CNBC’s Joe Kernen claims he is being treated “like a god” on Twitter following a June 19 interview on Squawk Box where he questioned whether Facebook’s libra is a cryptocurrency. In the clip, posted by a bitcoin (BTC) advocate, Kernen said libra “doesn’t excite me at all” and argued that blockchain networks used by major coins add inherent value. Describing the libra, he added: “This is just based on the dollar. I don’t understand it — is it called a cryptocurrency? Well it’s not.” Crypto enthusiasts praised Kernen for his remarks — and said it marked a turning point as …

Facebook’s Calibra digital wallet will not be available in some of the social network’s largest markets, including India, according to a TechCrunch report on June 19. A spokesperson told the website: “The libra blockchain will be global, but it will be up to custodial wallet providers to determine where they will and will not operate. Calibra won’t be available in U.S.-sanctioned countries or countries that ban cryptocurrencies.” Estimates by Statista suggest there were 260 million Facebook users in India as of April this year — far ahead of the tech giant’s second-largest market, the United States. Earlier this month, Indian …

A “next-generation” mobile payment protocol has unveiled new features — including “incentives” for users who own and run the nodes that perform vital roles on its network, including the verification of transactions. Crypto.com says the new program is a result of a partnership with Allnodes, which is offering its hosting services for the platform. Users who want to participate can either get involved through the Crypto.com Wallet app, or via Allnodes. The Hong Kong-headquartered company, which was founded in 2016, says the native blockchain powering its Crypto.com Pay service delivers “instant, seamless, secure and cost-efficient” transactions for merchants and crypto …

Ripple (XRP) wallet and gateway-as-a-service provider GateHub has warned that there is a phishing scam campaign targeting its cryptocurrency wallet users, as per an announcement on June 13. According to the announcement, GateHub’s wallet users are being sent malicious emails from addresses that look like they are from GateHub: “@gatehub.com” and “@gatehub.net.” The emails instruct the users to transfer their funds to a “secure” wallet, which is owned by the attacker, because their private keys are allegedly compromised due to insufficient security precautions. GateHub notes that, in addition to the attack being an unaffiliated phishing attempt, the service provider never …

Global mobile crypto wallet provider BRD has announced a partnership with blockchain payments and infrastructure firm Wyre that will enable its United States-based customers to purchase cryptocurrencies using bank transfers. The news was revealed in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on June 13. According to the press release, U.S. customers will be able to purchase bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and dai (DAI) by directly linking their BRD wallet to their bank account and making a low-fee transfer. The new service is reportedly supported by over 1,700 U.S. banks, and ostensibly allows for purchases to be completed within five minutes. …

A crypto wallet provider says it has launched a giveaway that allows 1,000 users to get a free EOS account. Lumi Wallet notes the giveaway is taking place on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead of answering quiz questions, preparing a submission or entering into a lottery system, all that participants need to do is sign up in EOS for free. The promotion will end when all of the accounts have been snapped up. The company says the giveaway is in partnership with Minergate and Changelly, and comes as Lumi vies to become “the premier wallet for the EOS blockchain.” Lumi …

A new digital assets ecosystem is offering decentralized crypto trading to businesses and individuals, delivering wallet-to-wallet transactions and “cutting-edge analytical tools” that enable users to make informed decisions about the cryptocurrencies they hold, buy and sell. Volentix’s “four pillars” will underpin the beginnings of its digital assets ecosystem — one of which is VDEX, or Volentix Decentralized Exchange, its flagship product. The project describes VDEX as a “next generation, extensible and customizable decentralized crypto exchange,” with an emphasis on ensuring that the assets and data of every user remain individual and secure. A suite of other decentralized applications (DApps) are …

A portion of bitcoin (BTC) stolen from Bitfinex crypto exchange back in 2016 has been moved from hackers’ wallets to an unknown address on June 7, based on several tweets by crypto transaction tracker Whale-alert.io. The movement of stolen bitcoins has allegedly started earlier today at 06:08 AM UTC and involved of six transactions to date, totally worth about 185 bitcoin, or $1.5 million at press time. Five out of six transactions of stolen funds from Bitfinex hack 2016 on June 7. Source: Whale Alert Twitter The amount of recently moved stolen bitcoins accounts for about 0.15% of the 120,000 …

Hackers have reportedly compromised nearly 100 XRP Ledger wallets on cryptocurrency wallet service GateHub. The incident was announced by GateHub in a preliminary statement on June 6. In the statement, GateHub reveals that it was notified by some of its customers and community members that funds on their wallets had been stolen. The company estimates that hackers managed to compromise around 100 XRP Ledger wallets. Although the company did not initially identify any nefarious activities on its platform, it began an investigation on the matter, wherein it discovered increased application programming interface (API) calls coming from a small number of …

Crypto wallet provider Komodo effectively hacked itself to prevent fraudsters from accessing its users’ funds, the company confirmed in a blog post on June 5. Security researchers had alerted the company to a vulnerability in its Agama wallet. Realizing that hackers could strike any moment, Komodo’s cybersecurity team decided to use the same exploit to move compromised crypto to safety. Explaining to users what happened, Komodo said: “We were able to sweep around 8 million KMD and 96 BTC from these vulnerable wallets, which otherwise would have been easy pickings for the attacker.” Komodo’s actions mean that, at current market …

Privacy-centric cryptocurrency Grin is finalizing its timeline for its first-ever network hard fork, according to a proposed timeline uploaded by Grin core developer Quentin Le Sceller to Github dev community forum Gitter on June 5. Grin is a privacy coin that implements scalability- and privacy-focused Mimblewimble protocol — named after a fictional tongue-tying curse from the popular Harry Potter novels. Mimblewimble is in part a variant of the cryptographic protocol known as Confidential Transactions, which allows for transactions to be obfuscated yet verifiable so as to achieve both heightened privacy and the prevention of double spending. According to Le Sceller’s …

Binance, the world’s second largest crypto exchange by adjusted volume, has released its official Trust Wallet on its decentralized trading platform Binance DEX. The news was revealed in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on June 4. As previously reported, Binance acquired Trust Wallet — an open source, decentralized wallet that initially offered native support for ethereum (ETH) and ETH-based tokens — in summer 2018. At the time, Binance had revealed its plans to list the wallet as the default wallet on its forthcoming decentralized exchange (DEX) — then still under development. Since then, the exchange has also rolled out …