Wed 21/03

Good Morning. Our Referral program is live. Please see the bottom of the letter for more details 😀 . In news today; JP Morgan will introduce the settling of dollars in India using blockchain, Euler hacker is back, DefiLlama splits and Florida moves to ban CBDC

💥 JP Morgan To Introduce Dollar Blockchain Accounts In India: In India, Nostro accounts held at U.S.-based banks are typically used for dollar payments. However, JP Morgan's newly established branch in India's GIFT City, an international financial center, has been approved for a pilot program to serve as an international settlement bank for other GIFT City banks. In about a month's time, banks will be able to hold foreign currency accounts with JP Morgan in India as blockchain-based bank accounts, allowing for 24/7 settlement instead of being limited to U.S. opening hours. Several Indian banks and international systemic banks, including JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and MUFG, have opened branches in the GIFT city. JP Morgan will provide a sandbox environment that will allow these banks to open on-chain Nostro accounts. While the interfaces use standard SWIFT messages, the use of distributed ledger within JP Morgan's ecosystem enables instant settlement and 24/7 payments.

Crypto Hackers Promote Fake XRP Airdrop on News24 Twitter Account: The Twitter account of News24 was targeted in a recent cryptocurrency scam. The hackers were able to breach the security of the account and post phishing links related to a fake XRP drop, which encouraged people to click and potentially become victims of fraud. The hackers took over News24's Twitter account and posted false information about Ripple events, including an XRP airdrop, using compromised links and even featuring the image of Ripple's CEO to gain people's trust. Some of the fake announcements are still visible on the News24 Twitter account, indicating that the channel may have not noticed the issue or is struggling to deal with the attackers. It is possible that some of News24's 1.4 million followers may have fallen victim to the scam.

👀 Euler Hacker Offers To Negotiate Return Of Funds: Recently, a hacker who breached Euler Finance has made a move to return the stolen funds. On March 20, an on-chain message sent by the hacker to Euler Finance's deployer contract indicated their willingness to come to an agreement and return what they had taken. The message, which was in hexadecimal code and had to be converted to UTF-8 format to be read, stated that the hacker had no intention of keeping what was not theirs and was setting up secure communication. Previously, on March 16, Euler Finance had offered a bounty of $1 million for the return of 90% of the funds within 24 hours. Despite this, the attacker managed to steal various cryptocurrencies, including DAI, USDC, and WBTC, among other assets, amounting to almost $200 million when the project was hacked on March 13. Euler Finance was already aware of the breach and was cooperating with law enforcement at the time.

📸 DefiLlama Website Splits As One Founder Pushes For Token: A dispute has arisen within DefiLlama, a decentralized finance data site, as a result of a team member attempting to launch a token without the consent of the wider team. The original site was launched around October 2020 at defillama.com, but a new site with almost identical features has been launched at llama.fi. On March 19, 0xngmi, a member of the DefiLlama project, claimed that the majority of the team launched the second site as a response to a "hostile takeover" and an "ongoing attempt" to create a cryptocurrency token without the team's authorization. The team member known as 0xLlam4 reportedly plans to proceed with the token launch despite the team's objections, citing a lack of revenue for the site. As 0xLlam4 has control over the DefiLlama website and Twitter account, the other members of the team are unable to prevent the token launch directly.

📈 Influential Florida Governor DeSantis Proposes Law to Ban CBDCs: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is also a possible Republican U.S. presidential candidate, has put forward a legislative proposal that would ban the use of CBDC as a form of money in his state. He stated that the proposed law aims to protect Florida consumers and businesses from the adoption of a "centralized digital dollar", which he believes will stifle innovation and promote government-sanctioned surveillance. The governor has encouraged other states to follow suit by enacting similar legislation. President Joe Biden had previously issued an executive order directing the federal government to study the potential uses and risks of a CBDC. DeSantis has raised concerns about the privacy implications of a federal CBDC, as well as its potential to diminish the role of community banks and credit unions

NFTs, Explained: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are assets that have been tokenized via a blockchain. They are assigned unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from other tokens.