Coinbase announces Venture Fund for early stage blockchain startups

Coinbase is launching a venture fund to help early stage blockchain startups flourish. The company’s President and COO Asiff Hirji announced this on CNBC on Thursday.

We’re going to invest off our balance sheet into crypto companies,” Hirji said. “We will invest in companies that are in the space and are aligned with our values.”

Profits from the fund will be “de minimis” in the scope of the entire company but the fund is already off to a $15 million start and set to grow, Hirji told CNBC.

The investments will not have any bearing on the listing of coins on the exchange, Hirji clarified. “We are not investing in currencies because we do not want even the appearance of a conflict of interest”. Coinbase Ventures is searching for founders, not the next money-making cryptocurrency, he said.

Coinbase is also open to investing in companies that might be direct competitors to its own business, it announced on its official blog .

The company says that initially they are more interested in helping compelling startups flourish rather than setting out formal requirements. According to the announcement, they will not stress on formalizing partnership relationships as is standard with Venture Funds — that might mean not asking for a major chunk of equity or tokens from the company before offering funds or support.

Coinbase has also expressed it will favor support for people from its own alumni network: “People who have worked at Coinbase are encouraged to think entrepreneurially, and you can expect that we’ll enthusiastically invest in ideas from our own alumni network.”

Cambridge Analytica planned to launch a cryptocurrency for selling personal data

Cambridge Analytica (CA) has become a huge name in the data analytics space for all the wrong reasons in recent times, most notably for scraping profile information on some 87 million Facebook users for targeting them with content to influence their voting decisions.

Now, The New York Times reports that the company also had a cryptocurrency in the works. Its plans to launch an ICO and promote a virtual token to enable people to sell their personal data and profit from doing so have apparently been derailed by the recent Facebook scandal in which its data collection activities were exposed.

The revelation comes from former CA employee Brittany Kaiser, who left the company in February. She also recently claimed that CA used more than one Facebook quiz to gather data on users, and that the number of people that the company profiled is higher than the previously claimed figure of 87 million.

Kaiser was in charge of the coin offerings business at CA; the firm, which specializes in profiling people so their views can be influenced for political campaigns, is said to have offered its services to numerous companies building virtual currencies. And that’s where things get even more bizarre.

At one meeting, CA reportedly suggested paying people in far-flung parts of Mexico with cryptocurrency as a reward for filling out surveys; the data gathered from this exercise could be used to help fashion campaigns for political candidates in the country.

The CA cryptocurrency team also worked with Dragon Coin , a currency meant for use by gambling enthusiasts on the island of Macau. That currency is believed to be sponsored in part by Wan Kuok-koi , aka Broken Tooth, a leader of the 14K criminal triad based in Hong Kong. Naturally, Dragon Coin denies connections with Broken Tooth, even though documents obtained by the NYT indicate otherwise.

It’s possible that CA had more shady dealings with people’s data in the offing that we’re yet to hear about. Hopefully, Ms. Kaiser’s statements will encourage more employees within the firm to come forward to reveal what else went on behind closed doors.

Image credit: Tiago Peter / Dribbble

The Next Web’s 2018 conference is almost here, and it’ll be

Anonymous supposedly resurfaces to donate $75M in Bitcoin to privacy tech

A group claiming to be hacktivist organization Anonymous has supposedly pledged to donate $75 million in Bitcoin to startups and individuals working on anonymity propositions.

The Unknown Fund will apparently be used to boost the proliferation of privacy -preserving technologies, with a specific focus on startups and individuals working on personal data protection solutions, anonymity tools, cryptocurrency , and blockchain technology.

Anonymous is made up of unknown, tech-savvy people from different countries who met on the 4chan English-language imageboard.

“We are you, we are your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues. Our ranks consist of representatives of many countries and nationalities, united by a virtual comradely spirit and the belief that we are fighting for the good of many, and not for the benefit of some. Anonymous is the voice of those who believe in truth, freedom and the right to self-expression,” a statement released on Wednesday reads.

The protection of personal data , the “fund” says, is one of the main challenges facing humankind.

Citing examples such as Brexit or the last US presidential elections which saw Donald Trump make it into the White House, the fund goes on to say that “the use of data has already become a powerful tool for manipulating people .”

“The Unknown Fund also sees incredible opportunities to protect the rights and freedoms of people that technology such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies give us. This is a chance for humanity to create a new environment , a new and honest monetary system, and to make the world a better place,” they add.

Doubts about the fund’s legitimacy

Decentralized by nature, Anonymous was notorious for several DDoS cyber attacks against several governments , institutions, and corporations, allegedly motivated by social justice and a reaction against censorship.

The group captured the world’s attention through these attacks , but the arrests of five members of Lulz Security (LulzSec) — a black hat computer hacking group — in 2012 created a “huge deterrent effect ” on Anonymous and its activity .

The arrested individuals were described as “core” members of Anonymous and LulzSec. A sixth individual, who operated under a separate group called Antisec, was also arrested.

We reached out to Unknown Fund to find out more about their selection process and will update the piece when we hear back.

In the meantime, some people on Reddit are suggesting this may be a scam .

While nothing’s been confirmed, this pledge to donate money to anonymity -focused blockchain technology is a little surprising given that these solutions already exist in the industry to some degree . Monero , for example, is a privacy -focused cryptocurrency .

Additionally, many Bitcoin users have been anonymizing their usage using “ coin mixers,” resorting to services such as CoinJoin. In fact, a report published in April said that mixed cryptocurrency transactions accounted for more than 4 percent of all Bitcoin transactions.