Snippings

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Crypto-based decentralised finance (DeFi) uses “oracles” to import real-world data into blockchain environments for use in smart contracts.
Whether oracles can truly adhere to the complete decentralisation ethos of crypto is debatable. Even if feasible in practice, striving for the ideal of full decentralisation leads to complex consensus protocols that further erode blockchain efficiency.
While introducing some degree of centralisation in oracles might boost efficiency, it also means adding trusted parties to a system designed to be trustless. As a result, crypto-based DeFi is likely to remain the preserve of cryptoassets only, rather than being used for real-world assets.

From: The oracle problem and the future of DeFi.

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Outages such as the one Square suffered late this week are rare, but can still cause major disruptions to merchants — particularly smaller businesses that may not have a multitude of non-cash payment options.

From: Square outage shows even a short disruption can cause chaos | PaymentsSource | American Banker.

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Nearly one-fifth (19%) of BNPL customers used Apple Pay Later in its first three months. PayPal was still the most-used BNPL brand over the same period (39%), with Afterpay (33%) as the next-most used brand.
The average Apple Pay Later user tended to be more financially healthy than most other BNPL customers, potentially giving it a more sustainable user base than its competitors.

From: Apple Pay Later gaining market share – Who should be concerned.

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An age-verification law in the U.S. state of Texas can’t be enforced against porn sites as intended while arguments about its constitutionality are heard in court.
A preliminary junction has been placed on the gating law because it was found to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. It is not clear what the next step in this case will be.
The contentious regulation, HB 1181, was supposed to be law as of September 1. Its stated goal is to prevent children under the age of 18 years from accessing adult content online.
Anyone found to break the law would face daily fines of up to $10,000 of a violation. Fines can be up to an additional $250,000 if a child gets past the gate.
Opponents, which, of course, includes the online porn industry, say the agenda and impact is larger.
To comply with this and other similar laws, publishers have to deploy age verification software and handle ID document checks in a way that does not let that information get out. Their costs and liability increase under the legislation.
Consumers of pornography do not want to go to the trouble of proving their age and identity to view content that is protected under the U.S. Constitution. Some are worried about future government interference and reprisals as well as their biometric data being stolen and sold.

From Texas law paused. Age verification for porn sites put on hold | Biometric Update.

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The obligations will require UK crypto asset firms to send beneficiary and originator information before or when making a digital asset transfer to another crypto company.

From UK Travel Rule goes live: This is what it means.

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Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder of the collapsed Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, his sister Serap Özer and his brother Güven Özer have been sentenced to 11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days in prison, according to local media. A judicial fine of 135 million liras ($5 million approx.) was also imposed.
Thodex was one of Turkey’s largest crypto exchanges before it suddenly went offline in April 2021 and Özer went missing. Over 400,000 members were left in the dark without access to deposits of $2 billion in cryptocurrencies. Özer had fled to Albania but was arrested in August 2022 after an Interpol red notice against him.
By April 2023, Özer was extradited to Turkey, and detained by police upon arrival on seven charges, including establishing and managing an organization with the purpose of committing a crime, being a member of an organization, fraud by using information systems as a tool of banks or credit institutions, fraud of merchants or company executives and cooperative managers, and laundering the value of assets resulting from crime.

From Boss of Collapsed Turkish Crypto Exchange Thodex Sentenced to 11,196 Years in Prison.

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The point about AML solutions making the problems worse reminds me of the case of Faruk Fatih Özer, founder of the now-defunct Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, who vanished last year along with $2 billion in cryptocurrencies from the exchange, had fled not only with customers’ cryptocurrencies, but also with their identities. As David Gerard so eloquently phrased it, Özer paid the most “painstaking attention” to money-laundering compliance and was therefore able to take detailed Know-Your-Customer (KYC) data for hundreds of thousands of users with him. This data included scans of the customers’ national ID cards, once again proving that digitising identity is no substitute for digital identity.

Now, of course, the reason why Mr. Özer had such a treasure trove of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) was because regulators had forced him to obtain it. So maybe it should be up to the regulators to fix the problem! But what are they going to do? What will happen to all of the people whose identities were stolen in this way? Are they all going to be given new identities in a vast national witness protection programme while their old identities are cancelled? Will the authorities give everyone a new name and a new number, cancel their old ID cards and send them new ones?

Well, of course not. Insane CDD demands continually force us to hand over our sensitive personal information to every Tom, Dick and Faruk on the internet while doing nothing to help us when our personal information is inevitably compromised as it must be when it’s sprayed around the web at the behest of regulators.

From AML Isn’t Working – by David G.W. Birch.

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Square is suffering a major systems outage that has left sellers unable to access their accounts or process payments for more than 12 hours.

The Block unit says that the outage hit at around noon Pacific Time on Thursday and was still affecting clients as of around 4:00am PT Friday.

A disruption at a data centre hit “multiple Square services,” affecting sellers across the US, although it is not clear how many firms are affected

From Square outage leaves sellers unable to process payments.

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LinkedIn estimates that 15-20% of candidates are dishonest in the way they present themselves. Additional alarming statistics include:

There has been a 92% increase in candidate fraud since the pandemic. 
21% of candidates engage in cheating in a controlled testing environment. 
52% of executives believe AI fraud detection is a best practice for hiring and preventing candidate fraud. 
Hiring managers have learned the hard way that hiring a candidate based on false information can prove costly – up to 30% of the worker’s first year salary, so it’s crucial for stakeholders in the hiring process to watch for red flags on resumes and during job interviews.

From Detecting and preventing fraudulent candidates.

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For reasons too boring to go into, I needed to use a prepaid card. In order to pass the KYC checks I was required to email a photo of my passport (what could possibly go wrong) and then provide proof of address in the form of a utility bill less than six months old. As you might expect, I have no such bill around the house because like most normal people I scan the bills when they come in and then shred them.

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Despite all the trouble of updating her ID and registering her new face on all the online platforms she used, Huan said she was very happy with her new nose.

The growing popularity of cosmetic surgery is proving a challenge for facial recognition technology. In January, another woman, in Urumqi, Xinjiang, failed to pay a fine for a traffic rule violation because her face did not match the one stored in the police system, according to online news video platform Pear Video.

Officers at the police station where the woman tried to pay the fine accused her of using someone else’s identity card, until she admitted she had undergone plastic surgery.

From Facial recognition technology in China beaten by a nose job | South China Morning Post.

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