United Arab Emirates-based cryptocurrency exchange BitOasis has reportedly secured preliminary approval with financial regulators, Bloomberg reported on May 13. Founded in 2015, BitOasis claims to be the Middle East's first digital currency wallet that uses multi-signature technology. The company previously announced that it was seeking to be fully licensed in the financial center Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) before the end of this year. Ola Doudin, the founder and CEO of BitOasis said then that “we are hoping to be one of the first regulated exchanges to get that licence.” Today, Bloomberg reported that BitOasis received preliminary approval in April …

Crypto securities company Curv has partnered with insurance company Munich Re to obtain $50 million in coverage, according to a Curv press release on May 10. This new insurance is designed to cover any cases in which a bad actor was able to gain access to either Curv or the customer’s shares, both of which would be needed in order to sign off on an illicit transaction. As is stated in the press release: “Even in an extreme scenario where both networks’ shares were somehow simultaneously compromised and a transaction were initiated outside of the corporate policy, Curv’s insurance would …

Top Stories This Week Fractional Reserve Stablecoin Tether Only 74% Backed by Fiat Currency, Say Lawyers According to documents released by USD stablecoin tether’s (USDT) lawyers, the company behind the stablecoin only has enough fiat reserves to back a little less than three-quarters of its existing supply — 74%. Tether executives had previously publicly promised that each tether was backed one-to-one to the USD, a claim that has been disproven by the lawyers’ document release. The need to release the figures comes from the recent claims by the U.S. attorney general in New York that cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, which shares …

American major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has added support for Dogecoin (DOGE) to its crypto wallet service Coinbase Wallet, according to an announcement published on May 1. The announcement states that users can now store DOGE directly in the Coinbase Wallet app. The coin thus joined other digital currencies — bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), bitcoin cash (BCH), ethereum classic (ETC), Ripple (XRP), Stellar Lumens (XLM) — already supported by the wallet. The wallet also supports the DOGE Testnet. DOGE was initially invented in 2013 as a joke currency, the logo of which features the likeness of a shiba inu dog from …

Earlier this week, United States-based security consulting firm Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) published a report on private keys for the Ethereum blockchain. Despite establishing around 700 weak private keys that are being regularly used by multiple people, the researchers found a “blockchain bandit” who has managed to collect almost 45,000 ether (ETH) by successfully guessing those frail private keys. Cointelegraph interviewed Adrian Bednarek, a senior security analyst at ISE, to find out more about what they describe as “ethercombing.” Research background and chief findings Bednarek says he discovered the hacker by accident. At the time, he was doing research for …

Hardware cryptocurrency wallet manufacturer Ledger has detected malware targeting its desktop application, according to a tweet on April 25. Ledger warned its users that the malware locally replaces the Ledger Live desktop app with a malicious one, and advised to follow security practices published on its blog. The company’s Twitter announcement specifically reads: “WARNING: we’ve detected a malware that locally replaces the Ledger Live desktop application by a malicious one. Users of infected computers are asked to enter their 24-word recovery phrase after a fake update.” In the comments to the post, Ledger revealed that the malware is infecting only …

Singapore-based crypto exchange KuCoin has blocked a crypto wallet that is allegedly involved in a recent RChain (RHOC) token scam, RChain wrote in a blog post on April 26. RChain, the blockchain firm behind RHOC coin, informed its users that the company suffered a scam involving an escrow transaction containing counterfeit money. In the apparent deal, RChain was set to send 11 million RHOC tokens to its partners who expressed an interest in putting money into an escrow account. Once the money was in escrow, RChain sent RHOC tokens to their wallet as agreed. However, after the tokens were sent, …

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has withdrawn funds worth almost $90 million from its cold wallet, blockchain data reported by cryptocurrency news outlet The Block confirmed on April 26. Bitfinex, which has the same owner as USD stablecoin Tether (USDT), has not publicly explained the reason for the withdrawals, which come as both companies face a fresh debacle over potentially missing funds. Over roughly the past 12 hours, Bitfinex has moved large amounts of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) from its wallets to unknown addresses, along with smaller amounts of other coins such as makerdao (MKR), online transaction monitoring resource Whale Alert …

Hardware cryptocurrency wallet manufacturer Ledger has secured 2.6 million euro ($2.9 million) from electronics giant Samsung, a company spokesperson told Cointelegraph on April 24. While the Ledger spokesperson confirmed the investment, no further details beyond the initial investment amount were provided. The news follows the appointment of Pascal Gauthier, the firm’s former president, as its new CEO. Former CEO Eric Larchevêque will now serve as Executive Chairman of the Ledger’s Board. He said in a letter that “in this role I will be able to properly focus on strategy and vision, while also overseeing regulator and government outreach, partnerships, customers, …

French hardware crypto wallet producer Ledger has named its president, Pascal Gauthier, as the new chief executive officer of the company. The news was announced in a press release published on April 24. Gauthier — a seed investor and board member — initially joined Ledger as its president, and will now reportedly be in charge of executing the company’s strategy and delivery of its products. In his letter, Gauthier said that he “will focus all of [his] attention and energy on growing an amazing tech company on both the retail and enterprise side.” The press release also notes that former …

‘Smart card’ crypto wallet manufacturer Tangem has received a $15 million investment from major Japanese financial services firm SBI Group, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reports on April 24. The new investment will purportedly allow Tangem to relocate its headquarters to the ‘Crypto Valley’ of Zug, Switzerland. From Zug, Tangem want to develop new use cases for its physical smart cards that function like the hardware wallet version of banknotes. Each of these smart cards carries a fixed amount of cryptocurrency. The company intends for these smart cards to be used for daily crypto payments. Andrey Kurennykh, Tangem’s CEO said: “It is …

A “blockchain bandit” has managed to amass almost 45,000 ether (ETH) by successfully guessing weak private keys, according to a report released by Independent Security Evaluators on April 23. Adrian Bednarek, a senior security analyst, said he discovered the sophisticated hacker by accident. While guessing a private key is meant to be a statistical improbability, he managed to uncover 732 private keys through his research — giving him the ability to complete transactions as if he was the account holder. The report notes that rather than using a brute force search for random private keys, it used a combination of …