A new strain of Trojan malware for Android phones is targeting global users of top crypto apps such as Coinbase, BitPay and Bitcoin Wallet, as well as banks including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America. The news was reported by technology news outlet The Next Web on March 28. Based on research from prominent cybercrime analytics firm Group-IB, this is reportedly the first time the Trojan — now named “Gustuff” — has been reported or analyzed. The malware is described as being designed for mass infection and is spread by SMS messages with links to load malicious Android package …

Top execs at Mastercard and Wells Fargo agreed that blockchain technology has long-term potential, but it has not been realized to date, CNBC reports on March 28. Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan and Mastercard CEO Ajaypal Banga concurred that the potential of distributed ledger technology (DLT) is yet to pay off, but that there are still no clear business use-cases as of now. The executives made their comments to CNBC at the Fintech Ideas Festival on Wednesday. Wells Fargo’s CEO emphasized that the technology has been very slow to roll out, pointing at a blockchain pilot carried out between the …

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange ErisX announced that it hired former Wells Fargo executive Kyle Unterseher as a business development executive. The news was reported in a Medium post published by the exchange’s head of marketing on March 5. In December 2018, ErisX raised $27.5 million from Fidelity, Nasdaq Ventures and other investors, with the goal of offering spot trading in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC), as well as futures markets, pending regulatory approval in 2019. Unterseher joins the ErisX business development team and will be reporting directly to ErisX chief commercial officer Kelly Brown. In the post, Brown …

Brazil’s largest private bank has partnered with United Kingdom bank Standard Chartered to create a blockchain-based platform for small loans, according to a press release published by Itau Tuesday, Dec. 4. Itau Unibanco, also a major Latin American banking group, and Standard Chartered both offer international banking services. The two entities have successfully conducted a proof-of-concept (PoC) for the mentioned platform, based on Corda Connect developed by New York-based blockchain startup R3. Moreover, Itau and Standard Chartered, joined by United States multinational financial services company Wells Fargo, have issued a club loan of $100 million to test the platform. According …

Major crypto exchange Bitfinex has responded to a recent swathe of online rumors, denying that the firm is “insolvent” or facing banking issues, in an official blog post published October 7. Bitfinex’s rebuttal comes in the wake of last week’s reports that the exchange’s banking partner, Puerto Rico’s Noble Bank International, is seeking a buyer and had lost both Bitfinex and affiliated firm Tether — who share a CEO, Jan Ludovicus van der Velde — as clients. In addition to Noble’s apparent woes, online bloggers were claiming that Bitfinex itself was insolvent, citing unverified reports of difficulties processing fiat withdrawals …

The results of a Wells Fargo/Gallup poll published July 27 finds that only two percent of U.S. investors own Bitcoin, but 26 percent are intrigued by it. The online survey was conducted May 7-14, 2018 amongst U.S. investors with more than $10,000 in stocks, bonds or mutual funds. The results show that the overwhelming majority of investors who have already heard of Bitcoin will not be investing in the leading cryptocurrency any time soon, with 72 percent saying they “have no interest in ever buying Bitcoin.” According to the data from the poll, even though 96 percent of investors had …

San-Francisco-based bank Wells Fargo has outlined a patent for a tokenization system that would protect data, according to a filing published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) July 17. The newly published application details a system in which any type of data element — whether a document, graphic, or database value — could be located, accessed, and protected by means of tokenization. Tokenization, as the patent filing outlines, uses encryption methods to process an originally unrestricted data element into a corresponding restricted token that can subsequently only be retrieved — or ‘detokenized’ — by a specified user. The …

San-Francisco-based bank Wells Fargo has announced that it will no longer allow its customers to purchase cryptocurrency using its credit cards, Fortune reported June 11. Wells Fargo, which is the third largest bank by assets in the US, said that its customers are now prohibited from purchasing digital currency on their credit cards issued by the financial institution. A bank spokesperson said that the decision was made in order to avoid “multiple risks” associated with cryptocurrency usage: “Customers can no longer use their Wells Fargo credit cards to purchase cryptocurrency. We’re doing this in order to be consistent across the …

What is Tether? Tether is a cryptocurrency that represents real currencies in a Blockchain market. The project was founded in November 2015. It has two tokens USDT and EURT, which were made as analogues of USD and EUR in a Blockchain world. These cryptocurrencies are closely connected with the exchange Bitfinex. At first, Tether was based on the Bitcoin Blockchain system, but in June 2017, the transition to Litecoin was declared. Since May 2016, Tether capitalization increased rapidly. At the end of August 2017, it amounted to approximately $320 mln. During 2016, there were no significant changes in the circulation. …

Wells Fargo has become embroiled in a legal dispute over manipulation of customer account data to maximize profits. Having been caught practicing so-called ‘reordering’ along with other major US banks, the international giant is seeking a ruling from the courts again after six years of battling payout claims from misled customers. “The bank is being uniquely aggressive,” National Consumer Law Center associate director Lauren Saunders told Vice. The legal debacle centers on Wells Fargo rearranging the order of transactions on bank statements to ensure an unarranged overdraft fee is applied as often as possible in a given period. Known as …