Category Archives: E-commerce

Bitcoin withdrawals temporarily suspended in volatile day for crypto market

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Value of assets dips below $1tn after Celsius Network halts withdrawals over ‘extreme’ conditions

The cryptocurrency market has endured another day of volatility as the Binance exchange temporarily suspended bitcoin withdrawals and the total value of the digital asset market dipped below $1tn (£820bn), after a cryptocurrency lender stopped customers from taking back their funds.

The cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network halted withdrawals because of “extreme market conditions”, prompting a sell-off.

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‘Complex and volatile’: cryptocurrencies should be regulated by financial watchdogs, say consumer advocates

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Treasury inquiry told ‘crypto is high-risk and unsophisticated investors are at high risk of losing significant funds’

Consumer groups have called for strong financial regulation of cryptocurrency markets and investments in Australia, saying crypto assets are “complex, volatile and high-risk products that can cause harm to Australian consumers.”

In a submission to the federal treasury’s consultation paper on cryptocurrency, consumer group Choice has urged the federal government to “strongly consider regulating all crypto assets under the existing financial product regulatory regime for better outcomes for consumers and the community”.

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Chinese technology shares jump as Alibaba sales exceed forecasts

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E-commerce company’s revenues rise 9% to 204bn yuan despite weakening economy

Chinese technology shares jumped after strong results from internet companies, including better-than-expected sales at the e-commerce firm Alibaba despite an economic slowdown driven by Beijing’s Covid-19 lockdowns.

The Hangzhou-based company beat analysts’ forecasts with its sales and profit figures for the first quarter despite a weakening economy, and it did better than local rivals such as Tencent. Revenues rose 9% to 204bn yuan (£24bn) in the first three months of the year.

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Beanstalk cryptocurrency loses $182m of reserves in flash ‘attack’

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Raider gains voting rights over digital currency and uses them to transfer contents of treasury

The Beanstalk cryptocurrency has been stripped of reserves valued at more than $180m (£138m) in seconds, after an attacker used borrowed money to snap up enough voting rights to transfer the money away.

The lightning hostile takeover raises fresh questions about the unregulated nature of digital currencies and the lack of protections for investors.

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Amazon workers in New York close to forming historic union after key vote

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Elsewhere, a unionization vote by Alabama workers is pending as hundreds of votes were challenged

Amazon workers in New York are close to voting to form a union – a major win for labor activists who have failed in previous efforts to organize at the tech giant that is now the second largest private employer in the US.

Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island will find out on Friday whether or not they want to form a union, Amazon’s first in the US where it now employs over one million people.

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Hackers stole over $500m in cryptocurrency in record-making heist, Ronin says

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Ronin, blockchain project that powers the popular online game Axie Infinity, says unidentified hackers used stolen private keys

Blockchain project Ronin said on Tuesday that hackers stole cryptocurrency now worth almost $615m from its systems, in what would be one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record.

The project said that unidentified hackers on 23 March stole 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD coin tokens. At current exchange rates, the stolen funds are worth $615m, but they were worth $540m at the time of the attack.

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US married couple arrested for allegedly conspiring to launder $4.5bn in bitcoin

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Husband and wife, a rapper on TikTok, are accused in the US’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case

The US justice department has announced the unraveling of its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case, seizing a record-shattering $3.6bn in bitcoin in a saga that has captivated the internet.

US officials said on Tuesday the recovered sum was linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago.

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How Australia’s far right uses cryptocurrencies to monetise hate online

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As cryptocurrencies become mainstream and frictionless, extremists are finding new ways to fundraise

There have never been more ways to ask for money on the internet. For rightwing extremists looking to monetise hate, that can be a big opportunity – and the earning potential of these digital assets hasn’t gone unnoticed in Australia.

Earlier this year, I traced funding networks associated with a sample of Australian channels that share rightwing extremist content on the chat app Telegram, and found links to at least 22 online funding tools. These included donation requests via wallet addresses for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, monero, ethereum and litecoin.

Ariel Bogle is a researcher and journalist with a focus on technology and extremism. She owns a small amount of ethereum.

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‘Blockchain Rock’: Gibraltar moves to become world’s first cryptocurrency hub

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Territory’s financial sector risks reputational damage and diplomatic sanctions if complex regulations of crypto hub fail

On the southern Mediterranean coast, nestled in the shadow of the Rock’s sheer limestone cliffs and its tangle of wild olive trees, the Gibraltar Stock Exchange (GSX) is quietly preparing for a corporate takeover that could have global consequences for the former naval garrison.

Less than half a mile away, next to the blue waters of Gibraltar’s mid-harbour marina, the peninsula’s regulators are reviewing a proposal that would prompt blockchain firm Valereum to buy the exchange in the new year – meaning the British overseas territory could soon host the world’s first integrated bourse, where conventional bonds can be traded alongside major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and dogecoin.

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NFTs market hits $22bn as craze turns digital images into assets

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Critics of non-fungible tokens say they are symptomatic of unsustainable digital gold rush

The global market for non-fungible tokens hit $22bn (£16.5bn) this year as the craze for collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Matrix avatars turned digital images into major investment assets.

NFTs have drawn from veteran investors similar warnings to those issued about cryptocurrencies: that they are symptomatic of an unsustainable, digital gold rush. NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item – whether a piece of virtual art by Damien Hirst or a jacket to be worn in the metaverse – upon someone, even if that item can be easily copied. Ownership is recorded on a digital, decentralised ledger known as a blockchain.

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Singapore suspends crypto exchange over row with K-pop band BTS

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Bitget reportedly loses licence after it promoted Army Coin, named after group’s ‘BTS army’ followers

Singapore’s financial regulator has reportedly suspended Bitget, a crypto exchange that is mired in a row involving South Korea’s biggest boyband, BTS.

Bitget has removed the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s logo from its website, the Guardian confirmed. The platform still claims to have licences from Australia, Canada and the United States, according to its website.

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Can big tech ever be reined in?

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The Biden administration has shown an early determination to tackle the power of Amazon, Google, Facebook and co. But is it already too late?

When historians look back on this period, one of the things that they will find remarkable is that for a quarter of a century, the governments of western democracies slept peacefully while some of the most powerful (and profitable) corporations in history emerged and grew, without let or hindrance, at exponential speeds.

They will wonder at how a small number of these organisations, which came to be called “tech giants” (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft), acquired, and began to wield, extraordinary powers. They logged and tracked everything we did online – every email, tweet, blog, photograph and social media post we sent, every “like” we registered, every website we visited, every Google search we made, every product we ordered online, every place we visited, which groups we belonged to and who our closest friends were.

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‘I went from having to borrow money to making $4m in a day’: how NFTs are shaking up the art world

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Digital art is a billion-dollar business, with everyone from Paris Hilton to Damien Hirst trading in ‘non-fungible tokens’. But are NFTs just a get-rich-quick scheme masquerading as culture?

“It’s actually a lot simpler than you think.” It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and somewhat to my surprise, I’m on the phone to Paris Hilton, who is graciously explaining the world of NFTs.

Hilton is many things – a reality star, an heiress, an unlikely lockdown fitness guru who uses designer handbags instead of weights. But until now, she has never been considered a significant player in the art world. When artists have acknowledged her, often they’ve done so to fetishise her image. In 2008, Damien Hirst bought a portrait of her by the artist Jonathan Yeo, in which her body is constructed from collaged images cut from porn magazines.

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Bookshops thrive as France moves to protect sellers from Amazon

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Legislation for minimum delivery price aims to stop ‘distorted competition’ against independent bookshops

At her independent bookshop in the small, rural town of Puy-en-Velay in southern France, Anne Helman had seen an influx of customers since the coronavirus pandemic who said they would rather buy books in person than online.

“I’ve never sold as many copies of Albert Camus’s The Plague,” she said. “Children wanted fantasy books. Adults wanted novels and the classics, particularly stories about viruses and the apocalypse. There has been a newfound enthusiasm for buying locally and supporting independent bookshops; it’s seen as the virtuous thing to do.”

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Scepticism grows in El Salvador over pioneering Bitcoin gamble

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Country will be first to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender next month – but economists are sounding warnings over risks

Litha María de Los Angeles slaps two cheese-filled pupusas – the El Salvadoran cornmeal flatbread – on the griddle. With a camera click on the QR code, she receives her payment: four hundred-thousandths of a Bitcoin. Then, as the rain pelts the corrugated iron roof and a gust of wind lifts the blue plastic table cloths, the power cuts out.

A tumultuous few weeks awaits El Salvador as it prepares to become the first country to adopt Bitcoin, the world’s most popular decentralised digital currency, as legal tender on 7 September. With that deadline looming, a host of challenges – technological, financial and criminal – threaten to sink the plan of the president, Nayib Bukele, to ride the Central American economy out of its current choppy waters on the back of a cryptocurrency wave.

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Boy, 12, makes £290,000 in non-fungible tokens with digital whale art

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Benyamin Ahmed’s Weird Whales sell in cryptocurrency and ownership is stored on blockchain

A 12-year-old boy had made about £290,000 after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.

Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays. His success may be a harbinger of the digital business models that could disrupt the banking sector.

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Listen up: why indie podcasts are in peril

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As big spenders such as Amazon and Spotify fill our ears with more commercial, celebrity-driven fare, can grassroots, diverse shows survive?

The British Podcast Awards were different this year. Held in a south London park, they had a boutique festival feel, with wristbands and tokens for drinks, an open-sided tent for the actual awards, and people lounging on blankets in front of the stage. There were also sponsor areas – those small, picket-fenced areas where invitees could drink and mix with brand bigwigs. Awards are expensive to stage, and to give any sort of a professional sheen, money is needed. In 2017, the BPA sponsors included Radioplayer and Whistledown, an independent audio creator. In 2021, the BPA was “powered by Amazon Music”. Spotify, Stitcher, Audible, Acast, Global, BBC Sounds, Podfollow and Sony Music also dipped into their sponsorship pockets. Clearly, podcasting has gone up in the world.

Over the past 18 months, podcasting has hit the corporate big time. Apple, long the most recognisable name in podcasting, its iTunes chart being the public measure of any show’s success, is attempting, clumsily, to move from being a neutral platform that hosts shows into one that makes money from podcasting (by, for example, charging creators for highlighted spots).

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Out of control and rising: why bitcoin has Nigeria’s government in a panic

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As leaders around the world grapple with cryptocurrencies, what happened when the African country tried to ban them?

When the Nigerian government suddenly banned access to foreign exchange for textile import companies in March 2019, Moses Awa* felt stuck. His business – importing woven shoes from Guangzhou, China, to sell in the northern city of Kano and his home state of Abia, further south – had been suffering along with the country’s economy. The ban threatened to tip it over the edge. “It was a serious crisis: I had to act fast,” Awa says.

He turned to his younger brother, Osy, who had begun trading bitcoins. “He was just accumulating, accumulating crypto, saying that at some point years down the line it could be a great investment. When the forex ban happened, he showed me how much I needed it, too. I could pay my suppliers in bitcoins if they accepted – and they did.”

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Cryptocurrencies could lead to ‘limitless’ losses for UK government

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Experts warn of danger of untraceable funds if companies accepting payments in cryptos go bust

The government could face “limitless” losses as a result of businesses that accept payments in untaxed and untraceable cryptocurrencies going bust, an insolvency expert has warned.

A growing number of companies, including the ethical cosmetics firm Lush and office-sharing firm WeWork, have begun taking payments for goods and services in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, alongside debt, credit or cash.

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