Cryptocurrency This Week: Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan On CBDC & More

During CNBC’s ‘Beyond the Valley’ podcast, last month, former RBI governor and ex-IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan highlighted the role of cryptocurrencies or digital currencies in the central bank context and what they would mean for commerce. While talking about the central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), Rajan said that in the coming times, we will witness competition among central banks. 

He added that many countries are talking about digital currencies, and soon many will be implementing them. “Once the door of trust opens for these central banks, many countries might start looking into digital currencies,” he said.  

Citing China’s PBC’s digital Yuan, he said that there are broader rules that need to be defined before making it acceptable, including the safety of data transactions, among other issues that come with the usage of foreign digital currencies, and also CBDCs might disrupt dollarisation in smaller countries.

He also stated that private digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Facebook’s Libra could be ‘in competition’ with central banks. “I would like to think that Bitcoin and Libra are also competing with the central bank digital currency,” Rajan added. 

Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) at the time of writing was $11,937.22  with a market cap of $220, compared to last week (August 25, 2020) which stood at $11.705.88, with a market cap of $216 Bn. 

Ethereum (ETH), on the other hand, was priced at $482.53 , with a market cap of $54 Bn at the time of writing, compared to last week (August 25, 2020), where the price of the cryptocurrency was $384.8, with a market cap of $43 Bn. 

Cryptocurrency News Of The Week:

North Korean Hackers Attacks Crypto Companies Via Linkedin 

The North Korean ‘Lazarus’ hacker group is back in action, but this time hackers are targeting cryptocurrency companies by sending them phishing emails via Microsoft-owned LinkedIn. According to F-Secure, a global cybersecurity firm stated that a system administrator from the targeted organisation received a phishing document via their personal LinkedIn account. The cybersecurity research firm, in its statement, said that the document was duped as a legitimate job advert for a role in a blockchain technology company that matched the employee’s skills. 

Github User Loses 1,400 Bitcoin (BTC) 

A Github user recently lost 1,400 Bitcoin (BTC) via an elaborate hack that affected their Electrum wallet. N-chain’s analysis showed the hackers had a Binance account in St Petersburg, Russia. However, there is no clarity on how the attack was executed, as Electrum’s software is considered to be secured if properly configured. In the series of complaints, the user has mentioned about using an older version of wallet. 

Ouch. https://t.co/Dryl3d3Otz pic.twitter.com/iuSEr5so1Y

— Ben Verret⚡ (@verretor) August 30, 2020

China Quietly Disables Wallet After Its Soft Launch 

On August 29, the users of China Construction Bank (CCB), a state-owned commercial bank, started to notice that the central bank digital wallet feature was available inside the bank’s mobile app. According to Coindesk report, the users of the app were able to navigate to the digital yuan wallet service and activate it by registering with a mobile phone number associated with their bank accounts. 

As the news spread among the crypto enthusiasts and crypto communities, the state-owned commercial bank, immediately disabled the feature for public use. Searching for the same term on CCB’s app, now leads to a message, which reads: “This function is not yet officially available to the public. Please wait patiently.”