By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
Steps have been taken this year in Japan and Norway towards the integration of digital currencies such as Bitcoin into the mainstream financial sector. Japan has amended financial laws to include coverage of digital currencies as a type of ‘prepaid payment instrument’, and an online bank in Norway has announced plans to offer clients the ability to link their bank accounts with cryptocurrency accounts.
Like an iceberg, the majority of the internet is concealed from plain sight. The “Dark Web,” or websites and content that use anonymizing networks to provide untraceable access to unindexed sections of the web, comprises a segment of what lies beneath that which is visible through a Google search. Cliff Histed and Nicole Mueller contributed an article to American Lawyer on this topic. The article contains insight into the concerns shared by former FBI Director, James Comey, as well as European law enforcement authorities.
To read the article, click here.
By Jacob Ghanty
The FCA has published a discussion paper (DP) on the potential uses of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in financial services. The purpose of the DP is to start a dialogue on the risks and opportunities in relation to DLT. The FCA has gained exposure to DLT through its Regulatory Sandbox initiative.
The FCA describes DLT as “a set of technological solutions that enables a single, sequenced, standardised and cryptographically-secured record of activity to be safely distributed to, and acted upon by, a network of varied participants.” It states that industry efforts to investigate DLT have become especially concentrated over the past 24 months and, in the second half of 2017 into 2018, it expects to see firms moving on from “Proof of Concept” to “real-world” deployment of this kind of technology.
By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray
Reuters has reported that a third of bitcoin trading platforms have been hacked, and nearly half have closed since they entered the scene 6 years ago. This increasing risk for bitcoin holders is compounded by the fact there is no depositor’s insurance to absorb the loss. That approach heightens cybersecurity risks and also exposes the fact that bitcoin investors have little choice but to do business with under-capitalized exchanges.
This issue was evident when Bitfinex was hacked earlier this month and an estimated $70 million in bitcoin was stolen. The virtual bank’s customers were forced to share the losses resulting in a generalized loss percentage of 36.067%. Read our blog post on this hacking here.
Experts say trading venues acting like banks such as Bitfinex will remain vulnerable. These exchanges act as custodial wallets in which they control users’ digital currencies like banks control customer deposits. However, unlike their brick-and-mortar counterparts, when customers’ bitcoin accounts are hacked, there is currently no third party that can step in to deal with the theft. As a result, these underfunded exchanges require nearly perfect security.
Given this it is not surprising that certain governments around the world are exploring the possibility of central bank issued digital currencies using distributed ledger technology which could compete with the private digital currency systems such as bitcoin. Read more on this here.
By Cameron Abbott and Simon Ly
Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange Bitfinex has suspended trading after discovering an alleged security breach to the tune of $72M! It has been reported that this is the third largest bitcoin breach in history, with the largest being the infamous MtGox breach in early 2014.
Trading has halted on Bitfinex as the company investigates the security breach and cooperates with law enforcement. Although this may come as only a small consolation to many, in its initial response Bitfinex said that the breach was quarantined to “bitcoin wallets; the other digital tokens traded on Bitfinex are unaffected”.
As of today, Bitfinex is still in the process of figuring out what happened, but disputes the total cost of the heist, stating that the “numbers being quoted are erroneous as nothing has been decided as of yet and [Bitfinex] is still in the process of settling positions and balances”.
Are we all more comforted by the fact that they don’t know?
To keep up to date, you can see Bitfinex’s blog updates here.
By Ayuko Nemoto and Yuki Sako
To date, virtual currencies and related service providers remain unregulated in Japan. However, on March 4, 2016, the Cabinet of Japan approved an amendment bill to the Payment Services Act of Japan and submitted it to the Diet (“Amendment Bill”).
Most importantly, the Amendment Bill aims to bring the industry under the supervision of the Financial Services Agency of Japan (“FSA”) and introduce new registration requirements for virtual currencies exchanges, including those based outside of Japan that provide services to customers in Japan. Exchanges based outside of Japan may be registered as a “Foreign Exchange” if they are registered or licensed in their home jurisdiction; however, they must have an office in Japan and designate a “representative of Japan,” the failure of which would result in disqualification.
By Jim Bulling and Michelle Chasser
Blockchain, the public decentralised ledger technology behind Bitcoin, is gaining attention from a much wider audience within the financial services industry in terms of the potential application to securities clearing and settlements, payment processing and loan transactions.
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