British auction house Christie’s is where spectacular auctions take
place. Transactions that are carried out there are mentioned all over the
world. Many Christie’s auctions attract interest due to the fact that they may
be controversial, such as sale of an image created by artificial intelligence
or the work entitled “Femme assise près d’une fenêtre
(Marie-Thérèse)” by Pablo Picasso. Recently Christie’s announced that
another innovative auction is planned.
Namely its October “Post-War to Present” auction will include the
sale of 31 non-fungible tokens that are considered to be some of the oldest on
the Ethereum blockchain. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unit of data stored on
a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be
unique and therefore not interchangeable. This will be the first ever live
auction with bidding conducted entirely in Ether. The NFTs that Christie’s is
offering in the fall have distinct legacies of their own. They are also
estimated to sell for between 250 and 350 ETH, which shakes out to
approximately between $870,000 and $1.3 million. These NFTs are Curio Cards that
were made in May 2017, so even earlier than CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties.
Aside from the Curio Cards NFTs, Christie’s will be auctioning NFTs
from the Art Blocks curated collection. Modern artists would have possibility
to choose their favourite post-war artworks and pay for them in Ethereum. The
tokens are representing real-world objects like art, music, in-game items,
videos and other seemingly mundane everyday signifiers. Works by renowned
artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell and Grace
Hartigan will be part of the auction alongside works by Wayne Thiebaud.
The event definitely created a buzz among art enthusiasts. NFTs are highly valued digital assets which
uses blockchain to record the ownership status of the aforementioned items. After
the transaction only the buyer of an NFT has the official of being its owner.
However anyone can still view the item.
Recently, several large cryptocurrency-based auctions have brought
in huge amounts of money in the art world. The upcoming “Post-War to
Present” auction is sure to create a buzz among currency enthusiasts. One
thing we can be sure of – a digital revolution is coming, and the world of
cryptocurrencies will surprise us more than once.
We usually associate the cryptocurrency
environment with advanced security measures to secure financial resources.
There are even companies that offer cryptocurrency holders advanced methods of
securing their wealth through military technology. Nevertheless, the problem of
theft is not a foreign topic in the cryptocurrency community.
The graph above shows the size of
cryptocurrency theft over a period of 3 years. Different colors indicate
different cases of cryptocurrency theft, while the black line shows the number
of recorded incidents.
Almost all cases of cryptocurrency theft
fall into one of the three theft categories. The categories mentioned are:
Exchange attacks, attacks on individuals, DeFi exploits.
Exchange attacks
At this point, thieves have stolen
billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency by attacking exchange wallets. Many
companies, including such large and respected companies as Bitpoint, Binance,
DragonEx, have been the subject of keen interest from hackers. The question
arises as to how hackers managed to break through such advanced security. One
of the most common methods used by hackers is social engineering. A hacker
typically tries to trick employees of a particular cryptocurrency security company’s
customers into downloading special malware that will give them access to one or
more accounts. If the attacker is sufficiently determined, he will wait for
months or even longer, observing patterns of money inflows and outflows so that
he can sense the right moment to steal as much money as possible. What does
this look like in practice? In one
particularly audacious case, hackers set up a fake company, complete with
website, social media presence and executive resumes. On the fake website, the hackers posted that
they had created an automated trading bot and sent out several messages to
employees of the companies/exchanges asking them to download and try a free
trial version. At least one of the recipients was tempted by the offer. As it
later turned out, the “free trial” included malware that helped
hackers obtain the keys to private cryptocurrency wallets of several users.
Immediately after gaining access to these accounts, the hackers began siphoning
funds from these wallets. Hacking activity is a major threat for exchanges.
Illegal
organisations, or other illegal cryptocurrency entities, are groups transacting
with cryptocurrency whose activities do not necessarily rise to the level of
criminality, but are nevertheless considered risky due to activities balancing
on the edge of legality or reputational risk. One example of such entities are
implicitly sex-related sites such as RubRatings. The site in question allows
massage therapists to publish advertisements encouraging clients to use their
sexual services and includes Bitcoin as a payment option. While services
offered by the said website are as a rule legal, the RubRatings website implies
the availability of sexual services and the site itself is listed as a human
trafficking intermediary, therefore the RubRatings organisation, can be
categorised as illegal.
Domestic Extremism and Racial Hatred
Another
example relates to the organisations and public figures associated with
domestic extremism and racial hatred. Many of these organisations accept
donations in the form of cryptocurrencies, and it can be expected that more
will follow, as with the current interest in cryptocurrencies, organisations
will continue to move away from conventional payment. Examples confirming this
trend are publications such as the Daily Stormer, as well as the work of public
figures such as Nick Fuentes. Extremist rhetoric itself is generally not illegal
in most jurisdictions, but many of these groups have been linked to incidents
involving outright violence. Examples of such incidents include: The 2017 Unite
the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia or the 2021 riot in front of the
US Capitol. In the latter case, Chainalysis found that several people with
alt-right views, including some associated with the rally immediately preceding
the riot, had received large donations in bitcoin one month earlier.
Online
interrogation of a foreign witness by a Polish court in a commercial court case
– practical bullet points on the example of a specific witness summons.
Online interrogation of a foreign witness by a Polish court in a commercial court case – practical bullet points on the example of a specific witness summons.
The changes in the functioning of the
justice system caused by the COVID-19 have been ongoing since the first quarter
of 2020. The first of them were introduced in the Polish legal system at the
beginning of March 2020, and to date these regulations have already been
amended several times. The changes mainly concern court proceedings, the way in
which cases are dealt with, as well as the issue of questioning witnesses. The
present article will focus on the latter issue, in order to explain in detail
how a witness is summoned and examined by a Polish court.
In accordance with article 15 zzs1
of the Polish Act of March 2, 2020 on special solutions related to the
prevention, counteraction and combating of COVID-19, other infectious diseases
and crisis situations caused by them (hereinafter as the “Act”):
Plural
form of this phrase suggests that there is a set of various services, actions
that provide a financial (payment to be more precise) services to the merchant.
Merchant services are situated between the merchant and the costumer during the
commercial transaction, because the money should move through the merchant
services provider’s system. Merchant services are provided via credit cards,
debit cards, electronic payments methods. Typically the banks, credit card
companies or other businesses are providers of such services.
In
the cryptocurrency sector merchant services encompass cryptocurrency payment
services.
How
merchant services work?
Merchant
services receives cryptocurrency payment from a customer on behalf of the
merchant. A merchant will receive funds via immediate settlement to their bank
account, or may choose to settle in cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency
can now be accepted online and in person, for online transactions you will
require a payment gateway which will accept cryptocurrency. The most common way
is through bitcoin online payments; however, solutions are available for most
mainstream providers.
