A local Pakistani news outlet, The Express Tribune has reported that the government of Pakistan will be implementing a new cryptocurrency regulation soon. The local press has quoted an unnamed source, “These regulations will help to combat money laundering and terrorism financing while it will also help regulation of digital currency throughout the country.”
India enters into election season which is set to take place between April 11 and May 19 in 7 phases. Varun Sethi, founder of Blockchain Lawyer explained, “During election time in India, ‘aachar sanhita’ or code of conduct applies. Thereby no new law can be passed. we can’t expect government to officially announce any regulation regarding cryptos or others.”
A declaration has been made in a statement by the Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) that the unlicensed trading of security token is a criminal offence. The Hong Kong SFC then have made it clear that any person which is intended to distributes or operating Security Tokens related business in the country need to have their license or registered.
The authorities in Italy have recently shares that they might be implementing blockchain technology to combat tax evasion in the country. The implementation of blockchain technology will enable the authorities to track the black money and tracking the cryptocurrencies using blockchain operation which will help in protecting the public and nation’s economy.
A town located in Ontario, Innisfil have recently shared they will be accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment method for property taxes. A pilot project which will enable the process of accepting bitcoin for tax payments has been approved in collaboration with a Toronto-based company. The other major cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple will be accepted soon.
The Ukrainian authorities have recently arrested a 32-year old man who allegedly installed cryptocurrency mining script in the HTML code of a number of websites. The man faces six years of jail time for crypto jacking using the website. This indicates that the authorities of Ukraine are treating cryptocurrency and cybercrime seriously as an effort in protecting the public.
A 31-year-old website designer, was charged with using a program on his website which takes advantage of website visitors’ spare computing power to mine cryptocurrencies (known as cryptojacking) has been acquitted by the Yokohama District Court. Judge Toshihiro Homma said that, ” not constitute a crime as we cannot say embedding the program was socially unacceptable.”
A man was arrested in New York and faces 20-year sentence for allegedly convincing the others to invest in cryptocurrency via Facebook and Twitter. The Attorney of United States, Richard Donoghue: “As alleged, the defendant defrauded investors by making false promises and sending them fraudulent balance statements, hiding the fact that he was stealing their money for his personal use.”
A cybersecurity company and anti-virus provider Kaspersky Lab have recently warned the cryptocurrency industry over the North Korean hacker which are still targeting the exchanges. Kaspersky Lab also commented regarding the hacker group named Lazarus APT, “Financial gain remains of the main goals for Lazarus, with its tactics, techniques and procedures constantly evolving to avoid detection.”
The Pakistani authorities successfully arrested the gang behind bitcoin ransom kidnapping scheme who recently kidnapped a college professor. The victim who was also a professor at the University of Lahore named Shahid Naseer was reportedly kidnapped by the group of men and was demanded approximately $142k worth of bitcoin as a ransom.
