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Blockchain of UPA decided to add Universal Protocol Token as well as Universal Euro and Dollar stablecoins to Bittrex cryptocurrency stock.

UPA (universal protocol alliance) unites six partners, who operate using blockchains and crypto money. Companies like Uphold or CertiK, just like Blockchain at Berkeley, and, in addition, Cred company and Bittrex have been a part of UPA since it was created. Alliance declared that universal currencies will be provided according to relevant fiat currencies (1:1 ratio). Moreover, UPEUR became a first stablecoin which is backed by the euro.

According to UPA, UPT holders will be able to take advantage of low fees and profitable annual income rate. This initiative focuses on users who live in countries with a high level of inflation so that they can hold funds or make profits in licensed banks. Despite that option, users will have access to additional opportunities provided by the platform of Universal Protocol.

Like that it will become possible to regain access to funds in the case when private keys are lost. Moreover, the user will be able to appoint the receiver of the payment, who can demand the funds’ transfer if there were no operations with the user’s account for a long time. Besides, the right to control digital assets can be transferred to a centralized exchange.

Traders will also be able to stake UPUSD with CredEarn app on Uphold. J.P. Thieriot, Co-founder of the Alliance and Head of Uphold startup, said that the UPA operations are aimed at a smooth and instant exchange of digital assets, as well as а mass implementation of stablecoins. For a dynamic token generation, the platform uses smart contracts. Last year we informed that for the Universal Protocol token support Thieriot planned to introduce a custody Ledger Vault solution.

Tether company announced the launch of stablecoin USDT on blockchain of Bitcoin Cash. Important to mention that the total capitalization of stable cryptocurrency is now above 5.7 billion dollars.

In recent days the capitalization of stablecoins majority has risen significantly in the context of cryptocurrency market fall. From 10^th until 15^th of March Tether company issued 300 million USDT on the blockchain-related to Ethereum.

Those coins are available today on Ethereum, Omni, Tron, Algorand, Liquid Network and EOS blockchains. Taking in mind, that at the beginning stablecoin was released on Omni Bitcoin protocol and only then appeared on other blockchains. Now a big amount of coins are located on blockchain of Ethereum – where the total sum is about 3.7 billion dollars.

Bitcoin Cash offers a huge block size and lower charges in comparison with standard Bitcoin. When a large part of coins belonging to Tether is transferred to this protocol, that fact will help to cut pressure on the platform of Ethereum. As a result, we expect the fees in a network of cryptocurrency, which owns the second place with its capitalization, to decrease.

«One of the most important advantages of our company is that it operates on a big number of platforms. We definitely will benefit from Bitcoin Cash and Tether cooperation. It is expected that adding support to our stablecoin on this blockchain will be simple. Despite this, Bitcoin Cash applications will support Tether payments, » said Paolo Ardoino, Chief Technology Officer. As we have informed, in the middle of February Roger Ver, Bitcoin.com CEO, has already mentioned that stablecoin USDT would appear on Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

Italy declared national quarantine over the coronavirus pandemic. In that context local bank Banca Sella has started bitcoin trade on its digital platform – Hype.

The bank will become a mediator between traders and cryptocurrency exchanges with its platform to reduce security issues for users. Now all the citizens are at home so we can see a keen interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a means of payment.

Hype platform will allow not only to buy and sell bitcoin but also to pay with cryptocurrencies for goods and services. Meanwhile, the amount of Italians who are using the platform today is already 1.2M. Hype CEO Antonio Valitutti said:

«Cryptocurrency market and bitcoin trade, in particular, continue attracting interest especially among our customers – young and smart, by definition, they want to receive the access to global opportunities with the platform they use every day». Last November it was reported that bitcoin became the third most popular way to pay for online purchases in Italy.

According to ESET researchers reporting, cybercriminals, who created Stantinko mining botnet, developed also several obfuscation methods in order not to be found.

Vladislav Hrčka, an associate of ESET internet security company, who is responsible for malware analysis, revealed a recent result of the research and told about activities that can be taken against the botnet providers on his webpage.

«People who created Stantinko botnet are improving their skills and introducing new models which include original and unpredictable methods, » he noted.

This botnet appeared in 2012 and is being spread with the help of malware, which is embedded in piracy files. The main targets of Stantinko are users from following countries: Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. At first, it was doing users activity fraud, advertising integration, SM fraud, and passwords’ theft. Nevertheless, in the middle of 2018 the owners of the botnet added to its profile a new hidden mining module Monero for cryptocurrency.

Monero includes such elements that are capable to find antivirus program and stop all other cryptocurrency mining processes. The module exhausts almost all assets of the chosen machine, and at the same time stops its intervention in order not to be found when a PC owner clicks on Task Manager to figure out why the device works so slow.

Stantinko platform doesn’t interact with pool of the miners and prefers to use proxy servers. Digital security company ESET discovered the previous reporting about cryptocurrency fraud module in the middle of autumn last year, however since that time the botnet providers found other methods to avoid being found:

• Strings entanglement – this is a tool when the most important strings are created and can be visible in back-office only when users need to see them.
• Non-working strings and assets – a method when assets and strings are added without impacting functionality.
• Entanglement of the managing commands flow– conversion of the managing commands into a tough-readable form to make the order of basic elements unpredictable.
• Non-existing code – a command that never functions, and its unique objective is to adopt files so they could look more legitimate.
• Non-active code – a technique of code introducing that is done but has no sense and does nothing. With this method it is easy to trick behavioral founding.

«The most notable details of Stantinko is the manner it functions and how it thwarts analysis and finding. Because it uses source-level entanglements with a seed of random and that Stantinko’s creators adjust the tool for every victim, each sample is non-repeating,» mentioned Hrčka in first reporting. As we informed previously, in September a new miner virus Skidmap for Linux operating system was discovered. This virus is covering up its activity.

A large Chinese commercial bank China Everbright Bank (CEB) is introducing blockchain-system for tracking the chains of deliveries. The system was developed by a company Ant Finance, a subsidiary of a trading giant Alibaba.

Network blockchain-platform Duo Chain, launched specifically for the operations with the chains of deliveries and accompanying them financial operations, will be implemented in the bank’s structure. CBE will become the first Chinese bank that uses Duo Chain in its work process.

The platform assists both participants of the deal — the seller and the buyer — to decrease the number of frozen assets and to increase the money flow. The blockchain makes the entire process of purchase and delivery more efficient and reduces the costs. Besides this, the platform allows organizing short-term loans for the buyers or early payments for the sellers.

Utilization of Duo Chain will help to increase the security of the financial trade deals and avoid  fraud transactions. The platform allows us to complete the full identification of the users and hand them out the digital signatures, then to add their data into the blockchain and later verify whether it remained unchanged. The deals of trade financing on the blockchain are becoming more and more popular. Similar systems were already tested by the leading banks, such as JPMorgan, Standard Chartered and SBI Holdings. Earlier, it was reported that Chinese banks in the city of Chongqing were also using the block-chain system of trade finance, through which the deals worth 460$ million had been transacted in the previous year.

On 17th March, President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro proclaimed national quarantine due to the Coronavirus pandemic. This led to growth in Bitcoin trading volume in the country.

To date, only 33 cases of Coronavirus infections have been recorded in Venezuela, despite this Maduro decided to take the stringent measures and hence to enact national quarantine. This resulted in the temporary closure of most companies, including banks, so Bitcoin has turned out to be a real alternative to fiat money.

At the beginning of 2020, Bitcoin demonstrated its record trading volume with Venezuelan bolivar on the platform LocalBitcoins. Since then, trading volumes have been gradually declining, however, two weeks ago the popularity of Bitcoin has grown again.

It seems that the spread of Coronavirus affected the popularity of the first Cryptocurrency throughout the Latin American continent. Thus, Bitcoin trading volume in Peru increased by 30%, and in Columbia — by 15%. Both countries recently closed their borders. Earlier this month, it was reported that global Bitcoin trading volumes on the platform LocalBitcoins had fallen to a 7-year low. Previously, the leading peer-to-peer exchange platform has lost a significant number of users and faced a loss of credibility due to the blocking of accounts and the transfer of customers’ personal data to law enforcement agencies.

Tim Draper’s portfolio company produced a tool Totle Swap Technology which aggregates token prices of the DeFi markets and enables the user to pick the best deal.

Global instability and falling markets have a world-wide influence. Nevertheless, according to a venture capitalist Time Draper, Decentralized Finance is what actually gaining momentum. This is why Draper’s portfolio company decided to release the new software that would facilitate further development of this industry.

“DEX has undertaken a long journey in perfecting its usability. Totle facilitates access to the decentralized markets”, — stated David Bleznak, the founder of DeFi Totle aggregator.

As it stated in a press release, the Totle Swap Technology would allow all users to buy and sell the tokens at the best price within the DeFi industry. The software operates as routing of warrants system while detecting its best combination. This gives customers an opportunity to maximize profit from their token portfolio. The tool is aimed at users with an extensive portfolio of altcoins who prefer trading on the decentralized platforms. Additionally, the new software could be integrated into the website or application of any company.

Totle Swap Technology illustrates the correlation between the stock prices and the rest of the market, and it makes possible to choose the most profitable option for the transaction. The tool shows traders’ prices in real-time, and also has other customizable features that allow you to track trading activity.

“Our interface is the most convenient way to get the best price for your assets on Ethereum”, — stressed Blaznak.

New products and offers have been constantly appearing on the DeFi market. Earlier this month, Ethereum launched the Bitcoin-compatible DeFi platform pTokens. DeFi Money Market declared that it will launch tokenized assets in DeFi markets in order to provide cryptocurrency loans, whereas Huobi has launched a test blockchain for DeFi with support for KYC and AML.

A developer of decentralized storage Storj Labs has launched a cloud service based on the blockchain for both enterprises and personal usage. It is intended for the secure storage of files and documents.

Starting this week, the users have the ability to start transferring and backing up data on the Tardigrade Decentralized Cloud Storage Service. An open source network is capable of accommodating 19 petabytes that is equal to 19 million gigabytes. Currently, thousands of nodes, operated worldwide by enterprises and individuals, make use of the open-source network. The platform is today supported by approximately 3,000 customers.

“Decentralization has the various advantages for the cloud, whereas the first customers of our service can already experience how the decentralization upgrades security, privacy, and fault tolerance, as well as reduces expenses”, — said Storj Labs Executive Chairman Ben Golub.

While uploading a file, it is getting encrypted and divided into 80 fragments spread over individual nodes. If a single node is compromised or disrupted, only 29 fragments are required to completely restore the file. Thus, users are protected from a single node failure.

Co-founder and chief strategist of the company, Shawn Wilkinson, claimed that the Storj Labs would, first, determine a price that is two times lower than the price set by the centralized cloud storage providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Furthermore, the service has no restrictions on carrying capacity — the platform allows users to store as much data as they need.

In 2017, Storj’s service was relocated from Bitcoin to Ethereum. The co-founder affirmed that the company is not planning another relocation.

“Ethereum enables us to forward thousands of transactions every month to numerous node storage operators”, — co-founder said.

Customers who already use the protocols of Kafkaesque, Fluree, and CNCTED data warehouse management and, additionally, authentication solution from Verif-y, Storj’s partner; will have access to the decentralized storage via platform connector. The protocol was designed in a way to enable developers with experience in Amazon S3, Python, Go, and Android to easily learn how to use Tardigrade. Storj is not alone in developing and proposing solutions for decentralized storage. In the past month, the project of decentralized file storage, Filecoin, announced the postponement until the summer of the launch of its core network. Now, the launch of the Filecoin blockchain is expected in the period from June 15 to July 17.

Philip Salter Chief operating officer of the mining company Genesis Mining believes that the economic crisis can give a powerful boost to the growth of bitcoin.

In recent weeks, the cryptocurrency market is very changing. According to Salter, mining companies could have contributed to the fall in the rate of the first cryptocurrency.

In this case, there is no different traditional markets. You sell everything you can just to stay afloat and pay your debts. The miners always have bills that they need to pay. It has to pay for electricity, maintenance in dollars. In addition, if the bitcoin exchange is falling, it means that you need to sell more bitcoins to continue working, said Salter.

Thus, the avalanche effect has happened. The lower the rate, the more bitcoins are sold by miners and the more the rate decreases. Therefore, until it reaches the point when it is easier and cheaper for the miner to suspend work until the market recovers.

However, according to Salter, the more real and deeper the economic crisis, the better situation for bitcoin.

If this crisis is artificial, there will be no special fallout for bitcoin. If this is a real global economic crisis, then interest in bitcoin will grow significantly. It will again become an issue of exposure hedging. The worse people pertain to the traditional financial system, the better they will pertain to cryptocurrencies, said the Chief operating officer of Genesis Mining. Recently, the founder of Gold Bullion International Dan Tapiero spoke that the introduction of negative rates on dollar deposits in the United States can be a boost to the growth of bitcoin.

The Deputy Chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Tao Zhang said that public cryptocurrencies can become «an available and legal digital form of fiat money».

Zhang stressed that public digital currencies can bring many advantages to the traditional financial system.

«Most important of all it will be a more efficient payment system. Secondly a more available financial system. In third place increasing stability and reducing entry barriers for new companies. In fourth place the strengthening of monetary policy. And in fifth place public cryptocurrencies can become a repellent of new digital currencies,» Zhang said.

The data analytics company CB Insights analysed the state cryptocurrency market. According to analysts two types, such currencies are being developed in different countries: basic and bank.

Basic digital currencies should take place of paper money and allow citizens to open accounts directly with the Central Bank. Bank digital currencies should become a means of interbank payments and may jeopardize the current banking system.

The researchers also reported that 80% of Central banks surveyed are exploring the possibilities of public cryptocurrencies.

In early February the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Jerome Powell said that the FRB is actively working to create a «digital dollar».