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Back in early May, a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline forced the company to pay the hackers US$5 million in cryptocurrencies. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the FBI had successfully recovered US$2.3 million of the ransom in Bitcoin. Those who really understood Bitcoin — and blockchain technology’s digital trail of crumbs that led to the crypto’s recovery — were gobsmacked. What could those cybercriminals possibly have been thinking? Pioneering blockchain lawyer Marta Belcher — general counsel at Protocol Labs and special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy rights advocacy group — , says many people still do not realize that Bitcoin is not anonymous — it is pseudonymous. “You're having a public key recorded permanently on a ledger forever. And anyone can see that,” Belcher explained, in a video interview with Forkast.News. “The authorities can see that. In some ways, it's a shortcut for law enforcement.” Instead of something very traceable by the government, Belcher says having a truly decentralized device for finance is essential to privacy and civil liberties. “I like to think about this photo that I saw from the Hong Kong protests. There are these photos where there are these long lines at the subway stations because the protesters wanted to buy their train tickets using cash because they didn't want their electronic purchases to place them at the scene of the protest,” Belcher said. “That really underscores that a cashless society is a surveillance society and the importance of certain technologies that can enable anonymous transactions.” Belcher told Forkast.News that this is how anonymity can enhance civil liberties, and also why privacy coins — fully private and anonymous — matter. Nevertheless, the U.S. government and governments around the world are applying similar levels of surveillance to cryptocurrencies as they do to the traditional financial system. The U.S. Department of Justice has named privacy coins “anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies” and insists that they are potentially criminal — this fends off the possibility of people making anonymous transactions through cryptocurrencies. Belcher views the central bank digital currency movement in the same way — as a type of government surveillance that could potentially threaten civil liberties. Hypothetically, when CBDCs are given to people as their only financial tool, every action can be traced by the government. “People really need to understand that financial transactions are a window deep into someone's life, deep into their politics, deep into what they're doing, their location. And that these types of transactions are incredibly sensitive,” Belcher said. “I'm very concerned about the idea of all money being digitally administered by a government.”.

In India, the legal status of crypto and cryptocurrency trading remains a hot and murky topic. India’s divisions, differences in opinion and all-out tug-of-war over the legality of crypto have been on full display in recent years. First there was a central bank ban on banks doing business with crypto firms. Then the Indian Supreme Court overturned that banking ban. Earlier this year, India’s Parliament upped the ante by drafting a bill that would ban crypto outright. That crypto ban bill hasn’t gone anywhere — yet. But with that threat in the shadows, what are India’s crypto holders and companies to do? As India’s crypto community awaits official clarification, many companies are now taking matters into their own hands through a voluntary and self-imposed code of conduct that would make them compliant with reasonable regulations, said Nishcal Shetty, founder of WazirX, in an interview with Forkast.News. WazirX, which launched just three weeks before the Reserve Bank of India’s issued its ban on crypto banking in 2018 and has since grown into one of the nation's biggest crypto exchanges, recently joined a new collaboration between India's Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council and India's Internet and Mobile Association to develop guidelines for self-regulation among India’s crypto exchanges. “The idea as an industry was, should we really just wait till the law comes in and just have anyone operate according to their own wishes? Or can we sort of try to build a template and sort of show the government that even on our own, we're still responsible and it's not the Wild West out here,” Shetty said. “I think with that objective, we decided we should all come together, exchanges in the country and adhere to some set of guidelines which we will all follow.” An entrepreneur at heart, Shetty took a hard look at India’s lagging position in the blockchain and cryptocurrency global ecosystem and realized that creating access was the first step to foster technological innovation and growth in the nation of 1.4 billion. Throughout his journey in the space, Shetty has discovered that among the oscillating government positions, that there are nuances in even hardline stances and a willingness by government officials to learn and understand the disruptive new technology. Shetty also believes the crypto industry can help the hundreds of millions of citizens who do not have access to mainstream financial services, such as having a bank savings account. “If you look at the whole equity space in India, we have probably 70 million people into it, that's about 4% and that's an industry that has existed for many, many years,” Shetty said. “Now, here you have an industry which sort of in India — I think it's been only four or five years since crypto really became a popular term — if you look at it in isolation, yes, it seems like just 1%. But if you think about it, it's already 25% of the whole equity space in a very short period of time. So that growth trajectory is something which is very, very visible.”

In the blockchain world, all eyes are on Ethereum and the roll-out of ETH 2.0 — which is expected to solve Ethereum’s scalability issues. But others, like Alan Chiu are trying to do the same sooner in a layer 2 race. Chiu, the founder and CEO of Enya.ai, says scalability in Ethereum is already making headway while the world waits for the next level Ethereum — a project already infamous for its many delays. “Ethereum has a rather limited capacity for computation and this has been a known problem for several years,” Chiu told Forkast.News in a video interview. “What happened more recently is, Vitalik and many other Ethereum researchers have come up with an alternative solution rather than trying to do everything in ETH 2.0, scaling both computation and data.” An approach to scaling is called rollups, which moves transactions off the main Ethereum chain before recording on the main chain. The off-chain transactions can also be executed in layer 2 chains before moving back to layer 1 to store proofs. The aim is to move transactions off-chain for faster throughput of transactions, and potentially reduce transaction fees. Chiu expressed excitement for the up-and-coming layer 2 developments as examples such as Polygon have been gaining traction while even showing immunity to the recent crypto crash. Enya.ai and OMG Network have also launched the public testnet of OMGX — a layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution which allows off-chain computations. “By implementing computations on layer 2, moving them off the main chain, we are freeing up the precious blocks on the main chain so that in aggregate we can — as an ecosystem — handle a lot more transactions,” Chiu said. According to Chiu, the layer 2 solutions like rollups will provide lower transaction fees and increase capacity for more transactions without having to wait for ETH 2.0. While the industry eagerly waits for the final form of ETH 2.0 for better scaling and less network congestion leading to slow and expensive user experience, various layer 2 projects are looking to solve Ethereum’s network clogs. The Ethereum development team has also scheduled network upgrade EIP-1559 in July, as part of the London hard fork, which looks to further improve the issues related to high transaction fees by introducing and burning a base transaction fee to discourage miners from manipulating gas. “So, over the next several months, there'll be several layer 2 solutions that will be moving into mainnet and it will be an exciting time,” Chiu said. “We'll see how that changes to gas fees that people have to pay to use these DeFi projects.” Watch Alan Chiu’s full interview with Forkast.News to learn more about Ethereum scalability, the scalability trilemma, ESG in blockchain, privacy, and more.

After settling a 22-month investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office, Tether growth has exploded – dispelling trust concerns says Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino.

What really happened on crypto’s so-called “Black Wednesday” earlier this month — and what can we learn from it? On May 19, a day when tweets and headlines criticized Bitcoin’s environmental impact, the crypto market crashed. Bitcoin prices tumbled from euphoric highs of over US$55,000 to under US$40,000 that day, and in the days since continued to plummet, to bottom out at around US$30,800, according to CoinMarketCap data. But despite that volatility, crypto’s underlying fundamentals and the factors that affect long-term prices have not changed, according to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. “I don’t think there is anything really fundamental that changed from [May 19] to today,” Bankman-Fried said in an interview with Forkast.News. “I don’t think it’s really caused by economic fundamentals. I think it was 10% of that and 90% was just liquidations.” As Bankman-Fried suggests, US$7.56 billion worth of Bitcoin long positions were liquidated on the fateful day with FTX contributing US$110 million, according to bybt data. While crypto still remains a disruptive technology that can revolutionize the finance industry, trading behavior in the blockchain world and the traditional equities has become analogous as a result of prominent figures that now have a platform to — directly or indirectly — impact markets. “It’s not like both crypto and stocks have their own charismatic guy who when they tweet, the thing goes up — it’s the same guy. Elon Musk in both cases,” Bankman-Fried said. In the equity market, an asset that has its values driven by social media sentiment rather than company performance is coined “meme stocks”, as popularized by the now-famous GameStop phenomenon. “All of a sudden for the first time, you had 15 million day traders get together and talk to each other… all of a sudden they each have a thousand dollars to trade. Now they have US$15 billion between them,” Bankman-Fried said. As the event sparked questions on collusion in meme trading events among retail investors, Bankman-Fried argues that the definition of collusion was never all that clear. “For instance, it’s totally fine for a bunch of people to get together and have a factual debate about a bunch of companies and just say a lot of true statements with the goal of figuring out the truth,” Bankman-Fried said. “It’s not exactly collusion, that wasn’t the goal of it, but it is an activity that correlates their behavior.” While social media has been an important contributor to the price fluctuations of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the past, Musk’s ability to send the price of Dogecoin to the moon was a spectacle unto itself.

The Digital Dollar Project — a private sector initiative by the Digital Dollar Foundation and Accenture — recently became a late entrant to the central bank digital currency (CBDC) testing grounds, announcing at least five pilots within the next year. But the United States Federal Reserve has yet to commit to the launch of a digital dollar, widening the gap between the US and other central banks — including China — in CBDC developments. Beijing, having already launched numerous pilot projects in various forms for its CBDC, now officially known as the e-CNY, has a seven-year lead against the US in the global CBDC race. “I would push aside the race analogy, but I would say there’s a contest,” former Commodities Futures Trading Commission chair and founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation, J. Christopher Giancarlo, told Forkast.News in a video interview. “The winner of the contest is the nation that successfully incorporates into a digital currency their societal values.” Fed chair Jerome Powell also brushes aside the race analogy, voicing the importance of getting a digital dollar “right” rather than “first.” But U.S. dollar dominance is dwindling. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report found that global reserves of the U.S. dollar sunk to a 25-year low of 59%, numbers not seen since 1995. But Giancarlo says that a digital dollar carrying the values of a democratic society could strengthen the dollar’s position as world reserve currency. “We may see a world in which you’ve got a digital dollar, hopefully — and if we get it right carrying those [democratic] values — competing against currencies of non-democracies that carry different values with them, values of state, surveillance of government, control of financial markets [and] of social credit systems,” Giancarlo said. “The dollar could reemerge once again as — well, it is today, the reserve currency — but even more so because of those democratic values built-in compared to the alternatives.” Accenture’s senior managing director David Treat discussed some aspects of how the Digital Dollar Project will explore some of these democratic values including benefits distribution. This being a controversial topic in the current U.S. financial structure, highlighted by a perceived lag in issuance of stimulus checks during the Covid-19 pandemic. “Part of what we’re going to explore [are] the various options against a backdrop of not having a national ID system, which is also part of our core societal values,” Treat said. “That ability to actually pair a stablecoin that can embed that business logic into it and to be able to guide what is spent and what is not spent on, paired with a central bank digital currency, we see as a powerful combination and one that's certainly worth exploring.” As for the current state of the Digital Dollar Project and its five pilots in the coming year, Treat revealed the project is currently selecting appropriate players in the industry to lead the initiatives. “We’re in the midst of picking the captains for each one of the pilots,” Treat said. “Very intentionally, when you think about the financial inclusion, the unbanked and underbanked, there may be some maybe some really, really important small local players that we announce.”

During the Indian Parliament’s Budget Session two months ago, all eyes were on a proposed bill to ban cryptocurrency trading in the world’s second-most populous country. The well-publicized bill sparked a large-scale campaign within the local industry encouraging the government to establish proper regulatory framework rather than an outright ban. Ultimately, the bill did not pass the parliament, leaving the state of India’s crypto industry uncertain. In an exclusive interview with Forkast.News, Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX, explained that local investors took this as a sign the bill may never pass, and actually laid the groundwork for further – much welcomed – regulation. As a result, the Indian retail and institutional market has been booming in the month since.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are shaking up traditional finance and shifting the tectonic plates of investing, but the technology underlying digital assets — blockchain — may eventually have a bigger impact on the world. Today, most applications on public chains such as Ethereum are centered around the economic layers of cryptocurrencies, such as decentralized finance (DeFi). But for a country like China, where public chain applications may not always be aligned with local regulations, permissioned chains are presenting corporations an alternative as well as greater protection from the volatility of cryptocurrency prices. “If we ran an application on a public chain, the revenue must be in cryptocurrency. Then, the cost is in cryptocurrency, the revenue is in cryptocurrency — that makes no sense,” Yifan He, the CEO of Red Date Technology — the company behind state-backed Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) in China — told Forkast.News in a video interview. “Next year, the cost could be more than your revenue.”

As corporations plow billions in Bitcoin, a new business model involving DeFi is attracting more investors, says Alessio Quaglini of Hex Trust.

Thailand’s crypto adoption is often overlooked, but one of its largest commercial banks has been leveraging permissioned blockchain Corda of R3 to digitize trade finance in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “On the blockchain side and the crypto side, I believe they're a leading player globally. They don't probably get as much recognition for all the work that's happening in the ecosystem,” said Amit Ghosh, head of APAC for R3, the blockchain software firm, in an interview with Forkast.News. “But from our experience, they are one of the leading countries — globally, in fact.”

Justin Chow of Cumberland DRW explains why Asia has lagged behind the US in institutional interest in Bitcoin and other crypto—and why that will likely change soon. “The number of institutional investors that have gone public with their investments in crypto is actually only a fraction of the conversations we're still having,” said Justin Chow, global head of business development and relationship management at Cumberland DRW, in a video interview with Forkast.News.

As Ripple and SEC intensify their legal warfare, attorney John Deaton and his clients want in. Will XRP investors get their day in court?

The Hong Kong government’s proposed legislation to ban crypto trading for retail investors and require virtual asset service platforms (VASPs) to obtain licenses to operate has caused great concern among the territory’s crypto community. Fears are that Hong Kong might cede its position as a regional fintech hub to neighbors such as Singapore, or fall behind other centers in the U.K. or U.S., by unduly stopping retail investors from trading while allowing the wealthy to continue. HashKey Group COO Angelina Kwan, a former regulator who helped write the laws that crypto firms are subjected to now, explains all.

The new generation of investors are not like those who came before them. Everything is going digital — even valuables like one-of-a-kind art. They won’t be shouting buy orders from the mosh pit of a trading floor; more likely, their investing will happen in a home office or on the living room couch. Justin Sun, 30, is part of this new generation. After narrowly missing out on buying digital artist Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” non-fungible-token (NFT) collage in a recent US$69 million Christie’s auction, the CEO of TRON and BitTorrent got a consolation prize: a different Beeple NFT artwork — “Ocean Front” — for US$6 million.

Early crypto investor and promoter Roger Ver tells Forkast.News how faster transactions and lower fees are fueling Bitcoin Cash adoption over Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is currently the 13th most popular cryptocurrency in the world, with a US$9.6 billion market capitalization that is just a fraction of Bitcoin’s US$1 trillion. But the transaction volume on the Bitcoin Cash network is outpacing transactions on the Bitcoin network at a 10:1 ratio, according to blockchain analytics engine Blockchair.

From JPM Coin to payments on Ethereum in outer space, JPMorgan’s Onyx division is pushing out the traditional banking world’s blockchain frontiers For over five years, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been advancing blockchain technology in the banking sector. Its JPM Coin — a wholesale payment stablecoin that is pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar — is now transacting billions of dollars every day. JPMorgan’s open information sharing network Liink — formerly known as Interbank Information Network — now has over 400 banks. Just last October, after JPMorgan sold Quorum, its blockchain protocol to the Brooklyn-based blockchain software firm ConsenSys, the banking giant established Onyx, its new blockchain unit.

The GameStop saga shows the changing power dynamics between big money and small investors. Here’s why one former banker thinks ‘DeFi is going to absorb traditional finance’ in the next 10 years.

Perianne Boring, president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, discusses the controversial ‘crypto wallet rule’ and how the industry pulled together to force FinCEN to consider more public comments. The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) proposed “crypto wallet rule,” which had been championed by former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, is currently on hold so the agency can gather more public comments. But the blockchain, crypto and digital asset industry’s sentiments are already clear.

CasperLabs, a new layer-1 smart contract network that recently joined China’s nationwide blockchain network, announced today that its CSPR token will be open for sale from March 23 to 26 to “accredited investors.” Casper network is an enterprise-focused layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain protocol aiming to solve the issues of scalability, security and decentralization that have plagued other smart contract blockchains such as Ethereum. Although Ethereum has launched Ethereum 2.0 in hopes of solving some of these problems, users still complain about Ethereum’s high transaction fees — also known as “gas fees.” Ethereum’s gas fee issues could worsen with the growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), most of which continue to rely on Ethereum.

In ancient China, small golden or silver ingots were used as currency. Its weight in taels — a weight measurement unit in regions of East and Southeast Asia — determined its value. Now, bitcoin — which has broken its all-time high record yet again, now exceeding US$56,500 in price and US$1 trillion in market value — is emerging as modern-day “gold 2.0” — especially in Singapore. Eugene Ng of Gemini, the Winklevoss-backed exchange that recently expanded into Singapore, explains why the Lion City is emerging as the crypto capital of Asia.

There is a transition underway from an “internet of information” to an “internet of value” with blockchain as its foundation, Blockchain Research Institute Executive Chairman Don Tapscott said in an interview with Forkast.News. According to the blockchain think tank’s new report — which outlines recommendations for the Biden administrations on how to approach, regulate and lead blockchain technology — any failure by the U.S. government to embrace and sensibly regulate crypto would sap the nation’s economic strengths and erode its long-term competitive advantages in tech and business innovation.

Buried under headlines of Covid-19, U.S.-China trade war and controversial elections, 2020 also saw journalism under attack around the world. Under threat of misinformation, manipulation and rising distrust in the media, could blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) help bolster legitimate journalism?

Although Microsoft Azure has been gradually closing the gap, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has topped the world’s cloud infrastructure services in market share again in Q4 of 2020 — a peek into the future potential of how CasperLabs can help “morph” China’s Blockchain Service Network into the AWS of the blockchain industry in the Web 3.0 era. “People watch Netflix all the time,” said CasperLabs CEO Mrinal Manohar in a video interview with Forkast.News. “Almost the entire infrastructure is on AWS [and] you’re using AWS even if you don’t know about it.”

Is crypto use totally anonymous? Think again. The Cubits/Dooga case shows how easy it is to trace crypto transactions compared to fiat.

Comparing nations like Ethiopia to “China in the 80s,” IOHK founder Charles Hoskinson explains Cardano’s Africa strategy and why Fortune 500 companies looking to do more global business in developing countries need cryptocurrencies.

Binance CEO CZ says bitcoin’s advantages over fiat have become, while sharing his thoughts on the future of DeFi and Binance in an interview with Forkast.News.

The U.S. government needs to provide more clarity and guideposts for crypto regulations — and better cross-agency coordination is needed, said U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Hester Peirce in an exclusive interview with Forkast.News Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau.

“The world we live in today is that the video, the pictures, deep fakes, people in general now understand that technology can make them see things that never happened,” Mance Harmon, CEO and co-founder of DLT developer Hedera Hashgraph, tells Forkast.News.

Here are the hottest blockchain news and trends that dominated Forkast.News headlines over the past 12 months. Let the countdown to 2021 begin!

Other top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: Fine art goes digital with NFTs. Hong Kong in talks to pilot test China’s DCEP digital yuan.

DeFi and cryptocurrency exchanges should take heed of examples such as BitMEX and improve KYC standards, say experts. blockchainDefiDecentralizedartificial intelligenceKYCAMLCryptoTokensDigital assetes

Ethereum 2.0 has transformed to proof of stake, but sharding, smart contracts and other features will have to wait for Eth2's future phases.

Other top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: S&P Dow Jones to launch crypto index. Walmart leads $700 million investment in Indian payment platform.

Top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: Bank of International Settlements considers stablecoins. China jails PlusToken scam’s ringleaders.

The multibillion dollar sector could go hand in hand with blockchain technology's immutability and transparency says SpaceChain's Jeff Garzik.

As bitcoin break new records, is the party almost over? Trent Barnes of Zerocap says it’s not too late as respected market institutions rather than scammy ICOs are fueling bitcoin’s rise this time.

Top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: Is another CFTC crackdown coming soon? China releases OKEx founder, exchange to resume services.

Reports of India’s potential crypto ban have continuallysurfaced even after the Supreme Court’s reversal of the RBI banking ban in March, and these reports can periodically resurface in upcoming parliamentary sessions.

Other top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: China taps Lakala for DCEP digital yuan’s payment system. Fintech VC in Hong Kong and Indonesia.

Blockchain technology is helping grow carbon credit trading while lowering investment costs so more young people can get involved, says Stefan Rust of Sonic Capital, in a special interview.

“Since we actually finalized our SPAC, did the business combination, we've had three of the world's largest crypto companies approach us and ask how we did it and what sort of process they would have to go through to get those governance standards in place to become a listed company,” Byworth said in an interview with Forkast.News.

Other top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: Will TRUMP crypto losers get second chance? Hong Kong requires cryptocurrency exchanges to be regulated.

"I'm very convinced that 2021 will be the year where you will see more and more people having CBDCs in their wallets or within their businesses," said Charles d'Haussy, director of strategic initiatives at ConsenSys in an interview with Forkast.News. Listen to the full interview with d'Haussy and Forkast.News Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau as they discuss use cases for CBDCs in China, the value of programmable money, the growing demand for DeFi and more.

Other top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: Bitcoin paper’s 12th anniversary. New Huawei phone has a DCEP wallet. FDA on blockchain and food safety. Editor's note: Forkast misstated 'food security' with 'food safety' in the FDA segment starting at 12:00. The FDA has recently launched a blueprint for food safety that includes blockchain.

Other top blockchain and cryptocurrency news: USDC stablecoin coming to Solana.

Other top news: OKEx freezes exchange services amid police investigation. Fintech investment in India

Other top news: China accelerates digital currency testing with 50,000 e-RMB red packets; Hong Kong as DCEP’s sandbox. VC in India.

The need for regulatory balance in Europe is necessary to maintain business innovation and keep investment flowing, says Alex Tapscott, co-founder of Toronto-based Blockchain Research Institute. Listen to the full interview with Tapscott and Forkast.News Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau as they explore how regulations could impact blockchain innovation in Europe as well as the development of DeFi and the challenges as well as opportunities it creates business.

Other top news: Filecoin’s mainnet set to launch. Chinese banks help DCEP digital currency get market-ready. NetEase to preserve email forevermore.

Scammers are going to scam, but there's a real opportunity in DeFi for the financial world at large, says Two Prime CEO Marc Fleury. Listen to the full interview with Fleury and Forkast.News Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau as they discuss DeFi's challenges and opportunities, yields for investors and more.