In recent years, government agencies across the world have vamped up their efforts to crackdown on money laundering involving cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Yet, money laundering scandals involving some of the largest banks in the world dwarf any cryptocurrency-related incidents.
SWEDBANK CHIEF FIRED, WHAT ABOUT BITCOIN RELATED CASES?
On Thursday, the board of Swedbank fired Birgitte Bonnesen from her position as the CEO at the bank, recognizing the seriousness of its $151 billion money laundering case and the pressure it placed on the company.
“The developments during the past days have created an enormous pressure for the bank. Therefore, the board has decided to dismiss Birgitte Bonnesen from her position,” Swedbank chairman Lars Idermark said.
The problem with the Swedbank money laundering scandal is that it is the second multi-billion dollar case to be unraveled in the Nordic region, following Danske Bank’s $224 billion money laundering incident in November.
It is the second case of a scandal in the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to emerge within a span of five months in the same region, raising questions on the complacency of financial regulators in dealing with major banks.
In November 2018, Reuters reported that the European Union’s banking supervisor criticized Denmark’s financial watchdog for trusting the bank too much.
“Denmark’s financial watchdog faces an inquiry by the European Union’s banking supervisor, and the Danish business minister has criticized the regulator for not being critical enough toward the bank and for trusting it too much,” a Reuters report read.
The size of money laundering scandals involving banks and bitcoin businesses is vastly different and the scale is on an unprecedented level
— www.ccn.com/bitcoin-swedbank-151-billion-money-laundering-scandal
Category: Dual-use tech
Telegram Gained 3 Million New Users During WhatsApp, Facebook Outage
WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram faced a widespread outage yesterday with users from around the world reporting issues with sending messages on WhatsApp and Messenger, posting feeds on Facebook and accessing other features on the three Facebook-owned platforms.
While the outage was quite troubling both for the social media giant and its millions of users, guess who benefits the most out of the incident?
TELEGRAM.
Pavel Durov, the founder of the popular secure messaging platform Telegram, claims to have had a surge in sign-ups within the last 24 hours, at the time duration when its rival messaging services were facing downtime.“I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours,” Durov wrote on his Telegram channel. “Good. We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone.”
Telegram is an excellent alternative to Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp services, offering users an optional end-to-end encrypted messaging feature, so that no one, not even Telegram, can access them.
Telegram adopted end-to-end encryption support way back in 2013—three years before WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
Besides this, Telegram messenger has introduced many unique features in recent months that no other widely-adopted messaging app is yet offering. Two of these features include:
Multiple Account Support: Users can add up to 3 Telegram accounts and easily switch between them simultaneously without logging out.
Create Polls: Telegram offers built-in polling feature for large communities, allowing them to coordinate their activities and discuss complex issues efficiently.The telegram has previously faced restrictions and bans in countries like Iran, as well as in its home country Russia, after Durov refused to comply with government requests for encryption keys and information on its users.
“In 5+ years, Telegram disclosed exactly zero bytes of private data to third-parties including governments. That’s why Telegram is banned by authoritarian governments such as Russia and Iran. Other apps such as WhatsApp have no issues with there,”
— thehackernews.com/2019/03/encrypted-telegram-messenger.html
Why AI researchers should reconsider protesting involvement in military projects – MIT Technology Review
AI expert who was involved in Project Maven, the DoD’s program to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning for military uses—said that “constructive engagement” with the armed forces was necessary to avoid bad decisions.
In June, Google said it would no longer work with Project Maven after more than 4,000 employees signed a letter that accused the company of being “in the business of war.”
But speaking at EmTech Digital, MIT Technology Review’s AI conference, McCord said that it would be better for society as a whole to see such collaborations continue, and for those dissenting employees involved in AI projects to reexamine their stance.
“Most here today would agree that militaries and their role in deterrence, offense, and defense are a part of the world, and they will be for the foreseeable future,” he said. “A strategy of constructive engagement versus one of opting out is a far more optimal one.”
“Working on AI for defense does not make you less principled,” he added.
The secretive nature of Project Maven, which was said to be focused on improving analysis of footage captured by military drones, had caused concern across a wide group of AI researchers. But the US armed forces remain a “powerful force for promoting peace and stability in the world,” said McCord, reflecting arguments that AI researchers who reject the military on principle are actually handing the advantage to those with less rigorous ethical standards, including other nations.
While McCord said he would not expect “antiwar pacifists” to change their minds, he asked researchers to consider what would happen if other countries were making their own advances in emerging fields. A more positive attitude to the military was particularly important, he added, since governments now play a lesser role in the development of new technological discoveries than they once did.
“At the end of the Cold War the locus of innovation shifted to the private sector,” he said. “The world has changed. The capacity for government, and the role of government, has been diminished to a point where it’s never been so low in my view. The net effect is that big tech companies have assumed the mantle—whether they wanted to or not—of being the arbiters. They’re often self-regulating.”
— www.technologyreview.com/s/613208/emtech-digital-brendan-mccord-project-maven/
2019 the year of blockchain
On the first day of this year’s DC Blockchain Summit in Washington, D.C., concern that a heavy-handed approach from the federal government may stifle blockchain innovation within the u. s. was lessened by the regulators themselves, who told attendees that they often support permitting the technology to flourish.
That message was bolstered on day 2 of the conference, when U.S. Representative Tom emmer (R-Minnesota), a lawmaker who has taken on blockchain as a difficulty on capitol hill. Emmer, who co-chairs the legislative assembly Blockchain Caucus, expected that 2019 “stands to be the year of blockchain, the year we separate hype from reality, and begin harnessing blockchain in the right-use cases to lower costs and increase efficiency,” he told attendees on March seven.
But he conjointly stressed the requirement for coordinated government oversight. “Congress has a clear role: we must insure that regulation is simple and precise,” Emmer said. “If a patchwork of regulations emerges, the industry will suffer, and prove government to be ineffective. This confusion will beyond question result in a lot of regulation, which is able to solely stifle the innovation and potential application of the technology.”The financial stakes were highlighted throughout the conference once it absolutely was noted that there’s $130 billion in price presently being keep in public blockchain networks, and that ten percent of the world’s gross domestic product is predicted to be stored by 2025.
Emmer counseled the Chamber of Digital Commerce for releasing its National Action plan for Blockchain, that necessitate a pro-growth restrictive approach to developing blockchain technology within the U.S. The document specifically mentions however the technology is already being applied in supply chain networks for following food safety.
“The National Action plan also provides a required need clear regulation before enforcement. although regulators of blockchain and cryptocurrency have been considerably restrained and have allowed innovation during this area to flourish, we’re presently operating beneath ‘regulation by enforcement.’ Regulators should offer clear rules of the road to make sure that even the tiniest start-up with a superb plan will become a serious enterprise.”
Emmer said he’s doing his half to hurry the expansion of blockchain within the U.S. through his Blockchain regulatory Certainty Act, a bill he introduced in January. The legislation ensures that blockchain developers that never take charge of client funds don’t have to register as a cash transmitter within the states in which they operate.
“Money transmitter laws were enacted to ensure the protection of the buyer entrusting another entity with their funds so as to transmit them. If no funds are being entrusted to a different, it ought to make sure that these rules don’t apply,” he said
PlanetMobile company public update
The company is conducting contracts with telecom providers and makes appropriate adjustments to the logic of the system.
Information on the web site will be updated in the coming days. Also, our SIM cards will be offered to a selected group of users for testing.
Planet Mobile – Stay online always and everywhere!
Nearly Half of So-Called ‘AI Firms’ in Europe Never Use Artificial Intelligence, VC Firm Says
London venture capital firm MMC Ventures has conducted a damning survey which revealed that 40% of “AI” firms in Europe don’t use AI at all, and are simply using the term to capitalize on the hype associated with the term. MMC examined 2,830 self-described AI startups throughout 13 EU countries. The VC firm found that 40% don’t use AI technology in a way material to their business, generally without even investing in artificial intelligence/machine learning technology at all.
South Korean District to Implement Blockchain for Administrative Transparency
A district in the South Korean capital has announced it will apply blockchain to its proposal evaluation system, privately owned local news agency Newsis reports on Jan. 16
According to the article, South Korea’s Yeongdeungpo-gu — an administrative district in southwest Seoul — aims to strengthen its administrative transparency by applying a blockchain-based evaluation system.
The system will also help to avoid falsifications within the various public service bidding company selection procedures, the publication notes. The blockchain-based application will be used throughout all proposal evaluation projects in the district in 2019, with plans to expand to the whole department, as well as other municipalities, in the future.
Last summer, the Yeongdeungpo-gu district had announced the building of the blockchain-based proposal evaluation system for increasing the fairness, transparency and integrity of administrative procedures, as Cointelegraph reported on Jul. 19.
Today’s announcement underlines the success of the Yeongdeungpo-gu’s experiment in the application of blockchain tech, Newsis reports.
Earlier this week, the South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance added blockchain to the fields of research and development eligible for tax credits, with the aim to support innovations within the ecosystem, as Cointelegraph wrote on Jan. 12.
Korean Gov’t Pilots Blockchain for Logistics Innovation in Country’s Largest Port
Two South Korean government ministries have launched a blockchain pilot for port logistics innovation and the country’s container shipping industry.
— Citește pe cointelegraph.com/news/korean-govt-pilots-blockchain-for-logistics-innovation-in-countrys-largest-port
UK Parliament Member Suggests Making Bitcoin a Payment Option for Local Taxation System
A member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament has declared that it should be possible to pay local authorities and utility providers in Bitcoin.
— Citește pe cointelegraph.com/news/uk-parliament-member-suggests-making-bitcoin-a-payment-option-for-local-taxation-system
BancorX Becomes the First dApp Across Blockchains – Coinjournal
BancorX, has added support for the EOS blockchain, becoming the first dApp to work across blockchains, it will allow the trading of ETH and EOS tokens.
— Citește pe coinjournal.net/bancorx-becomes-the-first-dapp-across-blockchains/