Scammers Raise USD 4.9m in Ethereum in 2 Months + 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.

Source: Adobe/momius

Crime news

• A South Korean scam operator has reportedly gathered around USD 4.9 million in ethereum (ETH) as part of a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme. Per Joongang Ilbo, the Seoul-based outfit, which was active between January and February 2020, made contact with at least 500 people, promising them tenfold returns on their investments.

Adoption news

• Fintech BTSE said they opened pre-registration for the BTSE Debit Card today. The crypto debit card will enable balances to be stored in four stablecoins and eight fiat currencies. “The card will only convert assets upon use, thereby allowing users to maximize their cryptoasset value and appreciation,” Jonathan Leong, Co-Founder and CEO of BTSE, was quoted as saying in an emailed press release.
• Binance and Panama-based crypto exchange Cryptobuyer say that they are set to roll out a binance coin (BNB) crypto pay solution for use in Venezuela. Per Diario Bitcoin, the solution will allow Venezuelans to use Binance’s native token in a range of stores, including the crypto-keen department store chain Traki, as well as a number of nationwide retailers of food, medicine, clothing and household appliances.
• The South Korean government says it will pay to foster 1,700 young industry 4.0 experts – including budding young blockchain technology talents. The joint public-private sector project is the brainchild of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Communication. The young experts’ training, per Chosun, will involve mentoring sessions with blockchain and other industry 4.0 professionals for 40 hours per week for a period of six months. The training will also involve company visits to blockchain companies and other firms.
• Non-custodial portfolio manager Balancer has launched out of the closed beta on the Ethereum mainnet. Their blog post states that Balancer has been building the contracts, interfaces, libraries, etc. for the past six months since publishing the whitepaper in September, and while the contracts were officially deployed in February, they spent the last few weeks running the bug bounty program along with a closed beta to gather feedback from early community members.

Exchanges news

• Japanese crypto exchange Zaif has announced that it will delist three altcoins later this month. The platform’s operators stated, in an official post, that it would stop trading in bitcrystals (BCY), storjcoin X (SJCX), and pepe cash (PEPECASH) due to current “market conditions.” The platform says it will cease trading in the cryptoassets at 23:59 on April 30, but added that it would retain any as-yet-unclaimed customer tokens in wallets for up to five years.
• Bitstamp is reviewing a number of digital assets to determine which of them fit within their internal digital asset framework, said the exchange. They are exploring support for the following six coins: basic attention token (BAT), ethereum classic (ETC), paxos standard (PAX), USD coin (USDC), stellar lumens (XLM), zcash (ZEC), and 0x (ZRX).
• Digital asset trading platform CoinEx and fiat payment infrastructure provider Simplex partnered up to open a fiat gateway and enable CoinEx users to purchase major cryptoassets like bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin Cash (BCH), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LTC), and tether (USDT). The announcement states that customers can use with their Visa or MasterCard credit cards directly, while various fiat currencies, including USD, EUR, and CAD, are supported as well.