Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you to track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Swiss Crypto Firm X8 AG Receives Islamic Finance Certification for Sharia-Compliant Stablecoin Swiss-based fintech firm X8 AG has received a certification from the Shariyah Review Bureau (SRB) for its Ethereum-based stablecoin. According to the X8 director and co-founder, the ETH-based crypto asset is backed by a basket of eight fiat currencies and gold, …

A recent Bitcoin scam on Twitter that compromised several major companies verified accounts came from a third-party app, tech news outlet the Next Web (TNW) reports Friday, Nov. 16, citing social media officials. Speaking to TNW, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the attack came from an outside software provider and not from Twitter’s own system. However, the official refrained from naming the app. The spokesperson reportedly explained that the attackers exploited a third-party marketing solution to launch a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway from several verified accounts, including Google’s G Suite and major U.S. department store retailer Target. The information was implicitly …

Malware researcher Lukas Stefanko has found four fake cryptocurrency wallets on the Google Play Store that were trying to steal users’ personal data, according to a blog post published Nov. 13. The apps were posing as cryptocurrency wallets for NEO, Tether and an extension for accessing Ethereum (ETH), MetaMask. They were purportedly designed to phish users’ mobile banking credentials and credit card information. Stefanko classified the wallets into two groups, wherein the fake MetaMask app was a “phishing wallet” and the other three apps were “fake wallets.” Once the phishing app is installed and launched, it requests the user's private …

The official Twitter account of Google's G Suite was reportedly compromised to promote a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway scam, technology and business news outlet the Next Web reported Nov. 13. The G Suite Twitter account was reportedly hacked to advertise a BTC giveaway scam to the page’s more than 800,000 followers. Scammers supposedly spread a message luring users to participate in a fraudulent 10,000 BTC giveaway, concurrently announcing that Google’s G Suite now accepts cryptocurrency as a means of payment. Screenshot of the scam message. Source: The Next Web According to the Hard Fork, the message disappeared barely more than 10 …

Blockchain will “probably take a little longer” to develop than the internet, because it is “much more complicated,” ConsenSys creator Joseph Lubin told German media outlet t3n in an interview, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported Nov. 9. Lubin, who is also the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), told reporters that blockchain technology is developing in a similar way to the web, citing its exponential growth with “hundreds of projects that are already practical for humans” to date. Based on blockchain’s use case for decentralized cryptocurrencies, the digital entrepreneur also suggested that distributed ledger technology (DLT) will be able to “permeate society more …

Dapper Labs, developer of the world’s most used blockchain app CryptoKitties, has received $15 million in another financing round, global news agency PR Newswire reported on Nov. 1. The new funding will help the Canada-founded Dapper Labs to expand it services on a local and global scale, as well as to address infrastructure issues and to boost mainstream adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT). According to the press release, the company is planning to set up a subsidiary in the U.S. headed by execs from video gaming firms Unity and Disney. Led by Venrock, the official venture capital arm of …

The mobile app version of the currently most-downloaded Ethereum Chrome browser extension MetaMask was revealed during Ethereum’s annual Devcon conference Oct. 31, according a tweet from the CEO of ConsenSys Joseph Lubin. Lubin, whose New York-based Ethereum blockchain software firm and incubator ConsenSys has been working on MetaMask since 2016, stated in the tweet: “Everyone's favorite Ethereum browser extension is coming to your phone. The team is focusing on not being ‘just a wallet,’ but a portal to the world of all things blockchain.” MetaMask, an extension available for Chrome, Firefox and Brave with more than one million downloads in …

Ripple has recently hired a former senior developer at Google’s new wireless messaging service as vice president of products, Reuters reports Friday, Oct. 26. The U.S. tech company that backs the third top cryptocurrency by market cap, Ripple (XRP), has confirmed to Reuters that Amir Sarhangi is leaving his position at Google to lead Ripple’s global payments network, RippleNet. Sarhangi reportedly joined Google in 2015 when the tech giant acquired Jibe Mobile, a startup that he founded to develop technology for wireless carriers to implement rich communication system (RCS). The RCS technology standard is considered to be a successor to …

Google entered the cryptocurrency-as-money debate on Tuesday, Oct. 9, arguing over its validity during an introductory video for a new feature from its Google Assistant tool. While demonstrating how its Call Screen caller ID function works, two Google presenters enter into a brief discussion about cryptocurrency in a spoof argument. The Call Screen shows the identity of an incoming call as being from the “electric company,” and the call’s purpose — Call Screen’s other feature — as one presenter’s “bill being super high.” “Cryptocurrency mining takes a lot of energy,” the presenter argues, which elicits the response from the other: …

Google’s new restrictions on Chrome Web Store extensions introduced Monday, October 1, are likely to affect cryptojackers. In a blog post, Google confirmed that as of now, Chrome extensions submitted to the Web Store would not be allowed if they contained “obfuscated” code. Aside from the security implications, obfuscated code, which the post describes as “mainly used to conceal code functionality,” “adds a great deal of complexity” to the process of reviewing extensions for approval. Cryptojackers rely on the clandestine insertion of malicious malware into scripts, allowing them to mine for cryptocurrencies without those being hacked noticing. In May, cybersecurity …

Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you to track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Google Reverses Crypto Ad Ban, Allows Crypto Exchanges In Japan, US To Advertise The U.S. tech giant Google is set to update its ad policy in October, re-allowing registered cryptocurrency exchanges located in the U.S. and Japan to advertise. According to the official announcement, starting in October, Google will allow registered cryptocurrency exchanges …

The U.S. tech giant Google is set to update its ad policy in October, reallowing some crypto businesses to advertise on its platform. The company announced this in an official post Tuesday, September 25. According to the official announcement, starting in October Google will allow registered cryptocurrency exchanges to advertise on its Google Adwords platform, targeting the U.S. and Japanese audiences. The announcement says: “Advertisers will need to be certified with Google for the specific country in which their ads will serve. Advertisers will be able to apply for certification once the policy launches in October.” This decision follows an …