Neil Bush is alleged to have received $300,000 to attend a meeting involving OneCoin co-founder and current fugitive Ruja Ignatova, known as the "Cryptoqueen." As Law360 reported on Nov. 15, testimony in a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York contained allegations against Neil Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush and son of the late President George H.W. Bush. Sibling entanglements As Cointelegraph has reported, OneCoin is among the crypto industry’s most infamous alleged exit scams. Founded in 2014, the Bulgaria-based firm remains fully operational to date despite investigators’ allegations that it raised 4 billion …

Lagos-headquartered fintech Opay has sealed $120 million in a series B financing round from a host of high-profile Chinese investors. Founded in 2018 by web browser developer Opera, OPay — which focuses on developing digital payments solutions to promote financial inclusion — had previously raised $50 million in June of this year, according to what Opera’s spokesperson told Cointelegraph. Opay to extend payments solution across Africa According to a Nov. 18 report from TechCrunch, Opera’s OPay reportedly intends to use the new Series B $120 million round to scale and extend its digital payments solution beyond Nigeria to Kenya, Ghana …

Tawanda Kembo, the founder and CEO of the Zimbabwean cryptocurrency exchange Golix, claims to have lost the password to one of the exchange’s Bitcoin (BTC) cold wallets. On Nov. 1, local news daily iHare reported that the CEO of Zimbabwe’s first cryptocurrency exchange allegedly lost the password in May of last year. IHare wrote that the “password fiasco” was confirmed by two separate sources familiar with the matter. CEO loses access to 33 Bitcoins The story of the lost password follows reports that financial regulators at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe ordered the exchange to shut down its operations for …

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) cryptocurrency trading platform Paxful has seen 2,800% more trades in South Africa this month compared to October 2018. Demand for crypto sharply increases in S.A. Paxful announced the growth of its South African user base in a blog post published on Oct. 28. In the post, the company also notes that Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town are the three cities that see the highest numbers of users. Paxful adds that the overall number of trades in the African continent also increased by 64% when comparing the current month with October last year. Furthermore, the platform reportedly now counts …

Hackers have compromised the website of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, and demanded ransom in Bitcoins (BTC). The city announced the hack on its official Twitter account on Oct. 25. The city wrote that it had “detected a network breach which resulted in unauthorised access to its information systems.” As a result, the breach affected several customer-facing systems — hardware or software customers interact with directly, such as user interfaces and help desks. The breach has frozen those operations. The ransom and investigation Following the attack, cybercriminals calling themselves Shadow Kill Hackers demanded ransom worth 4 BTC, as local …

The rapid onset of technological advancement is not evenly spread. Society is increasingly becoming digitally literate and uses emerging technology for work, to communicate and pay for things in ways unimaginable just 15 years ago. So, why are methods of governance largely unchanged since the invention of liberal democracy hundreds of years ago? Although many aspects of government remain entrenched in the past, one area is being brought into the 21st century: identity. With fears regarding third-party data abuse, citizens are more concerned than ever about how this affects their lives and their sovereignty. A number of innovative government departments …

Keith Mali Chung — the co-founder and president of African blockchain firm Loopblock Network — has returned almost $80,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) mistakenly sent to his wallet. Chung — who goes by the Twitter handle of “Bitcoin Keith (The African Bitcoin Bull)” — tweeted about the incident on Sept. 12: “I received huge sum of BTC from an unknown sender and it’s definitely a mistake from someone I must have had transaction with before, Kindly DM me time of transaction, your adress and exact digits sent.. thank you. Kindly retweet” The good Samaritan In a further update on Sept. …

Blockchain adoption in Africa is on the rise. From transportation to the gaming and lottery industries, reports of companies utilizing decentralized ledger technology (DLT) across the continent are emerging. Several stakeholders in the African blockchain scene say DLT is the key to solving the developmental issues plaguing the continent as a whole. They also believe the technology provides a platform for Africa to elevate itself to a position of greater relevance in global affairs. While the general attention of governments still appears minimal, some countries are reportedly taking steps to promote increased blockchain adoption. Nations such as Kenya and Nigeria …

Burundi has banned the trading of digital currencies due to a lack of protection for the public. As Bloomberg reported on Sept. 4, the government was urged to take action after some citizens in the central African country lost money while dealing with digital currencies. Crypto trading was subsequently banned. Alfred Nyobewumusi, a director at the central bank’s microfinance department, said: “Strong measures could be taken against all those who will not respect this decision.” Troubled relations with crypto in Africa As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the deputy governor of the Bank of Uganda, Louis Kasekende, has warned the public …

The government of Sierra Leone plans to fully adopt a blockchain-enabled national identity system by the end of 2019. United Nations involved President of Sierra Leone Julius Maada Bio reportedly claimed that the new infrastructure will allow financial institutions to verify identities and build credit histories, tech publication NFCW reported on Sept. 2. The new project, called the National Digital Identity Platform (NDIP), is a collaboration between the United Nations and San Francisco-based nonprofit Kiva, a key technology partner of Sierra Leone since September 2018. According to the report, the NDIP is being deployed in two major stages. The first …

Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by total assets, has joined blockchain-based trade finance network, the Marco Polo Network. Standard Bank will now develop trade finance solutions alongside major global financial institutions such as French BNP Paribas and Dutch ING, according to a press release on Aug. 22. Backed by the world’s biggest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Standard Bank is the first African bank to join the network, the press release notes. To date, the Marco Polo Network includes over 20 global financial firms such as Commerzbank, Anglo-Gulf Trade Bank, Danske Bank, NatWest, Alfa Bank, Bayern LB, …

Rwanda’s central bank, the National Bank of Rwanda, is researching how to offer an official digital currency. BNN Bloomberg reported the news on Aug. 22. The central bank is said to be interested in offering digital currency as a means to increase transaction efficiency and foster economic growth. However, Financial Stability Director-General Peace Masozera Uwase warned work remains to be done before implementation is on the table, adding: “There are still concerns about how exactly you convert the entire currency into digital form, how to distribute that and how fast can you process those transactions [...] Challenges come in, if …