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Here the Post examines the dispute and what Hongkongers can do to safeguard their biometric information.

The privacy commissioner carried out 10 undercover visits at six locations involved in the Worldcoin project between December 2023 and January 2024.

The watchdog raided six of the premises, at Yau Ma Tei, Kwun Tong, Wan Chai, Cyberport, Central and Causeway Bay, on January 31.

The investigation found the initiative required participants to provide facial and iris scans to verify their humanness and create a digital passport, a type of registered identity, in exchange for free cryptocurrency tokens.

Biometric information was collected from 8,302 individuals across the city.

But the watchdog slammed the Worldcoin project for illegally collecting private information.

Officials also highlighted the absence of Chinese versions of documents such as a privacy notice and a biometric data consent form.

The watchdog ruled Worldcoins information-collecting method was unfair because it failed to keep participants informed of possible risks related to disclosure of biometric information and did not answer reasonable questions.

The privacy commissioner added the company had also not adequately explained to participants important details, such as the purpose of the information collection and the voluntary nature of participation.

The watchdog criticised the project policy of data retention for up to 10 years to train artificial intelligence software for user verification as excessively long.

Cayman Islands-based Worldcoin Foundation, which is behind the project, said it was disappointed by the views by the regulatory authorities.

It stressed it operated within the law and was designed to be compliant with laws and regulations on data collection and use in Hong Kong, as well as in many other markets.

Worldcoin said that the foundation continued to raise the privacy bar through data minimisation, user control over data and advanced technology such as personal custody, iris code deletion and secure multiparty computation.

Unfortunately, the authorities in Hong Kong overlooked these aspects in their evaluation of the humanness verification process, a company spokesman said.

But Worldcoin did not say whether it would stick to the watchdogs ruling to suspend its biometric data collection operations in the city or tackle the concerns of participants.

The privacy commissioner on Thursday said it had no further comment, but emphasised that an enforcement notice had been served on Worldcoin.

Technology company Tools for Humanity, co-founded by Altman, launched the Worldcoin project in 2023.

It claims to have signed up more than 5.3 million applicants from more than 160 countries and territories.

Worldcoin has come in for scrutiny in a variety of countries over privacy concerns linked to its collection of biometric information. Its operations have been suspended in Spain, Portugal and Kenya.

Ronald Pong, the chairman of a committee of the Smart City Consortium, warned people to be vigilant when their biometric data was collected.

He said the nature of biometric information meant that, once it was leaked, the individual would lose all control over its use.

Dont ever surrender your bodily features as a means of authentication because, purely in technical terms, your iris patterns, fingerprints and voiceprints are among the most robust authentication methods, he said.

There is a significant issue once you hand over this information. If the mechanism responsible for safeguarding this data fails and a breach occurs, you cannot simply obtain new bodily features, as you would with replacing a lost identification card.

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Why Hongkongers should protect biometric information: the Post talks to experts - South China Morning Post

Crypto proponents have for years been asking for something that many other industries try to avoid regulation. With a vote in the House on Wednesday, they finally got their wish.

The Houses approval of a bill that provides guidelines for the Securities and Exchange Commissions regulatory authority over cryptocurrency is likely to stir renewed debate in the Senate, which has several proposals of its own regarding how to supervise the monetary innovations.

Congressman French Hill, a Republican from Arkansas and one of the bills backers, said before the House vote that the legislation is needed to prevent the SEC from pursuing what he called an agenda of regulation by enforcement. The uncertainty, he said, now leaves cryptocurrency firms fearing that theyll be subject to litigation at a moments notice if they continue to operate in America.

Late Wednesday, the House voted 278 to 136 to pass the measure. President Biden has said he will not veto the bill if it gets through the Senate and lands on his desk.

The Houses framework would result in most digital currencies and coins being placed under the regulatory authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has taken a more accommodating approach to cryptocurrencies than the SEC. Skeptics are likely to argue that regulation in and of itself doesnt protect the value or stability of a currency.

They are likely to point to the United States Federal Reserve Notes that are legal tender yet have shed more than 99 percent of their value just since the end of the Bretton Woods agreement. A dollar at the time had a value of a 35th of an ounce of gold. Today the value of a one-dollar Federal Reserve Note has plunged to less than a 2,500th of an ounce of gold.

In any event, the bill on cryptocurrencies would define several exceptions to the SECs jurisdiction of assets defined as securities such as Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies whose value is pegged to another asset such as fiat currency or a commodity and instead places them under the purview of the commodities regulation agency.

The chairman of the SEC, Gary Gensler, denounced the bill on the grounds that it would create new regulatory gaps and undermine decades of precedent regarding the oversight of investment contracts, putting investors and capital markets at immeasurable risk, he said in a statement hours before the House vote.

Mr. Gensler noted that the crypto industrys record of failures, frauds and bankruptcies is not because we do not have rules or because the rules are unclear.

As it stands currently, the SEC contends that cryptocurrencies are subject to the agencys regulation if they qualify as an investment contract. The definition, known as the Howey test, comes from a 1946 Supreme Court ruling about orange grove sales.

Following several high-profile cryptocurrency platform bankruptcies in 2022, the SEC stepped up its scrutiny of cryptocurrencies and their exchanges, bringing 46 enforcement actions against 124 defendants, the highest number since 2013.

The SECs regulatory actions include lawsuits against two of the largest crypto exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, for failing to register with the agency. Both cases, which are pending in court, hinge on whether cryptocurrencies classify as securities and are thus subject to the SECs regulation.

The SEC under Gensler is dead set on enforcing rules that, if followed, would kill off almost all of crypto, warned an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Omid Malekan.

The Heritage Foundations lobbying arm, Heritage Action, has criticized the federal regulatory agenciess approach to cryptocurrency. The SEC and CFTC have had more than a decade to promulgate rules governing digital assets, yet the SEC has utterly failed to do so and the CFTC has provided only minimal guidance, Heritage Action says, according to a report in Politico. Instead, both agencies have chosen regulation by enforcement and have done it poorly.

Frustration over the status quo has been similarly voiced by a coalition of over 50 digital asset companies, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Andreessen Horowitz, which issued a joint statement in support of the bill.

Currently, digital assets firms are instructed to somehow comply with U.S. securities laws that were designed nearly 100 years ago without consideration of the technological advances of today, including the ability for transactions to move at the speed of the internet, they wrote.

Ahead of Wednesdays vote, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the ranking member on the House Financial Services committee, called the bill the worst, most awful, regulatory proposal in a long time.

Ms. Waters argues that adequate laws are already in place to regulate cryptocurrencies. Our securities laws which have worked for every other industry for 90 years can also work for crypto firms, she said in a 2023 committee hearing on digital assets.

The head of a state regulatory body, the Idaho Securities Bureau, John Yaros, tells the Sun that there is lingering confusion over which cryptocurrencies fall under the category of securities and are thus subject to the SECs jurisdiction.

Nobody really knows when something is a security, when something is a commodity, when something is a bank product, such as a payment type tool or anything else along those lines, he says.

The lack of a regulation framework, he adds, leaves many businesses confused over which rules they are supposed to abide by and thus always concerned about being a target of regulatory action. Without clear regulatory perimeters, Mr. Yaros says, businesses are left in a no-mans land.

This bill joins other digital currency proposals in the Senate, including a bipartisan proposal from Senators Lummis and Gillibrand that, they contend, appropriately balances consumer protections while allowing innovation to continue.

Their proposed bill places crypto assets within the regulatory perimeter, the senators said in a statement, while requiring all crypto asset exchanges to register, and addressing the issue of decentralized finance.

The legislation, in what could set up a point of contention with the House-backed bill, also codifies the criteria to determine which crypto assets are securities or commodities.

The two senators are also pushing a separate bill to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins, a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset.

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House Passes Over SEC Objections Long-Awaited Bill Carving Out a Cryptocurrency Regulatory Framework - The New York Sun

Cryptocurrencys disruptive financial value has still not allowed it to escape the reputation of being complicated to use, despite institutional and commercial adoption rising globally. Theres a blueprint for scaling this wall, though. DeFi apps like Venmo and Robinhood were among the first to make online banking and investing accessible to everyone by leveraging intuitive, educational, and community-oriented features incentivizing community-based user behavior to drive growth. This drove scalar adoption and intergenerational user acquisition in Millennial and Gen Z user groups. It made fun and social interactions within apps their standard for money transfers and small-dollar investing, not uncomfortable formal bank visits and FA calls. Doing the same with cryptocurrency and onboarding the next billion users will require similar approaches while capitalizing on novel use cases. Below, I explore ways Web3 fintech companies are breaking the mold and why now may be a watershed Web3 moment in DeFi.

The complexity and intimidation non-crypto users face when engaging with digital finance and crypto/web3 make for a significant adoption problem that hasnt been solved uniformly across blockchainsthe result: an overall low crypto adoption rate within the general public. Traditional platforms have often not been user-friendly, creating a significant barrier to entry for the average person, and hindering the widespread adoption of cryptocurrency. Engagement and trust among potential crypto users toward crypto have also been historically low. The complex nature of traditional crypto platforms set the stage early for a dogged reputation for being inaccessible, or only for the technically savvy, which has continued to slow down mainstream adoption and trust in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Exchanges have been refining their wallets for some time with educational resources and features incentivizing transactions at every level from users at varying levels of sophistication, converting new crypto users into more seasoned ones. Platforms that serve non-crypto users in this same way are collectively an enormous avenue to bridge this significant market gap. Offering simplicity and diversity in their range of intuitive, user-friendly design features, these crypto apps help those new to cryptocurrency learn, buy, use, and invest with minimal stress.

Coinbase is the most obvious example here, given its range of educational tools on ways to use it; buy, hold, trade cryptocurrency, and more. Simplicity in crypto means meeting users where they are, and many still experience difficulty with even Web2 apps and services. Breaking down technical barriers by fostering user-friendly environments can encourage widespread cryptocurrency adoption.

Metamask, the leading Web3 wallet, has an entire site dedicated to teaching crypto newbies about Web3 and how it factors into Metamask as a wallet. The Web3 dApp giant and leading self-custodial wallet, with 30 million monthly active users, takes painstaking measures to ensure that its users have the best understanding possible as to how to use it and leverage it as a tool for dApp creation and cryptocurrency trading with a responsive mobile UI, DEX, and swap services. Teaching novices and specialists alike results in greater usage, more varied data for model training and overall functional rounding for future innovation and development, which drives growth.

Psi Finance takes an innovative approach to spurring crypto adoption by leveraging design. By seamlessly integrating traditional TradFi app features like no-fee asset purchasing and peer-to-peer transfers and payments, theyre bringing cryptocurrency to users in a way theyre already used to banking every day. Blending common banking and payment app features with DeFi functionality like onboarding/off-ramping and native escrow, combined with a social digital wallet for seamless payments might sound like Venmo, MobilePay, and Revolut rolled into one. Still, its one app that feels like using everyday banking apps. With an open presale and live tranche, theyre open to engaging at the ground level! A gateway welcoming millions to crypto offering simplicity and user-friendliness as a Web3 bridge from TradFi to DeFi, Psi Finance is targeting a vast, untapped market for entry into a user-centric future of cryptocurrency payments and trading.

Simplifying crypto doesnt have to be hard, but the number of companies doing it right makes it look that way. Most top wallets like Coinbase, Metamask, andUniswap have educational modules that help users understand how to use them, which is one way. Meeting users where they already are with features theyre used to is another way - leveraging intuitive features to speed adoption. Check out these apps for your crypto needs today!

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Meeting Users Where They Are Drives Cryptocurrency Adoption - hackernoon.com

U.Today - Samson Mow, former Blockstream CSO and now the chief executive officer at adoption-focused company Jan3, is a radical Bitcoin maximalist.

As the deadline for the SEC to reveal its decision on spot ETFs is drawing closer, Mow began to slam Ethereum-based ETFs. In a recent tweet, this $1 million Bitcoin advocate wrote that he is expecting them to be beaten by Bitcoin-based ones.

Besides, he believes now is the last time for holders to sell Ethereum at a good price against Bitcoin.

For those who are in doubt, the Bitcoin maximalist suggested comparing demand for both BTC and ETH on other markets and said it is important to consider that Ethereum will not give staking rewards.

Mow concluded his tweet by saying that now is the last chance to sell ETH above 0.05 BTC.

In the comments to his root tweet, Samson added that he expects the news of the potential approval to become one of the biggest sell the news events this year.

When a commentator pointed out that there is no company of the scale of MicroStrategy, which is acquiring Ethereum now in the same amounts as Michael Saylors company, is accumulating Bitcoin.

Contrary to Mow, Bitcoiner and VC investor Anthony Pompliano believes that the potential approval of Ethereum ETFs by the SEC could become the last dam to be broken before the U.S. approves the entire cryptocurrency space.

The BlackRock (NYSE:) fund remains the leader among ETFs, with $92 million coming into it on Wednesday. On May 21, BlackRocks IBIT had the largest inflow over the past 32 trading days - $291 million.

This article was originally published on U.Today

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'$1 Million Bitcoin' Advocate Samson Mow Reveals Last Chance to Sell ETH - Investing.com

MUC tokens will be listed on MEXC, the top global cryptocurrency exchange at 7am, May 24th (UTC). MEXC is the second global exchange for MUC after MUC was listed on Gate.io in April, allowing more global users to trade MUC tokens.

MEXC is an exchange that remains one of the top ranked exchanges according to CoinMarketCap, with more than 2,200 listed tokens and a daily trading volume of $1.2 billion. MEXC, which has seen a steep growth of 5% of the global digital asset trading market share within a year since its establishment in 2018, has been honored to be awarded the Best Crypto Exchange Asia at the 2021 Crypto Expo Dubai event.

MUC is a utility token project operated by Comseed Korea, a 100% subsidiary of Comseed, a Japanese listed company, and is a project to build an ecosystem centered on the original PFP projects and GameFi. Currently, projects within the MUC ecosystem include TMHC (Tokyo Mongz Hills Club), a famous PFP project that has been very successful in Japan, PEACHz.MOMO, a PFP project that was sold out in seven minutes in the second sale, and a blockchain game, UNIVERSAL STALLION.

UNIVERSAL STALLION is the first DAPP of the MUC ecosystem and a real-world horse racing simulation blockchain game featuring a legendary Japanese racehorse. With various promotions including advertisements in Shinjuku Station, Tokyo, it is attracting a lot of attention for its launch in June this year. MUC tokens can be used in the games on its own ecosystem including Universal Stallion and several affiliated projects. CommSeed Korea intends to gradually expand the MUC ecosystem with new games using multiple IPs.

CommSeed is a Japanese listed company and a game company that has launched numerous mobile games, including Japans largest virtual pachinko hall, and is serving a number of pachinko and pachislot games using famous Japanese IPs such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Monster Hunter. CommSeed Korea, a subsidiary of the company, develops mobile games and conducts blockchain content business. CommSeed Korea is well known for its publishing world-famous IP Attack on Titan game in Korea along with the MUC token project. In addition, CommSeed Korea is also working on original IP projects, so it plans to expand the MUC token ecosystem by adding new contents based on original IPs.

In commemoration of MUCs listing on MEXC, MEXC hosts an airdrop event called Kickstarter where MUC tokens are given to MEXC users who deposit more than 1,000 MX tokens at 5am, May 23rd(UTC). More information can be found on MEXC, MUC official X account, Telegram, and Medium.

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MUC Listed on Top Global Cryptocurrency Exchange, MEXC - Crypto Reporter