Blockchain will drive global growth by 2030

Blockchain will drive global economic growth of $ 1.76 trillion by 2030

PwC economists predict that a tipping point will come in 2025 if blockchain is widely deployed around the world. In addition, blockchain applications are expected to drive global gross domestic product (GDP) growth of $ 1.76 trillion (1.4%) by 2030.

Blockchain will have the biggest impact on the Asian economy as China, India and Japan drive technology adoption across the region, according to the report. China may receive the highest net profit of $ 440 billion, and the US - $ 407 billion. According to analysts, the economies of Germany, Japan, Britain, India and France can expect to grow to $ 50 billion over the same period.

The report identifies five key blockchain applications with potential to create economic value: product supply chain tracking ($ 962 billion), financial services and payments ($ 433 billion), identity and credential security ($ 224 billion), contracts and dispute resolution ($ 73 billion). , customer acquisition and reward programs ($ 54 billion).

The government, education and health sectors will benefit the most ($ 574 billion) by "capitalizing on the efficiency that blockchain brings to the world of identity and credentials." A PwC survey found that 61% of CEOs worldwide include digital transformation of their core business operations as one of their top three priorities.

“Serious blockchain activities are now affecting industries around the world,” PwC Blockchain Leader Steve Davies said in a report. He also added that the acceleration of the introduction of revolutionary technologies in business is caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Ripple CTO talks about his "$ 15 million mistake"

Schwartz wrote that as part of reducing the risk from cryptocurrency investments in 2012, he sold 40,000 ETH for $ 1 and an unnamed amount of BTC for $ 750 and XRP for $ 0.01. Obviously, there is a typo in his message, since in 2012 ETH and XRP did not exist yet, and bitcoin was worth less than $ 30. Probably, we are talking about 2016, and Schwartz did not sell cryptocurrencies in one day.

At the current exchange rate, 40,000 ETH is worth about $ 15.3 million. Schwartz explained that the decision to get rid of these digital assets was made jointly with his wife in order to reduce the risks in his portfolio of cryptocurrency assets. Now, however, a Ripple employee regrets selling them at such a low rate, missing out on a potential profit of tens of millions of dollars.

Hackers stole $ 23 million through fake Electrum wallet update

Fraudsters stole 1,980 bitcoins ($ 23.15 million) using a fake Electrum Bitcoin wallet update.

ZDNet researchers tracked several accounts to which cybercriminals transferred bitcoins stolen in 2019-2020

The hackers received most of the stolen cryptocurrency as a result of one incident, when 1,400 bitcoins were stolen from one of Electrum users in August.

The malicious version of the wallet asks the user for a one-time password required to transfer money.

Most users enter the code, confident that they are using the official version of Electrum, and thus give permission to transfer assets.

Wasabi Wallet patches a vulnerability that threatened the ability to anonymize bitcoin transactions

Wasabi wallet users need to update to the latest version if they want to keep access to the CoinJoin feature to help hide their transaction history. Older wallets can no longer mix coins with the latest wallets.

A new version of the Wasabi Wallet software was unveiled on Thursday, according to a project blog post, which fixed a vulnerability discovered by an employee of the Trezor hardware wallet company.

Wasabi Wallet developers were notified of the possibility of potential DoS attacks on their service on May 10. They argue that in practice, such attacks have never been carried out, but could disrupt the functioning of the CoinJoin privacy protocol.

A successful attack would stop the process of mixing user coins. An attacker could intervene with a mismatch between the number of inputs and outputs when mixing, which would make it impossible to generate a valid output transaction. However, it would be impossible to steal users' bitcoins or de-anonymize their transactions in this case.

"The vulnerability has been fixed and can no longer be exploited by a potential attacker," the message says.