Snippings

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BBVA is the latest financial giant entering the crowded field of stablecoins as the Spanish bank gets set to launch its own digital asset next year with the aid of Visa. In an interview with Fortune, BBVA head of digital assets and blockchain Francisco Maroto said the bank is currently in the sandbox phase of a new Visa program that helps firms launch their own tokenized assets, and wants to reach the prototype phase and live activity by 2025.

BBVA has not yet decided whether the stablecoin will be backed by deposits, money market funds, or fiat currencies such as the euro or the U.S. dollar, said Maroto, who added that the company plans for it to be used for the settlement layer on exchanges.

From: BBVA plans Visa-backed stablecoin launch in 2025 | Fortune Crypto.

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Rust would soon learn that “Ryuhei” and four other employees – more than a third of his entire team – were North Korean. Unwittingly, Rust had fallen prey to a coordinated scheme by North Korea to secure remote overseas jobs for its people and funnel the earnings back to Pyongyang.

From: How North Korea Infiltrated the Crypto Industry.

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oinDesk identified more than a dozen crypto companies that unknowingly hired IT workers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), including such well-established blockchain projects as Injective, ZeroLend, Fantom, Sushi, Yearn Finance and Cosmos Hub.
The workers used fake IDs, successfully navigated interviews, passed reference checks and presented genuine work histories.

From: How North Korea Infiltrated the Crypto Industry.

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Costco is diversifying its precious-metals business by selling ounce bars of platinum for $1,090. (Platinum is trading at around $1,000 per oz so it’a fair price.)

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The news that Walmart plans to step up its online pay-by-bank option in 2025 by hooking into both The Clearing House Real-Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow instant payments network has heated up the instant pay agenda in the payments business — and in a hurry.

Payments experts foresee significant implications for banks and credit unions, consumers and other merchants. Many fully expect this approach will migrate to Walmart’s in-store payments experience in its Walmart Pay mobile app before long.

From: Walmart Revs Instant Pay By Bank to Cut Out Mastercard and Visa.

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The sneaker resale market alone is expected to grow to $30 billion by 2030, as reported by Cowen Equity Research. However, the sneaker market has a major challenge, the counterfeit shoe market has risen by an astounding 1,200% from its $46.1 billion value in 2013 to a near $600 billion in 2023, as reported by Run Repeat.

From: Luxury Brands Are Fighting Counterfeits With AI And Computer Vision.

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wire a $398,359.58 down payment to a JPMorgan Chase

From: Real estate wire fraud: Silicon Valley exec had $400,000 stolen.

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So who should be held to account when such a fraud occurs?

Some would argue that it is the customer. After all, the customer did not double check that the account details were correct and did not do what I have done it similar circumstances (eg, buy a Jaguar car) and send $10 first then call to see that it had arrived before sending the balance.

Some would argue that it is the real estate agent who sends unecrypted and unsigned e-mails with sensitive financial details in them. E-mail is known to be unsafe and there really is no excuse for using it for such transactions. Using iMessage or WhatsApp or Signal or anything else would be better than using e-mail.

Some would argue that it is the banks because they do not provide a suitable request-to-pay service so that the real estate agent can request payment and that request would show up in the customer’s chosen banking application so that they know they can trust it.

Some would argue that is law enforcement, who do not have the resources. After all, as the story makes clear, the money was sent to JP Morgan Chase account. Since JP Morgan Chase have excellent know-your-customer (KYC), it should be straightforward for the cops to arrest the account holder (who is likely a mule, but unless the mules are punished they  

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Experts are warning foragers to avoid using Google Images to identify mushrooms after the search engine is delivering misleading AI-generated results.

Searches for a number of common edible mushrooms return wildly inaccurate images as the top result, despite these images being flagged as AI-generated.

Foraging experts warn this could lead to dangerous, if not deadly, errors for foragers trying to identify safe mushrooms to eat.

From: Urgent warning from scientists: Google is showing AI-generated images of mushrooms that look nothing like the real species – which could have deadly consequences | Daily Mail Online.

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Electric vehicles (EVs) represent a new paradigm of connected experience. The ongoing transformation in the automotive industry is more than just a transition from gasoline to electricity — it’s evolving how consumers interact with their vehicles.

Payments, along with commerce, sit squarely at the forefront of this technological shift.

“EVs represent a tremendous amount of opportunity for the payments ecosystem,” Julius Alexander III, the head of emerging payments at Discover® Global Network,

From: Discover Global Network: Payments Are Foundation of EVs.

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The idea, therefore, that there is a “constituency” of crypto voters needing to be pandered to, whose top issue is making sure that exchanges and other companies aren’t too heavily regulated, is fanciful.

From: The farce that is America’s ‘crypto election’.

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