As the crypto and blockchain space investigates seemingly private solutions for payments and messaging, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, has had the backdoor to one of the world’s major encryption systems since World War II. Beginning in WWII, Swiss company Crypto AG operated as a seemingly neutral party that developed encrypted communications solutions for over 120 different countries over much of the past century, The Washington Post revealed in a Feb. 11 exposé. Crypto AG was not what it seemed Behind the scenes of the seemingly Swiss company sat CIA and German secret service group BND, the true …

Binance’s futures platform is launching a Zcash (ZEC)–Tether (USDT) perpetual contract with maximum leverage of up to 50x. An announcement from the exchange on Feb. 4 revealed that trading for the new ZEC/USDT contract will go live at 8.00 a.m. on Feb. 5. In a bid to prevent market manipulation, Binance says it has chosen to set a pricing limit of ±1% on the mark price within the first 15 minutes after trading begins. Perpetual vs. traditional futures As reported, when the Binance Futures platform launched — offering maximum leverage of as high as 125x — the exchange emphasized it …

The Aztec privacy network has officially launched on the Ethereum blockchain on Feb. 1. Using Zcash-based technology, it introduces confidential tokens where all amounts are cryptographically hidden. The network is currently in limited deployment as it only supports zkDai, a private version of Maker’s stablecoin. Other zero knowledge tokens are set to be released in the coming weeks, while full access to custom token creation will be granted in two months, the company says. The Aztec protocol, just like Zcash (ZEC), uses Zk-SNARKs to validate encrypted transactions. When generating a transfer, a proof of correctness is generated as the amount …

The activation of Bitcoin’s (BTC) Taproot upgrade is moving forward as official Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIP) were submitted for review on Jan. 24. Even though Taproot is often hyped up for its privacy improvements, its true impact is likely to be very minor. What is Taproot? Taproot is the name given to a proposal coined by former Blockstream CTO Gregory Maxwell in January 2018. The actual implementation was later developed by a team of Bitcoin contributors led by Pieter Wuille. Taproot is a proposal that enhances Bitcoin’s scripts, a set of instructions attached to each transaction that explains how the …

Blockchain technology is an important tool in addressing the data protection crisis, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser believes. Kaiser, a former business development director at controversial British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, has discussed global data privacy issues in an interview with Cointelegraph on Jan. 23. Currently serving as co-founder at digital intelligence startup Own Your Data Foundation, Kaiser first came into the spotlight during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed that the firm had collected raw data from up to 87 million Facebook profiles for the Trump campaign. Speaking with Cointelegraph’s head of news Dylan Love at the World …

The volume of cryptocurrency flows coming on darknet markets have doubled for the first time in four years, a new study says. In part of its 2020 Crypto Crime Report published on Jan. 28, Chainalysis — a New York-based blockchain analytics firm — found that darknet markets have significantly increased their share of total incoming crypto transactions in 2019, doubling from 0.04% in 2018 to 0.08%. Crypto on darknets is resilient to scrutiny by law enforcement According to the study, total market sales in crypto grew 70% in 2019 to account for more than $790 million worth of cryptocurrency after …

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance has invested an undisclosed sum in blockchain data monetization startup Numbers. According to a post published on Binance’s official blog on Jan. 21, Numbers aims to create an open, transparent and traceable data sharing, verification and management system. The firm’s open source application reportedly allows individuals to own and monetize their personal data. Since last year, Numbers has reportedly worked with nonprofit Shoah Foundation, the Stanford University and IBM to develop data traceability and verification systems to preload on the Exodus, the blockchain smartphone of tech giant HTC. Binance’s strategy officer Gin Chao said: “Numbers app …

Over the last 10 years, the Bitcoin ecosystem has attracted developers to dedicate thousands of hours to improve and revamp most of its underlying codebase. Yet, Bitcoin (BTC) is largely the same. The reason for this is that its core set of consensus rules that define its monetary properties, such as its algorithmic inflation and hard-coded supply, remain unchanged. Time and time again, factions have attempted to change these core properties, but all hostile takeovers thus far have failed. It’s often a painful process but one that highlights and solidifies two of Bitcoin’s biggest virtues: No single party can dictate …

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of major encrypted messenger Telegram, argues that Apple’s cloud service iCloud is “now officially a surveillance tool.” Citing a Jan. 21 Reuters report, Durov claimed that applications like WhatsApp — which rely on iCloud to store private messages — are “part of the problem.” Telegram CEO delivered his verdict in a post on his official Telegram channel on Jan. 21: “iCloud is now officially a surveillance tool. Apps that are relying on it to store your private messages (such as WhatsApp) are part of the problem.” Apple dropped its end-to-end encryption plans for iCloud two …

Chinese technology experts held a seminar titled "Blockchain technology helps China's new social credit system" on Jan. 14. English-language news outlet China.org.cn reported on Jan. 22 that over 20 experts from universities, research institutes and businesses attended the event. China’s social credit system is a citizen reputation system that the Chinese government is currently developing. Social credit regional trials began in 2009, while a national pilot started in 2014. Four years after the national pilot began, the efforts were centralized under the purview of the country’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China. Now, Chinese experts presumably want to leverage …

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is now the United Kingdom's sole Anti-Money Laundering (AML) authority for the crypto business. After a decade of compliance under a laissez-faire approach to AML legislation, U.K.-based crypto firms now face a significantly more stringent set of rules. With the FCA thrashing U.K. crypto regulation into shape, the consequences upon start-ups, user privacy and adoption will likely be wide-reaching. In its early stages, decentralized finance (DeFi) has uncovered a bounty of possibilities within the economic sector. From borderless banking to using blockchain technology, DeFi is leading a comprehensive coup d'état against an entrenched financial industry. …

Tron (TRX) is set to feature zero knowledge-based privacy through the work of the TRONZ team. A trusted setup ceremony is set to be conducted soon, which Tron claims in a Jan. 17 blog post will “set a new Guinness World Record.” TRONZ is a privacy initiative that is set to integrate Zk-SNARKs, the core privacy technology of Zcash (ZEC), in the Tron blockchain. While the team claims its implementation is the “most efficient, and least resource-consuming privacy protocol in the world,” no technical details were released. Built with the “advancement of blockchain technology” in mind, the TRONZ team has …