Crypto derivatives exchange Deribit to put in place trade surveillance platform from Eventus
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com:
Eventus, a provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance and market risk solutions, announced today that cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Deribit has chosen the firm’s Validus platform to provide market abuse monitoring on the exchange.
Headquartered in Panama City, Panama, Deribit is one of the largest cryptocurrency options exchanges by volume and open interest, with approximately 90% market share in bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) options. The exchange also offers select futures on cryptocurrencies.
David Dohmen, Deribit’s Chief Legal, Compliance & Regulatory Officer said the exchange considered several trade surveillance systems in anticipation of operating under the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority in Dubai and as Deribit looked to expand into additional jurisdictions while maintaining the highest compliance standards.
He articulated: “Once I joined Deribit and our search for a surveillance vendor was underway, I was able to share that Eventus’ customer service is excellent. I’ve looked at and worked with a variety of trade surveillance systems, including Validus in two of my former roles since 2019. I was most impressed with the dedication and diligence of the Eventus team to continuously work with its clients to help improve how the system can meet our needs and resolve any issues we encounter along the way. They care about getting things done; it’s not just about the numbers.”
Additional factors in Deribit’s selection of Eventus, Dohmen said, were the firm’s vast experience with crypto asset exchanges and competitive pricing, plus the point that Validus is intuitive and easy to use.
“We are delighted to help Deribit achieve heightened surveillance capabilities. As the exchange continues to grow and expand its business to new regulatory jurisdictions, our Validus platform provides the scalable, agile solution the compliance team will need as its volumes increase and regulatory requirements become more complex.” – Eventus CEO, Travis Schwab
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As it would possibly well perchance be somber and staunch-of-reason, Peacock’s unique restricted sequence Lockerbie: A Discover about for Truth is, to the surprise of no one who has been staring at heaps of TV or reading my reviews these days, a truly mighty and extremely efficient myth dressed up in an unwell-fitting swimsuit.
The five-hour drama includes two nice looking episodes, then two meandering episodes and within the end a conclusion of impulsively resolved catharsis. Carried by a uncooked, heartbreaking lead performance by Colin Firth, it’s consistently watchable, but lacking the precious focus to be undoubtedly distinctive.
Lockerbie: A Discover about for Truth
The Bottom Line
Potent myth loses focus within the heart.
Airdate: Thursday, January 2 (Peacock) Solid: Colin Firth, Catherine McCormack Creator: David Harrower
Not to be puzzled with the Netflix six-parter, Lockerbie, Lockerbie: A Discover about for Truth — airing on Sky Atlantic within the U.Okay. — this one is consistent with Jim Swire’s memoir and adapted by Scottish playwright David Harrower.
The sequence begins in December 1988 with doctor Jim Swire (Firth) and spouse Jane (Catherine McCormack) pronouncing farewell to cherished daughter Vegetation (Rosanna Adams, conveying ample pleasure in five minutes for that memory to linger). Vegetation is catching Pan Am Flight 103 from London to Unique York City, where she’s spending Christmas with her boyfriend.
The Swires and endless other families are shattered when the plane is destroyed by a bomb over the minute Scottish city of Lockerbie, killing the 269 passengers and crew, as successfully as 11 of us on the ground.
Perplexed by the British government’s late investigative route of, Jim spends the next three a protracted time looking for answers concerning who bombed the plane and how the tragedy used to be allowed to happen. The hunt for for the actual fact involves more than one meetings with Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi and one notorious marzipan “bomb,” persevering with via the trial of the two Libyan men named as suspects.
It’s a puny bit extraordinary that 2025 will look this pair of Lockerbie-related sequence — a Thirty seventh anniversary commemoration of an unspeakable tragedy that, in its moment, united more than one countries in anguish and outrage but has, love so many other tragedies, viewed its profile move over time. The Lockerbie effort will dwell an eternally originate hurt in Lockerbie itself, and for Syracuse College, which lost 35 look-in a single other nation college students. Nevertheless it’s my hunch that there are entire generations now with restricted to no consciousness of it, and endless other of us that will survey Lockerbie: A Discover about for Truth and endure in mind ancient crucial aspects as a lot as a definite point and no extra.
That unhappy actuality is what Lockerbie: A Discover about for Truth, at its simplest, is ready. It’s an exploration, via one bereft man’s dogged roam, of how impossible it will also just moreover be to growth previous the unbelievable — and the wretchedness of realizing that other of us beget moved on to the next unbelievable dismay, closure be damned. Cherish anguish itself, there’s one thing ephemeral and unresolvable about the sequence’ theme, thrown into inconsistent distinction in opposition to the resolve on or resolve on to beget a study Jim Swire’s myth and the Lockerbie myth in a disappointingly concrete manner.
For some time, the inconsistency isn’t a subject. The opening two episodes are successfully distressing, specifically the vogue that Harrower and director Otto Bathurst treat the effort itself. It isn’t exactly exploitative, but there aren’t ample living off warnings for the nightmarish depiction of that December evening, the fireballs within the sky, the shocking hail of debris, fields scattered with charred bodies and the craters which would possibly well perchance be each and each literal and signify holes in families’ lives that can by no device be filled. The necessary episode substances on the least half-hour of mayhem and carnage, all over which doubtlessly the most efficient “reduction” is the escalating dread and then sorrow on the Swire household as they come to take hold of what has took place. It’s edge-of-your-seat tv interspersed with emotional agony, with Firth and McCormack grounding the intimate allotment of the parable and Sam Troughton, as a Scottish reporter who undoubtedly feels love a composite, capturing the disorientation in Lockerbie.
The instantaneous aftermath within the 2d episode is nearly as efficient, because the sequence follows Swire’s wretchedness, the early group of household anguish groups and the confusion on the failure of the British or American governments to open an autonomous inquiry. In a moment of escalating chaos, shown right here by process of files and documentary pictures, fingers were pointed at diversified Center Jap countries and fright groups, inflicting the parable to procure lost within the international maelstrom surrounding the most valuable Iraq Battle, then 9/11 and then the next battle in Afghanistan.
It’s a myth that changed into incredibly diffuse and confusing, all over which certain moments that played as climactic on the realm stage — the 2000 trial within the Netherlands used to be an remarkable moment of international legislation — weren’t truly conclusive, on the least now no longer for Swire.
This turns into a subject for the display conceal, attributable to it’s more uncomplicated to dramatize Jim Swire as a dogged autonomous investigator than as an incapacitated father, and it’s more uncomplicated to treat Swire as a particular person using the save of the investigation than as man using the investigation as a coping or sublimating mechanism. The sequence is more overjoyed depicting what Jim is doing as opposed to what Jim is feeling — even when the fleeting glimpses of the latter are mighty more efficient and a considerably better showcase for Firth, who’s higher than nice looking to dig deeper, but is simplest sporadically provided that chance.
The third and fourth episodes change into a frustratingly nonstop saga of Jim Swire making and disassembling all-too-familiar conspiracy boards in diversified areas of work and apartments, coming and going to heaps of trials, visiting and revisiting Libya. He’s constantly caught sharing the display conceal with composite characters — Troughton and Label Bonnar as an attorney who does… nothing are amongst several recognizable and wasted supporting gamers — or valorous-form ancient figures who by no device undoubtedly feel love proper americans. He’s also constantly repeating to of us that he needs answers, when the actual fact is that, as of 2024, right here’s now no longer a case all over which there are concrete answers.
The gap between how potent the scenes with Jim and Jane are and how mechanical the scenes with Jim and Gaddafi — or Jim and bombing suspect Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (Ardalan Esmaili) — are is huge. Though the want to treat al-Megrahi, clean doubtlessly the most efficient man convicted of any crime related to Lockerbie, as a beefy persona and display conceal him and Jim as parallels (two men, two fathers, whose lives were forever modified by December 21, 1988) is a mighty one, I don’t think Lockerbie: A Discover about for Truth ever comes shut to an understanding of al-Megrahi.
Aspiring to cardboard empathy for al-Megrahi, though better than treating him as a straight forward comic strip, finally ends up limiting the sequence’ opportunities for empathy for Jim and specifically Jane. Firth is at possibility of procure your complete reward, and his contained unraveling is compelling. I discovered McCormack to be every bit as appropriate, but much less fully realized as a persona. After handing over doubtlessly the most extremely efficient moment of your complete sequence toward the end of the most valuable episode, Jane is diminished to taking half in diversifications on “You’re so trapped within the previous that you just’re neglecting the household that’s clean alive!” tropes for nearly three hours.
If I had to bet, I’d declare the display conceal understands that it’s turning into as distanced from its emotional middle as Jim is, as alive to on making this a whodunnit on the expense of a myth of self-care and therapeutic. But I ponder if these identical beats would beget played more successfully in a function film or a tighter miniseries.
Tether (USDT), on the 2nd the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has been below intense scrutiny for loads of months due to federal investigations into its alleged role in facilitating harmful-border money laundering. Now, a present characterize by 404 Media highlights Tether’s rising employ as a money laundering instrument for Mexican drug traffickers, per the U.S. Federal authorities.
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The present characterize by 404 Media said that a money laundering organization tied to most critical cocaine seizures within the US, as neatly as cartels in Mexico and Colombia, has allegedly funneled hundreds of hundreds of bucks by leveraging cryptocurrency, seriously Tether, to switch wealth rapidly all over borders in present years.
404 Media reviewed the court paperwork that show how cryptocurrencies get become an integral instrument for colossal-scale drug trafficking operations in the 21st century. One revelation from the filings highlights that Tether is reportedly sold at a slash designate in Mexico, as its initiating place is ceaselessly linked to proceeds from drug trafficking. This underscores the twin-edged nature of cryptocurrencies: while they provide effectivity and hobble, to boot they relate original challenges for law enforcement in combating illicit financial actions.
As per the characterize, a civil forfeiture criticism was once filed by the government final week, in quest of get entry to to over $5 million payment of Tether saved in three cryptocurrency accounts allegedly tied to drug trafficking. On the choice hand, the total amount of cryptocurrency flowing through after all one in every of these accounts is unprecedented higher than the sum being seized. As per the characterize, the actual person deposited $15.6 million in cryptocurrency all over 452 transactions and withdrew virtually $15.7 million through 567 withdrawals. In whole, extra than $15 million in funds were transacted through this single account.
Why stablecoins fancy Tether are so controversial
Stablecoins fancy Tether (UST) and USDC (USDC) are cryptocurrencies whose payment is tied to that of but any other currency or commodities fancy gold or any financial instrument.
Stablecoin Tether acts as a digital buck for crypto traders and turns into a medium for these traders to commerce Bitcoin and completely different cryptocurrencies. Tether accounts for over 50% of the each day shopping and selling quantity of Bitcoin and up to 70% of some completely different major cryptocurrencies.
At the time of writing, Tether is the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a market cap of $132 billion. Circle’s USD Coin is the eighth largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $38 billion, per crypto monitoring net space CoinMarketCap.
Cloud computing has always been marketed to enterprises as a more cost-effective way for companies to access the compute resources they need, because they only pay for what they use and can easily scale back how much they are using, based on demand.
Enterprises were encouraged, on the back of these benefits, to streamline their on-premise datacentres and start migrating the applications and workloads that resided in them to the public cloud.
In the early 2010s, it is fair to say that companies had a much wider choice of public cloud providers to entrust their data to, with (the technology firms formally known as) HP and Dell both having enterprise propositions in this space, alongside Rackspace and the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Towards the latter half of that decade, HP, Dell and Rackspace (and a handful of others) had all bowed out of the public cloud race, with the rise of AWS often cited as a factor in their decisions to pivot their business models towards a mix of private and managed cloud services provision.
This, in turn, has paved the way for the cloud infrastructure market to become the three-horse race it is today, with AWS leading the charge, followed by Microsoft and Google Cloud.
With around two-thirds of an entire market dominated by just three players, it is perhaps unsurprising that the hold companies like AWS, Microsoft and Google have on the cloud infrastructure services market is coming under increased regulatory scrutiny in various markets across the world – and the UK is no different.
In September 2022, the communications regulator Ofcom launched year-long probe into the UK’s £15m cloud services market, with particular emphasis on the actions and activities of the market’s biggest players: AWS, Microsoft and Google.
The study’s aim, as outlined by Ofcom at the time, was to “assess the strength of the competition in cloud services and the position key companies hold in the market” under the terms of the Enterprise Act 2002, which is an act of Parliament concerned with preserving market competitiveness.
Halfway through its investigation, Ofcom published an interim report in April 2023 that singled out AWS and Microsoft, specifically, for engaging in anti-competitive behaviours that it claimed might financially disadvantage UK consumers and businesses.
The “behaviours” were serious enough for Ofcom to confirm it was consulting on whether to refer the UK cloud infrastructure services market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
This was in the wake of its investigation bringing to light evidence that users were being hampered in their ability to switch from one cloud provider to another or add additional ones to their roster of technology providers.
Despite opposition from both Amazon and Microsoft, Ofcom confirmed – at the time its final report into the UK cloud infrastructure services market dropped in October 2023 – that it would be referring the market to the CMA for a further anti-trust probe.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Why did Ofcom refer the UK cloud services market to the CMA?
Ofcom published a full-year report that chronicled the findings of its 12-month investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure market in October 2023 that raised red flags about some anti-competitive behaviours it claimed AWS and Microsoft are both known to display. This is why the market has been referred to the CMA.
These red flags included concerns about the fact cloud providers charge customers egress fees to transfer their data to a competitor’s environment, which Ofcom claimed could discourage users from switching between providers.
The report also flagged interoperability restrictions as being another matter of concern, as it means users often have to put additional effort into reconfiguring their data and applications to work in different cloud environments.
The offering of committed spend discounts, which Microsoft and AWS are both known to do to public sector users, was also raised as a red flag by Ofcom as it incentivises users to back a single cloud provider for all or most of their cloud needs, the regulator claimed.
Ofcom’s full-year report also devoted several pages to detailing concerns it had received about how Microsoft charges users more for running versions of its cloud products in its competitors’ hosting environments.
“We have received submissions that say Microsoft engages in several practices that make it less attractive for customers to use Microsoft’s licensed software products on the cloud infrastructure of rival providers compared to Microsoft Azure. The submissions allege that this limits their ability to compete for customers.”
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: What will the CMA investigation cover?
It will be the CMA’s responsibility to fully investigate the anti-competitive behaviours flagged in the Ofcom report. As well as this, the CMA also has powers to intervene and roll out changes to how the likes of AWS and Microsoft behave to correct any anti-competitive behaviours its work brings to light.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Who is overseeing the CMA investigation?
The CMA appointed an inquiry group to oversee the investigation on 5 October 2023. The group comprises four members: CMA inquiry chair Kip Meek, Robin Foster, Paul Hughes and Colleen Keck.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: How long will the CMA investigation into AWS and Microsoft last?
The CMA’s investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure services market is due to run until April 2025, meaning that by the time it ends, it will have run for about 18 months.
The investigation’s length has raised eyebrows and proven to be a great source of concern for UK cloud market stakeholders, who fear the 18-month timeline will pave the way for the companies under investigation to gain more share and influence at the expense of other, smaller providers.
And AWS made a similar announcement on 5 March 2024, with its pledge to waive the charges associated with transferring data out to the internet when users want to migrate workloads from its public cloud infrastructure.
In a blog post, announcing the move, the company claimed more than 90% of its customers never incur fees when transferring data out of AWS, because the company already offers 100 gigabytes per month of free transfers from its datacentre regions to the internet.
“If you need more than 100 gigabytes of data transfer out per month while transitioning, you can contact AWS support to ask for free data transfer out to the internet charges for the additional data,” the post stated.
“It’s necessary to go through support because you make hundreds of millions of data transfers each day, and we generally do not know if the data transferred out to the internet is a normal part of your business or a one-time transfer as part of a switch to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the company added.
The AWS blog post made no reference to regulatory pressure being a factor in its decision to waive data egress fees, but did say the move is in keeping with its view that moving to the cloud should give users choice and flexibility.
“We believe this choice must include the one to migrate your data to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the post added.
And doing so will not require users to close their accounts with AWS or change their relationship with the company in anyway, it added.
Just over a week after AWS said it was scrapping data egress fees, Microsoft published a brief blog post confirming that it was doing the same.
“We support customer choice, including the choice to migrate your data away from Azure,” said the Microsoft blog post. “Azure now offers free egress for customers leaving Azure when taking their data out of the Azure infrastructure via the internet to switch to another cloud provider or an on-premises datacentre.”
Technical and interoperability barriers were also flagged by Ofcom as complicating the lives of enterprises that might want to mix and match cloud services from competing providers. Therefore, Ofcom said the CMA could address this by forcing the hyperscalers to be more transparent about how nicely (or not) their technologies play with their competitors’ offerings.
One area that might be trickier for the CMA to fix is the offering of committed spend discounts, Ofcom acknowledged, because putting a stop to customers being able to access preferential pricing on products would mean higher prices and costs for users.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has there been any shift in behaviour from AWS and Microsoft since the CMA investigation started?
On the whole, it has been business as usual for AWS and Microsoft. There has been no let-up in Amazon’s use of committed spend discounts to lure in public sector customers, for example.
Despite the offering of discounted pricing being a key area of focus for the CMA’s inquiry, details emerged in December 2023 that AWS had quietly renewed the preferential pricing scheme it had in place with the UK government.
This pricing scheme, known as the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA), has already been used to call off several multimillion-pound contracts, including one valued at £450m with the UK Home Office since its introduction in late 2023.
As reported by Computer Weekly in February 2024, Microsoft confirmed it had opened discussions with the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade body with a view to resolving its concerns about how it charges more for customers opting to run their own software in its cloud.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has the CMA released any interim findings from its work so far?
On 23 May 2024, the CMA published the first in a series of working papers, to give stakeholders an insight into the shape its investigation is taking. The publications were released with the caveat that the working papers’ contents is not intended to give readers a steer on any provisional or final decisions the CMA is making.
The working papers include one examining the UK cloud market’s overall competitive landscape, along with others separately looking at how the charging of egress fees and the offering of committed spend discounts might impact which providers companies choose to use.
