Because to a ruling reached by a court in Israel, more than 150 bitcoin wallets that have been deemed to have potential links to the funding of terrorist groups will likely have their entire balances wiped out as a consequence of this verdict.
It has been reported that the Magistrate Court in Tel Aviv has handed down a judgement that grants the Israeli government permission to confiscate all of the cryptocurrency that is stored in the more than 150 digital wallets that it has banned due to the suspicion that they are aiding terrorist organizations. The reasoning behind the ban is that the government believes that these wallets are providing support to terrorist organizations.
On the 18th of December, local Israeli media reported that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz stated that the court’s order from the 15th of December has already enabled police to take an additional $33,500 from digital wallets that are related to the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas. This information was reported by the Israeli Defense Minister.
Prior to the verdict of the court, the only digital assets that the Israeli police were legally entitled to gather were those that had direct linkages to terrorist operations. They did not have the authority to confiscate any more cash that could have been included in the same wallets.
The authorities seized hold of the wallets in December of 2021 and withdrew $750,000 from each of them at that time.
Gantz issued an order on July 9, 2021, that permitted security personnel to seize bitcoin accounts that were suspected of having ties to the militant wing of the Hamas group. Gantz’s order authorized the seizure of cryptocurrency accounts.
In addition, Israeli detectives were successful in seizing 30 bitcoin wallets and 12 exchange accounts tied to Hamas in the month of February.
After the seizure, the true market worth of the cryptocurrency assets that were stolen was not disclosed to the public.
It has been shown that the use of cryptocurrencies in the process of funding terrorist groups is quite little. [C]ryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum play a very small role.
Early in 2022, the business that specializes in blockchain analytics known as Chainalysis came to the realization that just a minuscule portion of crypto currency was being used for illicit activities.
Senator Sherrod Brown of the United States argued that it would be very difficult to implement such a prohibition due to the fact that the activity in question would just move offshore.
Sherrod Brown, the chairman of the United States Banking Committee, has proposed that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) might maybe consider outlawing cryptocurrencies.
In answer to a question that had been posed earlier by a presenter concerning Senator Jon Tester, who is of the opinion that cryptocurrencies need to be outlawed, Brown said that he is of the same opinion.
The congressman from Ohio said that he has been warning his colleagues and the general public about the risks associated with cryptocurrencies for the last eighteen months, and he has been advocating for immediate and stringent action to be done.
He said that he had previously approached the Treasury and the Secretary with his request for a comprehensive review of the situation by the whole government, including all of the many regulatory agencies.
Brown noted the shocking collapse of FTX as an example of why it may be worthwhile to contemplate a ban, but he stressed that this is just one significant component of the whole issue.
He argued that cryptocurrencies are risky and a threat to national security, and he cited North Korean cybercriminal activity, the trafficking of drugs and humans, as well as the financing of terrorist organizations, as some of the issues that have been exacerbated as a result of the use of cryptocurrencies.
Since the beginning of this year, the chairman of the Banking Committee has been vocal about his doubts towards cryptocurrencies. Most recently, he has highlighted his worries over the issues of stablecoin issuance as well as cryptocurrency advertising and marketing efforts.
On November 23, Senator Tom Emmer made the statement that the breakdown of FTX was not a failure of cryptography but rather a failure caused by centralized actors.
Emmer also holds the view that crippling regulation would stifle industry innovation in the United States, causing it to lose its position of global market dominance — something that many people believe is already unfolding. Emmer is a supporter of the American Competitiveness and Innovation Act (ACIA).
Customers have been reassured by the cryptocurrency exchange that their funds are safe and that their transactions are in the process of being carried out.
According to a statement that was released on the 18th of December, users of the cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io are experiencing sluggish deposits and withdrawals on transactions as a result of a node maintenance that is being performed by a third-party cloud provider. The statement was made public on the cryptocurrency exchange’s official blog.
Despite the fact that they had previously claimed the opposite, Gate.io has stated that transactions are still being carried out and that customer funds are safe.
It is not immediately clear whether the delay in transactions is related to OKX’s outage, which was caused by a hardware failure at a Hong Kong data center owned by Alibaba Cloud, which is the primary infrastructure provider for OKX.
Alibaba’s Cloud server experienced an outage on December 17 and did not recover for more than fifteen hours after the outage. Users were unable to make cash withdrawals or deposits during this period of downtime.
In spite of the fact that OKX trading services were brought back online after a delay of a few hours, users of the Twitter account for Gate.io are still reporting that they are having difficulties placing trades.
The company announced that it would be launching its first Blockchain Node Service a few days prior to the disruption that occurred with Alibaba’s Cloud services. The cause of the disruption is unknown.
It is anticipated that the service will go live at the beginning of the first quarter of 2023, and its primary objective will be to make it simpler for businesses to create applications that make use of blockchain technology.
According to Alibaba, the new platform-as-a-service solution will be beneficial to developers because it will reduce the amount of time spent on tasks related to operation and maintenance. This will result in less time spent overall.
The company stated that the application of their technology would make it possible for node hosts to actively monitor other nodes and automatically switch between them in the event of a failure in the network. “Because it does not require hands-on monitoring or issue mitigation, developers are free to focus on product development and may therefore be able to speed up the pace at which the product roll-out process is completed,” said Alibaba’s.
The winners of Season 3 of the TRON Grand Hackathon 2022 got an early holiday gift this Friday. The recipients of each of the 107 prizes being distributed for this season’s HackaTRON were announced. There were 1185 participants who formed 272 teams that submitted projects in one of six tracks: Web3, DeFi, NFT, GameFi, Ecosystem, and TRON Academy.
Season 3 submissions began on September 20 and ended on November 14. The judging period lasted from November 29 to December 12. In addition, a second group was chosen by Hackathon participants who were active in the TRON DAO Forum. That voting period lasted from November 29 to December 4. Then, the winners of both groups were announced on December 16.
The TRON Grand Hackathon 2022 Season 3 winners selected by our judges are:
The Ecosystem Track was split into two categories – technical and creative. Ten total Ecosystem winners were selected with five from each category and the same prize structure for both.
All projects whose team members participated in the TRON DAO Forum were eligible to vote in the peer evaluated selection of winners. The TRON Grand Hackathon 2022 Season 3 winners selected by the TRON DAO Forum are:
The TRON Academy Track was new this season and involved a face-to-face competition called the “Hacker House.” That portion of the Season 3 HackaTRON was held in person on the campus of Harvard University during the weekend of November 12–13, 2022. Two categories of winners were selected – technical and non-technical. The winners were:
There were three additional bonus prizes given for Season 3:
The Devpost Community Prize of $1,000, which was determined by popular choice voting on Devpost by Devpost community members.
The Project Engagement Prize of $5,000, which was determined by the TRON DAO team based on how well a project engaged on the TRON DAO Forum.
The Community Contributor Prize of $5,000, which was determined by the TRON DAO team based on an individual’s valuable contributions during the hackathon. This prize was distributed in $500 increments to ten individuals who did not win another prize.
On December 20th 2022, TRON DAO leaders will hold their monthly Community Call and this month’s focus is the Hackathon and its winners. It’s a chance to congratulate all of the winners for their hard work and innovative ideas, which made this season’s HackaTRON one the best yet. “From cutting-edge solutions to real-world applications, the projects developed during this Hackathon demonstrated the true potential of blockchain technology,” one TRON DAO team member noted.
TRON DAO strives to empower blockchain projects in alignment with its vision of building a decentralized web. The TRON Grand Hackathon is one essential approach toward that goal.
CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of the TRON Grand Hackathon 2022 Season 3! Many thanks to all of the participants, judges, and sponsors who made Season 3 of the TRON Grand Hackathon 2022 such a huge success. We can’t wait to see the innovations developed in the 2023 Hackathon.
TRON DAO is a community-governed DAO dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and dApps.
Founded in September 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun, the TRON network has continued to deliver impressive achievements since MainNet launch in May 2018. July 2018 also marked the ecosystem integration of BitTorrent, a pioneer in decentralized Web3 services boasting over 100 million monthly active users. The TRON network has gained incredible traction in recent years. As of December 2022, it has over 129 million total user accounts on the blockchain, more than 4.4 billion total transactions, and over $9.7 billion in total value locked (TVL), as reported on TRONSCAN. In addition, TRON hosts the largest circulating supply of USD Tether (USDT) stablecoin across the globe, overtaking USDT on Ethereum since April 2021. The TRON network completed full decentralization in December 2021 and is now a community-governed DAO. In May 2022, the over-collateralized decentralized stablecoin USDD was launched on the TRON blockchain, backed by the first-ever crypto reserve for the blockchain industry – TRON DAO Reserve, marking TRON’s official entry into decentralized stablecoins. Most recently in October 2022, TRON was designated as the national blockchain for the Commonwealth of Dominica, which is the first time a major public blockchain partnering with a sovereign nation to develop its national blockchain infrastructure. On top of the government’s endorsement to issue Dominica Coin (“DMC”), a blockchain-based fan token to help promote Dominica’s global fanfare, seven existing TRON-based tokens – TRX, BTT, NFT, JST, USDD, USDT, TUSD, have been granted statutory status as authorized digital currency and medium of exchange in the country.
The Russian government does not want to make Bitcoin available to the general population of Russia but rather intends to reserve its use for international business transactions.
Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of Russia’s Central Bank, said that the institution is prepared to evaluate the possibility of legalizing cryptocurrency usage inside the nation, but only as part of a legal experiment.
During a news conference held by the Bank of Russia on December 16, Nabiullina noted that it is feasible to regard transactions made via an authorized organization in the country as part of an experimental legal regime; however, in order to do so, a corresponding law is required.
Nabiullina noted that the major concern that the Bank of Russia has always had with regard to cryptocurrencies is that they cannot be used as a payment mechanism.
She went on to say that the central bank is especially worried about the security of investors due to the extremely volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market.
According to Alexey Zabotkin, deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, the Bank of Russia believes that the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies will inevitably lead to their use as a payment method. While Russia does not formally prohibit its citizens from investing in cryptocurrencies, the Bank of Russia does believe that this will happen.
Zabotkin emphasized that the purpose of Russia’s experimental regime, should it be accepted, would be to encourage the use of cryptocurrencies inside Russia, but only in order to assist international commerce.
The most important crypto regulation in Russia, known as the Law On Digital Financial Assets, would legally ban the usage of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for payment purposes in the year 2020.
Despite the fact that the law does not prohibit citizens of Russia from investing in cryptocurrencies, the local cryptocurrency exchanges have not been regulated.
While the Russian government is not prepared to provide its citizens access to decentralized financial instruments like Bitcoin in their own country, it does not want to lose out on the opportunities presented by decentralization on a global scale.
Late in November, Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, issued a statement condemning the monopoly that exists in the world’s various financial payment systems and called for the establishment of a decentralized, blockchain-based settlement network.
