At least 95% of cryptocurrency crimes investigated by law enforcement involve bitcoin (BTC,) the co-founder and COO of Chainalysis told Fortune on April 24. Jonathan Levin, whose company offers investigation software for law enforcement to pursue bad actors, said BTC is “by far the favorite” for hackers and criminals. He revealed that law enforcement needs to take more sophisticated approaches to tackle darknets — and warned that the crypto industry was starting to see the beginnings of terrorism financing. Levin said the records left behind by crypto transactions has led to many arrests, as officials in the United States tackle …

A crypto company is launching “one of the first inter-blockchain, mobile decentralized exchanges” on April 23 — and says its platform is going to solve major problems currently seen in its centralized counterparts. According to the SovereignWallet Network, M.DEX is designed to address three key issues that have been having a detrimental effect on the usability and security of crypto transactions, for experienced consumers as well as newcomers. The first concerns the high risk of hacking associated with centralized exchanges. SovereignWallet says many of these rivals regularly perform virtual trading on their own databases to enhance transaction speeds and reduce …

Big Four auditing firm Ernst & Young (EY) has released two new blockchain developments, a new version of its Blockchain Analyzer and a zero knowledge proof protocol. The company revealed the products in two separate press releases on April 16. EY has launched the second generation of its analytics tool EY Blockchain Analyzer. While the first generation of the product was available to only EY audit teams facilitating gathering companies’ entire transaction data from multiple blockchain ledgers, the upgrade made the analyzer accessible for EY teams and non-audit customers as a business application. Paul Brody, EY Global Innovation Leader for …

An established blockchain ecosystem has launched a decentralized application (DApp) funding program worth $1.5 million to incentivize developers and enthusiasts to build applications with real value. WaykiChain says it will offer support of up to $15,000 for every decentralized application, along with other services that include tech support, branding and product marketing. The company hopes this program will help eliminate worries for developers and put them on a solid financial footing. Over time, WaykiChain believes this initiative will lead to a “long-lasting, stable, efficient, fair and sustainable ecosystem” where developers are driven to continue refining their DApps and build new …

American major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has expanded into cross-border payments. Coinbase revealed the development in an announcement on March 28. Coinbase customers can now transfer funds to any user with a Coinbase account around the world using Ripple (XRP) and the exchange’s stablecoin USDCoin (USDC) with no fee. The development reportedly enables users to send and receive money instantly, as well as convert them into local currency. March saw several new developments at Coinbase, including a service linking user accounts on its main platform to its Coinbase Wallet app, and a new market structure for the exchange’s professional trading platform, …

Blockchain consortium R3’s trade finance platform Marco Polo has completed its first real transactions, a press release from Commerzbank, one of the participants, confirmed on March 28. Marco Polo, which is built on R3 enterprise blockchain platform Corda, successfully facilitated a trade between Germany and China, involving two German firms. Tech group Voith and pump manufacturer KSB SE were the initiators of the transactions, which constituted a pilot scheme for Marco Polo. One transaction saw couplings delivered from Germany to China, while a second was based on hydraulic pumps delivered solely within Germany. The banks facilitating the operation were German …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed that wallets charge a gas fee for transactions in order to support developers in a tweet on March 8. Gas is a unit for measuring the computational work of operating transactions or smart contracts in the Ethereum network, wherein different kinds of transactions require a different volume of gas to execute. Gas price is the price of ETH a user wants to pay for every unit of gas measured in gwei, while gas limit represents the maximum amount of gas a user will pay for a transaction. In the tweet, Buterin stated: “I propose …

Blockchain property transaction platform blockkimo Ltd along with two other companies have jointly completed “the first” real estate transaction on a blockchain in Switzerland. The development was announced by blockimmo in a blog post on Mar. 1. Blockimmo, proptech company Elea Labs Ltd. and digital assets service firm Swiss Crypto Tokens Ltd. have conducted a blockchain-based real estate transaction — consisting of 18 apartments and a restaurant — at a cost of 3 million Swiss francs ($2.98 million). The property was reportedly tokenized, which means that its real asset value is now represented digitally on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain in …

Ripple, the firm behind the current third top crypto XRP, has introduced a major network upgrade of its XRP Ledger version 1.2.0, according to an official announcement on Feb. 13. The XRP ledger is a decentralized cryptographic ledger that stores XRP and is powered by a network of peer-to-peer (P2P) servers.With the release of the Ripple’s blockchain upgrade, servers will be able to automatically detect transaction censorship attempts and issue warnings of increasing severity for transactions, the announcement says. The XRP Ledger version 1.2.0 includes a number of network amendments, including MultisignReserve Amendment, fixTakerDryOfferRemoval and fix1578 Amendments. The MultisignReserve amendment …

Finance platform SDK.finance has partnered with Oracle to use the Oracle Blockchain Platform to improve payments processes and remove intermediaries. The partnership was announced in a press release published on Feb. 12. SDK.finance is a European-based fintech startup that offers a payment platform for banks and financial institutions. In 2015, the company was reportedly recognized as the best fintech startup by the Central European Startups Awards, while in 2018 it overcame other major industry players in terms of application programming interface (API) endpoints. By integrating the Oracle platform, SDK.finance reportedly aims to boost payment processes, also making them more cost …

Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees are at new lows, according to a new report published by crypto and blockchain research firm Diar on Feb. 11. While BTC transactions struck a one-year high in January, almost reaching the levels registered in 2017, the median transactions value in BTC have reportedly dropped. BTC median fees have reportedly decreased to 2014 levels: “Median Fees are also at levels not seen since 2015 despite the total monthly Bitcoins moved on-chain standing at higher levels than seen throughout most of 2018.” Last month, Diar reported that cryptocurrency exchanges closed 2018 with “record transacting volumes,” where the …

Iran is reportedly negotiating with eight countries to carry out financial transactions in cryptocurrency, local daily newspaper Tehran Times reports on Monday, Jan. 28. According to the article, Iran has already entered negotiations with Switzerland, South Africa, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, Germany and Bosnia, and the countries have reportedly visited Iran to discuss the matter. It was not immediately clear whether the news concerns the national cryptocurrency that Iran is allegedly set to launch vin the near future. However, the article notes that the talks on crypto transactions were held order to circumvent the ongoing United States sanctions …