Tuzemun Ethereum, Facebook Pay launch, Bitcoin major theft

Ethereum price unexpectedly broke a two-year record, breaking the $400 mark for the first time.

On the night of August 14, the quotes of the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization reached the psychological level of $400 and fixed on top. At some point in time, the price of Ethereum exceeded $430.

Against this backdrop, according to Bitinfocharts, transaction fees on the Ethereum network continue to skyrocket. On Tuesday, August 11, the average transaction fee was $1.57, a new high in more than two years.

During the week, the commissions grew by 140%, and the increase over the month was 5.5 times.

The daily volume of transactions exceeded 1.25 million and continues to grow.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced a fiat lending service secured by bitcoin.

The service will be available to customers in 17 US states.

Initially, the maximum loan amount will be $20,000 per client, the total amount of funds issued will be limited to 30% of the value of the bitcoins on the balance sheet of the exchange.

German regulators intend to introduce blockchain into the securities market, replacing paper stocks and bonds with digital versions.

This bill was submitted by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. The statement emphasizes that the adoption and implementation of tokenized securities is one of the key aspects of the government's blockchain strategy.

It is expected that the transition from paper to digital versions will not only increase the liquidity of securities, but also provide better legal compliance.

Facebook Pay service was launched in Russia and Ukraine.

The company did not pre-announce the launch and at the moment the service is available in a limited mode. 

Earlier, the social network announced the creation of a new division called Facebook Financial, which will focus on the company's payment initiatives. His area of responsibility will include payment projects, including the Facebook Pay service, which the social network plans to integrate into all its applications.

Facebook expects that the integration of payment solutions will increase the cost of advertising on the network.

A public company has invested part of its capital in bitcoin for the first time.

MicroStrategy, which is represented on Nasdaq, acquired 21,454 BTC at the rate of $11,652. The transaction amount was $250 million. CEO Michael Saylor said that he considers bitcoin as a more reliable alternative to the dollar, which has undergone devaluation. The purchase of the first cryptocurrency affected the company's shares, they increased by 14.6% (Yahoo Finance).

Financial Monitoring of the Russian Federation has developed an AI-based system for tracking cryptocurrency transactions.

The system called “Transparent Blockchain” was created on the basis of bitcoin and will allow tracking the movement of assets, as well as identifying facts of illegal trafficking of digital funds.

The “transparent blockchain” is able to partially deanonymize users, classifying them into the most common patterns of behavior with transactions. Not only the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also financial regulators of other countries have already become interested in the development.

There was the largest attack of users to steal bitcoins through the Tor browser.

A group of hackers replaced crypto-currency sites with HTTPS addresses for users with less secure HTTP and were able to replace bitcoin addresses with their own. This method of fraud has long been known in the community, but not on such a scale. In August, the attackers controlled 10% of the exit nodes, and in May, all 23% of the nodes. It should be noted that vulnerabilities in Tor allow such attacks to be repeated in the future.