round of layoffs. The reduction comes despite a strong financial position. Dapper Labs had received $600 million from venture capital. The company had an early success with NBA Top Shot, where fans could purchase short professional basketball clips.

The Block

YouTube rolls out multi-language audio tracks

“The multi-language audio feature lets creators add dubbing to new and existing videos, helping them expand their global reach and reach new audiences for their channels, according to YouTube.”

Variety

BLOCKCHAIN

International Monetary Fund: Blockchain can speed up payments and settlements, but crypto still is a “disappointment.”

The IMF sees three areas of application: Tokenization, Encryption and programmability. But the advisers argue that private issuers of (crypto) money can not be trusted to protect investors and users.

Blockworks

Research: State of Blockchain Report 2022

Global venture funding provided $26.8B for blockchain companies in crypto finance, web3 and blockchain infrastructure. While prospects looked positive in early 2022, the entire industry came under macroeconomic pressures, specifically in the 4th quarter of the year. CB Insights has a free (after registration) market overview with 162 pages of charts and data to make sense of it all.

CB Insights

SHORT LINKS

  • Why the 15-minute city is fueling a ludicrous conspiracy theory (Fast Company)
  • Pakistan’s three-day Wikipedia ban sends a “dangerous” message (Rest of World)
  • ConsenSys Acquires Easy-to-Use Blockchain Notification Tool ‘Hal’ to Strengthen Web3 Development (Coindesk)
  • Tencent to offer “metaverse-in-a-box” development services in Asian markets (Bitcoin.com)
  • Google Cloud becomes a validator for Tezos blockchain (Ledger Insights)

Thank you for reading. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact us via info@trublo.eu.

Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash

Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 42

Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 42

Welcome to a new edition of the TruBlo newsletter. We aim to collect and link to the most relevant content in the field of blockchain, trust and content from the past week, with optimism for blockchain technology, but not as cheerleaders. We are an EU-funded research project supporting 45 early-stage teams working on “trusted content for future blockchains”. Please forward this newsletter to colleagues and friends if you think they would be interested in this.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes 54 seconds (apologies, we are a bit longer this week).

Updates this week

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I can’t think of a field in tech that has had as much polarisation and as much useless noise as crypto. Behind all the noise, a lot of very clever people are quietly building highly complex and technical infrastructure, scaffolding and plumbing that might mean you could build billion-scale consumer services on this stuff in, say, five years.”

Source: Benedict Evans, Newsletter Nr. 457 (20.09.2022)

PROJECT

Projekt of the week: Enarxis – better management of EV loading stations

Enarxis project will use blockchain technology for reputation management for users of Electric vehicle (EV) loading stations, specifically in the hospitality sector.

Why in the hotel sector? Because EV loading stations have become as essential for hotel guests as WiFi was a few years ago. There are two problems: What if people reserve a station but then do not show up – but because of the reservation, the station is still blocked for use by others? Similarly, what if people load their batteries but then do not leave? Both issues will be managed with an app developed by the team behind Enarxis. The team was recently selected for an accelerator program by Visa and had earlier been funded by TruBlo.

Project profile & team members: Enarxis (EV Loader)

TRUST

How Russian Disinformation targeted a US movement

A report on how state-sponsored trolls from Russia targeted a movement (the Women’s March of 2017) and its leaders in the US. The goal was to weaken the movement by attacking the leaders and sowing doubt:

“They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners. But one message performed better with audiences than any other. It singled out an element of the Women’s March that might, at first, have seemed like a detail: Among its four co-chairs was Ms. Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist whose hijab marked her as an observant Muslim.”

A second quote helps to understand how the tactics work:

“Ladislav Bittman, who worked for the secret police in Czechoslovakia before defecting to the United States, compared Soviet disinformation programs to an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The New York Times ($)

Passwords: Why four random words are better than a complex phrase

Julia Angwin from The Markup shares a reminder on how to construct hard-to-crack passwords. The critical knowledge is that four random words (for example” “Sunshine Expected Today Brooklyn”) are hard to crack (because of the number of possible combinations) and easy to remember. There is no need for a complex, hard-to-remember phrase. For illustration, here is a link to an XKCD strip about this particular topic.

In her newsletter, she goes a step further and talks to Jeremi Gosny, an expert in the space of password security. They discuss how the need for safe passwords has changed. The critical advice: Make sure that you have a different password for all accounts, not the same across all your logins. The interview is interesting, and there are several relevant and recent observations in the space of individual password security.

Quote from the interview with Jeremi Gosny: “Where we find the most success as password crackers is targeting passwords that are generated by humans, because humans across the globe still tend to think alike. Despite our language and cultural differences, our brains are only capable of coming up with a finite space of patterns.”

The Markup

CONTENT

The New York Times reports strong subscriber growth for 2. Quarter 2022

The New York Times is one of a few newspaper/news organisations that are successfully moving from the old print/advertising world to digital subscriptions. Developments are tracked worldwide in the hope of learning about potential patterns that could be applied to ailing news organisations elsewhere. The most recent update from the company is the second-quarter results for 2022. In total, 230.000 new subscriptions in one quarter mean that the goal of 10 million total subscribers could be achieved much earlier than planned.

The New York Times (Press Release)

Police at the door

In Germany, posting hate content in Germany can have direct consequences as a result of new laws.

“German authorities have brought charges for insults, threats and harassment. The police have raided homes, confiscated electronics and brought people in for questioning. Judges have enforced fines worth thousands of dollars each and, in some cases, sent offenders to jail. The threat of prosecution, they believe, will not eradicate hate online, but push some of the worst behavior back into the shadows.In doing so, they have flipped inside out what, to American ears, it means to protect free speech. The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused. ‘There has to be a line you cannot cross,” said Svenja Meininghaus, a state prosecutor who attended the raid of the father’s house. “There has to be consequences.'”

The New York Times ($)

Five AR/VR trends: Free analysis of current market development

“Immersive workouts. Workplace training simulations. MeditaThere’sps in virtual reality” – these are just three scenarios which could soon define a growing market for AR (Augmented Reality) or VR (Virtual Reality). Market research CB Insights has a free 26-page study about recent trends for AR/VR, and the study is available after free registration. Salvador’sactive company so far in this field has been Meta, but now Apple seems to get ready to enter this particular market with new hardware offerings.

CB Insights

Instagram allows longer stories

Instagram will allow longer stories. Stories shorter than 60 seconds will no longer be broken into small segments.

“Now, when you post a Story that’s under 60 seconds in length, it won’t be broken up into segments. The company began testing the change with select users late last year and has now rolled it out to all users worldwide…The new change is a welcome addition to the app, likely for both users and viewers. Users will now be able to post uninterrupted Stories that won’t be broken up, and on the other hand, viewers will no longer have to continually tap to get through a long video that they may not actually want to see. But, the change could also be a turnoff for people who liked the simplicity of short, bite-sized Stories.”

Tech Crunch

Podcast episodes are getting shorter

Based on an analysis of 2,5 million podcasts episodes with at least 10.000 listeners, Rephonic found that:

“Over the past nine years, podcast episodes that are at least 60 minutes long have slowly but surely become less common. They made up over 20% of all podcast content in 2013, decreasing to under 17% in 2021. Why? It could be the rise of short and frequent daily news podcasts. Or perhaps as podcasting becomes increasingly accessible, it attracts more indie podcasters with less budget to spend on producing long episodes.”

Other findings:

  • The average top-performing podcast releases a 37-minute episode every 5 days
  • The top History podcasts have the longest delay between new episodes
  • Fiction podcasts should record longer episodes to attract a large audience

Rephonic Blog

BLOCKCHAIN

Digital Euro legislation planned for 2023

“At a conference hosted today by the Banque de France, EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness said that the Commission plans to propose legislation for a ‘possible’ digital euro in 2023 to enable parliament and the European Council to debate it. The digital euro work is currently in the prototyping phase, and Banque de France Governor François Villeroy de Galhau confirmed that a decision on whether to proceed would be made at the end of 2023, with a potential launch in 2026 or 2027.”

Ledger Insights

Ethereum Merge reduced global energy consumption by 0,2%

“The Ethereum merge this week slashed global energy consumption by 0.2%, Vitalik Buterin wrote in a tweet Thursday, citing a crypto researcher. The long-awaited event successfully transformed the blockchain from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake. Proponents have touted the transition for making Ethereum an almost-net-zero technology. The switch also makes gas fees, or transaction costs, lower and means the network will be able to process transactions faster.”

Insider

Argentine airline to adopt NFT technology for tickets

Airbondi, a low-fare airline from Argentina, plans to issue flight tickets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This means that passengers can do more with them. For example, they can sell or transfer the tickets to other persons three days before departure. The underlying technology was developed by Travel X, and the company’s website is worth a visit. The company aims to reimagine travel using blockchain tech.

Bitcoin.com

Nomura and 17here’s banks have invested in FNALTY, which uses blockchain for central bank settlements

“Fnality, formerly known as the Utility Settlement Coin, tokenizes money deposited at a central bank to enable the settlement of DLT-based transactions with on-chain digital currency. It is expected to launch its first currency, the British Pound, next month as it has been formally recognized as a payments system by HM Treasury. Other planned currencies are euros, U.S. dollars, Japanese Yen and Canadian dollars.”

Ledger Insights

Bitcoin in El Salvador, one year later

Quote via “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain”:

  • There’s almost no use of bitcoin as a currency. The official Chivo Wallet is hardly used, and they never did get it working correctly. Businesses have taken down their “we accept bitcoin” signs.
  • There’s almost no use of bitcoin for remittances.
  • Hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds have gone up in smoke — which is as if the US spent hundreds of billions — with nothing to show for it.
  • Crypto crashed. As well as screwing over local bitcoin holders, this halved the face value of the government bitcoin reserve.
  • El Salvador can’t borrow internationally. The IMF won’t talk to them while bitcoin is in place. The price of Salvadoran sovereign debt has fallen through the floor, as has El Salvador’s credit rating.
  • The Bitcoin Volcano Bonds supposedly had $1.5 billion of buyer interest lined up — then Russia invaded Ukraine, and those buyers vanished.
  • The ground has not been broken for Bitcoin City. I’m pretty sure it never will.

David Gerrard’s “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain”

Estonia approves first crypto bank after new legislation

“Striga, a bitcoin and cryptocurrency bank, became the first virtual asset service provider (VASP) to gain regulatory approval in Estonia following the country’s revamping of its digital asset legal framework, per an announcement from the Financial Intelligence Unit.”

Striga is the new name used by Lastbit, a US start-up team. The project had already introduced Mastercards in connection with crypto accounts. The team has been part of YCombinator, a start-up accelerator.

Striga (Homepage)

Financial Intelligence Unit (Press Release)

Bitcoin Magazine

Is crypto a house of cards?

The Washington Post has a special about the story of crypto so far, chapter by chapter.

“Crypto is among the most urgent of current tech topics, driven by billions of cryptocurrency trades weekly — bitcoin and so many others — and a cultural stigma perhaps unseen in finance since the days of the Wall Street wolves of the 1980s. Almost since its creation, crypto has been characterized by sudden wealth creation, surprise hacks, big scams, bold promises and shattered dreams.”

The Washington Post (free content)

OTHER STORIES & SHORT LINKS

  • Interpol has issued a red notice for Do Kwon, founder of failed Terraform TechCrunch
  • Looking at 320 pitch decks, here’s what science tells us works best TechCrunch
  • UN countries are preparing to pick a new head of the International Telecommunications Union Wired UK
  • “As If Nothing Happened”: I Used Artificial Intelligence To See How Some Celebrities Would Look Today If They Were Alive Bored Panda
  • Australian pilot CBDC test for eAUD to commence mid-2023 Cointelegraph
  • Christie’s moves on-chain with NFT auction platform on Ethereum Cointelegraph
  • How Web3 property rights can transform the digital economy Forkast

Thank You for reading. If you have questions or suggestions, please get in touch with us via info@trublo.eu

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Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 41

Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 41

Five Minute Blockchain

Welcome to a new edition of the TruBlo newsletter. The big news this past week was the successful merge of Ethereum. Our main question for selecting information and links: How is the field of blockchain, content and trust evolving?

Estimated reading time:

Updates this week:

PROJECT

TruBlo: Full list of 45 funded early-stage projects

We funded 45 early-stage projects, with €75K each. Selected projects will have the chance to get a second round of funding with an additional €100K. You can scroll through all projects on the website; each has a short profile.

TruBlo Funded Projects

TRUST

Ethereum Merge completed

This was a huge step for the platform. The new approach of proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work will sharply reduce energy needs. How the change will affect the future of Ethereum remains to be seen. This week the cryptocurrency is down about 10%.

“The metaphor that I use is this idea of switching out an engine from a running car,” said Justin Drake, a researcher at the non-profit Ethereum Foundation who spoke to CoinDesk before the Merge happened.”

Coindesk

The Economist: “The future of Crypto is at stake in Ethereum’s switch”

“Proof-of-stake will require 99.9% less energy to maintain. The effect on emissions will be as though, overnight, the Netherlands had been switched off.”

The Economist ($, free registration possible to read article)

A larger number of crypto start-ups at YCombinator’s current batch

Despite the recent downturn, the newest YCombinator cohort of start-ups has 30 crypto teams. YCombinator is the top incubator program for new tech companies, with an impressive track record of large firms which started there.

TechCrunch

Microsoft Teams popularity results in new cybersecurity challenges

“…according to research released by Vectra yesterday, versions of Teams for Windows, Mac and Linux are storing authentication tokens in plain text on the underlying device. This is significant because it means attackers can gain access to authentication tokens and other information if they hack a system where Teams is installed. This vulnerability highlights that enterprises can’t afford to rely on the security of consumer-grade, public-grade communication platforms when they’re communicating sensitive information, IPs and other data.”

VentureBeat

CONTENT

Open source AI software: Stable Diffusion released

You might have heard of Dalle-E. Now there is another software able to generate images from text, and it is open source.

A week or so ago, Stable Diffusion was released, and the world went crazy, and for good reason. Stable Diffusion, if you haven’t heard, is a new AI that generates realistic images from a text prompt. You basically give it a description of the image you want, and it generates it.

Stavros.io

Apple doubles digital advertising workforce

Apple gradually takes a larger slice of global advertising revenues; the number of people working in that area at the company has by now doubled. This is not without potential controversy because Apple had introduced privacy rules reducing the ability to track users for companies like Facebook.

Financial Times

Should Apple be forced to use USB-C?

In discussions in Europe and the US, the goal is to have less “chaos” with charging ports. But not everyone agrees. If companies are forced to use a specific system, what happens to innovation in the long term? Quote from John Gruber, writing on Daring Fireball:

“Proponents of the EU’s USB-C charging port mandate speak as though bringing order out of chaos is still a problem to be solved in the mobile phone world, like it was 15 years ago. It’s not. Market forces generally work, and in the case of charging ports, they have: there are only two meaningful phone charging ports today, USB-C and Lightning. There is no chaos. There are good arguments for Apple to switch the iPhone to USB-C (high-speed data transfer, particularly for the 4K video footage iPhones have long been capable of, being at the top of the list), and good arguments against (zillions of iPhone owners with zillions of existing Lightning cables). But that should be for Apple to decide.” (Daring Fireball)

Daily Beast

Instagram fined 400 million for child privacy violations

“The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta, the owner of the social network Instagram, EUR405M for what it labeled a violation of child privacy statutes under the GDPR. DPC mentioned three issues with Instagram’s privacy settings that led to the penalty:

  • Users under 17 can open business accounts.
  • Business accounts for minors still display user contact information.
  • Underage accounts are not private by default.”

Techgenix

France: Journalists sign charter towards better climate change reporting

Journalists and media professionals in France signed a charter defining guidelines for climate change reporting. This includes revisiting growth models for the media companies themselves. One of the goals is to investigate and report on real solutions.

Charte Journalisme Ecologie

BLOCKCHAIN

Binance to end support for stablecoins offers users to switch to their own

“Binance claims the move is to “enhance liquidity and capital-efficiency for users”, but the conversion and Binance’s related decision to stop trading on spot pairs involving those same stablecoins seems like an attempt to increase the status of its own stablecoin against that of rivals.” (Source: Web3isgoinggreat)

TechCrunch

Big financial firms collaborate for EDX

Several leading financial institutions in the US, including Fidelity, Schwab and Citadel, are behind a new crypto exchange called EDXM. Observers are unsure whether this is a sign of more profound interest or a delayed project coming out in crypto winter.

EDX

African Start-up “Metaverse Magna” receives funding for decentralised gaming

This February, Africa and emerging market-focused Nestcoin raised a pre-seed round to build, operate and invest in its web3 applications, including crypto content platform Breach Club and gaming guild Metaverse Magna (MVM). Nine months after its launch last December, the latter has completed a seed sale token round of $3.2 million at a $30M fully diluted valuation.

TechCrunch

UK Treasury mandates that crypto exchanges report breaches or pay fines

New rules are applied in the UK in response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The goal is to cover all valuable digital assets, which results in crypto assets being part of the sanctions list. If platforms do not report breaches quickly, they face fines for such delays.

The Guardian

OTHER STORIES & SHORT LINKS

  • What is decentralised identity in blockchain? Guide. Cointelegraph
  • South Korean Officials Are Targeting Do Kwon’s Passport Bitcoin.com
  • Mailchimp bans crypto-related projects Cointelegraph
  • Adobe agrees to buy the design tool Figma for a high price of $20B Bloomberg TechMeme
  • Anonymising facial images to improve patient privacy Nature
  • YouTube Taps Machine Learning to Convert Landscape Videos to Square, Vertical Formats Variety
  • AI Isn’t Ready to Make Unsupervised Decisions Harvard Business Review

Would you happen to have any feedback or suggestions? Contact us via info@trublo.eu

Photo by Joel Henry on Unsplash

Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 39

Five Minute Blockchain Newsletter No. 39

August 25, 2022• Issue No. 39

Five Minute Blockchain

Welcome to a new edition of the TruBlo newsletter. We are funding 45 early-stage blockchain ideas to explore new options for “trusted content on future blockchains”. A list of all TuBlo projects is here: https://www.trublo.eu/projects/Our main question for selecting news and links below: How is the field .of blockchain, content and trust evolving?

Updates this week:

Estimated reading time: 4 min 10 sec

TRUST

Spyware use in Europe, homemade

In Greece, Thanassis Koukakis, a financial journalist, discovered spyware on his phone. This case seems to be part of a whole wave of spyware uses.

“Over the past 13 months, it has been revealed that spyware had targeted opposition leaders, journalists, lawyers and activists in France, Spain, Hungary, Poland and even staff within the European Commission, the EU’s cabinet-style government, between 2019 and 2021. The bloc has already set up an inquiry into its own use of spyware, but even as the 38-person committee works toward producing a report for early 2023, the number of new scandals is quickly mounting up.”

One key finding – the spyware was developed in Europe, not elsewhere:

“What sets the scandal in Greece apart is the company behind the spyware that was used. Until then the surveillance software in every EU scandal could be traced back to one company, the notorious NSO Group. Yet the spyware stalking Koukakis’ phone was made by Cytrox, a company founded in the small European nation of North Macedonia and acquired in 2017 by Tal Dilian—an entrepreneur who achieved notoriety for driving a high-tech surveillance van around the island of Cyprus and showing a Forbes journalist how it could hack into passing people’s phones. In that interview, Dilian said he had acquired Cytrox and absorbed the company into his intelligence company Intellexa, which is now thought to now be based in Greece. The arrival of Cytrox into Europe’s ongoing scandal shows the problem is bigger than just the NSO Group. The bloc has a thriving spyware industry of its own.”

WIRED

A deep dive into the fall of Three Arrows

Long report about the founders, set-up and the reasons for the downfall of the crypto hedge fund. Apparently, “playing with money” was a big part of it, sheltered by a hybrid that the complex technology would make the blundering hard to detect.

“Bear markets in crypto tend to make any stock-market action look like child’s play. The crashes are so severe that insiders call it “crypto winter,” and the season can last years. That’s where Three Arrows Capital found itself by the middle of January 2022, and it was poorly equipped to weather it. The GBTC position ate an ever-larger hole in 3AC’s balance sheet, and much of its capital was tied up in restricted shares in smaller crypto projects. Other arbitrage opportunities had dried up. In response, Three Arrows seems to have decided to ramp up the riskiness of its investments in hopes of scoring big and getting the firm back on a solid footing. “What made them change was just overreaching for returns,” says a major lending executive. “They were probably like, ‘What if we just go long? In February, Three Arrows took one of its biggest swings yet: It put $200 million into a buzzy token called luna, which was founded by a brash, alluring South Korean developer and Stanford dropout named Do Kwon, with whom Davies and Zhu had been hanging out in Singapore.”

New York Magazine

CONTENT

How a small, slightly different view might grow into deep distrust

Even if views on a complex issue differ, it should be possible to find a consensus for the best solution over time. A factor in this should be the amount of available information – the more, the better. That would be an assumption based on common sense. But it might not be true at all. Instead, the abundance of information might amplify small different views into deep distrust of “the other side”.

„We show that small biases may lead to substantial and persistent divergence in both trust in information sources and beliefs about facts, with partisans on each side trusting unreliable ideologically aligned sources more than accurate neutral sources and also becoming overconfi- dent in their own judgment.”

Could the abundance of information on the web and social media overwhelms and confuses humans? And that this leads to more extreme positions instead of compromise?

Stanford University

Dark Patterns: Bad when used by others, but ok when used by your company?

Benedict Evans points to two articles published in The New York Times: One criticising the use of “dark patterns” on technology platforms. And other technical articles where the news organisation talks about its optimisation to gradually funnel online visitors into subscriptions.

The use of technology to funnel first-time visitors gradually towards a possible subscription is not automatically a “dark pattern”. The expression describes UI/UX layouts of websites where users have difficulty saying “no”. Such patterns are used in all kinds of applications, often leading to complaints by users who only later find out they were tricked into consent for a setting, for marketing purposes or even a subscription which can not be cancelled anymore.

But Evans has a point that often, double standards apply to the use of

The technical report about using Machine Learning to gain more subscribers does not mention such approaches. But the point is: As everyone tries to optimise the business revenue, the occurrence of tricks, cover-ups and harmful business practices will likely not go down but up. One fact from the published article: After reaching 10 million paying subscribers, the NYT aims to reach 15 million by 2027. Such ambitious growth often applies tricks to achieve such goals in time. High pressure to reach goals was a significant reason for Volkswagen’s scandal around engine emissions.

The New York Times: Stopping the manipulation machines ($)
The New York Times: How The New York Times Uses Machine Learning To Make Its Paywall Smarter

BLOCKCHAIN

In Argentina, Crypto is more practical for many transactions than cash

A recurring doubt regarding the future of cryptocurrencies (and blockchain) is the question of practicality. Where is the practical, day-to-day use?

One country where this is different is Argentina, a country where cryptocurrencies have a growing appeal, despite the volatility.

Two main reasons: The local currency, the peso, has lost value for decades. The second problem is that banks have imposed restrictions on bank accounts. Having a bank account in another currency with a bank outside of Argentina is no real option because one would have to travel there to get the money. This is why many people in Argentina store money they have in bricks – they buy bricks when they have money and store them.

“Argentinians who use crypto are increasingly untethered from the local Argentinian economy and increasingly plugged into the global cloud economy. Crypto is providing new solutions to problems that Argentina has faced for generations, and many Argentinians are excited about its potential to make it easier and safer to make, use, and store money.”

Big Think

People in El Salvador want reliable banking.

“N1co is Central America’s first neobank, thriving because El Salvador still needs basic financial inclusion.”

Rest of World

Bitcoin Depot to go public at an $885 million valuation

The company is operating a network of Bitcoin ATMs in the US.

“Founded in 2016, Bitcoin Depot claims to be the largest provider of such ATMs in North America with more than 7,000 kiosks in the region. These ATMs function by connecting with a wallet and, after a verification process, allow the user to insert fiat money to receive BTC, LTC or ETH in their wallets.”

The Block

The percentage of crypto investors did not grow in the past 12 months

According to a survey by PEW Research, the number of people dealing with crypto has remained at the same level as a year before, at roughly 16%.

(In 2020) Pew researchers asked 10,371 Americans if they have “ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency.” Some 16 percent of Americans said they had. Last month, the nonprofit asked another sample group — slightly smaller, at 6,034 Americans — the same question. And again, 16 percent said they had invested or traded in the alternate currency.

Washington Post ($)

Related:

  • 64% of crypto-versed parents want crypto to be taught in schools Cointelegraph
  • 72% of Russians say they never bought Bitcoin Cointelegraph

Ethereum Merge to begin September 6

The Ethereum Foundation says it will begin the Merge on September 6, split into two parts, the second running between September 10-20

The Block

Short links

  • cbETH: Coinbase offers liquid staking service & token for Ethereum ahead of the Merge The Block
  • Authorities in Afghanistan shut down 16 crypto exchanges in one-week Coindesk
  • Revenue is a feature. Some companies can think about it later; others must figure it out earlier. Benedict Evans
  • Mana: “BlackRock for the new economy” TechCrunch
  • BalkanID will use AI for Identity Governance TechCrunch.
  • Privado helps developers be compliant with privacy laws Forbes
  • ThirdWeb raises 24 million for web3 development kit TechCrunch
  • Polygon founder launches fund with $50 million for web3 investments Cointelegraph
  • How traditional banks cope with digital assets Blockdata

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Five Minute Blockchain – Weekly Newsletter No. 35

Five Minute Blockchain – Weekly Newsletter No. 35

30.06.2022 • Issue No. 35

Five Minute Blockchain

Updates from the intersection of trust, content and blockchain. What are notable developments?

This newsletter is published by the TruBlo project. We are funding 45 early-stage blockchain ideas to explore new options for “trusted content on future blockchains”. A list of all TuBlo projects is here: https://www.trublo.eu/projects/.

Updates this week

Estimated reading time: 5 min 44 seconds

TRUST

FBI says LinkedIn used for crypto scams

“In a typical scenario, according to the report, a scammer will pose as a professional with a fake profile and reach out to a LinkedIn user, starting with small talk before elevating to an offer to make money through crypto investments. Eventually, the scammer leverages the trust earned over months to direct the user to invest money to a site controlled by the perpetrator, and then drains the account.”

Coindesk

German telcos test new advertising technology, resulting in concerns by privacy advocates

In Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, the two largest mobile providers are currently testing a new advertising technology called TrustPid.

“TrustPid allows mobile carriers to generate pseudo-anonymous tokens based on a user’s IP address that are administered by a company also named TrustPid. Each user is assigned a different token for each participating website they visit, and these can be used to provide personalised product recommendations—but in what TrustPid calls “a secure and privacy-friendly way.” That “privacy-friendly” part has raised critics’ hackles.”

In essence, the question is whether or not the new technology would allow for personal tracking. A spokesperson from Vodafone answering to Wired denied that this would be possible.

WIRED

CONTENT

New York Times with solid growth of website traffic

The New York Times is currently one of the fastest-growing news websites. The website got 524 million visits in May 2022, an increase of 52% compared to last year. A big driver for the traffic growth has been the acquisition of Wordle, a popular online game. The NYT purchased the game in February 2022. Another website with solid traffic growth is the Daily Mail (UK), with an increase of 14% to 373 million. For comparison: The website of CNN has even higher total traffic (641 million) but not as much growth (4%).

List of the top 50 most popular news websites in the world

Press-Gazette

Netflix starts tier with advertising

Netflix will introduce a new tier supported by advertising. After years of solid growth, the company had recently lost around 200.000 subscribers. The idea is to reach an audience which would not pay the monthly subscription.

“We’ve left a big customer segment off the table, which is people who say: ‘Hey, Netflix is too expensive for me, and I don’t mind advertising”, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in an interview. “… we’re not adding ads to Netflix as you know it today. We’re adding an ad tier for folks who say, ‘Hey, I want a lower price, and I’ll watch ads.”

Based on reports, Google will organise the sales for such Netflix advertising.

Hollywood Reporter

China wants to censor all social comments in advance

A new proposal by a regulator in China aims to approve all social media comments in advance. It is not clear how this would be done technically. The assumption is that it would be an automated service.

“On June 17, the internet regulator Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) published a draft update on the responsibilities of platforms and content creators in managing online comments. One line stands out: all online comments must be pre-reviewed before being published. Users and observers are worried that the move could further tighten freedom of expression in China.”

Related: The New York Times has a visual report showing how surveillance technology in China works and how it has expanded in recent years:

“China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public.”

MIT Technology Review

The New York Times ($)

Notes: Twitter adds a long-form text option

Twitter will add a new feature called ‘Notes’, which then can be attached directly to a tweet. The idea is that content creation and tweet promotion can be done on one platform. Market observers view it as an experiment; it is unclear whether this will catch on. Twitter is testing the feature with several writers. So far, the quality is not available in all world regions, e.g., Europe.

Twitter

Khaby Lame rises to most followed TikTok creator

Lame, who rose to popularity with comedy reactions to other TikToks now has 142 million followers on TikTok.

Techcrunch

Khaby Lame TikTok

Wikipedia

BLOCKCHAIN

Falling prices testing platforms

The falling values of cryptocurrencies create all kinds of challenges. Example: Last week, users of Solend, a Solana-based protocol, voted to take over an account to prevent a margin call. The original user had borrowed $108 million but was getting under pressure to liquidate if the Solana token would fall below $22,30. Managers of Solend used “emergency powers” to take over the wallet. However, this decision was met with an outcry by users as a violation of the principle of decentralised decisions through code, not by single humans. While this is only one episode, the current situation in the crypto market creates all kinds of issues and pressure to invent policies for crises.

Coinbase

Three Arrows Capital ordered to be liquidated

The end of the crypto speculation bubble affects all kinds of Blockchain companies. Some of them are in crisis mode. Many watched the liquidity crisis in the past week at Celsius and BlockFi. Another firm in trouble is ThreeArrows Capital, which is based in Singapore. Sky News reported that a British Virgin Islands court had ordered the fund’s liquidation.

“The firm’s demise is likely to raise further questions, however, about the regulatory oversight to which cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are subject in the world’s major financial centres.”

The collapse of such prominent players sends shockwaves yet to other companies:

“Cryptocurrency market maker and lending firm Genesis Trading is facing potential losses into the “hundreds of millions,” according to three people familiar with the matter.”

Sky

Coindesk

Hackers steal $100 million exploiting bridge

The Harmony blockchain, used as a bridge to exchange tokens of different blockchains, has been hacked.

“Hackers looted about $100 million from a so-called cryptocurrency bridge, again exposing a key vulnerability in the digital-asset ecosystem.”

“…bridges are particularly vulnerable to hacks, as their technology is complex and they are often run by anonymous teams. The way they safeguard funds is often unclear. Sophisticated hackers have repeatedly targeted them. ”

Bloomberg

Short links:

• After the big crash, entrepreneur Do Kwon still wants to offer a new coin Wall Street Journal

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Five Minute Blockchain – Weekly Newsletter #30

Five Minute Blockchain – Weekly Newsletter #30