Private financial technologies as a tool for sustainable business development in Russia and Kazakhstan.

In 2018, Deloitte, the CIS conducted a comprehensive independent study on the trends in the financial technology market in Russia and Kazakhstan. The development of the Fintech market is primarily stimulated by three fundamental factors:

a) growing demand - the growing demand for financial services received by both the public and business through the Internet or mobile communications;

b) regulator's activity is the activity of the authorities, as a result of which a single national fintech space and infrastructure is formed;

c) dynamic supply - high sensitivity of FINTECH companies to growing demand (regular entry to the market of new products and services).

Currently, the concentration of demand from consumers of FINTECH services falls on the online lending segment. It is one of the most growing in the financial technology market: so, according to experts, in 2017, online companies issued 67% of loans more than a year ago. It should be noted that the absolute majority of representatives of the Fintech market expect the positive dynamics to remain in the online lending segment (two years to come) and consider online lending to be one of the main drivers of the development of the financial technology market...

Source: Deloitte CIS.

The leading information security portal SecurityLab.ru has published a note - Cryptocurrency on guard - Sentinel Protocol (2018/11/29).

While the basic technology of Blockchain has already earned an excellent reputation for its high level of security, cryptocurrency assets continue to be stolen daily. Cryptoexchange and wallets today have limited capabilities to prevent users from receiving or sending cryptocurrency funds to malicious addresses or to detect malicious URLs associated with phishing and malware.

The rapid development of computer technology in the 21st century has led to the manifestation of complex and intellectual threats that hinder the further introduction of innovations. Although the essence of cryptocurrency is decentralization, it has also become their biggest weakness. Since in a decentralized cryptocurrency system there is no protection against threats, the burden of security still falls on the shoulders of individuals and corporations. The Sentinel Protocol eliminates the disadvantage of decentralization, turning it into a security advantage. Using the collective intelligence, created by using the decentralization capabilities, Sentinel Protocol combines cryptographic functions and intelligent threat analysis algorithms to create a safe innovation ecosystem.

Let's take a closer look at the Sentinel Protocol platform. So, there are three main security issues that the average cryptocurrency user faces: the first problem is that ordinary users are too easily compromised. The second problem is that, although attackers can often identify victims, users cannot easily identify them. Finally, the damage caused by the attacking users is their personal responsibility...

Source: SecurityLab.ru

Source: K4Y0T Project.

The Supervisory Board of the High-Tech Park in Belarus approved regulations on the activities of residents of the High-Tech Park with digital signs (tokens).

Source:  Belarus Hi Tech Park.

London, 6 November 2018: CryptoCompare, the global cryptocurrency market data provider, today published its monthly Exchange Review for October 2018, designed to offer institutional and retail investors insights into the cryptocurrency exchange industry.

The monthly review includes exchange trade data; order book and web traffic analysis; news highlights; exchange market segmentation; an overview of trans-fee mining and decentralised exchanges; information on volumes and pairs including Bitcoin to Fiat volumes; as well as exchange security and KYC requirements.

The Methodology: CryptoCompare’s Monthly Exchange Review evaluates the consistency and quality of exchange data, which is incorporated into CryptoCompare’s real-time Aggregate Index Methodology (the CCCAGG), used to calculate the best price estimation of cryptocurrency pairs traded across global exchanges. It aggregates transactional data from more than 70 exchanges using a 24-hour volume weighted average for every cryptocurrency pair. Constituent CCCAGG exchanges are reviewed and amended each month to ensure that the most representative and reliable market data is used in CCCAGG pair pricing calculations.

Key findings from the October review include:

- The top exchange by 24h spot trading volume was Binance with an average of just under 980 million USD, followed by OKEX and Bitfinex with volumes of 405 million and 368 million respectively.

- Spot volumes constituted less than three quarters of total market volumes on average (less than 7 billion USD) compared to futures volumes (3.2 billion USD). Within total spot volumes, exchanges with taker fees represent approximately 90% of the exchange spot market volumes, while transaction-fee based (TFM) and no-fee exchanges represent the remaining 10%.

- Bithumb saw a 356% spike in trading volumes from an average of 140 million USD to an average of 640 million USD after the 7th of October. This follows after the Singapore-based BK Global Consortium bought a controlling share in the exchange.

- Bitfinex saw a spike in volumes towards the 15th of October as the Bitcoin premium on Bitfinex vs Coinbase reached an all-time high of 11.28%.

- An analysis of the top 100 exchanges by 24h volumes suggests that a third of top exchanges store the vast majority of users’ funds in cold wallets (offline).

- If we look at the ratio of order book depth down to volume, we can rank exchanges by how immune to manipulation their markets might be. What we find is that, itBit, Kraken and Bitstamp have relatively more stable markets compared to exchanges such as CoinEx, ZB and Coinbene. 

- CoinEx, a well-known trans-fee mining exchange, has a significantly higher trade frequency and lower trade size than other exchanges in the top 25. This may point to algorithmic trading, given its almost 176 thousand trades a day at an average trade size of 125 USD. In contrast, Bithumb and HuobiPro had an average trade size of just under 3,000 and 1,500 USD respectively and significantly lower trades per day (12–18 thousand).

- According to a web traffic analysis using Alexa data, exchanges ZB and EXX showed significantly lower daily visitors relative to other exchanges with similar volumes. Both exchanges trade volumes in excess of 150 million USD per day, but attract no more than 700 visitors per day.

Source: CryptoCompare.com

Solution to protect crypto assets by fighting fraud, scams, and malicious threats.

Singapore, 29 October 2018 — Sentinel Protocol announces the launch of the Interactive Cooperation Framework API (ICF API). After the successful launch of the UPPward Chrome Extension, a crypto scam protection solution, Sentinel Protocol continues to lead the crypto security industry by arming crypto exchanges and wallet services with its ICF API.

The new ICF API is designed to be integrated with financial software applications to proactively protect crypto assets belonging to organizations and clients from malicious threats. Before completing a transaction, the ICF API enables a financial application to query Sentinel Protocol’s Threat Reputation Database (TRDB) and check whether or not a specific crypto wallet address, URL, domain, or Telegram ID is safe. Within milliseconds, the TRDB sends a response. Depending on the type of response, a pending transaction can be immediately rejected and terminated; an alert or warning could be generated; or the transaction could be allowed if the alert level is low.

The key features of the ICF API are:

- Platform agnostic — can be used by any exchange, wallet, DApp, or application.

- Online access to collective security intelligence data held in the TRDB.

- Validated whitelists and blacklists of crypto wallet addresses, URLs, and domains related with malware, phishing, and scams.

While blockchain’s core technology has earned an excellent reputation for strong security, cryptocurrency assets continue to be stolen on a daily basis. Crypto exchanges and wallet services today have limited capabilities for preventing users from accepting or sending crypto funds to malicious addresses or for identifying malicious URLs associated with phishing and malware.

To address the above needs, the ICF API beta version will be made available to organizations by the end of October for testing and evaluation. The full production version will be deployed in early 2019.

Sentinel Protocol, is the world’s first crowd-sourced threat intelligence platform utilizing the advantages of decentralization to protect cyberspace with blockchain security. It aims to equip individuals and organizations with cybersecurity solutions that protect their valuable cryptocurrency assets from malicious threats, attacks, and fraud. Sentinel Protocol is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan.

Source:  Medium.

The leading information security portal SecurityLab.ru has published a note - Fighting cryptocurrency crime (2018/11/12).

The rapid development of technology promises not only great profits, but also carries significant risks. The situation with the fraud associated with the turnover of cryptocurrency and tokens (other digital assets) is aggravated.

As soon as platforms began to emerge expertise in the field of combating cryptocurrency fraud. Such as platform Crystal Blockchain.

Crystal is the result of two years of work and development by Bitfury Group’s development team. Consisting of world-class blockchain analysts, award-winning mathematicians and professional software developers, united by the idea of using Blockchain technology to build a better, secure future.

They turned this idea into reality, developing best-in-class blockchain solutions for people all over the world ... The results of current investigations and team research are available...

Source:  SecurityLab.ru

Source:  K4Y0T Project.

The full Q3 2018 Cryptocurrency Report by CoinGecko. Top highlights of the report: market dynamics and yearly market overview.

Total market capitalization has carried on its decline from Q2. Despite the downward pressure, market capitalization has been relatively stable in Q3 with trading volume growing.

Exchanges implementing trans-fee mining was a big trend in Q3. Trans-fee mining is the "mining" or creation of new exchange-based tokens via rebates of the exchange's transaction fees. The introduction of trans-fee mining have significantly changed the dominance rank for cryptocurrency exchanges in Q3 as compared to Q2.

A majority of news updates in Q3 relates to government regulation and mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. There is significantly less chatter around new ICO projects.

Despite the bearish market sentiment, there are still many project that attempted to raise funds via ICO. However, only half of them manage to complete their ICO with the average amount raised decreasing from $10.4 million in Q2 to $8.2 million in Q3.

CoinGecko collaborated with Masternodes.Online to produce a quarterly special with an insight into the growing masternodes space. The number of masternodes have been steadily increasing as investors seek alternative investment in this bearish market.

CoinGecko collaborated Nonfungible.com to take a deeper look into Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT). With the introduction of Cryptokitties and the introduction of the ERC-721 standard, NFT have gain significant popularity in 2018 with transaction volume doubled between January and October 2018.

Source: CoinGecko: 360° Market Overview of Coins & Cryptocurrencies. 

The editorial staff of the Security Director magazine notes the contribution of Igor Sergeyevich Bederov and the organizations he leads to the development of modern information and analytical services designed to prevent Internet crime.

We have studied the concept of the SICP (Security Intelligence Cryptocurrencies Platform) online service. We believe that the use of your software product will qualitatively improve the analytical work and implement previously inaccessible tasks for the prevention and investigation of crimes related to operations with cryptocurrency, bogus ICO.

We express confidence in maintaining the existing friendly relations and look forward to further mutually beneficial and fruitful cooperation for the benefit of the prosperity of Russian business.

2018/11/08

Ensuring the security of the blockchain and the digital economy of Russia is generally considered by the editors of RUBEZH magazine as an integral part of the country's national security system. The rapid development of technology, the constant increase in the number of frauds related to the circulation of cryptocurrencies and tokens, imposes on law enforcement agencies and private companies a great responsibility for developing innovative products that could effectively prevent crime.

Our editorial notes your contribution to the development of information and analytical services for law enforcement and private security services. Of particular interest is the SICP (Security Intelligence Cryptocurrencies Platform) service developed by your team. These products are undoubtedly a unique phenomenon for Russian business. For the first time, domestic cryptocommerce merchants will be offered a high-quality solution to effectively prevent the risks of fraud when performing operations with cryptocurrencies and conducting ICO's.

We hope that in the future our partnership will remain as fruitful! We wish you further professional success and prosperity!

2018/11/06

The experts of the Association studied the concept of the online service SICP (Security Intelligence Cryptocurrencies Platform - https://www.ueba.su/). We believe that the use of this software will significantly expand the analytical work and implement previously inaccessible tasks for the prevention and investigation of crimes in the field of blockchain technologies (operations with cryptocurrency, fictitious ICO, etc.)

We believe that the development of modern information and analytical services designed to prevent Internet crime and combat fraud is a major contribution to the development of the market of cryptotechnologies.

2018/11/07