Tag: exchanges

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Crypto Videos

WARNING! Crypto Exchanges Are NOT Safe!

https://youtu.be/W1KslwpA2Gk

https://youtu.be/W1KslwpA2Gk

WARNING: Crypto Exchanges Are NOT Safe!

 

More than half of all the crypto exchanges worldwide have weak or even no KYC identification protocols — with exchanges in Europe, the US, and the UK being some of the worst offenders, according to a new study done by blockchain analysis firm CipherTrace.
CipherTrace conducted an analysis on more than 800 decentralized, centralized, as well as automated market maker exchanges, and concluded that 56% of them did not follow KYC guidelines at all, despite the anti-money laundering regulations. The highest number of exchanges that don’t adhere to the regulations are in Europe — a region known for stricter regulations. Also, 60% of European Virtual Asset Service Providers do not have sufficient KYC practices.

The US, UK, and Russia are the three countries that host the highest numbers of exchanges with weak KYC procedures. Singapore is also at the top of the list, both when it comes to weak and porous VASPs.


CipherTrace study also found that many exchanges do not even bother to mention the country of its origin on its website or in its terms and conditions. This lack of transparency appears to be deliberate, as 85% of these exchanges had a frail KYC procedure framework. This implies that some exchanges are purposefully hiding their jurisdictions to avoid registering or complying with any form of AML regulation.
The report notes that 70% of crypto exchanges registered in Seychelles have poor-to-none KYC norms, making the small island country a potential base for money launderers.

The study also examined 21 decentralized exchanges and found that a whopping 81% had either weak or no KYC practices. However, looking at the bright side, DEXs aren’t necessarily good venues for money laundering due to how they operate. CipherTrace noted that although $7.9 million of crypto stolen in the KuCoin hack was sold on the decentralized exchange Uniswap, it wasn’t actually laundered there.


Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson said that “The hacker isn’t using DEXs to hide their tracks, but rather so they can sell their stolen tokens.”
DeFi projects offer a variety of traditional financial activities such as lending, borrowing, and earning interest. This means they could fall under the same regulatory framework as banks and other regulated financial institutions.
“DEXs offer financial activities, and are, by doing so, likely subject to various laws already, including securities law, and potentially banking and lending laws, and most definitely AML laws,” said SEC Crypto Czar Valerie Szczepanik in early October.

Dave Jevans, CipherTrace’s CEO, said he didn’t believe that DeFi protocols would accept regulations easily, but that he doesn’t think that DeFi can escape regulations for long.

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Crypto Guides

What Should You Know About Instant Crypto Exchanges?

Introduction Whether we need to buy, sell, or trade crypto, exchanges are the most convenient way to do so. It provides us with several functions that make the work easy. But when we need the task to be done on an immediate basis, we can opt for instant crypto exchanges. With these options, we don’t […]

Introduction Whether we need to buy, sell, or trade crypto, exchanges are the most convenient way to do so. It provides us with several functions that make the work easy. But when we need the task to be done on an immediate basis, we can opt for instant crypto exchanges. With these options, we don’t […]

Introduction

Whether we need to buy, sell, or trade crypto, exchanges are the most convenient way to do so. It provides us with several functions that make the work easy. But when we need the task to be done on an immediate basis, we can opt for instant crypto exchanges. With these options, we don’t have to go through the lengthy procedure of buying, selling, or trading crypto. Here are a few benefits that can be obtained from instant crypto exchanges over the traditional methods.

They Are Not-Custodial

In the traditional exchanges, our money will be held on the servers of the exchange. That means the exchange had our money’s custody for a while. This not only extends the transaction time but also put our money at risk. The year 2019 saw twelve crypto exchange hacks, which accounted for over $290 million of funds.

However, there are no such issues with the instant crypto exchanges. As soon as they receive the funds, these instant exchanges deposit the conversion in your wallet immediately. That means you don’t lose custody over your cryptocurrency, and there is no exchange theft associated with it.

They Are Quick

The custodial crypto exchanges require you weeks to get the account approved. By that time, you can’t buy, sell, or trade crypto. But you can do the work fast with the instant option. The name itself indicates that these are “instant” crypto exchanges. So you won’t have to waste much time in getting your currency exchanged. You will have to put only 5 to 60 minutes for each transaction to complete.

Price Aggregation

When you go for the traditional crypto exchanges, you will have to deal with an extensive interface. That is because the entire order book depth and price are shown to make the trade. However, it only includes orders from that particular exchange, and you will have to work accordingly. On the other hand, instant crypto exchanges aggregate multiple exchanges’ price. So you get access to deeper liquidity, and the risk of slippage lowers down.

Fixed/Floating Prices

While making a trade in the conventional exchange, you encounter a specific limit. The system executes a trade only when the prices are at or better than the specified limit. The feature was definitely beneficial, but the instant crypto exchanges have something better to offer. The two options available are:

Floating

When making a transaction, the floating rates get executed at the most excellent possible price. It can be either a little lower or higher than the quoted price.

Fixed

This fixes a specific rate for making the trade. That means, when that price is reached, the system automatically executes the transaction.

Ease Of Use

Last but not least, instant crypto exchanges are effortless to use. If you have already used traditional exchanges, you must be aware of their verification and registration formalities that you need to go through. When it comes to instant crypto exchanges, there are no such issues. You will get registered quickly with an email, and sometimes you can trade without any account or registration.

Examples of Instant Crypto Exchanges

As of today, there are only a few credible and reliable Instant Crypto Exchanges that we can rely on. One of the pioneers in this space would be a well-known exchange called Changelly. With this instant crypto exchange, we get to buy or exchange more than 150 cryptocurrencies. Some of the other popular instant exchanges include CoinSwitch, ChangeNow, FixedFloat, etc. All of these are instant and reliable, so you can confidently make your crypto trades with them.

Bottom line

Though it is quite clear that there are several benefits of opting for instant crypto exchanges, you still need to think twice before using them. This is because of their less sophisticated wallets and heftier exchange fees. You can look up to them and make your mind about whether you want to try them or not.

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Crypto Daily Topic Crypto Guides

Is Crypto Money Laundering A Real Problem?

What is Money Laundering?

What is Money Laundering?

What is Money Laundering?

Money Laundering is the legitimization of money earned through illegal means. Generally, it is the separation of money obtained through illegal activities and mixed with the money made from legal sources like small businesses that accepts cash as the primary mode of payment. The legitimized money is again funneled to the criminal enterprises to fund illegal activities.

Different Ways of Money laundering

Money laundering is prevailing for many decades in our financial history. Governments have been continuously upgrading the technology to avoid the money laundering cases, especially to reduce the funding of illegal activities. Cash still occupies the first place when it comes to laundering the money. Because it is difficult to trace the money that is transacted in cash. Hence selling/buying drugs, trafficking, and theft are mostly dealt with cash.

Gold is another popular form of laundering money. Other than these, we have large banks that don’t question with the source of the wealth when the cash is deposited in their vaults, casinos, tax havens, etc. But ever since the revolution of Cryptocurrency has begun, this asset is paving new ways for money laundering. Let’s discuss more about this below.

Is Money Laundering Using Cryptos A Real Problem? 

There are significant concerns across most of the governments with regard to money laundering using cryptocurrencies. But most of them are not true when it comes to reality. It is estimated that since 2009 approximately $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoins are laundered, whereas ~ $100-$300 billion dollars are being laundered every year in different ways.

Hence, if we compare the stats, the amount of money laundered using Cryptocurrency is very sparse. Moreover, it is not advisable to launder money using Cryptocurrency as all the crypto networks are permissionless and transparent for literally anyone to check. It is easy to put together the Bitcoin transactions as the transactions are only pseudo-anonymous.

How are cryptocurrencies used to launder money?

These are some of the ways how Cryptocurrency is used for money laundering:

₿ While most of the cryptocurrencies are regulated there are some exchanges that aren’t. This means they don’t perform KYC procedures and none of the details of their customers is collected while they perform crypto transactions. This makes it challenging to match the transactions made by their customers to their id’s. When several such transactions are made using unregulated crypto exchanges, a degree of privacy is added which may eventually result in using that money for illegal activities.

₿ Exchanging the Cryptocurrency with different altcoins, thus making it difficult to know the origins of the actual cryptos. This can also quickly be done by participating in an ICO.

₿ Using Bitcoin ATM’s, we can deposit fiat cash and take Cryptocurrency at any place where a crypto ATM is available.

₿ As the cryptocurrency market is too volatile, it is easy to show that the illicit income is a result of some profitable venture or some other currency appreciation.

₿ With ever-increasing online payments using Cryptocurrency, we can easily create an online company which accepts Bitcoin and convert black money into clean Bitcoin.

How are the governments controlling the crypto money laundering?

Governments are taking various measures by developing multiple tools to link the transactions to the ids of the users using KYC details. Anti-laundering laws are amended to include cryptocurrencies. The US, Canadian, and European governments have made changes to the rules already. Some governments are, in turn, taking measures by legalizing cryptos so that the transactions would be made through regulated exchanges instead of fraudulent ones.

Finally, it can be said that, since the usage of digital cash is going to be inevitable, all measures are being taken to curb the negativities that we see in today’s world with fiat cash. If you have any questions, shoot them in the comments below. Cheers!

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Crypto Videos

Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 5 – coinbase pro lower fees?

https://youtu.be/fOoxfzhaHHM

https://youtu.be/fOoxfzhaHHM

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 5/5

 

The last part of our in-depth review of Coinbase will show us the differences and similarities between this exchange and Coinbase Pro.
Coinbase is considered one of the most popular Bitcoin brokers. As a matter of fact, its user base surpassed that of stock brokerage Charles Schwab. Coinbase’s popularity soared in 2017 due to the major influx of new people into the cryptocurrency “game.”Coinbase Pro, which is also owned by Coinbase, has seen a similar amount of growth in 2017.

Coinbase vs. Coinbase Pro


Buying cryptocurrency can be extremely confusing, especially if you are a newcomer.
Coinbase is a platform designed to be easy to use. Its main focus is first-time buyers. The simplicity of their platform makes it easy and intuitive for anyone to buy or sell cryptocurrency.
Coinbase Pro is, on the other hand, for more advanced users. It offers features such as bid-ask spreads, price charts, order books, different kinds of orders, and stop losses. While this is considered a perk when trading, it can be overwhelming for new buyers. Coinbase users can buy or sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currency or exchange them for another cryptocurrency. The website doesn’t have any fancy price charts, order books, or different types of orders.

Coinbase users are offered the option to only “buy” or “sell.”


Transaction fees

Coinbase’s fees are pretty hefty when compared to those of Coinbase Pro. Coinbase charges a 3.99% fee on credit/debit card transfers as well as a 1.49% fee on bank transfers, while Coinbase Pro charges much less. If done correctly, the fees can even be non-existent.
Coinbase Pro charges 0.1% to 0.25% for taker trades while it charges zero for maker trades. As long as the orders you place are limit orders, you won’t have to worry about paying any form of trading fee.

Cryptocurrency prices

Cryptocurrency prices on Coinbase are based on the Coinbase Pro prices. However, they do have a hidden premium.
As an example, Bitcoin’s price on Coinbase is always around $50 higher than what it is on Coinbase Pro.
Liquidity
Coinbase is an extremely big exchange, so there is no question about its liquidity. As far as Coinbase Pro’s liquidity goes, you won’t have to worry either.

Supported Countries

Coinbase Pro and Coinbase, being almost the same company, support almost the same countries. They do, however, differ slightly when it comes to some countries.
Coinbase Pro and Coinbase both support the following countries (in alphabetic order):
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States.
However, customers from Singapore, Canada, and Australia are only able to use Coinbase. They are, for the time being, not able to use Coinbase Pro.

Availability

Coinbase can be used on mobile devices as well. It has mobile apps for Android and iOS devices.
However, due to the complexity of the platform, there is no mobile app for Coinbase Pro. The workaround would be that the mobile version of the Coinbase Pro website works quite well on tablets and smartphones.

Withdrawal Fees

Coinbase charges a regular Bitcoin transaction fee for withdrawals, which is around $0.10
Coinbase Pro has no withdrawal fees whatsoever. It pays the Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin transaction fees for you.

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Crypto Videos

The Complete Guide To Binance DEX – Crypto Master

https://youtu.be/nR68RoM5pm4

 
Binance DEX guide
Binance has released a decentralized exchange in addition to its traditional one. The Binance DEX is now running on the testnet. Binance wanted to

https://youtu.be/nR68RoM5pm4

 
Binance DEX guide
Binance has released a decentralized exchange in addition to its traditional one. The Binance DEX is now running on the testnet. Binance wanted to

 

Binance DEX guide

Binance has released a decentralized exchange in addition to its traditional one. The Binance DEX is now running on the testnet. Binance wanted to tackle the problems of the conventional exchange model. Having a decentralized exchange puts back full custody in customers’ hands as well as goes along with the principle that cryptocurrency decentralization.

Binance DEX is a decentralized order-matching engine that does not have any influence, power, or custody over its users. Binance DEX should be seen as an extension of the traditional Binance exchange, especially now that Binance DEX is only in testnet. As Binance DEX required a blockchain to be built on, Binance Coin (BNB) will transform from an ERC-20 token to a cryptocurrency with its blockchain called Binance Chain.


Binance DEX guide

Binance DEX currently allows people to create a wallet and start exchanging their tokens on it.

How to Start Creating a Wallet

Click the “Create Wallet” icon that appears on the official website. After creating a wallet, pick one of the three options to how you want to access your wallet:
Keystore File + Password;
Mnemonic Phrase;
Private Key.

Binance DEX requires all users to use the Keystore file + password, while the choice between Mnemonic Phrase and Private Key is left to the users. The chosen method will act as a secondary way of accessing the account wallet.
Creating a Keystore file requires users to enter a password that is at least eight characters in length. The password must include an upper case letter, a symbol, and a number for it to be accepted. After the password is created, the mnemonic phrase will be shown.


Unlocking the wallet

Before placing any trades, users are required to unlock their wallets. That can be done by clicking on any of the relevant tabs which will lead you to the password window. Once you choose one of the three aforementioned methods of wallet accessing and input it, you are ready to go.
Adding funds to the Testnet account
Adding funds to Binance DEX will give users free 200 BNB funds. All testnet users are required to have at least 1 BNB token on their traditional Binance account so they can receive the 200 BNB testnet funds. This requirement is not a limitation, but rather a security measure against spam.


Binance DEX trading interface

Binance DEX user interface (UI) is created to be easy to use and intuitive, as that was one of the biggest downsides to other DEXs.
TradingView chart is the center of Binance’s user interface. This chart is connected to TradingView, which means that all indicators, strategies as well as the ability to draw on the chart are available on Binance DEX.

The bottom left-hand side of the UI is where users can track their Open Orders, Order History, Trade History, and Balances.

Binance DEX currently supports only Limit orders, but other types of orders will be available. Limit orders can be located at the lower right-hand corner of the interface.

The order book can be found in the right-hand side middle part of the interface. By utilizing the order book, users can see a list of open orders on the exchange for both asks and bids.

The Left-hand side middle part of the UI is reserved for the trading history panel. This part of the UI shows users all trades that occurred on the selected trading pair and in a certain period.

Available trading pairs can be located at the upper left-hand side of the UI. Additionally, this part of the UI also shows the current price of the asset, 24-hour percentage price change, and the 24-hour volume.

Users can sign out by clicking the “Sign Out” icon at the top right of the user interface when they are finished with trading.