🛡️Mastercard Fights Crypto Fraud

Morning Morning!

👋 Welcome to Switch Daily.

Did you enjoy the chota mid-week break? Dandiya or Pandal hopping? Well, we did both. But, much like Devi from Never have I ever, we’re the nerds who snuck out from the most happening events to deliver your fresh dose of modern money. So, let’s dig in!🚀

Here’s what we’ve got for you:

• Market pulse

• A tool to combat crypto fraud

• Hot and saucy news

• Meme of the day

Market pulse 📈

The market is as still as a Crocodile 🐊

It was a mixed session for the crypto market on Wednesday, with the total market cap gaining a little over $10 billion to reach $974 billion. The lack of any signal from the global equity and crypto markets kept investors guessing about the possible next move.

The top ten cryptos did not show any weakness in yesterday’s session. XRP led the gainers’ chart and is up by 11.77% in the last 24 hours. Also, with Elon Musk confirming the Twitter deal, DOGE witnessed some buying activity and has gained 7.40%.

Avenger against crypto crime ⚔️

Crypto has become the ‘La hottie’ of payments in recent times. How do we know?

• Visa reported a whopping $2.5 billion transaction volume on its crypto-linked credit card in the first quarter of 2022 alone.

• Mastercard followed suit and launched an NFT-based card to attract high-profile customers.

Hasn't Bollywood taught us enough to know that La hottie is always followed by Les naughty? With the rising adoption of crypto payment, a.k.a La hottie, hackers, scammers, and crypto criminals, a.k.a Les naughties, have also increased.

Crypto crimes are nowhere close to what happens in the real world. Yet, they aren't any good for the ecosystem. Crypto theft in 2021 was 516% higher than in 2020, and the losses from crypto-related crimes also rose by 79%. This number has fallen in 2022, yet a series of hacks and scams in August alone wiped out nearly $1.9 billion from the crypto market. 🤕

The payments giant Mastercard gauged the situation and decided it was time to bring in an Avenger named Crypto Secure. 😎

What is Crypto Secure?

It is an anti-fraud software that uses Artificial Intelligence and blockchain-based data to detect the risk of fraud associated with crypto exchanges on its network.

In normal speak, it is a crypto crime scanner. The tool combs through all the data and rates transactions with a color code ranging between red and green. Red means high risk, and green means low risk.

Why now?

Well, we pretty much covered that in the intro, but here’s what the president of cyber and intelligence business for Mastercard, Ajay Bhalla, has to say:

“The idea is that the kind of trust we provide for digital commerce transactions, we want to be able to provide the same kind of trust to digital asset transactions for consumers, banks, and merchants.”

Developing software tools like this is always good news in a world where crypto assets are associated with crimes. But will this Avenger do justice to the citizens of the crypto-verse? We’re yet to know!

🤫Psst.. on a side note, noticed how Mastercard is doubling down in the crypto space despite the bear market? Word is, they believe this is a big evolving marketplace now and will probably be much, much bigger in the future.

What else is brewing? ☕

⚖️SEC fines Kardashian $1.3M for crypto promo

The US SEC charged Kim Kardashian with a $1.26 million fine for failing to disclose that she received a payment to promote a crypto project via her Instagram handle. Read more.

🤝🏻Argentine state-owned firm, crypto miner, joins hands

Argentina's state-owned energy company, YPF, has taken a pro-crypto stance and began supplying energy to a crypto mining company for its operations. Read more.

🤑Singer David Bowie’s NFT sells for $127,000

Singer David Bowie’s rare NFT from his collection, ‘Bowie on the Blockchain,’ was sold for a fortune on OpenSea. The rare Bowie NFT, in collaboration with a 19-year-old NFT artist, FEWOCiOUS, was sold for 96.5 ETH. Read more.

💰a16z invests in decentralized knowledge

After going heavy into centralized and decentralized finance companies, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is getting into decentralized knowledge. a16z recently led a $40 million investment into Golden, a decentralized knowledge company that complies with and streamlines open source data and allows community access. Read more.

Memewhile…

Before we wrap up, if you have come this far, you are the real deal and we’d like to get to know you better. Please take this quick survey and tell us what you think of Switch Daily. From the newsletter style to content type, we are all ears for your input!

Thank You,

See you tomorrow, folks. 👋

Loving Switch Daily? Make sure to share it with your friends and spread the love 💙