Blockchain Interchange

Over the last year, blockchain has evolved from an obscure concept to a mainstream corporate tool. From energy management to billing, Blockchain will eventually touch everything.

Neutrino employees who once worked for a controversial surveillance tech company will leave Coinbase

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Last month, Coinbase’s acquisition of blockchain analytics startup Neutrino was criticized because of the founders’ ties to a controversial surveillance technology company called Hacking Team. Today Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a blog post that employees of Neutrino who had previously worked at Hacking Team will transition out of Coinbase, instead of joining its team in London as originally planned.

Neutrino maps blockchain networks, focusing on crypto token transactions, and one of its main services is working with law enforcement to track stolen digital assets, investigate ransomware attacks and analyze activity on the “darknet.” Before launching Neutrino, CEO Giancarlo Russo, CTO Alberto Ornaghi and chief research officer Marco Valleri, worked at Hacking Team, a security and surveillance tech company that has been criticized for selling products to governments with a history of human rights violations, including Egypt, Kazakhstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkey. As The Intercept reported in 2015, Hacking Team’s malware has also been found on the computers of activists and journalists.

The close link between Hacking Team and Neutrino concerned many members of the blockchain community. Amber Baldet, CEO of Clovyr and the former lead of JP Morgan’s blockchain program, told Motherboard that “given the number of accounts Coinbase has opened, how they choose to implement compliance tools and their relationship with law enforcement will impact a lot of people.”

In his post, Armstrong said there was “a gap in our diligence process” while Coinbase was shopping for a blockchain analytics startup to acquire.

“While we looked hard at the technology and security of the Neutrino product, we did not properly evaluate everything from the perspective of our mission and values as a crypto company,” he wrote. “We took some time to dig further int this over the pats week, and together with the Neutrino team have come to an agreement: those who previously worked at Hacking Team (despite the fact that they have no current affiliation with Hacking Team), will transition out of Coinbase. This was not an easy decision, but their prior work does present a conflict with our mission. We are thankful to the Neutrino team for engaging with us on this outcome.”

“Coinbase seeks to be the most secure, trusted, and legally compliant bridge to cryptocurrency,” he added. “We sometimes need to make practical tradeoffs to run a modern, regulated exchange, but we did not make the right tradeoff in this specific case. We will fix it and find another way to serve our customers while complying with the law.”

Coinbase achieved an $8 billion valuation last October after raising a $300 million Series E and is focused on broadening its user base from consumers to institutional investors. Neutrino’s eight employees had planned to move to Coinbase’s office in London has part of the acquisition.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/04/neutrino-employees-who-once-worked-for-a-controversial-surveillance-tech-company-will-leave-coinbase/

China reveals case against two Canadians detained in wake of Huawei arrest

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Beijing (CNN)The case against the two Canadians detained in the wake of the controversial arrest of a Huawei executive was revealed by China’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission on Monday.

Businessman Michael Spavor is accused of providing intelligence to Kovrig, and is described as an “important contact” for the former diplomat.
“Kovrig’s alleged behavior of gathering and stealing secrets and other intelligence for a foreign power has seriously violated Chinese laws,” the statement said.
    In a statement Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “obviously very concerned with this position that China has taken.”
    “We have been engaging and standing up for the two Canadians who have been arbitrarily detained in China. We are a country of the rule of law. We will ensure that the rule of law is fully respected. It is unfortunate that China continues to move forward on these arbitrary detentions,” he added.

    Canada, China tensions rise

    Both Kovrig and Spavor were detained by Chinese authorities in December shortly after Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada for possible extradition to the US.
    Huawei is China’s largest and most successful technology company, a symbol of the country’s economic rise, which has made Meng’s arrest especially significant to Beijing.
    Monday’s announcement of the case against the Canadians came just two days before Meng is due to face an extradition hearing in Canadian court. The Huawei executive could be sent to the US to face charges over breaking Iran sanctions.
    Her case is one of several ways the United States is trying to put pressure on Huawei. The US government claims Huawei’s technology poses a national security threat.
    China has repeatedly denounced the arrest of Meng as a political decision, but Canada has said it’s just following the letter of its extradition agreement with the United States. The series of arrests have caused a major diplomatic crisis between China and Canada.
    Beijing authorities had already announced Kovrig and Spavor would be charged with “endanger(ing) China’s national security.”
    The comparison of Meng’s situation and that of the two Canadians is stark. While Kovrig and Spavor have been held in a Chinese jail and allowed consular access, the Huawei executive is under house arrest in her home in Vancouver.
    Meng’s legal team announced this week they would be filing a lawsuit against Canadian authorities for illegally detaining her.
    In their statement Monday, Chinese authorities said the two Canadians would have all their rights guaranteed and said the next judicial step would be launched at an appropriate time.
    In January, more than a hundred former diplomats, academics and activists wrote an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping calling for the immediate release of two Canadians.

    ‘Vague and unsubstantiated allegations’

    Both Canadians have a long history of working in China. Former diplomat Kovrig is northeast Asia senior adviser for the nonprofit organization, the International Crisis Group (ICG).
    In response to Monday’s revelations, ICG spokesman Hugh Pope told CNN that Kovrig’s “work for Crisis Group has been entirely transparent and in the open, as all who follow his work can attest.”
    “Vague and unsubstantiated accusations against him are unwarranted and unfair,” Pope said.
    Spavor is the founder of Paektu Cultural Exchange, a company that helps facilitate trips to North Korea. He has assisted former NBA player Dennis Rodman in travel to Pyongyang to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
    The tense situation between Canada and China escalated further in January, when a Chinese court sentenced Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg to death on drug trafficking charges, after he was previously given a custodial sentence.
      In the wake of that ruling, Ottawa issued new travel guidance for its citizens in China that warned of “the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
      China issued its own travel warning for Canada in response, citing the “arbitrary detention” of a Chinese citizen for a third country as a reason for the notice.

      Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/asia/china-canada-kovrig-spavor-huawei-intl/index.html

      Coinbase to give former Hacking Team employees the boot

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      Goodbye.
      Image: THE WASHINGTON POST / GETTY

      Hey, look at that. A cryptocurrency exchange has decided to do the right thing – albeit belatedly, and only after a sustained public outcry. 

      The San Francisco-based exchange Coinbase announced on March 4 it had agreed to part ways with several new employees holding a particular grisly distinction: Namely, that they previously worked for the incredibly shady Italian spyware company Hacking Team. 

      SEE ALSO: Now any idiot can apply to list their altcoin on Coinbase

      Hacking Team, for those not in the know, has been accused of selling spyware to governments with dismal human rights records. For example, the Ethiopian government allegedly used Hacking Team tools to target journalists in the U.S.

      So how did Coinbase get involved with Hacking Team? The company announced on Feb. 19 that it had acquired Neutrino, “a blockchain intelligence platform” that just so happens to have been founded by former Hacking Team employees. The reaction from the cryptocurrency community was swift, and negative. 

      A #DeleteCoinbase movement quickly sprung up, with cryptocurrency luminaries like Riccardo Spagni adding to the pile.

      Today, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong copped to making a pretty big mistake. 

      “While we looked hard at the technology and security of the Neutrino product, we did not properly evaluate everything from the perspective of our mission and values as a crypto company,” he wrote in the aforementioned blog post. “We took some time to dig further into this over the past week, and together with the Neutrino team have come to an agreement: those who previously worked at Hacking Team (despite the fact that they have no current affiliation with Hacking Team), will transition out of Coinbase. This was not an easy decision, but their prior work does present a conflict with our mission.”

      It is not clear at this time exactly what “transition out of Coinbase” means. Will the former Hacking Team employees get to stay on for an additional few months? Will they receive a severance package? 

      We reached out to Coinbase in an attempt to answer those questions, but have not received a response as of press time. How the company handles the departure of these employees will go a long way toward demonstrating what its “values” truly are. 

      Either way, it seems like Coinbase decided it didn’t need this headache on its hands. 

      WATCH: Crypto exchange loses millions after CEO dies with the only password

      Read more: https://mashable.com/article/coinbase-responds-hacking-team/

      ‘Pokmon Sword’ and ‘Shield’ revealed for the Nintendo Switch

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      Image: nintendo / mashable composite

      Nintendo has finally given the world a look at the first generation of Pokémon coming to a home console.

      Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield were revealed during a Pokémon-centric Nintendo Direct Wednesday, which will be coming to the Nintendo Switch in late 2019. Take a look:

      Pokémon Sword and Shield look like the Pokémon games we’ve always known and loved it, just with a visual upgrade thanks to the beefier technology of a home console. Despite the slicker look, it doesn’t look like the classic RPG will be straying from the formula it established in the ’90s.

      SEE ALSO: ‘Pokémon’ is finally getting a console release, but don’t get your expectations up too high

      Sword and Shield, the eighth generation of Pokémon, will take place in the Galar region, which will feature a wide array of environments. In a break from the two previous generations, it doesn’t appear to be as obviously based off of a specific region of the world like how Pokémon X and Y were influenced by France and Sun and Moon were inspired by Hawaii, but it does have a certain British vibe to it.

      Nintendo also revealed the three starter Pokémon the players will get to choose from at the start of their adventure, which will stick to the standard grass/fire/water formula.

      The starters Grookey, Scorbunny, and Sobble.

      Image: nintendo

      Grookey, the green chimp-like Pokémon will be the grass starter and it looks like it may have a knack for making music. Scorbunny, the quick little rabbit Pokémon will be the fire starter. Sobble, an aquatic lizard Pokémon, will be the water starter and it looks like it can turn invisible.

      We’ll have to wait and see what their evolutions look like.

      Nintendo first teased the new generation of Pokémon back during E3 2017, giving no details except that it may not come out for more than a year. They were right.

      WATCH: You can now take super cute AR photos on Pokémon Go

      Read more: https://mashable.com/article/pokemon-gen-8-switch/

      Tide Foundation gives consumers full control of personal data on blockchain

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      It seems that on a regular basis, we hear about massive data breaches or companies sharing highly personal information with third parties without a consumer’s permission or knowledge. Tide Foundation wants to change that by giving consumers complete control over their personal data on the blockchain by allowing them to manage their own encryption keys.

      The startup wants to take that notion a step further by giving users the ability to sell that personal information in an open marketplace that the company is announcing today.

      “The overall concept is that when a consumer engages with a business and provides that business with personally identifiable information, the Tide Protocol encrypts that information and provides the consumer with the only key to decrypt it,” Tide co-founder Issac Elnekave told TechCrunch.

      With full control over their data, companies could not transfer any information to a third party without the consumer granting permission first. The marketplace provides a way for companies that need data, the vendors that manage that data and the consumers who ultimately own the data to negotiate a fair market value for access to it. What’s more, the companies buying the data know that they are getting much more valuable and accurate information, delivered with the full knowledge of the consumer.

      In the event of a massive data breach like Equifax or Marriott, if customers had been using Tide Protocol, the hackers couldn’t have actually used the PII in the breached databases because consumers would control the keys to decrypt it, rendering it useless to the data thieves.

      Technically, the protocol works in a kind of standard business blockchain fashion. “Tide Protocol uses forked EOS nodes, smart contracts and additional proprietary decentralized layers to manage permissioned access to encrypted consumer data stored by businesses (vendors),” the company explained in a statement.

      As for consumers controlling encryption keys, the company says it has created a patented technology to simplify the process of managing those keys in order to put that process within reach of anyone, one that passes what they call “the Grandpa Test.”

      “We have developed a layer, a decentralized way to dumb down blockchain to a ubiquitous user experience on the web,” Yuval Hertzog, the other company co-founder, explained. He said the idea is to simplify the highly complex and make key management a typical kind of web experience.

      Elnekave says the company has also found a way to comply with GDPR, the strict EU privacy regulations that went into effect last year that includes the right to be forgotten. Because the protocol gives consumers full control over the encryption keys, the user simply has to stop giving access to the business, essentially throwing away the encryption key and blocking access, he explained.

      Tide launched three years ago in Sydney, Australia and developed Tide Protocol, the basis of its blockchain data privacy solution, two years ago. Today it has 13 employees. The company raised a $2 million seed round in November.

      The startup believes data ownership should be a basic human right in a similar fashion to Hu-manity.co, the startup that wants to provide a similar set of tools as Tide, but focused on medical information.

      Hu-manity wants to create a health data marketplace with help from blockchain

      Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/04/tide-foundation-gives-consumers-control-over-personal-data-on-blockchain/