Cryptocurrency

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, March 2nd, 2022, presented by Angie Lau. For the latest in blockchain & crypto news. On today's show: 00:54 - Crypto support for Ukraine grows as Animoca halts Russian services. 02:17 - Super rich Indians gaining crypto confidence. 03:17 - Could the age of South Korean crypto investors swing an election? 05:44 - Hacking group gives Nvidia an ultimatum. --- Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot, has donated US$5 million worth of DOT after the country expanded fundraising efforts by adding the cryptocurrency to the list of those it's accepting donations in. Meanwhile, the Solana Foundation, an ever stake, are collaborating with the Ukrainian government in setting up a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO named "Aid for Ukraine" to raise funds directly for civil aid. However, while Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, has called for crypto exchanges to freeze addresses linked to Russian politicians Kraken FX says it cannot freeze accounts without a legal requirement to do so. And a spokesperson for Binance told CNBC that such a move would actually fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists. Still, others are acting, according to a Bloomberg interview, Hong Kong based Animoca is cutting its service to Russian users and stopping the sale of shares to Russian investors in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Minister Fedorov has now tweeted his thanks for the support Ukraine is receiving from the Crypto community. India's super rich are gaining confidence in Crypto, according to local media, a report by property consulting firm Knight Frank, 18 percent of ultra high net worth Indians have invested in digital assets. Just in case you are wondering, ultra high net worth individuals are defined as having investable assets in excess of US$30 million. Now, 10 percent of them have gone for cryptocurrencies, while 8 percent have chosen to invest in NFTs. However, some respondents said the volatility of the crypto market is making them reluctant to invest, while a third said security concerns were holding them back from investing. Most significantly, over 60 percent say they do not understand the market sufficiently yet. Could be that that will change when or if the government clarifies its position on the legality of crypto in India. South Korea's crypto market has a total capitalization of almost US$46 billion, and an average daily trade volume of just over US$9 billion. And some of the findings of the first report from the country's financial intelligence unit on the crypto market in the country are very interesting. Among a population of over 51 million, 5.58 million are crypto traders. That's over one in 10 people. And while Bitcoin and Ethereum are responsible for 59 percent of investments in the global cryptocurrency market, Koreans are much less into them, with the two major tokens taking up just 27 percent of the Won-to-crypto market. Not only that, Korean crypto traders are older than some might expect. 31 percent of them are in their 30s, while 27 percent are in their 40s and just 23 percent are in their 20s. Indeed, the two leading candidates in Korea's presidential election, which is just one week away, have made promises to promote digital assets in their efforts to captivate the interest of younger voters. Those efforts include Democratic candidate Lee Jae-Myung's promise of stronger investor protection, and People Power's Yoon Suk-Yeol plans for a digital industry promotion agency. Both are pushing to institutionalize virtual assets. The hacking group Lapsus$ allegedly stole 1 terabyte of data from Nvidia's network last week. According to PC Magazine. The group then threatened to release the driver for sale if the chip maker refused to provide an update that would allow its light hash rate limiter on its graphics processing units, or GPUs, to be removed. Nvidia began installing the light hash rate limiter on its GeForce RTX series of GPUs early last year to make them less desirable to miners. Demand for the cards outstripped supply at a time, as users found they could be reprogrammed to mine Crypto, leaving gamers unable to get their hands on them. The hackers posted their latest demands on Telegram on Wednesday morning Asia time, requesting Nvidia commit to completely open sourcing their GPU drivers for Windows, Mac OS and Linux forever. In the message, the hackers gave Nvidia a deadline of Friday to meet their demands. According to Bloomberg, and Nvidia has said they do not anticipate any disruption to their businesses or ability to serve customers as a result of the incident. Forkast has asked Nvidia for comment, but none had been received by Wednesday afternoon Asia time. --- #Crypto #Blockchain #BlockchainTechnology #DigitalAssets #Cryptocurrency #DeFi #Ukraine #Russia #Conflict #Polkadot #AnimocaBrands #YatSiu #Nvidia #DOT #KoreanElection #Hacker