TL;DR: Welcome to In Case You Missed It (ICYMI), a daily crypto news update. MakerDAO faces class-action lawsuit from customer losses. China announces members of its National Blockchain Committee. FSB raises alert on stablecoin usage. Google removed 49 extensions used to steal private keys from users. CoinMetrics declares bitcoin is not correlated to stocks under normal market conditions, and InstaBitcoin debuts web portal.

MakerDAO Sued for DeFi Losses

MakerDAO, the institution behind the Dai stablecoin built on top of Ethereum, is now facing a class-action lawsuit regarding losses the protocol allegedly caused users last month when the price of ether dropped wildly. The suit introduced in California states MakerDAO “intentionally misrepresented the risks associated with CDP ownership” that might have caused users to lose millions of dollars through liquidations. While MakerDAO stated losses would take 13% of users’ collateral, many users were liquidated fully due to the price swing.

China Announces Members of Its National Blockchain Committee

The government of China has announced members of its blockchain committee, called the “Na­tional Blockchain and Dis­trib­uted Ledger Tech­nol­ogy Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee.” The committee is comprised of 71 members, most of the executives of big tech consortiums and universities like Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, Peking Uni­ver­sity, and Tsinghua Uni­ver­sity. The group, chaired by Deputy Minister of Industry and Information Technology Chen Zhaoxiong, will promote the use of decentralized technologies in the country.

FSB Raises Alert on Global Stablecoin Usage

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), a global institution seeking to preserve economical stability of the world’s economies, warned about the risks global stablecoins might pose to central banks. The group states if these so=called stablecoins become a popular store of value, “a moderate variation in its value might cause significant fluctuations in users’ wealth.” Also, the regular use of these stablecoins for payments could cause “significant operational disruptions affecting real economic activity,” particularly in emerging markets.

Google Removes 49 Extensions Stealing Wallet Keys

Google removed 49 extensions to its Chrome browser fraudulently stealing users’ private keys to deprive them of their funds, according to an article published by ZDnet. The extensions are reportedly authored by a Russian hacker group and have different branding depending on the users targeted. Harry Denley, director of security at MyCrypto, stated the scammers are probably only looking for high profile targets, as funds from compromised wallets are not stolen automatically when keys are obtained.

CoinMetrics: Bitcoin Not Correlated To Stocks Under Normal Market Conditions

1/ On Black Thursday (March 12th), BTC and S&P 500 correlation shot up to historically high levels after when the crypto markets and equity markets both experienced large, sudden losses. Correlation then decreased back to relatively normal levels by the end of March. pic.twitter.com/IBdImXLuPE — CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) April 14, 2020

Cryptocurrency market research and analytics firm CoinMetrics stated that while Bitcoin has shown recently a certain degree of correlation with the S&P 500 index, it’s not a real correlation under normal market circumstances. The firm stressed that “as news about COVID-19 began to grow more and more dire on March 12th, investors across the world suddenly began rushing to cash and selling off assets en masse.” However, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Bitcoin and S&P 500 had shown a correlation of 0.

InstaBitcoin Debuts Web Portal

InstaBitcoin, a Venezuela-based Bitcoin Cash exchange, launched a new web portal to promote their services. InstaBitcoin objective is to “make Bitcoin Cash the main currency used in Venezuela for payments,” and also help users exchange their Bitcoin Cash for bolivares and dollars easily and securely. They have also started a crowdfund to grow the platform in order to manage larger cash flows for exchange orders and keep fostering Bitcoin Cash adoption all over Venezuela. The campaign can be reached here.

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