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Indian Central Bank Chief Issues Crypto Warning
Welcome to The Daily Forkast, February 11th , 2022, presented by Megha Chaddah. For the latest in blockchain & crypto news. On today’s show: 00:00 Coming Up 00:53 Indian central bank chief says crypto “not even a tulip”. 01:50 Korean gaming giant Netmarble partners with Binance. 02:30 Korean crypto exchange execs found guilty in $1.9BN fraud case. — First up, India’s central bank chief has issued a stark warning over Crypto. Reserve Bank of India’s Shaktikanta Das said cryptocurrencies have no underlying value and that it is, quote, “not even a tulip”. The governor was referring to the Dutch tulip mania in the 17th century, where a speculative bubble surrounded the highly sought after plant. Thus, his comments come just over a week after the Indian government imposed a 30% tax on income from Crypto assets. The RBI has consistently opposed crypto trading in the country, even issuing a circular back in 2018 trying to stop banks from facilitating transactions. However, the Supreme Court struck that down, and sign ups to crypto exchanges like CoinDCX continue at US quick pace. Over in South Korea, gaming giant Netmarble has partnered with Binance on GameFi. The two are planning to establish a global blockchain gaming ecosystem. The world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volumes is to provide its blockchain platform and tech infrastructure. While the developer of everybody’s mobile and seven nights will work on GameFi projects and NFT offerings. Net Mobile has joined a growing list of South Korean game developers, including Kakao Games, Come2us and WeMade who are diving deeper into blockchain gaming and the metaverse. In South Korea, judgment has been made in a US$1.9 billion Crypto fraud case when the seven former executives of now defunct V Global Crypto Exchange faced court back in January, prosecutors demanded life sentences. All seven were found guilty, with sentences ranging in length from four to 14 years for six of the executives and 22 years in the case of the exchange’s CEO. Prosecutors had urged the maximum punishment of life in prison due to the severity of the case, which they said destroyed the victim’s families. Investors had been promised a 300% return on their virtual asset investments, as well as US$1000 in commission if they referred new customers to the exchange. But while some did receive a portion of the promised return, prosecutors said those funds had simply been taken from newer customers deposits. Han Sang-jun of law firm Daegun, representing V Global’s victim, told Forkast he expects all seven to appeal. However, with most of the damages not recovered, he doesn’t expect much change. During the trial, the exchange’s former CEO, Lee Byung-gul, apologized to the victims and said there had been no intention to defraud. One expert told Forkast the verdict won’t necessarily help the victims. The expert says despite the heavy jail time, Korean law may not be strong enough as he would have expected sentences of 80 to 100 years for a similar case in the U.S. He adds that the law should be able to punish more severely, depending on the amount of damages faced by investors. The wormhole exploit reiterates the need to balance speed with security as we move towards disintermediation, and Adrian Brink of Anouma, a protocol that enables trading of any kind of digital assets among any number of parties with full zero knowledge privacy, joins me now to talk more about this. Megha Chaddah: Adrian, hackers exploited a bridge between Solana and eight blockchains to steal millions. Some are laying the blame on Solana speed and proof of history protocol. Your thoughts? Adrian Brink: You can debate whether these were hackers or this was simply the way the system was intended to work. But this is always the question. The implementation was life for everyone to see. This is really hacking. Or is this just using functionality that is unexpected, but it is there and everyone was happy with it when they started using it. I think though, sort of irrespective of that discussion, the speed actually has nothing to do with it. So last proof of history makes it hard to build. It makes it impossible to build efficient pipelines for Solana, which result which means that you need to be using semi centralized bridges. Which wormhole is wormhole? It’s not a decentralized bridge. It’s a bridge that has 15 out of 20 signatories, I think. But these 15 signatories are just centralized entities. So I think it’s nothing specifically to the speed of Solana, but the bridge design that is sort of based on the fact that Solana doesn’t have an efficient Typekit — #Crypto #Blockchain #BlockchainTechnology #DigitalAssets #Cryptocurrency #DeFi #India #Netmarble #Binance #Gaming #CryptoExchange #CryptoFraud #Netmarble #GameFi #Metaverse