Tag: poverty

Libra Adds New Nonprofit Member Heifer International to Tackle World Hunger and Poverty After Enduring Months of Regulatory Scrutiny

The Libra Association has welcomed a new member, Heifer International, a nonprofit organization aimed to tackle world hunger and poverty. The addition of Heifer International brings the tally of members in the Libra Association to twenty-three. 

Around 780 million people in the world live in extreme poverty and spend less than $1.90 per person per day. A third of children who live in low to middle-income countries suffer from chronic malnutrition, as the adults may not have access to nutritious food due to insufficient income levels, leading to a child death rate of 45 percent due to malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization, 2018.

Heifer International works with some of the world’s poorest farmers, providing them with access to new markets and sustainably increase production. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that less than 10 percent of these farmers can have access to credit. With around 1.7 billion adults in the world remain unbanked, and after surviving months of intense backlash by global regulators, Libra could take supporting financial inclusion to the next level. 

Announced in a blog post, Heifer International CEO Pierre Ferrari indicated that the Libra project “has the potential to deliver a low-cost, more accessible and more connected global financial system.”

Last week, Facebook made an announcement regarding new updates to its whitepaper, to move away from its original plan of a permissionless digital currency, to a coin that would be subject to foreign exchange controls and regulations. 

Libra has applied for a payment system license from the Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FINMA), to be able to allow the Libra payments system to be used publicly. One of the major updates of the Libra whitepaper is that it explicitly mentions the limits of what users are able to do on the network, including balance and transaction limits, and the network would only be accessible to regulated crypto firms in the beginning.

Although Libra hopes to work with as many central banks as possible, for jurisdictions whose currency has not been added to Libra’s stablecoin backing will be unable to use it.

Kaspersky Report: Bitcoin Crime to Rise in 2021 Due to Covid-19 Induced Poverty

While most news for Bitcoin has been positive this year, 2020 marked a year rampant with Bitcoin and crypto-related crime. According to Kaspersky’s new report, most of the cyber threats and hacking scams that have plagued the crypto community in 2020 will likely increase in 2021 due to a new wave of COVID-19 induced poverty.

With 2021 just a month away, it is important for crypto firms and traders to pay attention to the cybersecurity landscape of the coming year. Leading cybersecurity solutions provider Kaspersky’s latest report indicates that an increase in global financial hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic will see crypto-related crime increase to new levels.  

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to trigger a huge wave of poverty and that would translate into more people engaging in crime including cybercrime as a way of getting livelihoods. Kaspersky researchers stated that certain economies may crash and local currencies plummet, which would make Bitcoin theft become more attractive. More fraud, targeting mostly Bitcoin is likely to occur because it is the most popular cryptocurrency.

With the special technical capabilities of deanonymization, monitoring, and seizing of Bitcoin accounts now in place, cybercriminals are expected to switch to transit cryptocurrencies for charging victims. Bad actors would prefer switching to other privacy-enhanced currencies including Monero to use them as a transition currency and then convert the funds to any other crypto assets of choice including Bitcoin.

Extortion practices are set to become more widespread as ransomware gangs consolidate and advance exploits being utilized more effectively to target victims. Coronavirus-related changes to the way people work and live have changed the way financial attackers operate. The implications of such shifts for the next year are significant. Throughout 2020, firms became less secure because of hastily deployed remote work solutions. That has translated into vulnerable remote access connections, default laptop configurations left unchanged, and a lack of employee training. Together these trends have opened up a series of new attack vectors, including targeted ransomware campaigns.

Addressing Crypto Crime

Criminal networks have increasingly recognized the superpowers given to them by the crypto world. Of course, the cryptocurrency world has become a part of the global financial system and is included in the analytical and monitoring efforts. Moreover, the ability to investigate and identify crypto crime has become a basic requirement for international and national law enforcement agencies. However, to succeed in the fight against crypto crime, law enforcement agencies must arm themselves with the right tools. Furthermore, it would be important for businesses to increase communications between various government agencies to detect patterns and address the problem. Finally, the introduction of tighter regulations is another vital way to minimize criminal crypto activities. All countries should enforce KYC (Know Your Customer) rule to get people to disclose their identities before conducting crypto transactions.

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