TL;DR: Welcome to In Case You Missed It (ICYMI), a daily crypto news update. Facebook Libra to be backed 50% in US dollar. BTI report states wash trading has reduced 35%. SEC charges ICOBox with selling unregistered securities. Two indicted for EtherDelta hack, and Swiss university starts pilot program to issue blockchain verifiable diplomas.



Facebook Libra Backed 50% by US Dollar

Facebook Libra will be backed 50% by the US dollar, according to a report by Der Spiegel. The basket of currencies will be comprised of the US Dollar (50%), the European Euro (18%), the Japanese Yen (14%), the British Pound (11%), and the Singaporean dollar (7%). The yuan is not present, and this could help Libra get less pressure from US regulators, having labeled China as a currency manipulator in the context of the trade war.

BTI Report States Wash Trading Has Gone Down by 35.7%

The Blockchain Transparency Report released its market surveillance update, finding wash trading has been reduced in 35.7% on the top 40 real exchanges. Kraken, Poloniex, Coinbase and Upbit are the cleanest and wash-free cryptocurrency exchanges, three of them located in the US, and one in Korea. Binance has room to get better, with 6.35% of their transactions faked. The worst offenders are OKEx and Bibox, with more than 75% of their transaction traffic comprised of wash transactions.

SEC Charges ICOBox With Unregistered Offers and Broker Fees

The US SEC charged ICO incubator ICOBox and founder Nikolay Evdokimov with selling unregistered securities and broker fees. According to the complaint, the company led an ICO, raising $14 million dollars from more than 2,000 investors without having registered properly. The tokens were marketed as a good investment, and they are worthless now, failing to deliver a return for investors. The company also facilitated other initial coin offerings from companies, acting as a broker without a license.

Two Individuals Indicted for EtherDelta Hack

Two suspects have been indicted for their alleged participation in the EthereDelta hack that happened back in October of 2017. Elliot Gunton and Anthony Tyler Nashatka supposedly got access to the decentralized exchange and managed to redirect users to an alternate page, letting hackers obtain the private keys of some users. Supposedly, they were able to steal at least $800K from one user.

Swiss University Starts Pilot Program to Fight Fake Diplomas with Blockchain Tech

The University of St. Gallen proposed a pilot program to use a blockchain-based system to verify if whether a diploma is authentic. The pilot project will issue 200 certificates on a blockchain for the next year, lowering the verification waiting times from weeks to seconds for each diploma checked. Their CIO Harald Rotter declared he “saw that it could be necessary and it could be a valid use case to transfer or to make easier to validate our diplomas based on a digital process on blockchain,” and immediately proposed the idea.

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