February 26, 2019 – FinTech and Blockchain Law Watch

Senate Committee publishes report and recommendations on regulation of Australian buy now pay later industry

Feb 26 2019

Following on from the Senate Hearings in January 2019, the Economic References Committee (Committee) published its Report on credit and financial services targeted at Australians at risk of financial hardship.

In addressing the current regulation of the buy now pay later (BNPL) industry, the Committee raised its concerns about the ease of accessibility of BNPL services to consumers experiencing financial hardship. Despite BNPL businesses, such as AfterPay and Zip.co stating that they already had algorithms in place to detect whether it was appropriate to provide services to an individual, the Committee stated that “clearly more needs to be done to ensure consumers are protected, and company algorithms alone are not sufficient.”

Surge In Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacking Activity

Feb 26 2019

By Jim Bulling and Edwin Tan

Cryptocurrency exchanges have always been a prime target for hacking activity due to the vast amounts of cryptocurrency and money held within each exchange. Finding and exploiting weaknesses in exchanges can be very profitable for hackers, and such hacking activity has grown exponentially year on year.

In late December 2018, Coindesk published an article revealing that the amount of cryptocurrency stolen from exchanges increased 13 times in 2018 compared to 2017. Analytics firm Chainalysis reported that approximately $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from digital currency exchanges in 2018.

Archive:February 26, 2019