Author: Staff

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Business

Samsung announces groundbreaking NFT support for its 2022 TV Line up

Samsung has announced groundbreaking TV support for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) beginning with its 2022 TV lineup, as the use of Blockchain-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs) gathers traction around the world. Through MICRO LED, Neo QLED, and The Frame, the NFT support provides an accessible, integrated platform for discovering, acquiring, and trading digital artwork.

“With demand for NFTs on the rise, the need for a solution to today’s fragmented viewing and purchasing landscape has never been greater,”

“In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favourite art — all in one place,” The Company added.

The NFT platform will allow artists to share their work with the world, as well as allow potential customers to “sample an NFT before purchasing it and learn about the history and Blockchain information of an NFT.”

In the next months, the company will provide additional information regarding the NFT platform.

NFTs are digital assets that have been around for a long time, but cryptocurrency and crypto-art have gotten a new lease on life in the last few months. NFTs enable anyone to buy and trade ownership of one-of-a-kind digital things in cryptocurrencies, as well as keep track of who owns them using the Blockchain. Anything digital, including paintings, artworks, tweets, animated GIFs, songs, and even video games, can technically be included in these.

Categories
Technology

El Salvador to Move Forward With Issuing Bitcoin Bonds

El Salvador is getting closer to issuing its Bitcoin bonds. To begin the process, the country’s Finance Minister announced that the administration would send Congress roughly 20 bills which was later confirmed by President Nayib Bukele on Twitter.

El Salvador’s Finance Minister, Alejandro Zelaya, said that the measures would “give legal structure and legal certainty to everyone who buys the Bitcoin bond.”

This year, the aim is to sell $1 billion in bonds, with half of the revenues being converted to Bitcoin and the other half going toward Bitcoin infrastructure and mining. The administration hopes that the issuance will help to establish Bitcoin City, a tax-free enclave in the country’s east powered by geothermal energy from neighboring volcanoes.

“We are the first country to release a Bitcoin bond. And because we are the first country to do this, it needs to be regulated,” said Zelaya, adding that the government was drafting the appropriate legislation for the bonds to be released. 

El Salvador became the first government in the world to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender last year. If businesses have the technological means (which many still do not), they must now adopt it. The Bitcoin community has so far applauded the action, but the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and global credit rating agencies constantly criticise it. On multiple instances, citizens have staged protests against El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law.

The country’s Bitcoin-loving president is continually launching crypto-related ventures, including Bitcoin bonds, the most recent of which is Bitcoin City.

Blockstream, a Bitcoin infrastructure company that has been aiding the Lightning Network (a second-layer solution for making Bitcoin transactions faster and cheaper) in the country’s expansion, will issue El Salvador’s Bitcoin bonds.

At first look, the Central American country does not appear to be the most appealing place for foreign investment: its bonds had the poorest performance in the world last year, according to Bloomberg. Only time will tell whether their cryptocurrency-backed bonds outperform traditional bonds.

Categories
DeFi

What is Decentraland (Mana)? A Beginner’s Guide

Decentraland is a software running on Ethereum that aims to encourage a global network of users to govern a shared virtual environment.

Users of Decentraland can explore, engage, and play games in this virtual environment while buying and selling digital real estate. Users may now use interactive apps, in-world payments, and peer-to-peer communication thanks to the platform’s evolution.

In Decentraland, operations are governed by two tokens.

These are:

LAND: A non-fungible token (NFT) that is used to define the ownership of digital real estate land parcels.

MANA: A cryptocurrency that may be used to buy LAND and other virtual products and services in Decentraland.

Changes to the Decentraland software are made possible by a network of blockchain-based smart contacts that allow MANA owners to vote on policy modifications, land auctions, and new development subsidies.

The Advent of Decentraland

The Decentraland Foundation, the organization behind the development of the Decentraland software, was founded by Esteban Ordano and Ariel Meilich in 2015.

In 2017, the Decentraland team performed an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to raise 86,206 ether (about $26 million at the time) to fund its future operations. The Foundation, which owns 20% of the initial token supply, is also in charge of intellectual property and the Decentraland website.

Decentraland established a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to hand over project control to its users before launching its platform. Furthermore, the founding team claims to have deleted the private key that controlled Decentraland’s smart contract.

How does Decentraland work?

The Decentraland application is built to track real estate parcels defined by LAND tokens. The software leverages the Ethereum blockchain to track ownership of this digital land, and it requires users to hold its MANA token within an Ethereum wallet to engage with its ecosystem. 

Further, developers are free to innovate within Decentraland’s platform by designing the animation and interactions experienced on their virtual real estate.

  1. Architecture

Many layered components of Decentraland are constructed using Ethereum smart contracts. The consensus layer keeps track of land parcel ownership through a ledger. Each LAND parcel contains a virtual world coordinate, an owner, and a link to a description file that describes the information within the parcel.

The content layer is in charge of what happens inside each parcel and includes the following files:

Content Files: Referencing all static audio and visuals

Script Files: Defining the placement and behavior of the referenced content

Interaction Definition: Peer-to-peer interactions such as gesturing, voice chat, and messaging.

The real-time layer facilitates social interactions within Decentraland through user avatars, including voice chat and messaging.

  1. Market place

The Decentraland team has also developed a marketplace and a drag-and-drop editor for users to utilize to create settings outside of the gaming area.

Participants can use the marketplace to manage and exchange LAND tokens, which are priced in MANA. Owners can use the marketplace to buy, sell, and trade parcels as well as other in-game products like wearables and unique names.

It’s worth noting that all transactions are resolved between Ethereum wallets, and thus are validated by Ethereum’s network and recorded on its blockchain.

Owners can use Decentraland’s building tools to create a one-of-a-kind experience within their LAND plots. Developers can access customization libraries and payment implementations through its editing tool, which allows them to create interactive scenes.

Why you should utilize MANA?

Decentraland may appeal to users as a personalized and shared virtual reality world. The Decentraland ecosystem may also be appealing to gamers looking to gain monetary in-game money that can be swapped for real-world products and services.

MANA is an important aspect of Decentraland’s virtual environment, and it may be used to conduct transactions within the ecosystem as well as participate in software maintenance. Ownership of MANA, for example, allows users to customize their avatars, engage with other users, and explore the platform’s metaverse.

Users who own MANA can also vote on policy modifications, LAND auctions, and subsidies to help enhance the site.

If you believe in the future of virtual reality and its power to connect users all over the world, you should consider adding MANA to your portfolio.

Categories
Business

Bitcoin drops 40% from its all-time high, to its lowest level since September 2021.

The largest cryptocurrency fell as much as 4.9 percent to $41,008, a drop of about 40% from its record high near $69,000 set on Nov. 10. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, fell as much as 9% to its lowest level since September 30 2021. According to CoinGecko, both of these tokens, as well as others like Binance Coin, Solana, Cardano, and XRP, have lost more than 10% in the last seven days.

The retreat follows the release on Wednesday of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December meeting, which hinted at the possibility of rate hikes earlier and quicker than expected, as well as a potential balance-sheet drawdown.

“The primary cause of this sell-off is the Fed’s aim to decrease the balance sheet in Q1 2022,” Fundstrat strategists wrote in a report on Thursday. “Unfortunately, there appears to be no immediate support ahead of the September 2021 lows of $39,573, with breakdowns of that leading down to the May-July bottom last summer.”

Last year, Bitcoin outperformed other asset classes by around 60%, thanks to a story that featured institutional acceptance, inflation protection, and investment diversification. However, it has struggled in recent weeks, as financial markets have been unpredictable. Inflation is rising, prompting central banks to tighten monetary policy, perhaps reducing the liquidity tailwind that has boosted a variety of assets.

According to Todd Morakis, co-founder of digital-finance product and service provider JST Capital, the unrest in Kazakhstan, where a large number of crypto-mining operations had fled following China’s crackdown on the practice, and which had already been impacted by the country’s recent power-supply problems, is also contributing to the declines.

According to data from Blockchain.com, the Bitcoin hash rate, a measure of the network’s computing power, fell to 176 million terahashes on Thursday, down from a high of around 208 million on Jan. 1.

Despite this, there were signals of a possible recovery: Hayden Hughes, CEO of Alpha Impact, a social-trading platform, said his customer base was “accumulating heavily” in the Asia morning, with a clear preference for Ether over Bitcoin. And, according to Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at Oanda Asia-Pacific, the relative strength indicator, or RSI, is “highly oversold,” and a bounce back to $45,000 isn’t out of the question.

According to Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lender Nexo, a breach of Bitcoin’s price below $41,000 “may turn ugly, with the mid-to-low thirties a possible destination.” From May to July last year, Bitcoin saw a two-month period of consolidation in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, and “a replay of history can’t be ruled out as Fed tightening remains the popular narrative,” he said.

Categories
DeFi

Non-fungible Tokens

What is a non-fungible token?

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a new solution to a problem that is as old as the web: the endless replicability of digital information online. When bits, files and pixels can be copied and pasted with a few clicks, analogue concepts such as ownership, originality and access control often go out of the window, as anyone who worked in the music industry during the heyday of streaming service Napster knows.

Non-fungible tokens use blockchain technology to certify the authenticity and ownership of a specific and unique digital object. Blockchains are the same basic technology that underpins a range of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. While one digital coin is the same as another (or “fungible”), each NFT is a one-off with one certified owner, even if the associated file can be copied. What bitcoin is to the US dollar, an NFT is to the “Mona Lisa”. Anyone can buy a print of the “Mona Lisa”, but there is only one original hanging in The Louvre (and an NFT can be more than just an artwork, but more on that later).

What are the most popular kinds of NFTs?

The iconic works of the early NFT era look rather different to Leonardo da Vinci’s Renaissance masterpiece. Today’s most valuable digital artwork collections include “CryptoPunks”, a limited run of 10,000 pixelated images that routinely sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes fetching millions, and “Bored Ape Yacht Club”, a troop of 10,000 cartoonish primates, and “Art Blocks”, “generative” works created by algorithm.

Total NFT trading on the Ethereum blockchain reached $5.9bn in the third quarter of 2021, according to NonFungible, a data platform — up more than six-fold from the $782m between March and June this year.

Yet, while it is growing fast, the overall community of active NFT buyers and sellers is small by internet standards — still well under 1m people, according to NonFungible’s latest estimates.

How do I buy an NFT?

Part of the reason there are not more NFT owners is that the process of buying and selling is cumbersome and occasionally risky.

Most NFTs are built on the Ethereum blockchain, which means they are purchased using ether (ETH), one of the most popular cryptocurrencies alongside bitcoin. Ether can be bought through a crypto platform such as Coinbase or digital payment and stock trading apps, including PayPal, Revolut and Robinhood.

Then a crypto wallet must be set up to pay for and receive NFTs. The most popular wallet is MetaMask, which is primarily used through a plug-in or “extension” to a desktop web browser such as Chrome or Firefox. Wallets that exist as smartphone apps offer more limited functionality, because of app store rules.

Which real-world assets are being tokenised?

To make purchases, a wallet must be linked to an NFT marketplace such as OpenSea, SuperRare or Foundation. NFTs on OpenSea are priced in cryptocurrency, making them vulnerable to the wildly fluctuating cryptocurrency markets as well as the shifting value of the NFT assets themselves. An extra and often unpredictable cost comes in the form of each transaction’s “gas” fee, which pays for authentication through the blockchain.

“It’s a very arcane process,” says Andrei Brasoveanu, a partner at Accel, a venture capital firm that made early bets on Facebook, Spotify and Deliveroo. “It can also be unsafe — once you pass a certain size of [wallet] account you have to invest in security. It’s not easy.”

But that has not deterred Brasoveanu from investing in NFT companies such as Sorare, which mixes fantasy football with NFT-style trading cards, and Sky Mavis, maker of the Pokémon-style game Axie Infinity. “To me, that’s part of the promise . . . even though it’s hard, people are jumping into this area.”

Who is buying NFTs?

Many of the wealthiest NFT buyers are crypto millionaires who invested early in bitcoin or ether and now crave a badge of status that is indigenous to their boosterish community. “CryptoPunk” owners, including rappers Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, often use the image as their Twitter avatar.

How do I decide which NFT to buy?

Most of the big NFT market places host their community discussions on Discord, a chat app that functions a bit like workplace messaging platform Slack. Discord can be a good way to discover new NFTs and to dive deeper into specific projects, to learn about their development “roadmap”.

But these lightly regulated online forums can be hard to navigate for the uninitiated, making them a hunting ground for scammers, whether by hyping a meritless project or trying to steal wallet login details by posing as customer support staff.

Can NFTs actually be useful?

As well as art and collectibles, some NFTs are used as a new kind of asset or credential, from owning characters in video games to granting access behind a virtual velvet rope.

“Bored Ape” owners, for instance, can access an exclusive online community, like a virtual Soho House members’ club for crypto nuts, while other NFTs allow owners to buy physical merchandise unavailable to the public.

How are NFTs regulated?

The sector is very loosely regulated at present, prompting US senator Elizabeth Warren to say in August that the market for some digital assets was like the “wild west of our financial system” and that “regulators need to step up to address crypto’s regulatory gaps”, writes Jane Croft.

The biggest debate at the moment is whether NFTs are effectively securities and should be regulated as such in future by the US and UK authorities. Lack of regulation means it is difficult to prove the usual anti-money-laundering checks have been carried out on money used to buy NFTs.

There are also regulatory issues around taxation: if NFT assets are held virtually on the internet, who decides in which country taxes are payable? Additionally, there are questions about what happens if a blockchain holding an NFT closes down or becomes defunct: does the NFT disappear?

“There are risks attached to NFTs if you buy and sell these tokens,” says Francesc Rodríguez Tous, lecturer in banking at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. “There should be safety measures in place if the servers have a problem or if there is a cyber attack. If large companies decide to come into this area, the regulators will have to get involved.”

However, there are questions about whether NFTs will remain attractive if they are regulated. “NFTs are very flexible and the issue with more regulation is whether it will allow them to keep this flexibility,” says Rodriguez Tous. “Regulated products tend to be more standardised and NFTs might lose part of their attractiveness and flexibility if they are regulated.”

In September, OpenSea, a platform for buying and selling digital collectibles, launched an internal probe after it emerged one of its top executives had allegedly been using insider knowledge to sell items ahead of their promotion on the marketplace.

For now, large financial institutions remain cautious of NFTs. “Banks are interested in NFTs but are watching to see what happens with regulation,” says Rodriguez Tous. “Banks are very regulated and wary about investment outside that regulatory purview, otherwise they will attract the attention of banking supervisors.”

How are famous names using NFTs?

Non-fungible tokens are being used as an engagement tool by artists, sports stars and celebrities to connect with superfans and offer them exclusive material.

US band Kings of Leon recently generated $2m from NFT sales of their latest album When You See Yourself; each token included exclusive album artwork and limited edition “Golden Eye” vinyl.

Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino has announced plans to sell seven never-before-seen scenes from his 1994 classic movie Pulp Fiction as NFTs. Film studio Miramax has said it will sue, claiming it holds the rights and the scheme would devalue its own plans for movie NFTs.

Artists and celebrities are also piling in to offer their fans unusual NFTs. In July, Star Trek actor William Shatner released digital trading cards featuring images from his life and career, including an X-ray of his teeth, on the WAX Blockchain, which tracks a card’s ownership records and history. Collectors can now trade cards between themselves.

Max Dilendorf, a partner at New York-based law firm Dilendorf, suggests a celebrity could even securitize their heartbeat. “Using heartbeat-monitoring tech, a celebrity could assign rights to a newly formed company to display the audio and visual stream of the heartbeat, for example, for $10m,” he says. Such a company could issue and sell digitized shares to fans, who could then trade them as tokenized securities on regulated alternative trading system platforms such as Zero or Inx, he suggests.

Categories
Amber Group Business

Amber Group – December 2021 Recap

Corporate News

Named a winner of Deloitte’s 2021 Hong Kong Technology Fast Leader award.

Announced the appointment of Cactus Raazi as the CEO of Amber Group’s US subsidiary.

WhaleFin UK received approval as Appointed Representative for UK FCA-authorised firm Strata Global Limited.

Blockchain security research team provided an in-depth breakdown of the loophole on Dexfolio’s LP farming contract which the team identified and reported through the bug bounty platform, ImmuneFi, on August 15, 2021.

Product Development and Partnerships

Launched WhaleFin, an integrated digital asset platform that has combined Amber App and Amber Pro.

Led the $175 million Series B funding round for 1inch.

Led the $6 million token sale for algorithmic stablecoin Sperax.

In the News

Cointelegraph:  1inch Network concludes $175M Series B led by Amber Group.

Disruption Banking: Amber Group’s UK Subsidiary, WhaleFin Technologies, receives approval as Appointed Representative for UK FCA-authorised firm Strata Global Limited.

BeInCrypto: Amber Group appoints global markets veteran Cactus Raazi as US CEO.

The Block: 1inch Network closes $175 million Series B, aims to serve institutional customers.

Yahoo Finance: Amber Group reimagines digital wealth management In the metaverse with launch of WhaleFin.

Crowdfund Insider: Amber Group’s WhaleFin seeks to simplify crypto investments.

U.Today: WhaleFin presents modern digital wealth management platform.

Benzinga:  Amber Group named a winner of Deloitte’s 2021 Hong Kong Technology Fast Leader Award.

Blockworks: Funding News: Steve Aoki, Alameda, Amber Group invest $6M in private token sale, humanDAO raises $3.7M.

Events and Media Appearances

CEO Michael Wu invited on The Daily Forkast to share his views on the topical stories of the week in December, such as India’s crypto bill, web 3.0 development, and Omicron token.

Managing Partner Annabelle Huang  invited to DCenetral Miami Conference to share her perspectives on DeFi outlook and trends.

Managing Partner Annabelle Huang and North American Head of Business Development Angie Beehler attended Miami Art Basel 2021 opening reception.

CSO Dimitrios Kavvathas invited to the OP Investment Management panel discussion titled “Asia Alpha: Undiscovered Talent”. 

CSO Dimitrios Kavvathas invited to Bank of America’s private conference to share his views on the potential of crypto innovation and uptake in India.

Regional Director for Europe Sophia Shluger invited to the Blockchain Finance Forum: Europe 2021 to share her perspectives on the impact of blockchain technology on European finance.

Categories
Coins

What is Solana (SOL)?

Solana ($SOL) was one of the hottest blockchains in 2021 due to its incredible speed and extremely cheap transaction cost. Since its token rose from $2 (7,000Ugx) in August 2020 to almost $240 (848,400Ugx) by the end of 2021, Solana outperformed other blockchain networks and is now ranked among the top five most valuable blockchains in terms of market valuation. But what exactly is Solana? Let us find out!

Solana is a third-generation blockchain platform built exclusively for decentralized applications (Dapps) like DeFi and NFT. Proof-of-History (PoH) consensus is used by the Solana blockchain, which is an open-source initiative.

Solana claimed a throughput of 50,000 TPS (Transactions Per Second) with an incredibly low transaction fee thanks to an ideal network of blockchain validators. This speed outperforms all other blockchain platforms, including Cardano, Ethereum, and Ethereum layer-2 solutions, among others.

History of Solana

Since releasing the Solana whitepaper in 2017, Anatoly Yakovenko has been the company’s creator, describing a new consensus called Proof-of-History (PoH). The Ethereum and Bitcoin challenges were overcome by consensus.

The Solana project was developed by Solana Labs in the United States and is led by the Solana Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland.

In March 2020, Solana introduced the Mainnet Beta, which lets users conduct simple transactions and use smart contracts on the Solana blockchain. The Solana team held a public auction to raise $1.7 million.

Developers can now use the Solana blockchain to test their ideas since the smart contract was launched. Hundreds of new projects are being launched on the Solana blockchain all the time, making it one of the crypto world’s fastest-growing blockchain ecosystems.

How does Solana blockchain work?

The node leader takes the transaction, gives it to a hash code, and sends it to the Solana blockchain once a user provides it to the blockchain. The transaction is validated by other nodes (validators), which then send it back to the leader. This entire operation takes 400 milliseconds and results in a block on the Solana blockchain.

Solana’s eight core blockchain technology are as follows:

  • Proof-of-History (PoH): A clock for blockchain. A sequence of computation that is responsible for cryptographically verifying the passage of time between two events.
  • Tower BFT: Solana’s Custom High-Performance Implementation of PBFT. This enhances the PoH to reduce communication time and network latency.
  • Turbine: A block propagation protocol. The message will be divided into smaller packages which are sent to network validators to process. This solves the problem of the distributed system that has to propagate all data to a large number of separate nodes.
  • Gulf Stream: Mempool-less transaction forwarding protocol. The next network-validating leaders will be selected based on their SOL stakes. Data of transactions can be processed in those leader nodes, reducing the validating time and improving the memory optimization for validators.
  • Sealevel: Parallel smart contract run-time. This supports parallel transaction execution in a single shard.
  • Pipelining: A Transaction Processing Unit (TPU) for validation optimization. This optimizes the CPU and GPU of the validators to make sure that the hardware components of validators are working properly.
  • Cloudbreak: Horizontally-Scaled Accounts Database. This optimizes the flow of data on storage disks.
  • Archivers: Distributed ledger store. This means data of Solana is stored on a network of nodes called Archivers not on validators’ nodes. Those Archivers don’t take part in the consensus process. The data is divided into pieces distributed to those Archiver nodes.
Categories
DeFi

Cryptocurrency tips for first-time investors

There are now over 15 000 cryptocurrencies accessible worldwide, with a total market capitalization of about 10,000 trillion Ugx. There’s no sign of this growth slowing down as the technology gains more popularity and new use cases are discovered. 

The fact that Bitcoin, the most well-known cryptocurrency, achieved an all-time high market capitalization of almost $1.3 trillion in November 2021 demonstrates how cryptocurrencies are becoming more widely accepted as part of mainstream investor portfolios.

However, like with most things, several waves of adoption have occurred. If you weren’t an early adopter and are now regretting your decision, don’t worry; it’s not too late.

The truth is that the cryptocurrency market is here to stay, and while it may appear to be a hard world to enter, it isn’t. Here are a handful of tips to guide you through your crypto currency investments.

  1. Take the first steps and start now!

When it comes to cryptocurrency investing, the old Chinese proverb “a thousand miles begins with one step” holds true. Even if it’s only 100,000 Ugx, make that first investment. Giving yourself some (even very tiny) market exposure will cause you to begin tracking the investment’s success. 

Being in the market is the best approach to improve your expertise and understanding of an investment. Of course, no one becomes an expert overnight (and be wary of those who claim otherwise); it takes time and continuous study, which you can only begin once you’ve made that initial commitment.

  1. Don’t wait.

Cryptocurrencies are significantly more volatile than traditional assets, which is part of their attraction because it can help an investment portfolio earn larger returns, but it also means that timing an investment is difficult, if not impossible. Most markets are like this. If you’re concerned that the market may crash as you enter it, decide how much you want to invest in total and then invest 10% of that amount every week (or month) until your entire allocation is invested. This method, known as dollar cost averaging, will significantly reduce your risk in the event of a market decline and give you a better understanding of the day-to-day complexities of trading.

  1. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Cryptocurrencies come under the ‘riskier investment’ category of an investor’s portfolio due to their volatility, and as a result, investors should be aware that the risk profile is high, and allocation should be limited to a few percent. Huge risk, on the other hand, can lead to high return (as with bitcoin over the years). You may benefit from the overall rising acceptance of this new technology by diversifying your cryptocurrency portfolio rather than betting on a single cryptocurrency. Do your homework and determine which coins have a strong investment case; cryptocurrency isn’t just about bitcoin.

  1. Long term hold

If you look at all of the graphs over the last five years, you’ll notice that investors who have held their cryptocurrency investment for more than five years have all made good long-term returns. This means that if the market falls, you should resist the desire to sell everything you own. Holding your investment for a long time can also help you avoid the volatility. While the biggest cryptocurrencies may fluctuate between 5% and 20% on any given day, the long-term trend has been upwards.

  1. Security

Most individuals are significantly more concerned about online security than they were, say, two years ago, thanks to the rise of online banking and banking apps. It’s even more crucial in the case of bitcoin trading. Make sure the trading applications and digital wallets you use have two-factor authentication, if not three-factor authentication, and don’t reuse passwords you’ve already used. If you’re going to work with exchanges or fund managers, be sure they’re respectable by checking with multiple sources.  Refer to our recent article to learn more about Crypto wallets. 

Categories
Business

Deftify builds the first Africa Focused Crypto Incubator and Launch pad

Deftify has announced the launch of the world’s first Africa-focused incubator and Launchpad, which will provide investors with exclusive access to cutting-edge African innovation. This incubator is part of a bigger DeFi and NFT ecosystem aimed at supporting individuals and ideas across Africa.

Africa has the world’s fastest-growing crypto trading industry. In fact, between June 2020 and June 2021, crypto use increased by 1200 percent. Regardless, the continent’s cryptocurrency sector is mostly untouched. Deftify wants to remedy that by offering infrastructure and a Launchpad for African entrepreneurs with a large pool of talent but no assistance.

Deftify’s decentralized private launchpad was created with the goal of assisting African blockchain companies in realizing their full potential and achieving growth. The Deftify team has built an incubator inside the launchpad to help blockchain developers bring social, financial, and technical benefits to rising regions around the world. Deftify’s varied index funds and integrated portfolio management tools also give investors an advantage that other launchpads don’t offer.

With a market data aggregator, index fund, metaverse game, and Africa-focused launchpad all in one place, Deftify has created a one-of-a-kind ecosystem. Deftify has mastered all of these characteristics and merged them into a game-changing environment, whereas other ecosystems specialize in only one of them. Every part of the ecosystem helps the team achieve its goal of expanding the ecosystem, promoting widespread crypto usage, and supporting promising blockchain initiatives in emerging markets.

The Deftify ecosystem runs on DFTY – the native token that is designed to unlock utility throughout the network. When staked, DFTY becomes a valuable ticket to premium features as the money that runs transactions in Deftify. Users can even construct their own NFT characters in the metaverse game by staking DFTY tokens. Token holders can battle other players, level up, and receive rewards by playing the game.

While Deftify isn’t the first business accelerator, they do so in a unique way by tapping into the genuine talent pool and networking with founders in person. They want to change the crypto landscape in Africa, and then in other emerging regions, by ensuring the successful launch of promising blockchain enterprises.

Categories
Technology

Deepfakes, cryptocurrency, mobile wallet attacks: beware of these and more cybercrimes in 2022

Check Point Software Technologies, a global provider of cybersecurity solutions, has released its 2022 cybersecurity forecast, which outlines the major security challenges that businesses will face in the coming year.

As cybercriminals try to profit off the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects, they’ll develop new ways to attack using deep fakes, bitcoin, mobile wallets, and other methods.

The Global Cyber Security Forecast 2022 report’s highlights include the following:

  1. Fake news and deception operations are making a comeback: Misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination information has circulated throughout 2021. Cyber criminals will continue to use fake news campaigns to carry out phishing attacks and scams in 2022.
  2. Supply chain cyber attacks will become more widespread, and governments will begin to implement rules to prevent these attacks and protect networks, as well as collaborate with the private sector and other countries to discover and target new threat groups around the world.
  3. Terrorist groups and political activists will be able to further their agendas and carry out more complex and extensive attacks as infrastructure and technology capabilities improve. Cyber attacks will increasingly be employed as proxies in proxy wars to undermine global industry.
  4. Data breaches are increasingly common and cost more money: Data breaches will become more common and cost firms and governments more money to recover. The US insurance firm paid hackers $ 40 million in ransom in May 2021. It was a new high, and attackers’ ransom demands are projected to rise in 2022.
  5. Attackers Are Getting More Into Cryptocurrency: When bitcoin and altcoins become pure software, the cybersecurity required to protect against hackers stealing and manipulating them will inevitably evolve.
  6. Cybercriminals will evolve and adapt their strategies to exploit the rising dependency on mobile devices as mobile wallets and mobile payment platforms become more widely used.
  7. Microservice vulnerabilities will be exploited by attackers: As cloud service providers (CSPs) adopt the microservices architecture, attackers exploit the weaknesses in it to mount large-scale attacks against CSPs.
  8. Penetration tools are becoming more sophisticated: in 2021, one out of every 61 enterprises will be hit by ransomware. Ransomware assaults will become more sophisticated in 2022, as threat actors continue to target corporations that can afford to pay the ransom. Penetration tools will be increasingly used by hackers to customize attacks in real time and to live and work within victim networks.

“By 2021, hackers modified their attack strategy to take advantage of vaccination mandates, elections, and the transition to hybrid work, focusing on disrupting supply chains and networks of businesses,” said Maya Horowitz, vice president of research at Check Point Software. 

“To remain ahead of threats, businesses must be proactive and secure and monitor every element of their attack surface, or they risk becoming the next target of sophisticated targeted attacks.” – she concluded.