Snippings

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The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has been urged to intervene in the “outrageous” case of a Leeds University student jailed in Saudi Arabia for 34 years over her use of Twitter.

From Plea for Liz Truss to act after Saudis jail UK student for 34 years over Twitter use | Saudi Arabia | The Guardian:

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Bank-to-bank messaging network Swift has moved to eliminate payments friction by introducing a new capability to flag upfront when a payment may stall because of incorrect payee details,

The new service analyses previous flows on the Swift network to identify accounts that have been credited successfully and uses this information to detect potential errors in payee information – the most common cause of cross-border delays.

This centralised verification, based on aggregated and anonymised data from nine billion transaction messages between four billion accounts each year, provides a level of insight no single financial institution has on its own.

“Think of it as the ultimate payment pre-check” says Thomas Zschach, chief innovation officer, Swift.

From Swift mines data flows to flag up incorrect payments:

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Net losses quadrupled at the Swedish payments firm for the first six months through June to 6.2 billion kroner ($581 million) compared with 1.4 billion kroner ($141 million) for the same period of 2021, according to the report. Revenue rose 24%.

Despite laying off 10% of its staff, overhead for salaries and other administrative costs increased to 10.2 billion kroner ($1 million), compared to about 6 billion kroner ($604,000) in 2021. Net credit losses widened to 2.85 billion kroner ($287,000), 0.7% of gross merchandise value (GMV) and was a result of overall loan growth. Last year, credit losses were 1.85 billion kroner and 0.56% of GMV.

“We’ve had a few years now where growth has been really heavily prioritized by investors. Now, understandably, they want to see profitability,” said CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski.

From Klarna Faces Growing Pains as Losses Increase:

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Streaming media platform Plex on Wednesday said it was hacked by intruders who managed to access a proprietary database and make off with password data, usernames, and emails belonging to at least half of its 30 million customers.

From Plex imposes password reset after hackers steal data for >15 million users | Ars Technica.

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Ethereum, launched in 2015 by a 21-year-old whiz kid named Vitalik Buterin, is about to swap proof-of-work mining for an alternative system known as proof of stake, which does not require energy-guzzling computers. The Ethereum Foundation, a research nonprofit that spearheads updates and ameliorations to the Ethereum blockchain, says the shift will reduce the network’s energy consumption by 99.5 percent. The big switcheroo is known as the Merge—and it is slated to take place on September 14.

From Ethereum’s ‘Merge’ Is a Big Deal for Crypto—and the Planet | WIRED UK.

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I’ve always been interested in Ethereum and its founder Vitalik Buterin. I remember when he kindly accepted my invitation to come along to the Tomorrow’s Transactions Forum in London back in 2015 (there’s a video of it here) to take part in some very stimulating and enjoyable discussions about the future of shared ledgers and smart contracts. Ethereum has exploded since them and now forms

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Much of the criticism is fueled at least partly by self-interest. Many of the Merge’s most vocal opponents are businesses that have built expensive data centers to mine Ether in the proof-of-work system.

From The Crypto World Can’t Wait for Ethereum’s ‘Merge’ – The New York Times.

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“It’s flying the jet, and changing the engine in the sky,” said Chandler Guo, a crypto industry veteran who leads a group opposing the Merge. “It’s very difficult. It’s very dangerous.”

From The Crypto World Can’t Wait for Ethereum’s ‘Merge’ – The New York Times.

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(Chandler is an interesting guy. The last time I met saw in person was, oddly, on the day that the BBC ran a story about a secret Chinese bitcoin mine and I ran into him at a not-at-all secret hotel in New York. As an aside, he won the coveted Toast D’Or prize at the 2015 Money 20/20 in Las Vegas because he asked the best question from the floor. You can read the full story about that here .)

Chandler has apparently put together an engineering team to work on an alternate currency to rival the merged proof-of-stake Ether so it will be really interesting to see how this develops too.

By back to Ethereum itself.

 

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It is said that the incoming Biden administration tried to hire Zatko as the country’s cybersecurity chief, but he decided to go to Twitter.

From Twitter’s whistleblower has pitched up at a very inconvenient moment | John Naughton | The Guardian.

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More than half of all reported trading volume is likely to be fake or non-economic.

From More Than Half Of All Bitcoin Trades Are Fake.

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At $71.4 billion daily volume, bitcoin-tether (BTC-USDT) activity exceeds that of BTC-USD by 57%,

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Censorship resistance is the toughest problem to crack. [It] prevents nation states from controlling access to financial infrastructure for domestic and external power projection, an essential prerogative even in the most liberal of jurisdictions

From Crypto and regulation: I can’t live with you, but I can’t live without you | CEPR.

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The washout of bad actors and the bursting of financial bubbles affords the crypto industry an opportunity to focus on amending its mistakes and building better technology, without distractions from overblown yields. This is the time for self-discipline and a sharper focus on security, decentralisation (Aramonte et al. 2021), and scalability.

From Crypto and regulation: I can’t live with you, but I can’t live without you | CEPR.

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The National Payments Corporation of India has asked payment apps to stop charging a platform fee for payments enabled on the Bharat Bill Payment Platform. This is in light of the RBI coming out with a discussion paper on payment charges in the country. The government also seems inclined to treat the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) as a public good that customers do not have to pay for.

From NPCI directs apps not to charge bill payment fees – Times of India.

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