TL;DR: Welcome to In Case You Missed It (ICYMI), a daily crypto news update. Casa refocuses on its software service offerings. CFTC Chairman predicts Ethereum Futures. Bitcoin mining is centralized in China. Kraken breaks Trezor wallet security in 15 minutes. Read.cash adds forum functionality, and Zebpay relaunches operations in India.

Casa to Refocus on Software Business

Casa, makers of popular hardware, announced they won’t be making more Casa Nodes, their in-house built Bitcoin and Lightning ready nodes, as they shift priority to software services offerings. “We will be open-sourcing the Casa Node so that anyone can build it on their own hardware (and we won’t be building new Nodes for now),” they declared while announcing a new subscription tier to their services, Casa Gold. Their anchor plugin product was criticized by some as being too expensive for the hardware it carried, based on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM.

CFTC Chairman Predicts Ethereum Futures

Chairman of the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission), Heath Tarbert, predicted the eventuality of Ethereum based futures in the market. During an interview with Bloomberg TV, Tarbert explained, “Certainly, we’ve seen Bitcoin futures, both cash-settled as well as physically delivered. My guess is we’re going to see Ether futures as well, and as things start to migrate into the commodities space, we’ll see even more.” He also declared his wish for US to lead in the cryptocurrency field. Bitcoin and Ethereum are considered commodities in the US, so they might under the jurisdiction of the CFTC.

Bitcoin Mining Centralized in China

A new report from TokenAnalyst, a blockchain data analysis company, found almost 50% of the Bitcoin mining hashrate is centralized among five companies, all located in China. The services of these five companies (AntPool, BTC.com, BTC.top, F2 Pool and ViaBTC) can be contracted using a cloud mining front called BitDeer, which can effectively contract hash from all of them at once. “What is to stop the entities merging into a single large entity that maintains a degree of separation,” the report warns.

Kraken Hacks Trezor Hardware Wallet in 15 Minutes

🚨It took Kraken Security Labs just 15 minutes to hack both of @trezor’s crypto hardware wallets. Here’s how we did it and what it means if you’re a user: https://t.co/5betNtDnD0 — Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) January 31, 2020

Kraken Security Labs, a division of the popular exchange, announced they managed to crack and extract the private seeds from the Trezor One and Trezor Model T, two cryptocurrency wallets offered by the industry leader. The attack managed to beat the security of the wallets in 15 minutes. It requires physical access to the device and takes advantage of a vulnerability present in the microcontroller in Trezor hardware. While the hack also needs several hundred dollars in hardware equipment, Kraken insisted “criminals could mass produce a consumer-friendly glitching device for about $75.”

Read.cash Launches Forum Functionality

New feature on the popular #BitcoinCash-powered media site https://t.co/MBuywWKsOm: – a basic forum functionality Very helpful as a complement to existing comment threads ! 👍https://t.co/itiEDWkCh4 — bch 'make Bitcoin cash again' protocol upgrade (@btcfork) January 31, 2020

Read.cash, the writing platform allowing users to get Bitcoin Cash tips for their articles, introduced a new function into the platform: Forums. They will let users discuss any of the articles on the site natively. According to the announcement, this is an answer to the several discussions involving the BCH funding proposal made by Jiang Zhuoer, because “it was very hard to have a long meaningful discussion in form of threaded comments.” The forum functionality is still very basic, but site developers declared it will be improved over time.

Crypto Exchange Zebpay to Relaunch Operations in India

Zebpay, the first cryptocurrency exchange in India, closed due to the Indian Reserve Bank cryptocurrency crackdown during 2018. It will now reopen operations with a new team behind it. While the cryptocurrency banking ban continues in India, and is making its way through the court system, ZebPay will relaunch their operation as a crypto-to-crypto exchange, and will also open funding investment opportunities for Indian nationals. The same difficulties that led to its closure are still present, so it is uncertain how Zebpay will operate in the country to sidestep these anti-crypto measures.

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