The largest bank of Russia plans to issue digital currency

Russia’s largest state-owned lender, Sberbank, is planning to launch its own digital currency, Sbercoin. The Russian bank is collaborating with JP Morgan to first launch the proprietary digital currency as an experiment. The bank is also preparing for the launch of a platform, which will allow the users to buy digital financial assets. Sberbank is also proposing to make all non-cash rubles digital and has developed its own model for the issuance and circulation of the digital ruble. The Russian Central Bank proposed a draft for issuing digital rubles earlier this year, considering it a third form of money. However, Sberbank’s proposal differs from the monetary regulator’s vision for a digital fiat. The lender wants to add a tracking number on each digital ruble and wants to settle payments under smart contracts, which, according to it, will solve the problems of fund misappropriation. These individual attributions will allow the commercial banks to maintain the account for non-cash digital currencies.¹

Australian Crypto Exchange Exposes Personal Data of 270K Users

BTC Markets, one of Australia’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, has accidentally exposed users’ personal data. The exchange revealed the names and email addresses of over 270,000 users when it sent out mass emails. The error saw names and addresses placed in the “to” section rather than individually addressing each recipient or using blind carbon copy. The emails were sent out in batches of 1,000 recipients and meaning the exposure to a bad actor was limited to the data of 999 individuals per email. While no passwords or financial data were included in the breach, email addresses can be used for targeted phishing campaigns, since the attackers know the individuals affected have cryptocurrency accounts. The error highlights the risks that centralized exchanges can pose when it comes to user’s data and privacy. BTC Markets will report the breach to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, undertake an internal review and work to increase its security.²

Global crypto exchange Bitterz launches in Japan

Global crypto exchange platform Bitterz has launched in Japan and is offering $50 worth of bitcoins to all customers who opens a new account. The crypto exchange will start providing its services to customers also in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea.

Bitterz in Japan offers a highly secure trading environment along with  24-hour monitoring for dealing and security; provides a cold wallet to protect customers’ holdings, and a two-step authentication system to prevent unauthorised logins. It also doesn’t charge on transfers and withdrawals.³

Huobi launches regulated crypto exchange in Malaysia

The Huobi Labuan took its brokerage license for offering crypto spot and derivatives trading for an initial nine-month trial period. Huobi Global, Huobi Group's flagship crypto exchange headquartered in Singapore, will also launch another and independent platform licensed to use the Huobi name. Targeted at the Malaysian market, the new Huobi Labuan is launching trading services shortly after having secured a digital asset trading brokerage service license from Malaysian authorities in September.

The new platform will be able to offer crypto spot and derivatives trading for over a dozen cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), EOS and Huobi’s native token. In terms of infrastructure, Huobi Labuan will act as a local operating partner of Huobi Cloud, and therefore use Huobi's established trading technology for its local digital transaction brokerage services.⁴

For more data, tools, analytics and news on Crypto Markets, register CryptoIndexSeries on cryptoindexseries.com