Bennett Cyphers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explains how this goes down in the USA

Over the past few years, data brokers and federal military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies have formed a vast, secretive partnership to surveil the movements of millions of people. Many of the mobile apps on our cell phones track our movements with great precision and frequency. Data brokers harvest our location data from the app developers, and then sell it to these agencies. Once in government hands, the data is used by the military to spy on people overseas, by ICE to monitor people in and around the U.S., and by criminal investigators like the FBI and Secret Service. This post will draw on recent research and reporting to explain how this surveillance partnership works, why is it alarming, and what can we do about it.

Where does the data come from?

Weather apps, navigation apps, coupon apps, and “family safety” apps often request location access in order to enable key features. But once an app has location access, it typically has free rein to share that access with just about anyone.

That’s where the location data broker industry comes in. Data brokers entice app developers with cash-for-data deals, often paying per user for direct access to their device. Developers can add bits of code called “software development kits,” or SDKs, from location brokers into their apps. Once installed, a broker’s SDK is able to gather data whenever the app itself has access to it: sometimes, that means access to location data whenever the app is open. In other cases, it means “background” access to data whenever the phone is on, even if the app is closed.

One app developer received the following marketing email from data broker Safegraph:

SafeGraph can monetize between $1-$4 per user per year on exhaust data (across location, matches, segments, and other strategies) for US mobile users who have strong data records. We already partner with several GPS apps with great success, so I would definitely like to explore if a data partnership indeed makes sense.

But brokers are not limited to data from apps they partner with directly. The ad tech ecosystem provides ample opportunities for interested parties to skim from the torrents of personal information that are broadcast during advertising auctions. In a nutshell, advertising monetization companies (like Google) partner with apps to serve ads. As part of the process, they collect data about users—including location, if available—and share that data with hundreds of different companies representing digital advertisers. Each of these companies uses that data to decide what ad space to bid on, which is a nasty enough practice on its own. But since these “bidstream” data flows are largely unregulated, the companies are also free to collect the data as it rushes past and store it for later use.

The data brokers covered in this post add another layer of misdirection to the mix. Some of them may gather data from apps or advertising exchanges directly, but others acquire data exclusively from other data brokers. For example, Babel Street reportedly purchases all of its data from Venntel. Venntel, in turn, acquires much of its data from its parent company, the marketing-oriented data broker Gravy Analytics. And Gravy Analytics has purchased access to data from the brokers Complementics , Predicio, and Mobilewalla. We have little information about where those companies get their data—but some of it may be coming from any of the dozens of other companies in the business of buying and selling location data.

If your next question is “which apps are sharing data?”, the answer is: “It’s almost impossible to know.” Reporting, technical analysis, and right-to-know requests through laws like GDPR have revealed relationships between a handful of apps and location data brokers. For example, we know that the apps Muslim Pro and Muslim Mingle sold data to X-Mode , and that navigation app developer Sygic sent data to Predicio (which sold it to Gravy Analytics and Venntel). But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Each of the location brokers discussed in this post obtains data from hundreds or thousands of different sources. Venntel alone has claimed to gather data from “over 80,000” different apps. Because much of its data comes from other brokers, most of these apps likely have no direct relationship with Venntel. As a result, the developers of the apps fueling this industry likely have no idea where their users’ data ends up. Users, in turn, have little hope of understanding whether and how their data arrives in these data brokers’ hands.

Who sells location data?

Dozens of companies make billions of dollars selling location data on the private market. Most of the clients are the usual suspects in the data trade—marketing firms, hedge funds, real estate companies, and other data brokers. Thanks to lackluster regulation, both the ways personal data flows between private companies and the ways it’s used there are exceedingly difficult to trace. The companies involved usually insist that the data about where people live, sleep, gather, worship, and protest is used for strictly benign purposes, like deciding where to build a Starbucks or serving targeted ads.

But a handful of companies sell to a more action-oriented clientele: federal law enforcement, the military, intelligence agencies, and defense contractors. Over the past few years, a cadre of journalists have gradually uncovered details about the clandestine purchase of location data by agencies with the power to imprison or kill, and the intensely secretive companies who sell it.

This chart illustrates the flow of location data from apps to agencies via two of the most prominent government-facing brokers: Venntel and Babel Street.

The vendor we know the most about is Venntel , a subsidiary of the commercial agency Gravy Analytics . Its current and former clients in the US government include, at a minimum, the IRS , the DHS and its subsidiaries ICE and CBP , the DEA , and the FBI . Gravy Analytics does not embed SDKs directly into apps; rather, it acquires all of its data indirectly through other data brokers.

Few data brokers reveal where their data comes from, and Venntel is no exception. But investigations and congressional testimony have revealed at least a few of Venntel’s sources. In 2020, Martin Gundersen of NRK Beta filed requests under the GDPR’s Right to Know in order to trace how data about his location made its way to Venntel . He installed two navigation apps from the company Sygic, as well as an app called Funny Weather, and granted them location permissions. Funny Weather sold his data to location broker Predicio, which then sold it to Gravy Analytics. The Sygic apps sold data to both Predicio and another firm, Complementics, which sent data to Gravy as well. All of the data ended up inside Venntel’s database. In 2021, following a lengthy investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden, broker Mobilewalla revealed that it too had sold data to Venntel.

Gravy Analytics shares some information about its location-data practices on its website . Gravy claims it has access to “ over 150 million ” devices. It also states outright that it does not gather data from the bidstream. But government officials have told Congress that they believe Venntel’s data is derived both from SDKs and from the bidstream, and there is other evidence to support that belief. One of Venntel’s sources, Mobilewalla , has testified to Congress that it gathers and sells bidstream-based location data. Government contracts describe Venntel’s dataset as containing data from “over 80,000 apps.” Data brokers that rely solely on SDKs, like X-Mode, tend to maintain direct relationships with just a few hundred apps. Venntel’s incredible app coverage makes it likely that at least a portion of its data has been siphoned from the bidstream.

Venntel’s data is disaggregated and device-specific—making it easier for this data to point right to you. Motherboard reported that Venntel allows users to search for devices in a particular area, or to search for a particular device identifier to see where that device has been. It allows customers to track devices to specific workplaces, businesses, and homes. Although it may not include explicitly identifying information like names or phone numbers, this does not mean it is “anonymous.” As one former employee told Motherboard , “you could definitely try and identify specific people.”

Venntel has sold several annual licenses to its “Venntel Portal,” a web app granting access to its database, at a price of around $20,000 for 12,000 queries. It has also sold direct access to all of its data from a region, updated daily and uploaded to a government-controlled server, for a more lavish $650,000 per year.

Babel Street is a government contractor that specializes in “open-source intelligence” (OSINT) services for law enforcement. Its flagship product, Babel X , scrapes and interprets text from social media and other websites and merges OSINT with data gathered from more traditional intelligence techniques. Babel Street is “ widely used ” by the military, intelligence agencies, private companies, and federal, state, and local law enforcement. It also sells access to app-derived location data through a service called “Locate X,” as first reported by Protocol in March 2020.

Babel Street first registered Locate X with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2017 . The service allows Babel’s clients to query a database of app-derived location data. Locate X can be used to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint devices that were in that location, and see where else those devices went in prior months. Records obtained by Motherboard from DHS reveal that, according to a DHS official, “Babel Street basically re-hosts Venntel’s data at a greater cost and with significant constraints on data access.” Babel Street employees have also said Venntel is the ultimate source of most of the location data flowing to the federal government that we are aware of.

Although Babel Street has many public-facing marketing materials, it has attempted to keep details about Locate X a secret. Terms of use provided by Babel Street to its clients ban using Locate X data as evidence, or even mentioning it in legal proceedings. Still, several buyers of Locate X have been reported publicly, including the Air National Guard, the U.S. Special Forces Command (SOCOM), CBP, ICE, and the Secret Service.

Anomaly 6 (or “A6”) also sells app-derived location data to the government. Its existence was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2020.

A6 was founded by a pair of ex-Babel Street employees, Brendan Huff and Jeffrey Heinz. At Babel Street, the two men managed relationships with large government clients, including the Defense Department, the Justice Department, and the intelligence community. After striking off on their own, A6 allegedly began developing a product to compete with Babel Street’s Locate X, and catering its services to a very similar clientele. In 2018, Babel Street sued the company and its founders , and the two companies eventually settled out of court.

A6 presents very little information about itself publicly. Its website comprises just a company logo and an email address on an animated background. It is not registered as a data broker in either California or Vermont . Not much is known about A6’s data sources, either. The Wall Street Journal reported that it collects data via SDKs in “more than 500” mobile apps. According to a 2021 report by Motherboard , these SDKs are deployed by “partners” of the company, not A6 itself, creating a buffer between the company and its data sources. A6 claims its contracts with the government are “confidential” and it can’t reveal which agencies it’s working with. Public procurement records reveal at least one relationship: in September 2020, SOCOM division SOCAFRICA paid $589,000 for A6’s services .

In April 2022, The Intercept and Tech Inquiry reported on presentations that A6 made in a meeting with Zignal Labs , a social media monitoring firm with access to Twitter’s “firehose.” A6 proposed a partnership between the two firms that would allow their clients to determine “who exactly sent certain tweets, where they sent them from, who they were with,” and more. In order to demonstrate its capability, A6 performed a live demonstration: it tracked phones of Russian soldiers amassed on the Ukrainian border to show where they had come from, and it tracked 183 devices that had visited both the NSA and CIA headquarters to show where American intelligence personnel might be deployed. It followed one suspected intelligence officer around the United States, to an American airfield in Jordan, and then back to their home.

X-Mode is a location data broker which collects data directly from apps with its own SDK. X-mode began as the developer of a single app, “ drunk mode ,” designed to help users avoid sending embarrassing texts after dark. But once the app started getting traction, the company decided its real value was in the data. It pivoted to develop an SDK that gathered location data from apps and funneled it to X-Mode, which sold the data streams to nearly anyone who would pay. It’s not clear whether X-Mode had direct relationships with any government clients, but it has sold data to several defense contractors that work directly with the U.S. military, including Systems & Technology Research and the Sierra Nevada Corporation . It has also sold to HYAS , a private intelligence firm that tracks “threat actors” suspected of being involved with cyberattacks “to their door" on behalf of law enforcement and private clients.

X-Mode developed an SDK that was embedded directly in apps. It paid developers directly for their data, at a rate of $0.03 per U.S. user per month, and $0.005 per international user. X-mode’s direct-SDK model also made it possible to figure out exactly which apps shared data with the company by analyzing the apps themselves. That’s why the company made headlines in 2020, when Motherboard revealed that dozens of apps that target at-risk groups - including two of the largest Islamic apps in the U.S., Muslim Pro and Salaat First - were monetizing location data with X-Mode. This visibility also made X-Mode more accountable for its behavior: both Apple and Google concluded that X-Mode violated their developer terms of service, and banned any apps using X-Mode’s SDK from the App Store and the Play Store.

At one time, X-Mode boasted it had data from about 25 million active users in the U.S. and 40 million more worldwide, tracked through more than 400 different apps. After the crackdown by mobile platforms, the company was bought out and rebranded as Outlogic , and it adjusted its public image. But the company is still active in the location data market. Its new parent, Digital Envoy , sells “IP-based location” services, and describes its Outlogic subsidiary as “a provider of location data for the retail, real estate and financial markets.” Digital Envoy also has deep ties to the U.S. government. The Intercept has reported that Digital Envoy contracts with the IRS enforcement division, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (which has also contracted with Venntel), and the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency. It’s unclear whether Outlogic’s app-based location data is incorporated into any of those Digital Envoy relationships.

How is location data used?

While several contracts between data brokers and federal agencies are public records, very little is known about how those agencies actually use the services. Information has trickled out through government documents and anonymous sources.

Department of Homeland Security

Perhaps the most prominent federal buyer of bulk location data is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as its subsidiaries, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). The Wall Street Journal reported that ICE used the data to help identify immigrants who were later arrested. CBP uses the information to “look for cellphone activity in unusual places,” including unpopulated portions of the US-Mexico border. According to the report, government documents explicitly reference the use of location data to discover tunnels along the border. Motherboard reported that CBP purchases location data about people all around the United States, not just near the border. It conducts those searches without a court order, and it has refused to share its legal analysis of the practice with Congress.

The Federal Procurement Database shows that, in total, DHS has paid at least $2 million for location data products from Venntel. Recently released procurement records from DHS shed more light on one agency’s practice. The records relate to a series of contracts between Venntel and a recently-shuttered research division of DHS, the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency ( HSARPA ). In 2018, the agency paid $100,000 for five licenses to the Venntel Portal. A few months later, HSARPA upgraded to a product called “Geographic Marketing Data - Western Hemisphere,” forking over $650,000 for a year of access. This data was “delivered on a daily basis via S3 bucket”—that is, shipped directly to DHS in bulk. From context, it seems like the “Venntel Portal” product granted limited access to data hosted by Venntel, while the purchase of “Geographic Marketing Data” gave DHS direct access to all of Venntel’s data for particular regions in near-real-time.

The HSARPA purchases were made as part of a program called the Data Analytics Engine (DA-E). In a Statement of Work, DHS explained that it needed data specifically for Central America and Mexico in order to support the project. Elsewhere, the government has boasted that ICE has used “big data architecture” from DA-E to generate “arrests, seizures, and new leads.” ICE has maintained an ongoing relationship with Venntel in the years since, signing at least six contracts with the company since 2018.

Federal law enforcement

The FBI released its own contracts with Venntel in late 2021. The documents show that the FBI paid $22,000 for a single license to the Venntel Portal, but are otherwise heavily redacted. Another part of the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), committed $25,000 for a one-year license in early 2018, but Motherboard reported that the agency terminated its contract before the first month was up. According to the Wall Street Journal , the IRS tried to use Venntel’s data to track individual suspects, but gave up when it couldn’t locate its targets in the company’s dataset. Some of Babel Street’s law enforcement customers have had more success: Protocol reported that the U.S. Secret Service used Locate X to seize illegal credit card skimmers installed at gas pumps in 2018.

Military and intelligence agencies

Military and foreign intelligence agencies have used location data in numerous instances. In one unclassified project , researchers at Mississippi State University used Locate X data to track movements around Russian missile test sites, including those of high-level diplomats. The U.S. Army funded the project and said it showed “good potential use” of the data in the future. It also said that the collection of cell phone data was consistent with Army policy as long as no “personal characteristics” of the phone’s owner were collected (but of course, detailed movements of individuals are actually “personal characteristics”).

Another customer of Locate X is the Iowa Air National Guard, as first reported by Motherboard . Specifically, the Des Moines-based 132d wing—which reportedly conducts “long-endurance coverage” and “dynamic execution of targets” with MQ-9 Reaper drones—purchased a 1-year license to Locate X for $35,000. The air base said the license would be used to “support federal mission requirements overseas,” but did not elaborate further.

Anomaly 6 only has one confirmed federal client: the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM. In 2020, SOCAFRICA - a division which focuses on the African continent - spent nearly $600,000 on a “commercial telemetry feed” from A6. In March 2021, SOCOM told Vice that the purpose of the contract was to “evaluate” the feasibility of using A6 services in an “overseas operating environment,” and that the government was no longer executing the contract. In September 2021, federal procurement records show that the U.S. Marines’ special operations command, MARSOC, executed another contract for $8,700 for “SME Support” from A6. (SME could stand for Subject Matter Expert, implying that A6 provided training or expertise.)

Finally, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has confirmed that it, too, works with location data brokers. In a January 2021 memo to Senator Ron Wyden, DIA stated that it “provides funding to another agency” that purchases location data from smartphones on its behalf. The data is global in scope, including devices inside and outside the United States, though the DIA said it segregates U.S. data points into a separate database as it arrives. The U.S. location database can only be queried after a “specific process” involving approval from multiple government agencies, and the DIA stated that permission had been granted five times in the previous two and a half years. The DIA claimed it needs a warrant to access the information. It’s unclear which data broker or brokers the DIA has worked with.

Is it legal for the federal government to buy our location data?

In a word, “no.” The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and it requires particularity in warrants. If the federal government wants specific location data about a specific person, it must first get a warrant from a court based on probable cause of crime. If the federal government wants to set up a dragnet of the ongoing movements of millions of identifiable people for law enforcement purposes, too bad – that’s a forbidden general search. The federal government cannot do an end-run around these basic Fourth Amendment rules through the stratagem of writing a check to location data brokers.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on cell-site location information, or CSLI, is instructive. CSLI is generated as cell phones interact with cell towers. It’s collected passively, all the time, from every phone that has cell service. It is less granular than GPS-based location data, and thus cannot locate devices as accurately. The only companies that can access it directly are the phone carriers themselves. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that CSLI is protected by the Fourth Amendment. It also held that the government can’t demand CSLI from telecom companies without a court-approved warrant. Since 2018 , all major U.S. carriers have publicly committed to stop selling raw CSLI to anyone. Police do commonly obtain warrants for CSLI pertaining to active investigations.

Courts also are beginning to crack down on “geofence warrants” for GPS data from large companies like Apple and Google. These warrants seek all the phones present in a particular time and place. As EFF has explained , they are general searches that violate the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement. One was struck down by a federal district court earlier this year in United States v. Chatrie . Federal purchase of location data about millions of people raises similar Fourth Amendment concerns.

With access to location data from commercial data brokers, federal agencies can query data about the movements of millions or billions of identifiable people at once. They are not limited to data about a single area or slice of time. As Anomaly 6 reportedly demonstrated, they can start from a single time and place, then look forwards or backwards at the location histories of hundreds of devices at once, learning where their owners live, work, and travel. Agencies can make extraordinarily broad queries that span entire states or countries, and filter the resulting data however they see fit. It appears that this kind of full-database access is what the DHS purchased in its 2018 deal with Venntel . This stretches the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement far beyond the breaking point.

In 2021, the Center for Democracy and Technology published a comprehensive report on the legal framework underpinning the government’s purchasing of location data. It concluded that when law enforcement and intelligence agencies purchase personal data about Americans, “they are evading Fourth Amendment safeguards as recognized by the Supreme Court.” EFF agrees. The Fourth Amendment should not be for sale. Sensitive data about our movements should not be collected and sold in the first place, and it certainly shouldn’t be made available to government agencies without a particularized warrant.

Finally, transparency laws in Vermont and California require certain kinds of data brokers, including those that process location data, to register with the state. Of the companies discussed above, X-Mode, Gravy Analytics, and Venntel are registered in California , but Babel Street and Anomaly 6 are not. These laws need better enforcement.

What can we do?

Congress must ban federal government purchase of sensitive location information. The issue is straightforward: government agencies should not be able to buy any personal data that normally requires a warrant.

But legislatures should not stop there. Personal data is only available to government because it’s already amassed on the private market. We need to regulate the collection and sale of personal data by requiring meaningful consent. And we should ban online behavioral advertising , the industry which built many of the tracking technologies that enable this kind of mass surveillance.

The developers of mobile operating systems also have power to shut down this insidious data market. For years, both Apple and Google have explicitly supported third-party tracking with technology like the advertising identifier. They must reverse course. They also must crack down on alternative methods of tracking like fingerprinting , which will make it much more difficult for brokers to track users. Furthermore, OS developers should require apps to disclose which SDKs they pack into their apps and whom they share particular kinds of data with. Both Apple and Google have made strides towards data-sharing transparency, giving users a better idea of how particular apps access sensitive permissions. However, users remain almost entirely in the dark about how each app may share and sell their data.

Fortunately, you can also take steps towards preventing your location data from winding up in the hands of data brokers and the federal government. As a first step, you can disable your advertising identifier . This removes the most ubiquitous tool that data brokers use to link data from different sources to your device. You can also look at the apps on your phone and turn off any unnecessary permissions granted to third-party apps. Data brokers often obtain information via apps, and any app with location permission is a potential vector. Revoke permissions that apps do not absolutely need, especially location access, and uninstall apps that you do not trust.

🎙Podcast | Meet Kap and Joe! You'll find entertaining but thoughtful talks about ... anything ... and we never stay on topic. Thinking outside the 📦 of politics, society, tech ... ♻️🤫

Episode 14 - No planning required - Let's not have an agenda for once. Approaching the world without an agenda? Is that even possible? How do we build an agenda-less media?

Episode 23 - The fools of attraction - Dr Kap engages with Twitter - Gets involved in a $66 million weird defi mining liquidity scam involving a femme fatale and a month of psy-ops on himself.

Enjoy!

Hanna Bozakov at privacy focused email service provider, Tutanota, has shared details on their work on quantum encryption.

"I just quickly wanted to let you know about pretty exciting news in the cybersecurity world: NIST has just finished Round Three of evaluating post-quantum secure encryption algorithms and pushes ahead with CRYSTALS-KYBER, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, SPHINCS+. These algorithms will harden encryption against future attacks from quantum computers. This is a huge step to secure our data as quantum computers will be able to break currently used algorithms easily.

Tutanota has already developed a working prototype to securely encrypt emails with the now defined algorithms by NIST, namely CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium. “The algorithms now picked by NIST have proven to the best choice for quantum resistant encryption in our email prototype”, explains Vitor Sakaguti, member of the research project PQMail.

During the research project that Tutanota executed together with the L3S research institution of Leibniz University Hanover, the researchers evaluated all NIST algorithms from Round Two in regards to security, a low resource impact and a fast performance before settling on CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium.

Now, NIST said in a statement that they “recommend two primary algorithms to be implemented for most use cases: CRYSTALS-KYBER (key-establishment) and CRYSTALS-Dilithium (digital signatures)”.

“That these algorithms have now been picked as final candidates by NIST is the best case scenario for us”, says Vitor. “At the same time, it does not surprise us that NIST settled on these algorithms as they performed the fastest. Our protocol was designed to be able to work with any of the candidates from the NIST competition, but our performance tests showed that the CRYSTALS family would provide the best experience for our users.”

“CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium had the lowest resource impact (key and signature sizes) and were the fastest while still providing the security levels we were targeting, that is, at least as secure as 128 bit security with current algorithms on classical computers.”

The next step of NIST, Round Four, is being eyed closely by the cybersecurity community, and particularly by us at Tutanota: “Now we are going to see a lot of effort going into trying to break these algorithms. This is a good thing: We want researchers to find any possible weaknesses so that they can be fixed. The more mature these algorithms get, the more confident we can be about the security of our protocol”, adds Vitor.

The selection process of NIST is going exactly as it should to achieve cryptographic resilience. For instance one of the already ruled out candidates in the NIST process has been proven to be completely broken: The algorithm Rainbow can be broken within two days – not with a quantum computer, but with a normal laptop, according to researchers from IBM .

“By investing early-on in post-quantum secure encryption we at Tutanota deliver on the promise made to our users: to build the most secure email service out there”, says Matthias Pfau, co-founder of Tutanota.

The next step for Tutanota will be to implement the new post quantum secure encryption protocol into Tutanota itself. Once that is completed, millions of Tutanota users will instantly benefit from post quantum secure encryption.

As the migration to new algorithms is done automatically in Tutanota, users will not have to do anything. Once the new protocol is implemented, all data stored in Tutanota – that is emails, contacts, and calendars – are automatically encrypted with the new algorithms.

This will safeguard all data of millions of users against attacks from quantum computers."

https://tutanota.com

Since the closure of his bank in Puerto Rico, Peter Schiff has been at the receiving end of Bitcoin ( BTC ) proponents, reminding him this wouldn’t have happened if he was using BTC.

The latest to taunt the gold proponent is none other than El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has had a fair share of interactions with Schiff ever since El Salvador adopted BTC as a legal tender last year.

Bukele responded to one of the tweets made by Schiff in January this year criticizing BTC and predicting that the likes of MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Bukele himself would eventually have to sell their BTC holdings as price drops. The President responded to the tweet by asking about his bank.

The exchange between the two critics comes when the global financial markets are in ruins. On the one hand, the crypto market has lost more than 60% of its market cap from the top, and on the other, the equity market is at an all-time low.

Schiff has been quite vocal about his bank closure and has blamed the corrupt local government for it. He has said that the government is illegally trying to extort him for criticizing them.

While Schiff claims the bank was closed due to his criticism of the government, it highlights how centralized financial institutions such as banks often curtail financial freedom. The price of BTC might fluctuate over time, but the owner is in full control of their funds if they haven’t put them on a centralized exchange.

Critics often highlight the volatility in the crypto market. Still, the traditional financial market is in no better state either, with inflation touching decade highs and several top stocks registering more significant losses than BTC in 2022.

BTC has been crucial in offering financial freedom to nearly 70% of the unbanked population of El Salvador. Although the price of BTC has dipped more than 60% from its top and critics often like to point out the decline in the number of BTC purchases by the Central American nation, the country has onboarded 4 million unbanked using their national Bitcoin wallet.

El Salvador’s remittance network has been enhanced by the BTC adoption, accounting for millions in cross-border transactions with minimal fees . The country has proven that Bitcoin can offer financial freedom to the unbanked.

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US government officials who privately own cryptocurrencies are now banned from working on regulations and policies that could affect the value of digital assets.

A new advisory notice released by the US Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on Tuesday stated that the de minimis exemption — which allows for the owners of securities who hold an amount below a certain threshold to work on policy related to that security — is universally inapplicable when it comes to cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

“As a result, an employee who holds any amount of a cryptocurrency or stablecoin may not participate in a particular matter if the employee knows that particular matter could have a direct and predictable effect on the value of their cryptocurrency or stablecoins.”

The notice provided an example scenario whereby an employee who owns a mere $100 of a certain stablecoin, is asked to work on stablecoin regulation — the employee in question cannot participate in work concerning regulation “until and unless they divest their interests in [that] stablecoin.”

The notice specified that this ruling still applies even if the cryptocurrency or stablecoin in question were to ever “constitute [a security] for purposes of the federal or state securities laws.”

The new ruling applies universally to all federal government employees including The White House, The Federal Reserve and The Department of the Treasury.

The term “de minimis” comes from a longer Latin phrase, meaning: “the law does not concern itself with trifles.”

The only exemption from the OGE’s crackdown on crypto ownership is that policy makers are allowed to hold up to $50,000 in mutual funds that invest broadly in companies that would benefit from crypto and blockchain technology. The reasoning for this exemption is because they “are considered diversified funds.”

Despite the seemingly harsh rules concerning employee investment in the crypto sector, the United States continues to move forward in integrating the cryptocurrency industry, with the US president Joe Biden announcing a “whole-of-government” approach to regulation concerning the digital asset sector.

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Boris Johnson, who has been the prime minister of the United Kingdom since 2019, said he will step down as leader of the country’s Conservative Party but will remain head of state until a replacement has been found.

In a speech in front of 10 Downing Street in London on Thursday, Johnson said “it is clearly now the will of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister,” with a transition timetable set to be announced next week. The prime minister added that he would remain in government, as would recently-appointed cabinet members, to serve until the party decided on a new leader.

Many in Johnson’s government and opposing political parties had called for his resignation following reports the prime minister knew former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher had allegedly groped two men but chose to promote him to a senior position. This week, Chancellor of the Exchequer for the United Kingdom Rishi Sunak and Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen both announced they would be leaving their positions in Johnson’s cabinet in response to his handling of the allegations, as did more than 50 members of parliament before the prime minister’s speech on Thursday.

Nadhim Zahawi, a member of parliament for Stratford-on-Avon since 2010, has taken over for Sunak as chancellor of the Exchequer. At the time of publication, the U.K. government had not announced a replacement for Glen, who said in his resignation letter that “vital reforms" to the country’s financial services were ready to be presented to parliament.

Under Johnson, who took office three years ago, the U.K. government and regulatory agencies adopted many policies largely favorable to crypto firms, but also addressed possible risks and misuse of the innovative technology. The country’s Advertising Standards Authority banned many crypto companies from advertising in public spaces, citing the need to warn investors of volatile crypto prices.

The U.K. Treasury Department has also made pushes to incorporate stablecoins used as a means of payment into the country’s existing regulatory framework, working with the Financial Conduct Authority, the agency responsible for permitting firms to “carry out crypto asset activities.” At the time of publication, the FCA has approved 35 companies to operate in the U.K. in compliance with Anti-Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism regulations.

It’s unclear how the change in leadership in the U.K. government could affect these policies going forward. Many reports have put forth Sunak as one of the possible replacements for Johnson, suggesting that pro-crypto regulations could remain at the forefront of the government’s agenda — the former chancellor of the Exchequer was behind many proposed reforms promoting the adoption of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.

Some weeks back, DT published the following story about Ruja Ignatova. We often talk about the three existential threats to crypto as being criminality, deception and regulation...this individual represents the worst of all three, directly or indirectly.

Last week, news surfaced that the FBI have now added her to their international Top Ten Most Wanted list and the BBC (yes, we know!) added some more insight within the following:

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OG article:

Welcome to another episode of EXPOSED! on decentralize.today where we share public domain information about the individuals, organizations, companies and governments involved in criminal and corrupt activities. Many are well known, some less so.

Today, we turn to the woman who became known as 'The Cryptoqueen', Ruja Ignatova.

Who?

And if that was your reaction, that it would probably be understandable, so let's recap on her legacy!

$ 6 billion fraudulently obtained from investors into her 'OneCoin' cryptocurrency venture.

Now let's look at how she got here and the ramifications for her and, more broadly, the development of cryptocurrencies.

Born to Bulgarian parents in Sofia in 1980, she moved to Germany as a 10 year along with her younger brother, Konstantin (more on him later).

She studied with some distinction, earning a law doctorate along the way, and is reported to have worked at the international business consultants, McKinsey & Co., at some point. There is no doubt that Dr Ignatova was incredibly intelligent and more than a little street smart!

Her first taste of embezzlement, and brush with the authorities, came in 2012, when she and her father were convicted of fraud in connection with the acquisition of a company that was declared bankrupt soon afterwards in highly dubious circumstances. She received a suspended sentence of 14 months' imprisonment as a result.

In 2013, she was back at it again with her first venture into Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) with a company called BigCoin. MLM basically involves lots of people buying quantities of goods or services and then recruiting layers of staff to sell these on...effectively a pyramid selling scheme and often used in scams for bogus, ineffective or non-existent products.

Then came OneCoin!

Launched in 2014, it was a centralized currency hosted on OneCoin own servers in Bulgaria and Hong Kong. The business involved selling educational material for trading. Investors were able to buy packages of various sizes, but apparently up to over 200,000 euros each, and in exchange receive tokens which allowed them to mine for OneCoins.

However, the only way to exchange Onecoins for any other currency was via the OneCoin Exchange, xcoinx, an internal and exclusive marketplace for members where coins could be exchanged with the proceeds placed in a virtual wallet for them. These could then be wire transferred on request, although the daily limits were very strict.

The exchange closed without notice in January 2017, although individuals connected with the scheme continued to collect investment funds for some time afterwards.

Almost from its launch the company attracted the attention of authorities and media across the globe including in Bulgaria, the UK, the USA, India, Norway, Croatia, Thailand, Vietnam, Germany and Hungary. Many expressed concerns about the company's registration and business practices, and soon legal proceedings started to mount. By the latter stages, as the scheme snowballed, there were huge amounts of money in play and moving these triggered investigations into securities and wire fraud as well as charges of money laundering.

This was all orchestrated by Ignatova, her lawyer / husband, her business co-founder, Sebastian Greenwood, her brother and various other accomplices around the world. And despite the growing concerns about the OneCoin model, they kept it going until one day in late 2017.

Ignatova was to address these concerns at a meeting of European OneCoin promoters in Lisbon, Portugal. Dr Ignatova, who was famously punctual, just didn't show up and no-one could explain why not! Some claimed she had been killed or kidnapped by the big banks, who had most to lose from the cryptocurrency 'revolution', or by criminal associates or even by terror groups she was supposedly secretly funding.

In fact, FBI records show that on 25 October 2017, two weeks after the Lisbon no-show, she boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens and at that point she really did disappear.

It had been exposed as a giant international 'ponzi' scheme and the head con artist got out just before the 'house of cards' collapsed.

Where are they now?

In September 2021, a money-laundering trial commenced in Germany at which Dr Ignatova's German lawyer, Martin Breidenbach, went on trial accused of laundering and transferring €20 million to a London law firm to fund the purchase of a luxury property. Two others are also facing charges connected to the siphoning of millions from the (now estimated) €4bn scam.

And the trial shed light on some of the conspicuous spending by Dr Ignatova with one witness remembering meeting her in 2016, at an exclusive Abbots House apartment block in Kensington, London, as she returned from a shopping trip with her Bulgarian bodyguards.

"These two poor men came behind her like overloaded donkeys, struggling, and a bit out of breath - they must've had 20 bags each"

Dr Ignatova had been splurging on designer-labelled goods, Jimmy Choo, Prada, Calvin Klein and the like, - with no regard for the cost.

It transpired that she 'owned' an $18 million four bedroomed, penthouse apartment inside the building, complete with its own swimming pool.

"She had an Andy Warhol painting stuffed in the cupboard"

That was a print of the actress, Elizabeth Taylor, whilst another Warhol, Red Lenin, hung above the fireplace and a print of Queen Bubblegum by Michael Moebius was in another reception room. In total, it was estimated that there was in excess of $800,000 worth of art in the property, all bought from London's Halcyon gallery.

The mechanics of the purchase operation, involving, amongst others, lawyers in the US and anonymous Guernsey shell companies, have all been extensively covered elsewhere, suffice to say, she covered her tracks well and, by and large, via sadly legal devices and banking routes.

In July 2018, Dr RIgnatova's brother, Konstantin, who took over the running of the company after her disappearance, posted a photo of himself taken inside the penthouse.

On 6 March 2019, Konstantin was arrested at LAX and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud. He has now admitted to his role in the fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme and pleaded guilty to several charges, including money laundering and fraud.

He signed a plea deal on October 4th 2021, which was made public on November 12th. In it, (Brother) Ignatov will not face further criminal charges for his role at OneCoin, except any criminal tax violations that emerge. He still faces up to 90 years in prison for his part in the scheme!

Additionally, he has been testifying at the trial of a US lawyer accused of laundering proceeds from OneCoin. Mark Scott is accused of helping move around $400m out of the USA while concealing the ownership and source of the funds. His trial will conclude shortly.

Back in the UK, a leading campaigner for the victims of the scheme,  Jen McAdam, has stated:

"This is almost certainly OneCoin victims' money that these properties have been purchased with, victims who for the last five years have been facing unimaginable emotional suffering and immense financial loss".

It has been estimated that investors, in that country alone, lost more than £100m.

She went on to criticize the City of London Police for closing its investigation into OneCoin in September 2019 without making any charges.

While the billions of dollars lost to OneCoin have yet to be recovered, a British attorney has pointed authorities to digital wallets hosted in the Seychelles that, allegedly, belong to Dr Ignatova and contain Bitcoin now said to be worth over $10 billion. It has also been reported that she is living under an assumed identity in Frankfurt, Germany. Her, now ex, husband and their 5-year-old daughter are also said to live in the area.

But on a grander scale, the saddest thing about this whole affair, leaving aside the victims for a moment, is the reputational damage this and similar actions inflict on cryptocurrencies and their slow march to acceptance and mass adoption.

There are three principal existential threats to the existence of life in Cryptoland...and this involves all three. Firstly, outright internal criminality - deception, fraud, embezzlement - secondly, outright external criminality - fraud, money laundering, tax evasion - and finally, and potentially the most damaging, these two will fuel calls for an increase in regulation and greater control over all crypto-related activities.

What the Times of London has described as "one of the biggest scams in history" could yet inflict even greater collateral damage in the long run. Let us hope cool heads prevail and that the heads of the wrong doers 'roll'...metaphorically!

Dr Ruja Ignatova was the subject of the 2019 BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen. Sadly, whilst a good listen, it does plays into the establishment narrative.

Reference Links

An average crypto asset holder in Great Britain would be young, male and a hodler. And they would consider crypto to be a "fun investment." Such are the findings from the fresh research conducted by Her Majesty Revenue and Customs (HMRC) with the help of research agency Kantar UK and published on Tuesday.

Taking a quantitative approach, the research sought to establish the prevalence of owning crypto assets, the types and amounts held, and the platforms individuals use to buy crypto assets. It consisted of a survey with a representative sample of 5,916 United Kingdom adults, including 713 crypto asset owners.

The report revealed that 10% of the U.K. citizens hold or have held crypto, with 55% never having sold any (equivalent to 5% of the adult population). Only 7% are currently holding more than £5,000 (almost $6000 by press time) in value, while 52% of current owners have holdings of up to £1,000 ($1200).

Other significant findings come as no surprise — crypto owners tend to be younger than the general population with 76% of them 45 years, and mostly they are male (69%). A vast majority hold cryptocurrencies (79%), while the second most popular type of asset is utility tokens (20%).

An important takeaway refers to the common trading pattern — 68% of owners most frequently acquire crypto from “centralized exchanges” and 81% use these exchanges to sell or exchange their assets.

The majority of owners reported making a profit (63%) over the past year when disposing of cryptoassets, 14% claim they made a loss and, similarly, 14% revealed they broke even. As the survey was conducted between February 2021 and June 2021, this data should be attributed to 2020.

On Tuesday, HMRC made a call for an evidence paper , describing its intention to study whether administrative hassles and costs may be reduced for taxpayers who participate in the crypto industry.

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While the market goes steady, the crypto ecosystem continues to grow as merchants innovate and adopt cryptocurrency payments in their quest to gain new customers.

Data platform PYMNTS collaborated with Bitpay to survey merchants, in an attempt to understand the trends on what participants expect from digital currencies and their effect on payments and businesses.

In the report titled "Paying With Cryptocurrency," the researchers found that among businesses with an annual income of $1 billion, 85% are adopting crypto payments to find and gain new customers. On the other hand, 82% of all the merchants who participated in the survey cited crypto’s elimination of middlemen as their reason for accepting it as a payment method.

Apart from these, the results also showed that 77% of the surveyed merchants are also drawn to accepting crypto because of lower transaction fees. According to the report, the fees for processing crypto transactions are around 1%. This is much lower than the usual fees from 1.5% to 3.5% charged by other payment options like credit cards.

While most of the report shows positive perspectives on crypto, some merchants report that technical barriers and challenges still get in their way of adopting crypto payments. Of the merchants that do not accept crypto yet, 68% said that this is because of the challenges that they face in the implementation of the technology at the checkout.

Despite the crypto winter, a report published by Cointelegraph Research in June showed that a wide range of companies coming from various industries has already integrated crypto payment options. From entertainment platforms like to travel booking platforms, the crypto ecosystem continues to expand as global adoption progresses.

In the same month, Ben Caselin, an executive at trading firm AAX, told Cointelegraph that despite the bearish market, Bitcoin ( BTC ) adoption and Metaverse development continues to advance . According to Caselin, this is a good opportunity for businesses that are looking to tap into the crypto ecosystem.

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Vincenzo Sospiri Racing (VSR), a GT racing team backed by Lamborghini's motorsport department, has announced its partnership with nonfungible token (NFT) platform Go2NFT to launch a program that certifies racing car parts.

In an announcement sent to Cointelegraph, former racing champion Vincenzo Sospiri from the VSR mentioned that their team will build NFT certification for their race cars with Go2NFT and blockchain platform Skey Network. This will allow them to monitor and ensure the quality of the car parts. He explained that:

“This also brings great responsibility to ensure that we can securely authenticate and audit every part of our racing fleet to monitor performance and ensure provenance.”

Apart from the car parts, VSR is also looking to expand the NFT certification program to official merchandise and its other products as well. According to the team, this will give fans peace of mind when purchasing branded goods.

Boris Ejsymont, an executive at Go2NFT, mentioned that their team understands the challenges that brands face when it comes to protecting their intellectual property, and they believe that NFTs can provide a solution. Ejsymont said that:

“We believe that NFT utility can help create more trust and transparency for brands and their fans. This project with VSR is just the start of many such co-operations for beloved brands across the globe.”

The world of racing and crypto has been colliding well in 2022. Back in February, Formula 1 racing team Red Bull Racing scored a $150 million partnership with the crypto exchange platform Bybit. In a Cointelegraph interview, Bybit founder Ben Zhou said that the partnership allowed its team to reach people who are new to the crypto space .

In March, Crypto.com partnered with car manufacturer Aston Martin's Formula 1 team. With the deal, the brand's F1 cars will showcase advertisements of the exchange. Jefferson Slack, an executive at Aston Martin, noted that the move allows the car manufacturer to understand the crypto space more.

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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.

Another explosive video from one of our favourite privacy defenders!

Here's How They Built The Most Secure Phone On The Planet

The champion of privacy and security is an open source mobile operating system built by a non-profit. This is how GrapheneOS built the most secure phone on the planet

A secure mobile operating system is built on top of a complicated software stack who's every single building block is isolated to enforce the strict security policy.

All system components and processes, third party apps and services are separated from one another in a multi-party consent of developers, users and the platform itself.

This is known as an Application Sandbox and it is how Android designed its architecture.

GrapheneOS is a non-profit security research project that focuses on hardening privacy and security features of the operating system while maintaining usability at the same time.

GrapheneOS adds to Android’s defense in depth by protecting against exploits abusing unknown vulnerabilities, so called 0day exploits.

These exploits are being sold legally by malware brokers for millions of dollars because crafting them requires a high set of skills and experience.

GrapheneOS has made such a vast number of improvements it would be impossible to cover them in one video.

Many of GrapheneOS’s enhancements have been adopted by the mainstream Android itself.

The research project maintains an extensive documentation on all the important features many of which were missed out by this video.

Sources: [0] https://source.android.com/security/a... [1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/05/to... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCr... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.05572.pdf [4] https://tribune.com.pk/story/1423609/... [5] https://www.wired.com/story/new-mac-r... [6] https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-sn... [7] https://www.zerodium.com/program.html [8] https://www.wired.com/story/android-z... [9] https://source.android.com/devices/ar... [10] https://source.android.com/security/o... [11] https://developer.android.com/guide/p... [12] https://source.android.com/security/f... [13] https://source.android.com/security/a... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.05572.pdf [14] https://developer.android.com/trainin... [15] https://blog.google/products/pixel/in... [16] https://security.googleblog.com/2021/... [15] https://blog.google/products/pixel/in... [17] https://safety.google/intl/en_us/pixel/ [18] https://grapheneos.org/faq#encryption [19] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/te... [20] https://www.yahoo.com/gma/san-bernard... [21] https://www.washingtonpost.com/techno... [22] https://source.android.com/security/v... [23] https://source.android.com/security/v... [24] https://source.android.com/security/v... [25] https://grapheneos.org/features#auditor [26] https://attestation.app/about [27] https://grapheneos.org/features#explo... [28] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/... [29] https://source.android.com/devices/te... [30] https://source.android.com/security/s... [31] https://source.android.com/security/s... [32] https://grapheneos.org/features#impro... [33] https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxe... [34] https://grapheneos.org/faq#hardware-i... [35] https://grapheneos.org/features#close... [36] https://grapheneos.org/features#wifi-... [37] https://grapheneos.org/features#netwo... [38] https://grapheneos.org/features#senso... [39] https://grapheneos.org/features#explo... [40] https://grapheneos.org/features#attac... [41] https://grapheneos.org/usage#exec-spa... [42] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/hardene...

Credits Music by: White Bat Audio, CO.AG Music, Infraction, Yuzzy Follow me: https://twitter.com/The_HatedOne_ https://www.reddit.com/r/thehatedone/

The footage and images featured in the video were for critical analysis, commentary and parody, which are protected under the Fair Use laws of the United States Copyright act of 1976. 2.1K I-dislike Ibahagi Clip I-save

Major European digital asset manager CoinShares is finalizing the acquisition of the French fintech firm Napoleon Group despite the ongoing market decline.

CoinShares announced on July 4 that the firm has acquired Napoleon Asset Management, a digital asset management subsidiary of Napoleon Group.

CoinShares previously entered into a sale and purchase agreement (SPA) to acquire the entire issued share capital in Napoleon Crypto SAS for 13.9 million euros ($14.5 million) in November 2021.

The latest acquisition came shortly after the French financial regulator, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), authorized the acquisition of Napoleon AM on June 28. CoinShares subsequently proceeded with the transaction pursuant to the terms set out in the group SPA on June 2022.

Paris-based Napoleon AM was launched after completing an initial coin offering (ICO) in late 2018, raising over $10 million through the sale of NPX tokens. The firm has received the alternative investment fund manager (AIFM) license and became one of the first European asset managers to be financed by an ICO and incorporated under French law.

In late 2019, Napoleon AM launched a regulated Bitcoin ( BTC ) fund, the Napoleon Bitcoin Fund.

The acquisition of Napoleon AM allows CoinShares to offer AIFM-compliant products and services in addition to being a major issuer of crypto exchange-traded products in Europe. The license enables the firm to provide market services across the European Union, expanding CoinShares’ products with algorithmic trading and artificial intelligence tools developed by Napoleon AM.

The transaction is yet another piece of evidence that CoinShares continues scaling despite the ongoing market decline, CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti told Cointelegraph, stating:

“CoinShares continues to grow despite market conditions. The bear market is an opportunity to solidify positions and build new products and services.”

According to the CEO, having an AIFM-regulated entity in CoinShares’ group is important because it’s “one of the most demanding licenses.”

“CoinShares has always been at the forefront of regulation, it is a strong advocate of regulation in the digital asset industry and has an extensive list of regulated products and services,” Mognetti added.

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Prominent economist Peter Schiff, who is well-known in the community for his anti-crypto sentiments, had his bank shut down by Puerto Rico regulators. The revelation, however, led to Crypto Twitter pointing out the “irony” as Schiff’s prediction for Bitcoin ( BTC ) came true for his own traditional bank.

Puerto Rico regulators closed down Schiff’s bank for not maintaining the net minimum capital requirements, which further impacted the customers as they lost access to their accounts following a subsequent freeze.

While acknowledging that “customers may lose money,” Schiff stated that he was unaware of the regulatory minimums and was not presented with any form of legal notice prior to the abrupt closure. He added:

“It costs a fortune to run a small bank. That’s why I never really made any money. The compliance costs are outrageous.”

As a witness to what many consider an epic plot twist, the crypto community took the opportunity to explain the importance of Bitcoin in reinventing the core of traditional finance.

Bitcoin podcaster Stephan Livera, too, chimed in on the development as he said, “He’s [Schiff] been a #bitcoin skeptic since $17.50.” The sudden closure of Schiff’s bank in Puerto Rico reignited the discussions around Bitcoin’s resistance to judicial supremacy.

“The irony here is priceless,” added @HodlMagoo, while others rhetorically helped Schiff find a promising alternative to traditional finance, asking “Do you understand why you need bitcoin now?”

On the other end of the spectrum, Puerto Rico has been receptive to crypto acceptance in the region. On April 20, Puerto Rico authorities became the fourth jurisdiction in America to award a money transmitter license to Binance.US, a United States-based subsidiary of crypto exchange Binance.

While the crypto community empathizes with Schiff and the bank’s customers for their losses, the episode further cements Bitcoin’s position as the ultimate replacement of traditional finance.

Analysts from Deutsche Bank forecasted BTC prices to rebound back to $28,000 by the end of the year despite an ongoing bear market.

Analysts Marion Laboure and Galina Pozdnyakova envisioned the Standard and Poor (S&P) to rebound back to its January levels, which in turn, could result in a 30% increase in Bitcoin’s value from current levels midway through 2022 — bringing up its price to the $28,000 mark.

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Multichain, a cross-chain platform, has announced the integration of the Bitcoin-based ( BTC ) smart contract protocol Rootstock (RSK) blockchain into its ecosystem. This will allow users to exchange Ether ( ETH ), USD Coin ( USDC ), Binance USD (BUSD) and other assets between RSK, Ethereum and BNB Chain.

According to Monday's announcement, the integration is a major milestone for Multichain because it opens up access to decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin. This addition will allow users to take advantage of RSK's security and functionality.

The integration will enable RSK to bring Bitcoin to Multichain's ecosystem while also providing access to new markets and use cases for its users. The RSK sidechain is the first Bitcoin-based sidechain to be incorporated into Multichain. It has a unique place in the world of Bitcoin enthusiasts as well as with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-powered DeFi.

The company said its integration with Rootstock is meant to provide fundamental benefits to builders utilizing RSK. They won't have to spend resources building bridges to capital and addressable markets, for example. They will also have a quicker time marketing new platforms based on RSK.

Users may start bridging their ETH, USDC, BUSD, BNB, WBTC and DAI between RSK's network and Ethereum. Multichain will add additional chains and tokens to the RSK network in the coming weeks and months. RSK co-founder Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar stated:

"RSK is home to the fastest-growing DeFi for Bitcoin ecosystem with protocols that are built to last and provide real solutions to the issues users face in centralized finance."

The anyCall interoperability protocol has been updated by Multichain, which allows cross-chain communications and name contracts. It will be a valuable instrument for building cross-chain decentralized apps on Rootstock and other supported networks.

Rootstock, the brainchild of Bitcoin Core developer Sergio Lerner, saw several years of development before its initial mainnet launch in January 2018. “Essentially Rootstock aims to be what Ethereum is, a decentralized, Turing-complete smart contract platform. However, Rootstock aims to utilize the Bitcoin ecosystem rather than creating a new one from scratch,” blockchain engineer Albert Szmigielski stated in a 2016 blog post.

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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.

DT Note: We are pleased to have regular contributor and key crypto commentator, Steven Miller, with us to provide his take on our 21 Questions!

Ok Steven, let's get things started!

decentralize.today (DT): How, why and when did you get into cryptoassets?

Steven Miller (SM): I founded CryptoJungle shortly after the ICO boom kicked off in 2018. It is a mechanism to discipline myself to understand the cryptoasset investments I'm making by formalizing and then publishing my investment theses on them.

DT: What were you doing professionally before crypto?

SM: I worked as a Consultant helping asset owners deconstruct the risk/return profile of their portfolios.

DT: How would you describe your current work to a 5-year-old kid?

SM: I'm a treasure hunter searching for magic internet money in the depths of a deep, dark forest.

DT: What was your first-ever job (even as a kid)?

SM: Caddy, schlepping around golf bags in a swamp for country club members in the summer.

DT: What’s the best life and work advice you’ve ever been given?

SM: Optimize for interesting. Think this came from Naval Ravikant. Especially relevant given the bloodbath in crypto markets right now. In my experience, the most interesting projects of the last two cycles since I've been involved emerged during the downturns.

DT: Who is your biggest inspiration when it comes to work/business?

SM: Not directly relevant professionally. I think Venkatesh Rao at RibbonFarm has carved out what appears to be a unique and fulfilling career according to his own metrics of success I admire.

DT: What trends do you think we should all be aware of and watching today?

SM:

• Inflation
• In Crypto, if BTC hits $14,000 and ETH hits $1,000 I'll be buying with two fists.

DT: What has been your favourite cell phone to date?

SM: My first smart phone was an HTC Thunderbolt and it holds a special place in my heart to this day.

DT: How important was school/college to, and for, you?

SM: I wouldn't have gotten the job I got out of college without it. I majored in finance and I would say the cost/benefit ratio of a finance degree when I got it still favored getting one instead of going without. Versus the trade-offs now given the exploding costs and variety of alternatives as opposed to when I went.

DT: What new habit, hobby or skill did you acquire during lockdown?

SM: Athletic Trainer, with sports shut down by US I had to attempt to keep my children in shape using a ladder in my backyard.

DT: What are your ‘must-dos’ for online security and privacy?

SM:

• Use 12 letter passwords with a mix of letters, numbers, symbols
• Use a different password for every site
• Use a paid VPN. Don't skimp out and go free
• Browse with Firefox or Brave
• Use 2FA whenever it's available

DT: Which coins will survive and thrive, and why?

SM:

• I feel confident Bitcoin and Ethereum are here to stay.
• I do not have the same level of confidence for any other projects. The most interesting one to me personally right now is Tezos. For a non-ETH whale-like myself it offers an opportunity to get involved with NFTs on a scale that's not possible on Ethereum.

DT: What app do you wish someone would invent?

SM: Payment app you enter all your credit cards into that uses the optimal one to maximize rewards for the type of purchase you are making.
I have a bunch of credit cards and a bunch of rewards. I can never keep track of what the best card is to use when buying stuff. I need an app I can enter my cards into that will select the best option to pay with to optimize my rewards when buying gas, groceries, meals, etc...

DT: If time travel were available (because we all know it’s possible) to which event in history would you most like to go back and observe?

SM: Signing of the declaration of independence.

DT: What would be your dream project if money was no object?

SM: Build a skyscraper

DT: Any particular thinker, writer, commentator, or leader you really admire, dead or alive?

SM: Peter Thiel sent me down the rabbit hole of Rene Girard's work on mimesis lately. Luke Burgis does a nice job of making Girard's work accessible in his book/blog.

DT: Sport, books, movies, music, family, friends...what’s your preference? What do you do for fun?

SM: Movies with family. My son wants to watch a different baseball movie each night this summer although he does not have buy-in from me on this yet.

DT: What grinds your gears or are your pet peeves? What do you really dislike?

SM: Parents who take kids' sports too seriously.

DT: What would be the one thing you would say to your 18-year-old self, if you had the chance?

SM: Become a mortgage broker until 2007

DT: Is there any question that you wished you had been asked by decentralize.today?

SM : What are you reading? My answer? Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan

DT: Finally, what's next for you and CryptoJungle?

SM: I'm working on a book to help people get started investing in cryptoassets with the very creative title '101 Things You Need to Know to Get Started Investing in Cryptoassets'

About our respondent:

Describing his professional mission as "Helping investors hack through the weeds to find the crypto gems at http://cryptojungle.io . Insights on surviving and thriving in a volatile world" here is how you can get in touch...

Steven L. Miller, CFA, Founder, Crypto Jungle

E: steve@cryptojungle.io
T: 412-979-1952
C: Twitter | LinkedIn

Thanks, Steven, for taking the time to answer our questions, some great insights in there and a few laughs! DT

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Any thoughts on future candidates for 21 Questions with decentralize.today? Let us know on hello@decentralize.today