Autor Cointelegraph By Jesse Coghlan

5,000 miles apart: Thailand and Hungary to jointly explore blockchain tech

The financial technology associations for Thailand and Hungary have signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to support the introduction of blockchain technology to their respective financial sectors.The MOU, signed by the Thai Fintech Association (TFA) and the Hungarian Blockchain Coalition on Oct. 25, will see the two associations “share experiences, best practices and explore areas potentially beneficial for direct cooperation,” according to a Facebook post by the Embassy of Hungary in Bangkok.TFA president Chonladet Khemarattana said that e-commerce, mobile payments, and digital currencies are growing rapidly in Thailand and that international cooperation is needed to further develop local financial technology, according to an Oct. 29 report from the Bangkok Post.He also claimed 20% of the world’s crypto holders are in Thailand, the country placed eighth on the 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index released in September by analytics firm Chainalysis and crypto payments company TripleA estimates almost 6.5% of the population owns cryptocurrency, The Hungarian Blockchain Coalition was jointly created by the country’s Ministry of Innovation and Technology and the National Data and Economy Knowledge Centre in March 2022, while the Thai Fintech Association is a non-profit founded in 2016 with the aim of representing the local financial technology industry including cryptocurrency exchanges.The pact comes as Thailand’s central bank, along with some of the country’s commercial banks, were involved in the testing of a cross-border wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) transaction platform using distributed ledger technology in September. The Bank of Thailand also announced in August it was looking to start a pilot of a retail CBDC by the end of 2022 at a limited scale in the private sector among roughly 10,000 users. It would test the digital currency using “cash-like activities” such as paying for goods or services.Related: Crypto exchange Bitkub targeted by Thai SEC with wash trading claimsMeanwhile, Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has enacted some restrictions on crypto this year, with it banning the use of cryptocurrencies for payments in March saying they “could affect the stability of the financial system.”The regulator is also cracking down on crypto lending platforms with the SEC planning to prohibit crypto exchanges from providing or supporting digital asset depository services. Hungary seemingly takes a similar hard stance on cryptocurrencies, in February the governor of the Hungarian National Bank, György Matolcsy, wanted a blanket ban on all crypto trading and mining across the European Union saying it “serviced illegal activities” and was “speculative.”

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Web3 sees 15 new scam smart contracts an hour: Solidus Labs

The Web3 and cryptocurrency space is seeing a significant amount of smart contract scams proliferating, with blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs saying it has detected on average 15 newly deployed scams every hour.Solidus Labs said on Oct. 27 that it had been monitoring 12 blockchains including Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), and BNB Chain (BNB) since Oct. 10 and in that time had detected 188,525 smart contract scams.Former United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director, Kathy Kraninger, who is now Solidus’ VP of regulatory affairs, said in the statement that “while some of the big rug pulls and scams make the news […] the full picture stemming from our data shows the vast majority of these scams go unnoticed.”The firm also shed some light on the number of tokens that are scams, saying 12% of BEP-20 tokens — the BNB Chain’s token standard — exhibit fraudulent characteristics marking it as the blockchain with the most cryptocurrency scams.Ethereum’s native ERC-20 token standard came second with 8% of the blockchains’ tokens exhibiting scam-like characteristics according to the company. It also estimated around $910 million worth of ETH related to scams had passed through centralized and regulated exchanges.Solidus said these so-called “scam token smart contracts” are hard-wired to steal investors’ funds and fit alongside other abusive practices such as rug pulls where the developer steals the invested funds and token impersonations that aim to trick people into investing by mimicking popular cryptocurrencies.It said these types of contracts are “automatically deployed and easily repeated” with scammers able to quickly complete thousands of low-value attacks with exchanges, regulators and authorities none the wiser.Related: Google still promoting crypto phishing sites warns Binance bossIt’s not only scamming cryptocurrencies investors need to watch for, hacks are also on the rise with October being possibly the biggest month ever for crypto hacking activity according to analytics firm Chainalysis.Chainalysis director of research, Kim Grauer, said in an interview with Cointelegraph that the amount of value stolen in crypto hacks is on track to hit all-time highs in 2022 with a vast majority targeting decentralized finance (DeFi).The Web3 and cryptocurrency space is seeing a significant amount of smart contract scams proliferating, with blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs saying it has detected on average 15 newly deployed scams every hour.

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Nifty News: LooksRare the latest NFT market to sack royalties, Twitter’s tweeting tiles, and more

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace LooksRare is the latest in a string of NFT markets to do away with enforcing creator royalties by default following the likes of Magic Eden and X2Y2.The platform tweeted on Oct. 27 that it would not be supporting creator royalties by default, instead choosing to share 25% of its protocol fees with NFT creators and collection owners. Buyers can still choose to pay royalties when purchasing an NFT but will be on an opt-in basis.Explaining the changes, it said 0.5% of its 2% protocol fee would go to collections, as long as that collection has a receiving address for the funds.LooksRare said the willingness of buyers to pay royalties has “eroded” as a result of many NFT markets now moving to a zero-royalty model adding that these disadvantage creators by removing a source of passive incomeFor this reason, it says it wants to create a “competitive solution” through its fee-sharing model with creators.That’s why we’re choosing to lead the charge in this new landscape, by creating a competitive solution that still benefits creators: diverting protocol fees directly to creators.— LooksRare (@LooksRare) October 27, 2022The reaction from the community was mixed, with some praising LooksRare for the revenue sharing model, but well-known Twitter NFT statistician, the aptly named NFTstatistics.eth, said he doesn’t see the benefit.“The average royalty paid is around 6%” they tweeted, “I wouldn’t say that giving artists 0.5% […] is a competitive solution that benefits creators.”“I do get that everyone is trying to survive in this race to the bottom,” he added.Twitter’s testing token tweeting tilesTwitter’s development team announced on Oct. 27 that it’s testing “NFT Tweet Tiles” with some links to NFTs showing on the platform with a larger picture along with details of the NFT and the name of its creator.Now testing: NFT Tweet Tiles Some links to NFTs on @rarible, @MagicEden, @dapperlabs and @Jumptradenft will now show you a larger picture of the NFT alongside details like the title and creator. One more step in our journey to let developers impact the Tweet experience. pic.twitter.com/AkBisciB1i— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) October 27, 2022

Supported NFT marketplaces, for now, include Rarible, Magic Eden, Dapper Labs, and Jump.trade. It comes after the platform rolled out NFT profile pictures in January but only for its paid subscribers on Apple iOS.The new feature could be a move to appease its most active users as leaked internal Twitter documents show it found the topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users of the platform have shifted over the last two years, with one of the highest-growing topics now being cryptocurrencies.There are also circulating rumors that Twitter is developing a crypto wallet, but so far the claim hasn’t been backed by evidence nor confirmed by Twitter, regardless, speculation abounds that it could be in the works with the takeover by crypto-friendly Elon Musk.EPL lines up $35M NFT deal with SorareThe top English men’s professional soccer league — the English Premier League (EPL) — is working on signing a nearly $35 million (£30 million) NFT deal with Ethereum (ETH) blockchain-based fantasy soccer game Sorare according to Sky News.Sorare is a fantasy soccer league trading card game where players buy, sell, and trade NFTs player cards to manage a team, that team can then enter contests and earn in-game points based on the actual on-pitch performances of the corresponding players.The EPL will hold discussions with its 20 clubs regarding the reported multi-year contract on Oct. 28, the deal will allegedly focus on static images of EPL players assigned to NFTs which of course will allow fans to buy, own, and likely trade them.In March it was reported that the EPL tapped blockchain firm ConsenSys for an NFT deal allegedly valued upwards of $300 million. Still, Sky News reports that a slide in NFT prices had ConsenSys renegotiating to lower the price of the agreement which made Sorare’s offer more attractive to the league.A separate deal between the EPL and blockchain developer Dapper Labs is reportedly also under discussion.New NFT market gains on leader OpenSea in 24-hour trading volume The new NFT marketplace and aggregator Blur hit a record high of 1,610 ETH, around $2.5 million, in 24-hour trading volume on Oct. 26 according to Dune analytics placing it only behind the largest marketplace Opensea.It topped its rivals LooksRare and X2Y2 in terms of market share on the day, taking to Twitter to celebrate the milestone.In the last 24 hours Blur became the #2 NFT marketplace by volume (excluding wash trades)! Blur is also the #1 aggregator.This is a huge win for the entire Blur community who will eventually be majority owners of Blur. It’s only day 7 and we’re just getting started! pic.twitter.com/YpvywTdU5H— Blur (@blur_io) October 26, 2022

The Ethereum-based platform launched a beta version on Oct. 19 with an airdrop of its native token BLUR to anyone who had traded NFTs in the last six months. It says it targets “pro traders” and offers no trading fees and optional royalties.Related: TV streaming providers should start relying on NFTsOn the same day, NFT marketplace X2Y2 tweeted that it would like Blur “to stop using our listings on your website” and subsequently blocked Blur from its platform claiming it violated X2Y2’s terms by using multiple application programming interface (API) keys.More Nifty NewsNFT marketplace myNFT will showcase its first-ever physical NFT vending machine at the NFT.London event slated for Nov. 2–4 that will allow eventgoers to buy an NFT by purchasing a displayed envelope, scanning a code to create a myNFT account, and receiving the NFT in their newly created wallet.Monkey Drainer, the pseudonym of an alleged phishing scammer, has reportedly stolen $1 million worth of ETH so far this week through creating copycat NFT minting websites, and its possible the scams may have stolen over $3.5 million in total so far.

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Twitter’s top brass gutted as Elon Musk’s takeover begins

Elon Musk reportedly finalized his $44 billion takeover of social media platform Twitter on Oct. 27 and has started his tenure at the company by cleaning house at the upper executive level.According to sources from multiple outlets, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of legal and policy Vijaya Gadde are reported to have been sacked with Musk accusing them of misleading him over the number of spam accounts on the platform.Agrawal and Segal were “escorted out” of the company’s headquarters when the deal closed according to Reuters sources.the bird is freed— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022Musk had previously attempted to back out of the deal to buy Twitter in July accusing the company of making “false and misleading representations” regarding the number of spam and fake accounts.With the deal now closed, Musk looks to change the platform into a bastion of free speech, change the algorithms to prevent political echo chambers, and remove all fake and spam accounts.In an open letter to Twitter advertisers on Oct. 27 Musk further reiterated his motivations for buying Twitter, saying it is important for the “future of civilization to have a common digital town square” free from political polarization.Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022

He added he purchased the platform “to help humanity, whom I love” and penned his aspirations for Twitter to become the “most respected advertising platform in the world.”Related: How Crypto Twitter could change under Musk’s leadershipMusk is aware of the “meme-ability” of the prolonged deal and was filmed walking into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Oct. 26 carrying a sink tweeting “let that sink in” while also changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit.”Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

On Oct. 20 The Washington Post reported Musk planned to cut up to 75% of Twitter’s staff, but a report from Bloomberg days later disclosed that Musk told Twitter staff on Oct. 26 during his visit that the statements were false and he doesn’t plan to sack any staff. However, those at the top of the Twitter tree have just found out otherwise.

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Equifax—known for huge data breach—is building a Web3 KYC solution

Credit reporting company Equifax, known for suffering from one of the largest customer data breaches to date, has partnered with blockchain company Oasis Labs to build a Know Your Customer (KYC) solution.Equifax and Oasis said on Oct. 26 that the latter would be building a decentralized identity management and KYC solution for the industry on Oasis’ platform which will leverage Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from Equifax to help with checks and user identification.The announcement made no mention of the exact technology which will underpin this offering and Cointelegraph’s request for comment was not immediately responded to by either company.Both firms believe there hasn’t been a KYC solution tailored to Web3 with “strong privacy protection” and their proposed offering is set to address this gap by issuing anonymized KYC credentials to individuals’ wallets.This credential will be continuously updated according to the announcement and Oasis pledges its “privacy-preserving capabilities” will ensure data is processed in confidence whilst maintaining a trail on the company’s blockchain.Web3 firms offering similar solutions based around decentralized identity are Dock and Quadrata with each offering a product built around decentralized identity.The partnership could have some Web3 natives concerned considering the significant data breach Equifax suffered in 2017. Around 163 million worldwide private records were compromised with 148 million being U.S. citizens making it the 13th largest data breach in U.S. history according to cybersecurity company UpGuard.Related: Zero-knowledge KYC could solve the privacy vs compliance conundrum — VC partnerAttackers targeted a third-party web portal with a known vulnerability that was patched but Equifax had failed to update to the latest version, the hackers gained access to the firms’ servers for around two and a half months all the while siphoning millions of records containing sensitive information.It was reported that Equifax spent $1.4 billion on legal fees and strengthening its security posture following the incident. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a $700 million fine in July 2019 which the firm settled.

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