Iran is reportedly gearing up to create its own national digital currency, Fortune reported. According to reports, a plan is in the works to “create an indigenous cryptocurrency.” In addition, the country’s central bank was reportedly creating the cryptocurrency with the help of “domestic knowledge-based companies.”
In other news, hackers broke into the exchange and main websites of Waves, CoinDesk reported. The hackers then used the main site of Waves to seek personal wallet information belonging to the company’s users.
“Someone just faked my passport and gave it to support [staff] at the domain company and they changed the password at his request,” Waves CEO Sasha Ivanov told CoinDesk. “Then the attacker was able to change the main website.”
And regulators in Switzerland are investigating a startup that raised $100 million during an initial coin offering (ICO), CoinDesk reported. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has said that it is looking into Envion AG: The startup allegedly took in public deposits for its token, even though those kinds of transactions are reportedly not allowed.
On another note, the head of the virtual currency response team at South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) is asking politicians to pass a law that regulates crypto exchanges, CoinDesk reported. Hong Seong-ki has said that lawmakers should pass the bill “as soon as possible.” Additionally, Hong said that “we’re trying to legislate the most urgent and important things first, aiming for money-laundering prevention and investor protection.”
In other news, the South Carolina attorney general’s office has taken away the ended cease-and-desist orders against two crypto firms, CoinDesk reported. The office vacated an order against one firm and dropped another company as a respondent in another case.
And Mastercard’s chief executive believes that crypto’s volatility and anonymity don’t make it a good fit to be a medium of exchange, Yahoo Finance reported.“I think cryptocurrency is junk,” Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga said at an event. “The idea of an anonymized currency produced by people who have to mine it, the value of which can fluctuate wildly — that to me is not the way that any medium of exchange deserves to be considered a medium of exchange.”
On another note, two developers behind the CoinVault and BitCryptor ransomware will perform community service, CoinDesk reported. The men, who are in their twenties, had each reportedly taken in 10,000 euros from the ransomware. CoinVault, for example, would prevent users from accessing their files and demanded a ransom of one bitcoin, which was valued at several hundred euros when the scheme occurred.
And Galaxy Digital experienced losses of $134 million over the first quarter as cryptocurrencies fell in value, CoinDesk reported. The crypto investment bank experienced $85.5 million of a “net unrealized loss” for digital assets along with a $24 million loss on investments. Additionally, the firm’s operating expenses were $11 million and the firm experienced a loss from its income of $13.5 million.
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