Snippings

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IndusInd Bank today announced the launch of its contactless payments wearables, ‘Indus PayWear,’ India’s first All-in-One tokenizable wearables for both debit and credit cards exclusively on Mastercard, with the offering to be extended to other card networks shortly.

From: IndusInd Bank launches India’s first contactless wearables for both credit and debit cards | Capital Market News – Business Standard.

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World ID lets you prove you’re a unique human on the internet while keeping your identity private. It’s designed to give you full control, and is built as an open protocol meant to be owned by all people.
World ID 2.0 will introduce Apps, a new way to build and use integrations to verify your online accounts using World ID. You can explore available apps on the new Worldcoin App Store, including the new integrations with Reddit, Discord, Shopify, Minecraft and Telegram.

From: Introducing World ID 2.0.

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Being asked to explain something often reveals a gap between what you think you know and what you actually know – a gap which, most of the time, we blithely under-estimate or ignore. Psychologists call this “the illusion of explanatory depth”. In experiments, they ask people if they know how a bicycle worked, or a zip, or a toilet. Of course we do, the respondents say, we’re not idiots. But when asked to explain, in words or diagrams, they produce a confused mess.

From: Why It’s Good To Be Biased – by Ian Leslie – The Ruffian.

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A recent report from the Brevan Howard hedge fund found that 49% of weekly active wallets using stablecoins resided on Tron at 2.41 million, followed by BNB Chain with 1.37 million users or a 28% dominance. Ethereum came in third with just 379,769 or a 7.7% market share.
Data from DeFi Llama also suggests Tether (USDT) on Tron boasts a 70% dominance with $104 billion of the on-chain stablecoin sector’s $148 billion market cap.

From: Worldcoin Addresses Privacy Concerns With New Personal Custody Feature – The Defiant.

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Tornado Cash involvement
Adding another layer of complexity, the address associated with BlackRock’s BUIDL fund was ‘tainted’ with ETH originating from Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer sanctioned by the US Treasury. This development underscores the challenges posed by regulatory compliance within the crypto ecosystem, as traditional financial institutions navigate interactions with decentralized protocols subject to regulatory scrutiny.

From: Crypto community mocks BlackRock’s $100M fund amid Tornado Cash transaction.

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Commercial Bank of Ethiopia has lost more than £31 million after a technical glitch let customers withdraw and transfer money that was not in their accounts.

From: Ethiopian bank glitch lets customers withdraw millions.

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One sector in particular that is leaning in to AI’s capabilities is fintech, and according to research conducted by Mordor Intelligence, the global AI in fintech market is projected to reach $26.67 billion by 2026, expanding at a CAGR of 23.37% from 2021 to 2026.

From: How AI is changing fintech jobs.

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Americans passed a discomfiting benchmark last year: For the first time, they lost a collective $10 billion to fraud, according to data that the Federal Trade Commission released last month. Taking advantage of social isolation and unmet needs, scammers are using ever more sophisticated methods to tailor their grifts and blanket Americans with requests for money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, and personal information.

From: How America got scammed – The Atlantic.

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What in practical terms can be done?

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Jian Wen, 42, was said to have been the “front person” recruited to help fugitive Yadi Zhang launder the profits of a £5bn fraud.

From: How Chinese takeaway worker led police to Bitcoin worth £3bn in Britain’s biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure | UK News | Sky News.

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Newly released Federal Trade Commission data show that consumers reported losing more than $10 billion to fraud in 2023, marking the first time that fraud losses have reached that benchmark. This marks a 14% increase over reported losses in 2022.

From: As Nationwide Fraud Losses Top $10 Billion in 2023, FTC Steps Up Efforts to Protect the Public | Federal Trade Commission.

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Another first is the method scammers reportedly used to reach consumers most commonly in 2023: email. Email displaced text messages, which held the top spot in 2022 after decades of phone calls being the most common. Phone calls are the second most commonly reported contact method for fraud in 2023, followed by text messages.