Police are cautioning the public to 'talk to your older relatives and neighbors about scams as they are often the targeted population.'

CLEVELAND After the owner of a Westlake convenience store helped thwart an alleged attempted cryptocurrency con involving an elderly near-victim, police are advising the public on warning signs to avoid scams.

Westlake police say on Thursday, April 4, a convenience store owner became concerned after seeing an "older gentleman" depositing large amounts of cash into a cryptocurrency ATM in the store. Police say the man was being instructed on what to do by someone over the phone.

"Knowing that these were signs that a scam was underway, WPD detectives responded to attempt to stop the theft," the WPD said in a news release. "Luckily the officers were able to stop the crypto-currency transaction before it was finalized and funds passed to the perpetrators."

According to police, the man had been targeted with a pop-up on his home computer saying that his computer had been "compromised."

Police said the scammers tried to scare the man into transferring the funds by falsely telling him that criminals had traded in child porn on his computer and that he would be implicated if he did not pay the scammers to "clean up" the device.

The WPD is highlighting the attempted scam to caution the public to talk to older relatives and neighbors about how to spot a scam, noting that seniors are often the targeted population of fraudulent activity.

"Do not call phone numbers on unexpected pop-ups on computers, or unexpected emails, texts or phone calls," the WPD says. "If someone is instructing you to buy gift cards to pay for debts, warrants or computer support it is a scam. If someone instructs you to keep them on the phone when you go to the bank to withdraw cash or when depositing funds in a Crypto-ATM, IT IS A SCAM!"

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Westlake convenience store owner helps thwart crypto scam - WKYC.com

HashKey Group, operator of one of only two licensed cryptocurrency exchanges in Hong Kong, is teaming up with the operator of the blockchain created by Telegram Messenger to give users an on- and off-ramp by exchanging their so-called Toncoins for cash.

The agreement applies to users in the Asia-Pacific region and will see the two organizations work on new ecosystem projects by providing mentorship, networking opportunities, and other incubation activities, TON Foundation said in an announcement on Friday.

The foundation governing TON an acronym that once stood for Telegram Open Network and now means simply The Open Network was set up after Telegram was forced to abandon the blockchain because of a settlement with the US Securities and Futures Commission in 2020. The separate organisation has continued to develop the blockchain and later integrated it into Telegram through a mini app and business arrangements.

This is potentially quite massive, TON Foundation president Steve Yun said. He referenced HashKeys regulatory compliance as a way to help with know-your-customer (KYC) rules. We do take strategic steps to make sure we follow the compliance requirements.

Hong Kongs HashKey crypto exchange takes aim at Coinbase with global platform

Even as TON has sought to keep itself separate from Telegram, the main utility of its blockchain remains tied to the popular messaging app, which has more than 900 million users globally, according to Yun. While anyone can build mini apps integrating other public blockchains into Telegram, the TON Foundation pays for premium real estate in the app, making it the default wallet option in the sidebar.

However, TON is still grappling with regulatory issues. To avoid complications, it bars people in certain jurisdictions such as the US, China and Hong Kong from using the cryptocurrency function within Telegram.

TON is betting on the mini app ecosystem on Telegram as a means of driving adoption of its blockchain, which Yun said can scale better than most blockchains because of its use of sharding a means of breaking up a blockchain into different segments.

Greater adoption means more users will be looking for ways to convert their tokens to cash and vice versa. TON also sees Asia as a natural fit because they are already used to the super app concept, according to Yun, hence the team-up with HashKey in the region.

Where in the world do [people] know how to build mini apps as part of a super app? Not many places, Yun said. Eastern Europe because VK is popular. [Asia-Pacific] because of Line, Kakao and WeChat.

The agreement also adds to HashKeys recent expansion efforts. The Hong Kong-based company became the second licensed crypto exchange operator in the city in 2022, nearly two years after BC Technology Group, which operates the OSL exchange.

The local crypto firm known today mostly just in Hong Kong has been looking to transform itself into a major international player. Livio Weng, the chief operating officer, said this week that HashKey intends to surpass Coinbase in trading volume by 2030. Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US, currently has around 30 times the 24-hour trading volume of HashKey.

Teaming with TON foundation offers it a different avenue to scale than Coinbase, which has seen its fortunes rise with the popularity of bitcoin since its founding 12 years ago. HashKey is just half that age.

If Toncoin becomes popular through its integration with Telegram and its myriad mini apps, as the TON Foundation is betting on, then HashKey could suddenly find itself with millions of potential new users across Asia as it facilitates the default medium of exchange on one of the worlds most popular messenger apps.

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TON blockchain on Telegram teams with HashKey to help Asian users trade crypto - South China Morning Post

Ten cryptocurrency exchanges account for 90% of the markets trading.

And that concentration could be a problem, according to a reportissued Wednesday (April 10) by theEuropean Securities and Market Authority(ESMA).

While this might be advantageous from an efficiency standpoint due to economies of scale, it raises considerable concerns regarding the implications of a failure or malfunction at a major asset or exchange for the wider crypto ecosystem, said the report, which noted that Binance accounts for roughly half the market.

The EU made history in 2023 when it became the first jurisdiction in the world to endorse a comprehensive regulatory framework for cryptoassets like bitcoin. The Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) rules wont go into full effect until the end of this year. Until that happens, the report said, crypto assets and related service providers are more or less unregulated.

In fact, crypto exchanges largely operate outside of national legal frameworks and are often based in countries with lighter regulatory requirements, the report said. Binance, for example, claims to not have a headquarters, while former crypto exchange FTX wasbased in the Bahamasand incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda.

The report also cited data from Chainalysis showing that during the last two years, around 20% of crypto transaction value was received by investors from North America, another 20% from central, northern and western Europe, and 20% from central and southern Asia.

Based on the domiciles of crypto exchanges, we find that most trading is performed on exchanges based in tax havens, ESMA said. The announcement of MiCA, the regulator said, has not caused an increase in euro transactions.

The report added that despite frequent claims that crypto assets could represent a safe haven in times of wider market stress, we find a certain co-movement with equities and no stable relationship with gold.

Earlier this year, ESMA debuted proposed rules for crypto asset firmsbased outside of Europethat want to offer services to European customers.

The proposed guidance confirms ESMAs previous message that the provision of crypto-asset services by a third-country firm is limited under MiCA to cases where the client is the exclusive initiator of the service, ESMA said in a statement.

This exemption should be understood as very narrowly framed and must be regarded as the exception. A firm cannot use it to bypass MiCA, the agency added.

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EU Watchdog: 90% of Crypto Trading Confined to 10 Exchanges - PYMNTS.com

As concerns grow about what a flood of new computers, data centers and artificial intelligence operations means for the electric grid, one industry remains a massive question mark: cryptocurrency.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that mining for bitcoin and other digital currencies accounts for 0.6 to 2.3 percent of the nations electricity use. But that figure is just an approximation based on worldwide data collected by Cambridge University and publicly available information about 52 crypto mining sites.

A bid to have the agency a nonpartisan data arm of the Department of Energy collect more detailed information on how crypto miners use electricity was stymied by a lawsuit and wont be revived until after a public review. That means regulators, legislators and even power providers dont have detailed data about how an industry that has exploded in just a decade could affect the grid in the future.

Theres just not a lot of transparency, said Ben Hertz-Shargel, the global head of grid edge at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie who focuses on topics such as demand flexibility and a decentralized power system. You can look at the companies that are publicly traded, and theyll discuss plans with estimates of megawatts [consumed]. But actual demand may be very different, so you only have partial clues.

Conditions on the U.S. grid may become increasingly tight. A December 2023 report from the consulting group Grid Strategies found that the forecast for electricity demand over the next five years nearly doubled over the past year, thanks to commitments for new industrial sites, data centers, extreme weather, and the electrification of homes and cars.

The EIA estimates that U.S. electricity demand could increase as much as 15 percent by 2050, numbers that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said literally keep her up at night.

Crypto companies acquire virtual coins by solving a series of computational puzzles, a mining process that requires computers to run for hours on end. Because electricity is essentially the only expense and the price of a digital coin is the source of revenue, the industrys electricity use is typically dependent on bitcoin prices.

Right now, thats a bull market. The price of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, has increased nearly 2.5 times since the end of September. That could grow after the Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 bitcoin funds for trading on U.S. markets, which makes the assets more accessible.

According to the University of Cambridges Centre for Alternative Finance which models bitcoin electricity consumption based on factors like prices, mining equipment and energy efficiency power demand for crypto mining has also risen over six months, from an estimated 14,000 megawatts daily at the end of September to more than 19,000 MW last week.

That means utilities could see a massive load shift based on economic factors, not weather or population growth.

A February 2023 BloombergNEF report examining the main power market in Texas concluded that peak energy prices could increase by 30 to 80 percent based on the influx of cryptocurrency mining. Power prices, the report found, will be a function of new bitcoin mining facilities.

That variability a load that could shift based on market prices, not on more predictable factors like weather or population growth has led to increasing calls for transparency. Eight Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, wrote in a February 2023 letter to DOE and EPA that a mandatory disclosure regime is critical. That letter predated the EIAs survey request.

Every day is urgent, said Mandy DeRoche, a deputy managing attorney of the clean energy program at the environmental group Earthjustice. The incentives for mining are getting so much higher. Between the price of bitcoin and extreme weather, the combination is a danger to our grid and a danger to externalizing costs on other ratepayers and on the environment.

But even some in the industry say more transparency around electricity is necessary and could help miners play a key role in protecting the grid. Cryptocurrency miners can soak up excess electricity and can ramp down quickly to reduce demand at times when the grid is at risk.

We want to supply some of this information, especially about how the industry can curtail and actually benefit grid reliability, said Tom Mapes, president of the Digital Energy Council, which advocates for cryptocurrency mining. Theres an opportunity for us to show how we can be flexible.

The EIAs request seemed simple: Have 82 mining companies report the electricity used at their 150 mining facilities, as well as the electricity sources they rely on.

It was made in January under an emergency order approved by the White House, with EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis saying the industrys rapid growth and existing strain on the grid created heightened uncertainty for power markets.

The industry, however, protested. A lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Texas Blockchain Council and Riot Platforms, a large mining company, said the agency had not properly sought public comment and wouldnt commit to protecting proprietary information. They charged that the legally defective survey would pose a risk to their operations.

Thats in line with comments Riot made in a February filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where the company warned that bitcoin mining will be a focus for potential increased regulation in the near- and long-term.

The company added that it was possible the planned EIA survey or similar data collection would be used to generate negative reports regarding the Bitcoin mining industrys use of power and other resources, which could spur additional negative public sentiment and adverse legislative and regulatory action against us or the Bitcoin mining industry as a whole.

An agreement with the companies resulted in EIAs move to pull the emergency survey and committing to seek public comment before launching another survey. EIA spokesperson Chris Higginbotham said last month that there was no update on the timing of the survey.

Other grid watchdogs are also closely watching how cryptocurrency grows. In its 2023 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, the North American Electricity Reliability Corp. wrote that the unique characteristics of cryptocurrency mining mean that potential growth can have a significant effect on demand and resource projections as well as system operations.

The watchdog organization said it had not previously covered cryptocurrency in its long-term projections but that the industry could impact load forecasting methods because of its flexibility.

Wood Mackenzies Hertz-Shargel also said it would be important to know how mines work on an hourly basis in response to fluctuating power prices or other factors that regulators may not have considered. Spikes at certain times of day, for example, could mean utilities have to plan different power sources or anticipate systemwide peaks at unusual times.

Thats different from data centers or certain industrial users, which typically run 24 hours a day on end and arent in a position to turn up or down based on grid demands. Many data centers are also backed by large technology companies that have their own internal climate goals and have the financing to link their operations to new renewable energy projects.

Crypto companies, which are newer and whose profitability fluctuates based on the currency, typically dont have the same heft as those tech giants to establish their own renewable power and are left to pull electricity from the grid.

The EIA does survey data centers as part of the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, which was last conducted in 2018. Although the data collection allowed EIA to assess how it could publish data center estimates, that survey did not separate out data center use as a separate building type because of a small sample size and low cooperation rate, Higginbotham said.

Accessing crypto data typically means going through filings for companies that are publicly traded or relying on voluntary disclosures. Elliot David, head of climate strategy and partnerships for the Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, is also working to have miners communicate their energy use and rely more on renewable power where available.

The level of transparency really varies, said David. Its hard to contextualize energy consumption sometimes because theres a whole chain of energy and digital asset structure that needs to be factored in.

Despite the Texas Blockchain Associations role in fighting the EIA survey, the Lone Star State may actually have the most insight into the industry. A 2023 law requires cryptocurrency miners above a certain size to register with the state and disclose their anticipated load to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator for most of the state.

Texas Blockchain Council President Lee Bratcher said in an email that ERCOT can view nuanced and minute by minute energy consumption data for bitcoin miners in Texas. This is essential for grid operations and bitcoin miners are proud to be the most flexible load on the grid.

ERCOT has a large flexible load taskforce to track their impact on the grid and work on ways to better integrate them into the grid.

In a statement, ERCOT said that the grid operator is looking at variables including outside factors tied to global economics that impact the supply and demand curve and in turn the overall cost of electricity and cost to the consumer.

Instances where mines unexpectedly disconnect or display inconsistent behavior during resource scarcity events could represent risks to grid reliability.

Some groups supportive of the EIA survey say the agency was off base in the haste with which it sought the data. The agency said the quick rise in bitcoin and the threat of grid stress during cold weather made it imperative.

Mapes of the Digital Energy Council, who formerly worked at DOE, said he could see that some members might feel unfairly singled out by the rushed process and that it is important to not just cherry-pick certain data points.

The fact that the Biden administration has proposed a 30 percent tax on the electricity used by cryptocurrency miners, including in its most recent budget request, adds to the concerns that the industry could be unfairly targeted.

Groups had also raised concerns about the EIA collecting information on machine types, locations of data centers and energy contracts.

Instead, Mapes said, the industry could tell a compelling story about its unique role in grid planning. Mines can support renewable energy, he said, by soaking up energy that might otherwise be curtailed or by locating with large new energy developments. And by ramping up and down, he said, the projects can help ensure stability on the grid.

A responsible partner could even sacrifice mining at a time when prices are high to accommodate a request to cut back on load, according to Mapes.

Depending on the utility and service area, miners may also be compensated for reducing their load.

Isaac Holyoak, chief communications officer for the Nevada-based cryptocurrency firm CleanSpark, said the company emphasizes open communication with utilities and power providers. CleanSpark, he said, targets communities that have excess energy and then seeks contracts that allow utilities to call on them to curtail it during times of need.

Those instances, he said, are generally infrequent, often representing just a few hours during a year.

Transparency is the most important thing, Holyoak said. Our customers are the utilities. We want a mutually beneficial relationship so we both get something out of it.

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Unsolved mystery: How much power is crypto using? - E&E News by POLITICO