Shiraz Jagati
Per a new report released by digital-asset intelligence firm CipherTrace, the value of ill-gotten funds siphoned through cryptocurrency crimes over the first five months of the year stands at a whopping $1.4 billion, thus making 2020 a potentially active year in regard to cryptocurrency-related thefts, hacks and fraud.
The report goes on to state that if things continue at the same rate, the total volume of stolen crypto for 2020 has the potential to get close to reaching the $4.5-billion mark set in 2019. Criminals appear to be capitalizing on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to target unsuspecting individuals by luring them in via a variety of crypto-related phishing campaigns, ransomware and darknet marketplace fraud.
Additionally, out of the multiple scams that have been accounted for this year, many of them have reportedly made use of email campaigns impersonating various coronavirus-related official groups — such as the World Health Organization, the Red Cross and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — to solicit payments and donations in the form of cryptocurrency.
Helen Partz
Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volumes, continues its efforts to maintain dialogue with global regulators by introducing withdrawal limits and a new tax reporting system.
The company officially announced Tuesday a major update to its Know Your Customer policies, significantly reducing maximum withdrawal amounts for users who have not completed full identity verification.
Effective immediately for new Binance accounts, users who have completed only basic account verifications will be unable to withdraw more than 0.06 Bitcoin (BTC) per day, worth roughly $2,400 at the time of writing. Previously, the maximum daily withdrawal amount was capped at 2 BTC, or about $80,000, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao noted on Twitter.
According to the announcement, Binance will continue applying new withdrawal limits for existing users in phases starting from Aug. 4. The exchange expects to have adopted new withdrawal restrictions entirely by Aug. 23. Binance users who have completed full identity verification will be still able to withdraw up to 100 BTC in a day, or nearly $4 million at BTC prices at the time of writing. “Withdrawal limits refresh daily at 00:00 AM,” the announcement notes.
Martin Young
The world’s leading decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has announced the delisting of a number of tokens from its app interface.
Uniswap Labs made the announcement on Friday, emphasizing that the tokens had been removed from the app interface only and that the protocol remains immutable:
“These changes pertain to the interface at app.uniswap.org — the Protocol remains entirely autonomous, immutable, and permissionless.”
The company Uniswap Labs is the software developer that has built the front-end web app portal. The front-end is separate from the Uniswap protocol itself, which is autonomous code that was released as a public good.
In the blog post, Uniswap Labs hinted that increased regulatory pressure may have influenced its decision, stating, “We monitor the evolving regulatory landscape.” The company also described the move as “consistent with actions taken by other DeFi interfaces.”
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
