Philippines deports $33 million Bitcoin pyramid scheme mastermind
The Bureau of Immigration of the Philippines had ordered the deportation of a South Korean national who is wanted in South Korea over his involvement in a bitcoin pyramid scheme.
Identified as Go Yongsung, the South Korean was arrested in the city of Las Pinas. According to Jaime Morente, a Bureau of Immigration Commissioner, the arrest was conducted by the Fugitive Search Unit of the government agency. A warrant had already been issued by a district court in South Korea for his arrest prior to his capture, according to Manila Bulletin.
Per documents obtained from the authorities, Go and other accomplices defrauded South Koreans of over US$33 million by promising huge returns if they invested in bitcoin between December 2015 and June 2016. According to the authorities Go, who is 48, used a firm which was operating in Pasay City as a front in his fraudulent scheme.
Crackdown on Fugitives of Justice
After the arrest, Morente warned that the bureau would not relent in its efforts to ensure criminals faced justice regardless of which jurisdiction they committed their crimes...
eCommerce Startup Ticket Monster (TMON) Raises $32 Million to Create Crypto Stablecoin
South Korea ecommerce marketplace Ticket Monster (TMON) revealed it had closed a $32 million funding round for its new stablecoin.
TMON, which boasts a considerable $4 billion in total sales, is seeking to create an in-house cryptocurrency to compliment its existing token, Luna, which acts as collateral on its blockchain platform.
Contributing to the round are some of the cryptocurrency industry’s best-known names, including Binance Labs, OKEx and Huobi Capital, as well as funds including Polychain Capital.
“From experience, I know that faster, more secure transactions...
Being a Woman Entrepreneur In China's Get-Rich-Quick Crypto Culture
Sa Wang has co-founded several successful companies in the tech and blockchain space, first at popular Chinese self-service kiosk startup Dora, and now at top 50 crypto project and blockchain protocol IOST.
We hear a lot about women (or the lack thereof) in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.
Confirming what many of us already suspected, CoinDesk's Q2 2018 State of the Blockchain Report found that only 4 percent of crypto investors are women. In tandem, reporters regularly call the "blockchain bros" on the carpet for elbowing women out of yet another lucrative emerging industry.
But this has been a predominantly West-centric conversation, casting the spotlight on gender inequality and underrepresentation at Western crypto companies, Western blockchain conferences, and Western meetups.
Thus far, news articles, Twitter threads, and Medium posts have largely neglected the diversity of female experiences in other parts of the world, such as China, South Korea and Japan, where the crypto space is equally — if not more — dynamic and growing.
Take China, for instance. Despite banning ICOs and bringing bitcoin trading to a virtual standstill, in 2017, China was responsible for over half of the world's blockchain-related patent applications — with the U.S. coming in a distant second. The top three cryptocurrencies by market cap launched in 2018 — Zilliqa, Ontology, and IOST — are all Chinese.
With such a strong Asian presence in the blockchain world, why do we rarely hear about Asian women in crypto? What can the rest of the world learn from our experiences?
Chinese women in crypto
In order to understand what it's like to be a Chinese woman in crypto, first you must understand the Chinese crypto space itself.
Despite China's ban on crypto trading, there is a ravenous appetite for crypto wealth — traders have simply started placing their bets in Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. The regulatory crackdowns have done little to stifle the hundreds of scam crypto projects in China (many of them deployed overseas), while newly minted bitcoin millionaires — mostly male with no education or merits necessary — abound.
In contrast to the West, where conversations are slowly evolving towards a more nuanced discussion of the merits of blockchain technology and institutional adoption, Chinese crypto enthusiasts largely maintain a single-minded speculative focus: Will this coin be listed on a Korean exchange soon? What is its market cap? Should I buy? Should I sell?
This get-rich-quick mentality makes it very difficult for serious blockchain advocates — especially females, who already have to fight for a voice — to cut through the noise and evangelize a longer-term (and much less sexy) message.
As Carylyne Chan of CoinMarketCap writes in her fascinating and detailed account of Chinese crypto culture:
"Scam cases… have engendered many tragedies, and created a more insidious impact: For those who truly believe in the blockchain, such scams are smearing the blockchain technology...
South Korea to Double Public Sector Blockchain Trials Next Year
The South Korean government is literally doubling down on its efforts to trial blockchain in the public sector, adding more projects and increasing available funds for 2019.
The Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) – a sub-organization of the Ministry of ICT – has said it is aiming to increase the number of blockchain pilot projects in the public sector from six this year to 12 in 2019, as CoinDesk Korea reported on Tuesday.
"In the next year, we are considering expanding blockchain pilot projects in the public sector to 12, and plan to support more than three private-led blockchain national projects," said Min Kyung-sik, head of KISA's blockchain team.
Further, the government agency will also boost the blockchain pilot budget for 2019 to more than 10 billion Korean won,...
Korea’s 2nd-Biggest Cryptocurrency Exchange Bithumb Resumes User Registrations
Crypto markets are stabilizing and improving. Enabling companies to begin focusing on their next phase of growth.
Bithumb, South Korea’s second-biggest crypto exchange by daily trading volume behind UPbit, will officially resume registrations for new investors as early as this week.
NH Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the country, is set to sign an agreement with Bithumb on August 30 to provide virtual bank accounts to Bithumb users, which will allow new users to trade on the trading platform.
In South Korea, cryptocurrency exchanges are required to operate virtual bank accounts so that users can withdraw and deposit Korean won without having to directly deal with their respective banks for efficiency and security.
What Bithumb’s Registration Resumption Means
Since early 2018, as its partnership with NH Bank was dematerialized and it experienced a $40 million security breach which disabled deposits and withdrawals on Bithumb for a whole month, Bithumb has not been able to accept new traders on its platform.
As CCN previously reported, an official from Nonghyup Bank told Business Korea:
“We have decided not to renew the contract because Bithumb still has problems in protecting consumers and information and preventing money laundering.”
As seen in its decline in profits in the third quarter of 2018, the trading volume and user activity of Bithumb stagnated due to its inability to support new users and facilitate trades in July.
But, this month, the government of South Korea approved UPbit, Bithumb, Korbit, and a few other cryptocurrency exchanges for having...
Binance Backs TMON Unicorn Founder's $32 Million Crypto Stablecoin Financing
Yet another stablecoin is attracting big investors.
Announced Tuesday, the founder behind a $1.4 billion startup unicorn called TMON is revealing he has raised a $32 million seed round to build a stablecoin called Terra. But while a number of startups have deployed stablecoins – cryptocurrencies engineered to track the price of another asset, usually fiat currency – Terra comes with a notable addition: an existing user base.
Created by Korean entrepreneurs Danial Shin, who founded and chairs TMON, one of the top e-commerce websites in South Korea, the Terra project is launching with a significant number of partners that already reach 40 million customers. Those partners, who will together form the Terra Alliance, a group of e-commerce sites that are interested in incorporating the stablecoin into their business, include Woowa Brothers, Qoo10, Carousell, Pomelo and TIKI.
According to a spokesperson for the project, those companies, combined, take in $25 billion in sales.
"We've banded together all the e-commerce platforms in Asia that are not called Alibaba or Amazon to push Terra into the hands of many many people," Shin told CoinDesk.
It's no wonder that the round includes quite a few notable crypto investors, including Polychain Capital, FBG Capital, Hashed, 1kx, Kenetic Capital, Arrington XRP, Binance and others who were not disclosed.
"We are pleased to support Terra, which sets itself apart from most other blockchain projects with its established and immediate go-to-market strategy," said Polychain's Karthik Raju in a statement.
Echoing that, Ella Zhang, head of Binance Labs, said in a statement:
"While we see many stablecoins coming out, Terra's journey is especially meaningful as they are designing one of the few price-stable protocols with existing, working and strong go-to-market strategy and usage."
That use, according to Shin, is in acting as an economical digital payment system, compared to credit cards.
He told CoinDesk, that a significant portion of TMON's annual losses take the form of credit card fees. And he's sure other retailers experience the same.
That...
What the Korea's Crypto Scene Is Saying about Exchange hacks
The Korean cryptocurrency community speaks out about the recent exchange hacks
The past two weeks have seen two South Korean exchanges get attacked and robbed, sparking commentary and critique among the country's local cryptocurrency community.
It began with the Coinrail hack on June 9. At the time, the popular South Korean cryptocurrency exchange tentatively announced a "cyber intrusion" that saw the loss of $40 million worth of cryptocurrencies.
The exact number and amount of tokens taken from the exchange have yet to be confirmed by the company itself, though a third-party firm assisting Coinrail gave a few estimates in a blog post the following day.
If that wasn't enough, on June 20, Bithumb – South Korea's largest by trade volume – also announced a major security breach in which $31 million was reported to be lost. In a post published on their official website the same day, Bithumb reassured customers that their assets were now securely stored in offline "cold" wallets unreachable to hackers and the stolen funds would be fully reimbursed.
Combine this environment with a recent bearish market trend taking the price of bitcoin down in a way not seen since 2014 and you get the kind of social media uproar that questions just about everything.
As one Korean cryptocurrency skeptic tweeted:
"Anyone would look at this and see it as an insider act, no? Please catch the culprit and restore the platform back to the original state as soon as possible…You said there is no vulnerability of being hacking in an advertisement. Are you joking me right now?"
Digging Deep
For most, it's not a matter of tech security – that's a given for those that care – but rather about the people who operate the exchanges behind the scenes.
As @leejongsul78 puts it:
