Author: Jordan Lyanchev

Ripple (XRP) Expecting Customers From US Banking Sector Next Quarter

https://cryptopotato.com/ripple-xrp-expecting-customers-from-us-banking-sector-next-quarter/

Last week, the legal battle between the SEC and Ripple that had been raging for 3 years was finally settled, at least partially.

Although Judge Analisa Torres ruled that some primary sales of XRP should have been registered as securities offerings, the secondary sale of the asset does not count as unlicensed securities.

Open for Business Again

The case may yet go to trial, and financial penalties for the primary sales of XRP may still occur. However, the ruling cleared Ripple’s name as far as using XRP to facilitate money transfers, which in the past not only made potential customers cautious against engaging with the company – it also lost them its biggest customer, Moneygram.

Brad Garlinghouse – Ripple’s CEO – previously stated that the court’s decision will allow the firm to pursue new moneymaking avenues again.

Furthermore, Garlinghouse believes the outcome of this landmark case will be beneficial for the entire industry, not just Ripple.

“For the SEC, it is really an overreach to suggest, as the Chair has said many times, that basically, everything in the crypto space is a security. Well, you now have a judge who is very clearly saying that is just not true and very clearly saying XRP is not a security on exchanges and all these different use cases, which I think helps the whole industry, for sure.”

Ripple to Explore Deals Regarding Cross-Border Transactions

Now that the dust has settled, Stu Alderoty, Ripple’s general counsel, revealed that the company will begin talks with new potential clients starting in the third quarter, which is only 2 weeks away.

According to Alderoty, Ripple will seek to enter deals with firms in the American banking sector. Chief among target customers are banks and payment processors who do business abroad, as Ripple’s XRP token eliminates the need for pre-funded banks on the receiving end.

“I think we’re hopeful that this decision would give financial institution customers or potential customers comfort to at least come in and start having the conversation about what problems they are experiencing in their business. […] Hopefully, this quarter will generate a lot of conversations in the United States with customers, and hopefully some of those conversations will actually turn into real business.”

Although most of Ripple’s revenue is reportedly generated outside of the U.S., this was more a matter of necessity due to the legal troubles. Now that those have largely been done away with, Ripple is looking to pivot strongly towards U.S. business partners yet again.

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Blockchain.Com Quits Asset Management After Less Than a Year: Report

https://cryptopotato.com/blockchain-com-quits-asset-management-after-less-than-a-year-report/

Blockchain.com started out as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer back in 2011 and later expanded into wallet services, as well as hosting its own crypto exchange.

Following years of growth, the company decided that 2022 was the year they would expand into asset management services. Unfortunately, the years of experience did not save the firm from the bear market.

Operational for Just Under a Year

Blockchain.com, which was worth about $14 billion when BCAM was launched, created the asset management service in collaboration with Altis Partners.

The service was geared towards high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors and upsold the idea of investing in cryptocurrency with less risk due to “algorithm-based risk-managed exposure” – a string of words that don’t mean much, considering all trades, crypto or not, are done using algorithms. Margin calls, for instance, are technically based on an algorithm that reduces the risk for the broker.

At the time, Charlie McGarraugh, the chief strategy officer at Blockchain.com, believed the newly formed asset management arm was a great opportunity for investors worldwide.

“Like everything in crypto, you won’t know until you try. But like with everything in crypto, we think we are growing into the clear blue sky. It’s a big opportunity.”

Unfortunately, the timing was notoriously poor. After just under a year – 11 months, to be precise – of the aforementioned exposure, BCAM filed a request to be struck off the UK Companies’ register, according to Bloomberg.

Crypto Winter to Blame

According to a spokesperson for BCAM, the decision to shutter its doors came after nearly a year of adverse market conditions with little to no relief.

“Blockchain.com Asset Management launched in April 2022, shortly before macroeconomic conditions deteriorated rapidly. With crypto winter now approaching the one-year mark, we made the business decision to pause operating this institutional product.”

This makes Blockchain.com the latest victim of crypto winter – although, much like Silvergate’s decision to wind down earlier this week – it seems to be in an orderly fashion, without the need for bankruptcy proceedings as in the case of TerraformLabs, Voyager, FTX and others.

Currently, no information is available on how or when exactly the company will cease operations and how it will liquidate all active assets in order to return them to customers.

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Aptos Explodes 10%, Bitcoin Calm Below $22K Ahead of CPI Numbers (Market Watch)

https://cryptopotato.com/aptos-explodes-10-bitcoin-calm-below-22k-ahead-of-cpi-numbers-market-watch/

Bitcoin has remained stuck beneath $22,000 for the past 24 hours, but there’s likely to be more volatility during the day as the US is scheduled to announce the CPI numbers for January.

The altcoins have taken a breather, as most are with minor gains. APT and FTM, on the other hand, have skyrocketed by double digits.

Bitcoin Anticipates CPI Numbers

The primary cryptocurrency started the month on the right foot, surging past $24,000 for the first time since August last year after the US Fed raised the interest rates by another 25 basis points.

However, the price surge was short-lived as the asset retreated below $24,000 in the following hours. The bears even pushed it back down to $23,000 days later, where it spent the past weekend. The landscape changed for the worse yesterday when the US SEC and then the NYDFS went after Paxos, alleging it sells unregistered securities in the form of BUSD and ordered it to stop issuing the stablecoin.

BTC reacted with another price decline, this time to $21,400, which became its lowest price point in over three weeks. It has recovered some ground since then and sits at $21,700, but its market cap still struggles beneath $420 billion.

Its dominance over the altcoins, though, is up by 0.5% in the past few days and is close to 42%.

BTCUSD. Source: TradingView
BTCUSD. Source: TradingView

APT, FTM on the Rise

Most altcoins dropped on the news from the US regulators yesterday but have charted some minor daily gains now. Ethereum has gone back to $1,500 after a 1% increase. Binance Coin, which dumped by over 6% following the regulatory scrutiny, stands still at 290.

Cardano, Solana, and Tron are the most substantial gainers from the larger-cap alts, all jumping by up to 4%. Even more impressive price increases are evident from Aptos and Fantom.

Both assets have soared by 10% and 12%, respectively, to $14 and $0.47. HBAR, GRT, and LDO have added between 5-7% of value in a day.

The total crypto market cap has tapped $1 trillion once again on CoinMarketCap after falling below that line yesterday.

Cryptocurrency Market Overview. Source: Quantify Crypto
Cryptocurrency Market Overview. Source: Quantify Crypto

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Unciphered Reveals Now-Patched Vulnerability in OneKey Wallet

https://cryptopotato.com/unciphered-reveals-now-patched-vulnerability-in-onekey-wallet/

In a YouTube video shared on their channel, the cybersecurity team at Unciphered demonstrated a critical security vulnerability for the OneKey wallet that they discovered during research.

As is customary for the white hat discovery of vulnerabilities, the video was released after it was patched.

Lacking Customary Encryption

Unciphered, a cybersecurity startup whose main focus is recovering lost crypto for clients who no longer have access to their wallets, presumably uncovered the issue while attempting to recover funds for a customer. In the video, a OneKey wallet is disassembled and manipulated, with the Unciphered team inserting a piece of hardware that monitored communications between the wallet’s CPU and its secure unit.

Generally, the communication between the CPU and the secure unit – where the mnemonic and crypto are stored – is encrypted. However, for OneKey wallets, it appears this was not the case.

“Normally, the communications are encrypted between the CPU, where the processing is done, and the secure element. Well, it turns out it wasn’t engineered to do so in this case. So what you could do is put a tool in the middle that monitors the communications and intercepts them, and then injects its own commands.”

Factory Mode Bypass

By inserting their piece of hardware between the CPU and the secure unit, the team at Unciphered could trick the device into thinking it’s in factory mode, which then dumped the mnemonic onto the team’s device.

“We did that where it then tells the secure element it’s in factory mode, and we can take your mnemonics out.”

This would have allowed a bad actor who could have discovered the vulnerability to gain access to the wallet once it was reassembled.

It’s worth noting that in order to perform this hack, it would have been necessary for a bad actor to have physical access to the device, as it could not be performed remotely. Nevertheless, it’s important to note that the location of a hardware wallet can be exposed – take the Ledger breach, for example, where the data of the wallet clients was exposed, leaving them open to potential thefts as well as simple extortion attempts.

Thankfully, the issue has now been patched due to communication between the two companies. For their efforts, Unciphered received an undisclosed amount from OneKey’s bug bounty program.

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