Bitcoin Miner Ebang Mulls Crypto Exchange, BTC Refunds + More News

Crypto Briefs is your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Exchanges news

• Chinese crypto mining company Ebang International Holdings Inc. is planning to launch an offshore exchange for digital assets in 2020, reports Bloomberg. The company wants to expand beyond the mining industry as its performance tends to fluctuate with bitcoin (BTC) prices, it added. The company’s Chief Financial Officer, Chen Lei, is cited as saying that they could see a 40% growth in total revenue after the expansion to helping clients manage data centers, and that revenue could nearly double to USD 200 million in 2020 with the launch of the exchange. The company would hit this mark in 2022 otherwise.

Adoption news

• BTCPay Server, a free open source Bitcoin payment processing server, has enabled streamlined refunds and notifications for payment status updates, among other features in its latest update. Per their announcement, the server has introduced several features, improvements and bug fixes, which should simplify handling crypto-payments for merchants. Other additions include pull payments and wallet improvements.
• A blockchain-powered medical billing platform has been launched in Fujian Province, China. Per FJSen, the platform is the brainchild of the Fuzhou Municipal Health and Health Commission, who say it will help eliminate fraud and prevent the issuance of “fake medical bills.”
• Mutual fund giant Vanguard has completed the first phase of a blockchain pilot designed to digitize the issuance of asset-backed securities (ABS), in partnership with technology provider Symbiont. Working with a large US ABS issuer, as well as BNY Mellon, Citi, and State Street, says the press release, Vanguard modeled the full lifecycle of an ABS settlement on distributed ledger technology (DLT) network by replicating end-to-end transaction flows.
• BitFlyer Holdings, the company that controls Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer, utilised a blockchain voting app for its general shareholders meeting held last Friday. The voting app is called bVote, and it was developed by BitFlyer’s subsidiary BitFlyer Blockchain.
• Kyber Network (KNC), an open-source, on-chain liquidity protocol, has announced that their next protocol upgrade, dubbed Katalyst, will go live on July 7. According to their press release, the upgrade will include changes to the KNC token model to align incentives from different stakeholders and attract more participants to the protocol development. The goal of Katalyst is to reduce friction in liquidity contributions, introduce rebates for high-performing reserves, and allow dapps (decentralized apps) integrated with Kyber to add a custom spread for flexible rates.

Crime news

• Police in South Korea are looking into a complaint brought by a group of 950 investors who claim they have fallen victim to a crypto pyramid scam, reports TV Chosun. Investigators say they are to look into over 160 individuals believed to be operating at the “higher echelons” of the alleged scam. The investors say they thought they were paying for sponsored ad packages, but were actually allegedly duped into making crypto-related investments.
• Ukrainian police have closed down ”about” 20 illegal online exchanges, per Forklog. The police have also arrested three individuals who they believe were laundering funds using cryptocurrencies – and advertising the exchanges’ services on dark web portals.