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While the number of cryptocurrency-related complaints to the FBI – 69,000 – accounted for just 10% of all financial fraud complaints last year, they represented 50% of total losses.

The likes of bitcoin and ether are used in a host of frauds, although investment scams dominate, accounting for around 71% – $3.9 billion – of all crypto losses. Call centre frauds, including customer support scams and government impersonation scams, accounted for about 10% of crypto losses.

People over 60 filed the most complaints about crypto scams, reporting the most losses – over $1.6 billion. California saw nearly double the number of complaints of any other state.

From: Americans lost $5.6bn to crypto-related fraud in 2023 – FBI.

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Lina emphasised the beneficial business effects of using blockchain: recognition and funding from humanitarian donors for her agency. These benefits were immediate and not tied to any proof of the technology’s concrete achievements. Nor was any technical understanding of blockchain required to make the business case for using it.

From: Full article: Conjuring a Blockchain Pilot: Ignorance and Innovation in Humanitarian Aid.

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The Blockchain Pilot is ‘conjured’ as a product to be promoted to a marketplace of aid donors. ‘Conjurings’ are the spectacles and magical appearances that draw an audience of investors. Ethnographic research suggests that conjurings drive capitalist markets. Rather than just requiring knowledge and expertise, I argue that conjurings entail key forms of ignorance: (i) confusion, (ii) illusion, (iii) disappearance, and (iv) misdirection.

From: Full article: Conjuring a Blockchain Pilot: Ignorance and Innovation in Humanitarian Aid.

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. Stripe has increased its compliance technology spending sixfold since 2020, the spokesperson said, and over the last two years it nearly tripled its risk and financial crime team’s head count to roughly 700 employees, supported by more than 1,000 external reviewers.

Stripe’s current total head count is around 7,000,

From: Stripe’s Challenges With Wells Fargo, Goldman Highlight Payments Risks — The Information.

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Fintech companies, in the meantime, continued to report their Q2 2024 results. We saw many strong reports with a common theme: fintech companies continue to grow, and they continue to grow profitably. The TWIF index is up +25.1% YTD and continues to outperform Nasdaq Composite (+11.2% YTD) and S&P 500 (+13.4% YTD).
The fintech industry didn’t die in this rate hiking cycle. Many of them came out of this cycle stronger. Let’s see what the future holds when the rates start coming down.

From: Signals: Public fintechs are becoming affirmatively profitable.

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Australia is planning to ban children from using social media amid concerns that platforms like Instagram and TikTok are negatively affecting young people’s physical and mental health.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday that the government will launch an age verification trial in the coming months ahead of the introduction of legislation to enforce a ban.

From: Australia says it will ban minors from using social media | Social Media News | Al Jazeera.

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I feel that it could have worked better, and there is still time to make some improvements, but it hasn’t resulted in anything negative. On the contrary, it gave us branding, it brought us investments, it brought us tourism.

From: Read the Transcript of President Bukele’s Interview With TIME | TIME.

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Brazil’s instant payment system Pix is seen surpassing credit cards as the leader in the local online purchase market as soon as next year, earlier than initially expected, a new study from Brazilian payments firm Ebanx showed on Monday.

From: Brazil’s Pix to overtake credit cards in e-commerce as soon as 2025, study shows | Reuters.

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New algorithms are therefore needed. And because switching over to them will take years, the transition to post-quantum cryptography (pqc) needs to begin as soon as possible. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (nist), America’s standards agency, has now fired the starting gun for this transition. On August 13th nist announced that three algorithms had been approved as official standards for pqc. Two are based on lattice problems, a type of mathematical puzzle challenging for quantum and classical computers alike. The third, which is based on the hash functions used in data analysis, avoids having too many eggs in a single basket.

From: The world needs codes quantum computers can’t break.

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Skyfire created a payment network specifically for AI agents to make autonomous transactions. Now, obviously, AI agents are hard to control today, so the idea of one tied to your bank account is terrifying. However, Skyfire uses a number of safeguards to prevent AI agents from overspending, making the whole thing a little less scary.
Skyfire assigns each AI agent a digital wallet with a unique identifier, where businesses can deposit a set amount of funds they want the agent to spend, so they don’t get unlimited access to a bank account. Skyfire also allows customers to set limits on how much an AI agent can spend in one transaction and over time. If an AI agent tries to overspend, it will ping a human to review it. Skyfire also offers a dashboard to view exactly how much, and where, their agent is spending.

From: Skyfire lets AI agents spend your money | TechCrunch.

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$8.5 million in seed funding raised from Neuberger Berman, Inception Capital, Arrington Capital, and other investors