Friday, July 16. The week is coming to an end, so we can talk about the most interesting news in the crypto industry for this week.
«The Finico» pyramid asks for personal data of users before payments
«The Finico» pyramid stopped payments to its users and began to forcibly request personal information. This was done ostensibly in order to confirm that it was this user who invested his funds. The information was confirmed by the founder of Finico, Kirill Doronin.
When a user wants to withdraw his money using his personal account, he will see a sign with the inscription: «According to clause 3 of the offer agreement, you need to provide documents confirming income».
The list of documents is small, but they include almost all the information of a person. The company asks for a certificate of income, a loan agreement, bank statements, and others. If you believe the founder of the pyramid, all the sent documentation will be checked. The terms of verification are individual for each user.
According to data from one Telegram-chat «Finico», clients were told not to conduct operations in a private office from 13 to 16 July. According to the company, such measures were applied in order to enable «Finico» to enter the international market and move the company to the legal sector.
However, the company refers to clause 3 of the offer contract, which allegedly states that the user is obliged to provide the documents in question. But the thing is, there’s not a word about it in that paragraph. It only states that the customer is obliged to pay taxes and fees in accordance with the laws of the country to which the user belongs. Prior to this, there was no need to confirm the origin of the profits and the company did not mention this.
Visa and Mastercard payment systems will continue working with Binance
The international newspaper Financial Times writes that despite increased regulatory control, Visa and Mastercard will not refuse to work with the crypto exchange Binance.
Visa claims to be aware of FCA’s application to the Binance cryptocurrency exchange and continues to hold discussions with the site on topical events.
Mastercard also notes that they look at the situation and how in general the exchange is working to meet regulatory requirements.
Visa and Mastercard are not going to ban their users from using their payment cards to work with the Crystal Exchange.
All this happened due to the fact that at the end of June, the UK financial regulator (FCA) banned Binance from engaging in activities throughout the country, without written approval.
The Briton who threw away 7500 BTC is going to find them with the help of AI
In 2013, programmer James Howells accidentally threw out the hard disk on which he had extracted 7,500 BTC. He has already made more than one attempt to find lost digital assets. The last attempt was in January of this year, Howells offered the authorities of his city of Newport to excavate a landfill for the purpose of searching, offering about $72 million for this. But the authorities did not approve of the idea and refused. Now he has a new idea of how to carry out the search. Take advantage of modern technologies, namely, devices that scan the terrain with an X-ray and artificial intelligence. This news was reported by The Sun publishing house.
The programmer was studying photos of the landfill extracted from the air, where, according to his assumptions, the cherished hard drive is located. He estimated that the area is 200 square meters, and the depth of the landfill is about 15 meters. To implement his plan, it will take about one year, during which time it will be possible to scan the entire territory of the landfill.
The price for one device that will conduct scanning is approximately $690,000. Tools that will help remove landfill pollution in the region of $138,000. In order for the idea to come true, Howells will be sponsored by a hedge fund, which decided to remain anonymous.
The programmer says that during the search, everything will be done as carefully as possible, so as not to damage the HDD. At the moment, there is approximately $240 million on it.
But even here it was not without the intervention of the city council. According to them, such a procedure will be quite expensive and can harm the environment.
At the moment, it remains unclear whether Howells will be able to negotiate with the authorities.
The data of Telegram users has been made publicly available
Telegram channel «Information Leaks» reports that a file has been discovered on the Internet. It contains over 700,000 lines of data from users from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. This database contains the ID of users; personal numbers to which the account appears to be linked; nicknames; names and surnames.
The purpose of the perpetrators who have assembled such a formidable database remains unclear. Experts believe that this may be for the de-anonymization of users or for the purchase of personal data.
A similar situation occurred last year. Telegram users’ database was also found on one of the forums in the darknet. Back then, there were several million messenger users in the database.