Samuel Haig
Binance Australia has announced the appointment of Leigh Travers, the former chief executive of local blockchain technology and payments firm DigitalX, as the company’s new CEO.
Travers has worked at DigitalX for seven years, and previously served on the board of leading local blockchain industry body, Blockchain Australia. In June 2014, DigitalX became the world’s first publicly-listed blockchain firm after completing a reverse takeover of the Australian Stock Exchange-listed company, Macro Energy Ltd.
In an Aug. 28 announcement from Binance, Travers emphasizes that he will prioritize building Binance Australia’s relationships with regulators and growing the company’s brand.
“We have a responsibility to be involved in helping to shape the growth of our industry and this means prioritising engagement and conversations with policy makers and regulators,” said Travers, adding:
“From an industry perspective, I know it’s imperative that we continue to develop our relationships with regulatory bodies while reinforcing our company commitment to compliance and best practice.”
Helen Partz
American tech giant Microsoft has won a blockchain-related patent for techniques for implementing a cross-chain token management system.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted the patent to Microsoft’s subsidiary, Microsoft Technology Licensing, on Tuesday.
Filed in February 2019, the patent describes a “ledger-independent token service,” or a software service enabling individuals and organizations to create and manage tokens across multiple distributed ledger networks and platforms.
Examples of such platforms in the patent filing included major blockchain platform Ethereum, IBM-backed Hyperledger Fabric, JPMorgan’s enterprise blockchain platform Quorum, R3 Corda and Chain Core.
The described computer system aims to provide the user with one or more “token templates,” with each of those corresponding to a type of physical or digital asset. The ledger-independent token service is designed to act as a single interface for managing the lifecycle of tokens across multiple blockchains, allowing developers to write code for transacting and managing tokens “in a manner that is agnostic of the underlying distributed ledger networks.”
Shiraz Jagati
Per a new report released by digital-asset intelligence firm CipherTrace on June 2, 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.
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
