This startup thinks it has solved the biggest problem banks have with bitcoin | ||
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Elliptic, a bitcoin analytics and storage startup based in London, thinks it's just made a huge breakthrough that could make banks way more interested in bitcoin. The company has created a sophisticated bit of software that it claims can identify where a bitcoin has come from. That's a big deal for banks, who have a legal obligation to find out where the money they hold is coming from to ensure they're not holding proceeds of crime. Bitcoin isn't untraceable — every transaction is recorded on a public ledger called the blockchain. But the digital wallets that carry out transactions are anonymous, making it extremely difficult to actually make sense of the data. You could do some digging around and make a guess, but it's hard and time-consuming. That means banks have been wary about holding bitcoin — if they take a bitcoin that's just been earned selling drugs in a dark web market like Silk Road 2.0, or that has passed through a known money-laundering service, they could end up in huge trouble with regulators. Elliptic say its tool, build by 4 PhD holders, can make a hugely accurate guess as to who each wallet belongs to — and it can do so in real-time. Using machine-learning, its software crunches through the web and dark web, skimming references to wallets and other digital clues to build up a picture of the owner. Tom Robinson, Elliptic's cofounder, told Business Insider the tool could be a "game changer for the institutionalisation of bitcoin." If banks can satisfy anti-money laundering regulation then they can start think about handling bitcoin. The tool was created after conversations with dozens of lenders. Elliptic has today released a visualisation tool showing the flow of bitcoin between entities over the entire six year history of bitcoin, naming the 250 largest entities where bitcoins are sent to and from.
Later this year the company will launch a API of its software, meaning banks will be able to effectively bolt it on to their existing systems and use it. Kevin Beardsley, an analyst at Elliptic, said around 5 banks have already signed up for the API. (He didn't say who.) In an emailed statement on Thursday, Elliptic's CEO Dr. James Smith said that “if digital currency is to take its legitimate place in the enterprise it inevitably must step out of the shadows of the dark web. Our technology allows us to trace historic and real-time flow, and represents the tipping point for enterprise adoption of bitcoin. "We have developed this technology not to incriminate nor to pry; but to support businesses’ anti-money laundering obligations. Compliance officers can finally have peace of mind, knowing that they have performed real, defensible diligence to ascertain that their bitcoin holdings are not derived from the proceeds of crime.” Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 'Shark Tank' investor Daymond John reveals the one thing in business more important than money  | ||
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Germany's most popular paid app is a secure messenger loved by millions — now it's taking on the US | ||
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Threema, a secure messaging service that has grown to become one of the most popular apps in Germany, is officially launching in the US. Created in 2012, Threema prides itself on its end-to-end encryption and security features. It's a minnow next to big messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. WhatsApp has 800 million monthly active users; in contrast, Threema has just 3.5 million. But Threema's userbase has skyrocketed by almost 900% in the last year, and has never marketed itself on a global level. Plus, other apps are free — while Threema costs $1.99 to download. And it's seen success in its own right. The app has sat at the top of the German paid download charts for the last two years; according to analytics company App Annie, it's outranking Minecraft and WeatherPro (it's also currently second in the Google Play charts). Threema is significantly bigger than its rival, popular chat app Wickr, which according to Google Play Store metrics has only seen between 100,000 and 500,000 downloads. Encryption is a hot topic right now. Strong encryption refers to scrambling data and messages in such a way that it cannot be understood without the correct "key," even if the authorities have a court order. Over the last year or so, there has been a concerted effort by some of the biggest tech companies around to implement strong encryption into their products, brought on by whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks about NSA mass surveillance.
It's understandable why Germany has taken so warmly to Threema. The country has had a particularly strong response to Snowden's revelations, which included a claim that the NSA bugged chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. German intelligence agency BND recent "drastically reduced its cooperation with the US National Security Agency in response to a growing fallout over their alleged joint surveillance of European officials and companies," the Guardian reported in May. Threema is based in Switzerland — Blatter says the country has "some of the most user friendly privacy laws in the world" — and has 12 full-time staff. Following its German success, the company is now keen to push into new markets, and sees America, with its ongoing debates about surveillance and privacy, as the natural target. (Though previously available to download in the US, the company has never actively targeted the country before.) Part of this push involves a price cut — from $1.99 to $0.99 for a limited time. Users don't need to provide a phone number or any other identifying details to use the app, and encryption keys are stored only on phones — making it impossible for Threema to read the contents of messages.
And in a way, it's testament to the success of Threema. Security experts have long acknowledged that encryption products will be misused by a minority — but the alternative, backdoors and weak protections, are ultimately far worse for users. As security researcher the Grugq puts it: "If your secure communications platform isn't be used by terrorists and pedophiles, you're probably doing it wrong." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: These Surveillance Balloons Are The Hot New Way To Spy On People  | ||
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Brought out just prior to the Snowden news, the leaks caused an initial flurry of interest, boosting the user numbers to the hundreds of thousands. "But our real transformation into a business happened 9 months later," CEO Martin Blatter told Business Insider via email. "That was when Facebook purchased WhatsApp ... That deal created huge privacy concerns with people here in Europe. And hundreds of thousands of people came to us and downloaded Threema. Our user base literally doubled over night ... It was pretty wild."
As well as being Germany's most popular app, Threema has another, more dubious honour: It is recommended by ISIS. Documents put together by ISIS-affiliated internet users The advertising industry admits it has a major transparency problem and it's about to find out just how big of an issue it is | ||
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The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the US advertising trade body, has put out a call for a research agency to conduct an industry-wide media transparency study. In its RFP (request for proposal), the ANA says it hopes to: "demystify the landscape;" understand the practices and processes of holding companies, suppliers, vendors, and media companies; assess marketers' processes; and develop practical industry solutions in order to elevate trust and confident across the entire media-buying supply chain. Earlier this year Business Insider took a deep dive into the media transparency issue. Despite the fact that has been a huge talking point amongst the industry this year, none of the big advertising agency holding groups have wanted to admit there is a problem. And that's even after Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser downgraded all the advertising agency holding groups he covers, citing "emerging concerns among marketers" around "misleading" payments and different forms of volume rebates in the United States. While almost everyone in the industry knows practices such as kickbacks and rebates have been going on for years, the transparency issue was thrust into the spotlight at the ANA's 2015 Media Leadership Conference in March this year. There, former MediaCom CEO Jon Mandel said media agency kickbacks were so widespread in the US, it was what forced him to leave the business. Most people usually thought the practice was something that only still happened overseas, and that it didn't really affect the US any more. At the heart of the issue is also how clients and agencies view contracts differently. An agency may say its contracts contain complete disclosure over its practices (including whether it receives rebates, or bonuses), but a client may believe that disclosure doesn't go deep enough. Contracts can contain ambiguous wording, and clients may be unclear exactly what it is they are paying for. Just the other day, AdAge unearthed a contract between Havas Media US and two ad tech vendors. The vendors say the contract they were asked to sign required them to pay fees to a Havas entity in Spain. But the vendors didn't know what the entity in Spain actually did for the fees (the contract just said "planning services.") Havas Media Group global managing director Dominique Delport told AdAge the contact "has nothing to do with rebates" and that the Spanish entity only charges for appropriate services. The ANA hopes to receive applications from research agencies looking to study the transparency issue by July 24. The trade body says it has "elevated media transparency to one of its top priorities" and it has already set up a task-force of senior marketing and agency executives focused on developing industry codes of conduct and improved media contracts. Last year the ANA ran a survey of members, conducted by research agency Forrester, to poll marketers on how concerned they were about several areas of media transparency. The results showed there were growing concerns around transparency across a wide array of business practices within the media buying industry, as the chart below shows.
SEE ALSO: $25 billion in media money just went up for grabs — and nobody can agree on why Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Two models in Russia just posed with a 1,400-pound bear  | ||
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The advertising industry is not only admitting it has a problem with transparency over agency practices, such as receiving rebates from media companies and not disclosing them or passing those back to clients, but it is now looking to outside help to try to solve the perception issue.
The Guardian will appoint David Pemsel as its chief executive | ||
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Guardian Media Group, the owner of The Guardian newspaper and websites, has promoted its deputy CEO David Pemsel to chief executive, Sky News reports. He replaces Andrew Miller, who announced in January he was leaving the company at the end of June 2015. Miller had been in the role since 2010 and worked to implement a five-year turnaround plan with the aim of securing The Guardian's financial future. Sky News sources say Pemsel saw off competition from "an unidentified UK-based Google executive." Business Insider has contacted The Guardian for comment and we will update this article once we hear back. Pemsel joined The Guardian in 2012 as its chief marketing officer, having previously worked as a marketing consultant to the company, helping appoint advertising agency BBH, which created the newspaper's award-winning "Three Little Pigs" ad campaign. He was promoted at the end of 2012 to become Guardian News and Media's chief commercial officer. In 2013, he was promoted once again, and became the publisher's deputy CEO, a move that many people in the industry saw as priming Pemsel for the top job at the company. Pemsel has overseen several major projects in his time at The Guardian including the launch of a new content marketing division Guardian Labs, launching a Membership scheme for readers, acquiring an events space in London, restructuring the commercial department, and relaunching The Guardian website (which he spoke to Business Insider about earlier this year.) Commercial highlights have included increasing overall revenue by 3% £215 million ($340 million) for the 2015 financial year. Underlying losses were flat year over year at £20 million ($32 million.) Prior to joining Guardian News and Media, Pemsel served as the group marketing director for UK TV broadcaster ITV for more than five years. He had also worked at London-based advertising agency St Luke's. SEE ALSO: The Guardian Has A Fresh Plan To Take On MailOnline And The New York Times Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This is how big dinosaurs actually were in real life  | ||
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This startup thinks it has solved the biggest problem banks have with bitcoin | ||
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Elliptic, a bitcoin analytics and storage startup based in London, thinks it's just made a huge breakthrough that could make banks way more interested in bitcoin. The company has created a sophisticated bit of software that it claims can identify where a bitcoin has come from. That's a big deal for banks, who have a legal obligation to find out where the money they hold is coming from to ensure they're not holding proceeds of crime. Bitcoin isn't untraceable — every transaction is recorded on a public ledger called the blockchain. But the digital wallets that carry out transactions are anonymous, making it extremely difficult to actually make sense of the data. You could do some digging around and make a guess, but it's hard and time-consuming. That means banks have been wary about holding bitcoin — if they take a bitcoin that's just been earned selling drugs in a dark web market like Silk Road 2.0, or that has passed through a known money-laundering service, they could end up in huge trouble with regulators. Elliptic say its tool, build by 4 PhD holders, can make a hugely accurate guess as to who each wallet belongs to — and it can do so in real-time. Using machine-learning, its software crunches through the web and dark web, skimming references to wallets and other digital clues to build up a picture of the owner. Tom Robinson, Elliptic's cofounder, told Business Insider the tool could be a "game changer for the institutionalisation of bitcoin." If banks can satisfy anti-money laundering regulation then they can start think about handling bitcoin. The tool was created after conversations with dozens of lenders. Elliptic has today released a visualisation tool showing the flow of bitcoin between entities over the entire six year history of bitcoin, naming the 250 largest entities where bitcoins are sent to and from.
Later this year the company will launch a API of its software, meaning banks will be able to effectively bolt it on to their existing systems and use it. Kevin Beardsley, an analyst at Elliptic, said around 5 banks have already signed up for the API. (He didn't say who.) In an emailed statement on Thursday, Elliptic's CEO Dr. James Smith said that “if digital currency is to take its legitimate place in the enterprise it inevitably must step out of the shadows of the dark web. Our technology allows us to trace historic and real-time flow, and represents the tipping point for enterprise adoption of bitcoin. "We have developed this technology not to incriminate nor to pry; but to support businesses’ anti-money laundering obligations. Compliance officers can finally have peace of mind, knowing that they have performed real, defensible diligence to ascertain that their bitcoin holdings are not derived from the proceeds of crime.” Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 'Shark Tank' investor Daymond John reveals the one thing in business more important than money  | ||
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Germany's most popular paid app is a secure messenger loved by millions — now it's taking on the US | ||
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Threema, a secure messaging service that has grown to become one of the most popular apps in Germany, is officially launching in the US. Created in 2012, Threema prides itself on its end-to-end encryption and security features. It's a minnow next to big messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. WhatsApp has 800 million monthly active users; in contrast, Threema has just 3.5 million. But Threema's userbase has skyrocketed by almost 900% in the last year, and has never marketed itself on a global level. Plus, other apps are free — while Threema costs $1.99 to download. And it's seen success in its own right. The app has sat at the top of the German paid download charts for the last two years; according to analytics company App Annie, it's outranking Minecraft and WeatherPro (it's also currently second in the Google Play charts). Threema is significantly bigger than its rival, popular chat app Wickr, which according to Google Play Store metrics has only seen between 100,000 and 500,000 downloads. Encryption is a hot topic right now. Strong encryption refers to scrambling data and messages in such a way that it cannot be understood without the correct "key," even if the authorities have a court order. Over the last year or so, there has been a concerted effort by some of the biggest tech companies around to implement strong encryption into their products, brought on by whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks about NSA mass surveillance.
It's understandable why Germany has taken so warmly to Threema. The country has had a particularly strong response to Snowden's revelations, which included a claim that the NSA bugged chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. German intelligence agency BND recent "drastically reduced its cooperation with the US National Security Agency in response to a growing fallout over their alleged joint surveillance of European officials and companies," the Guardian reported in May. Threema is based in Switzerland — Blatter says the country has "some of the most user friendly privacy laws in the world" — and has 12 full-time staff. Following its German success, the company is now keen to push into new markets, and sees America, with its ongoing debates about surveillance and privacy, as the natural target. (Though previously available to download in the US, the company has never actively targeted the country before.) Part of this push involves a price cut — from $1.99 to $0.99 for a limited time. Users don't need to provide a phone number or any other identifying details to use the app, and encryption keys are stored only on phones — making it impossible for Threema to read the contents of messages.
And in a way, it's testament to the success of Threema. Security experts have long acknowledged that encryption products will be misused by a minority — but the alternative, backdoors and weak protections, are ultimately far worse for users. As security researcher the Grugq puts it: "If your secure communications platform isn't be used by terrorists and pedophiles, you're probably doing it wrong." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: These Surveillance Balloons Are The Hot New Way To Spy On People  | ||
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Merkel 'still convinced' Greek debt deal possible | ||
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Berlin (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is convinced it is still possible to reach an accord with Greece on its crippling debt crisis, ahead of crunch EU talks Thursday. "It remains the case that Germany's efforts are aimed at keeping Greece in the eurozone," she told the Bundestag lower house of parliament. "I am still convinced -- where there's a will, there's a way. If the political leaders in Greece demonstrate this will, then a deal with the three institutions is still possible." The eurozone finance ministers were due to meet in Luxembourg as Greece negotiates with the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund on the last 7.2 billion euro ($8.1 billion) tranche of its massive international bailout. Merkel said Germany, the largest single state contributor to the rescue package, was guided by the principle of European "solidarity" in exchange for "crucial" economic reforms. She pointed to the relative success stories of Ireland, Spain and Portugal, which she said were "now standing on their own two feet" after fulfilling the terms of their own bailout agreements, while Cyprus was "on the right track." "These countries seized the opportunities presented to them," she said. "They implemented painful structural reforms and thus created the basis for new growth, new competitiveness and new jobs, although the path wasn't easy and these countries are still grappling with the consequences of the necessary adjustments." Merkel said that the far-left government of Greece, by contrast, had failed to live up to its obligations to get its finances in order. "Important reforms were put off," she charged. "We want the people of Greece -- like the people of Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus -- to have a chance at a better future."
Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The 10 things in advertising you need to know today | ||
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Good morning! Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today. 1. The Guardian is about to appoint David Pemsel as its chief executive. He was previously deputy CEO. 2. The ad industry is about to find out just how big a problem transparency really is. The Association of National Advertisers has put out a call for an independent research agency to look into issues such as media rebates, kickbacks, and contracts. 3. Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton is confident his company will win its $100 million lawsuit with Hulk Hogan. The media company published an article with an excerpt of a sex tape starring the former wrestler. 4. Google announced a hefty move in its measurement war against Facebook. Google's DoubleClick for advertisers has launched cross-device measurement. 5. Snapchat has turned its popular geofilters into ads. McDonalds is already on board. 6. A designer has called Spotify's new logo change "self-indulgent." Smith & Milton's group creative director Steve Anderson says users will be asking: "What does it mean for me? Why should I care?" 7. Fox News boss Roger Ailes has been demoted in the Murdoch executive shake-up. Ailes famously doesn't get on with the Murdoch sons, who are now in charge of Fox. 8. Snapchat's Live Stories feature can reportedly make $400,000 from 10-second ads. The section can attract about 20 million people every day. 9. Here's why Hulu dropped the "Plus" from its subscription service's name. A staffer told us it would make marketing more effective. 10. Cablevision CEO James Dolan thinks we will see a 20% to 25% reduction in big bundle cable packages over the next five years. Channels without a strong brand identity are going to run into trouble, he added. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 11 little-known facts about Nike  | ||
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The advertising industry admits it has a major transparency problem and it's about to find out just how big of an issue it is | ||
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The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the US advertising trade body, has put out a call for a research agency to conduct an industry-wide media transparency study. In its RFP (request for proposal), the ANA says it hopes to: "demystify the landscape;" understand the practices and processes of holding companies, suppliers, vendors, and media companies; assess marketers' processes; and develop practical industry solutions in order to elevate trust and confident across the entire media-buying supply chain. Earlier this year Business Insider took a deep dive into the media transparency issue. Despite the fact that has been a huge talking point amongst the industry this year, none of the big advertising agency holding groups have wanted to admit there is a problem. And that's even after Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser downgraded all the advertising agency holding groups he covers, citing "emerging concerns among marketers" around "misleading" payments and different forms of volume rebates in the United States. While almost everyone in the industry knows practices such as kickbacks and rebates have been going on for years, the transparency issue was thrust into the spotlight at the ANA's 2015 Media Leadership Conference in March this year. There, former MediaCom CEO Jon Mandel said media agency kickbacks were so widespread in the US, it was what forced him to leave the business. Most people usually thought the practice was something that only still happened overseas, and that it didn't really affect the US any more. At the heart of the issue is also how clients and agencies view contracts differently. An agency may say its contracts contain complete disclosure over its practices (including whether it receives rebates, or bonuses), but a client may believe that disclosure doesn't go deep enough. Contracts can contain ambiguous wording, and clients may be unclear exactly what it is they are paying for. Just the other day, AdAge unearthed a contract between Havas Media US and two ad tech vendors. The vendors say the contract they were asked to sign required them to pay fees to a Havas entity in Spain. But the vendors didn't know what the entity in Spain actually did for the fees (the contract just said "planning services.") Havas Media Group global managing director Dominique Delport told AdAge the contact "has nothing to do with rebates" and that the Spanish entity only charges for appropriate services. The ANA hopes to receive applications from research agencies looking to study the transparency issue by July 24. The trade body says it has "elevated media transparency to one of its top priorities" and it has already set up a task-force of senior marketing and agency executives focused on developing industry codes of conduct and improved media contracts. Last year the ANA ran a survey of members, conducted by research agency Forrester, to poll marketers on how concerned they were about several areas of media transparency. The results showed there were growing concerns around transparency across a wide array of business practices within the media buying industry, as the chart below shows.
SEE ALSO: $25 billion in media money just went up for grabs — and nobody can agree on why Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Two models in Russia just posed with a 1,400-pound bear  | ||
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The Guardian will appoint David Pemsel as its chief executive | ||
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Guardian Media Group, the owner of The Guardian newspaper and websites, has promoted its deputy CEO David Pemsel to chief executive, Sky News reports. He replaces Andrew Miller, who announced in January he was leaving the company at the end of June 2015. Miller had been in the role since 2010 and worked to implement a five-year turnaround plan with the aim of securing The Guardian's financial future. Sky News sources say Pemsel saw off competition from "an unidentified UK-based Google executive." Business Insider has contacted The Guardian for comment and we will update this article once we hear back. Pemsel joined The Guardian in 2012 as its chief marketing officer, having previously worked as a marketing consultant to the company, helping appoint advertising agency BBH, which created the newspaper's award-winning "Three Little Pigs" ad campaign. He was promoted at the end of 2012 to become Guardian News and Media's chief commercial officer. In 2013, he was promoted once again, and became the publisher's deputy CEO, a move that many people in the industry saw as priming Pemsel for the top job at the company. Pemsel has overseen several major projects in his time at The Guardian including the launch of a new content marketing division Guardian Labs, launching a Membership scheme for readers, acquiring an events space in London, restructuring the commercial department, and relaunching The Guardian website (which he spoke to Business Insider about earlier this year.) Commercial highlights have included increasing overall revenue by 3% £215 million ($340 million) for the 2015 financial year. Underlying losses were flat year over year at £20 million ($32 million.) Prior to joining Guardian News and Media, Pemsel served as the group marketing director for UK TV broadcaster ITV for more than five years. He had also worked at London-based advertising agency St Luke's. SEE ALSO: The Guardian Has A Fresh Plan To Take On MailOnline And The New York Times Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This is how big dinosaurs actually were in real life  | ||
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