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South Korea Blocks Lending Services

by admin August 19, 2025

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South Korea’s financial regulator has ordered a stop to all crypto lending on local exchanges, saying the fast-growing products lack proper rules and pose risks.

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) issued administrative guidance that takes effect immediately and will stay in place until new lending rules are written.

Regulator Moves To Halt Crypto Lending

According to the FSC, exchanges must suspend services that let users borrow against crypto or fiat deposits. Existing loans are not being wiped out; borrowers can still repay or extend under current contracts.

Reports say the order is an administrative step, not a criminal ban, but platforms that ignore it may face on-site inspections from authorities.

South Korea confirms that the only “investment” the U.S. is getting out of them is in the form of high interest rate loans.

Just like Japan. pic.twitter.com/REDeuP8DvC

— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) August 4, 2025

Rapid Uptake And Big Numbers

Based on reports, lending offerings exploded after early July. Upbit launched a program letting customers borrow up to 80% of the value of their deposits, using USDT, Bitcoin and XRP as collateral.

Rival Bithumb offered loans worth up to four times a customer’s holdings, and other local platforms quickly followed.

One company’s first month drew roughly 27,600 investors who borrowed about 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion), according to the regulator. Market swings pushed about 13% of those borrowers into liquidation, the FSC added.

BTCUSD trading at $115,564 on the 24-hour chart: TradingView

Liquidations And Stablecoin Strain

Reports have disclosed an unusual sell-off in USDT tied to the lending push, and that move briefly disturbed stablecoin pricing on some Korean platforms.

Forced liquidations and a sudden rush to sell can magnify losses for ordinary users, which is exactly what alarmed regulators. That mix of heavy borrowing and market stress is what the FSC flagged as a systemic worry.

Exchanges Pivot As Rules Loom

Upbit and Bithumb had already paused lending once in July; Bithumb later resumed under stricter terms before this fresh suspension.

At the same time, industry players are preparing for more regulated business: Dunamu, which runs Upbit, unveiled a custody service that stores assets in cold wallets for corporate and institutional clients.

Reports also point to the ruling party’s Digital Asset Basic Act, a proposal that would formally allow lending services inside exchange operations — but only once rules are set.

Push For Rules While Opening New Doors

Officials say they will move quickly to build a clear rulebook for digital asset lending to protect users and keep markets steady.

South Korea appears to be loosening other curbs: authorities are clearing the way for the country’s first spot crypto ETFs and are working on a won-pegged stablecoin framework.

That shows regulators want to encourage safer forms of crypto access, while trimming riskier retail products.

Featured image from Verdict, chart from TradingView

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Court blocks FTC investigation into Media Matters’ alleged scheme against X

by admin August 17, 2025

The court has blocked the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into Media Matters, the media nonprofit that previously published research showing that ads appeared on X alongside neo-Nazi and other antisemitic content. In 2023, Elon Musk’s X filed a lawsuit against the media watchdog following an advertiser exodus. It accused Media Matters of “knowingly and maliciously manufactur[ing] side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white national fringe content.” Just this May, the FTC started looking into whether the nonprofit violated antitrust laws by allegedly colluding with advertising and advocacy groups to boycott X.

In June, Media Matters sued the FTC, accusing it of unfairly targeting the group in retaliation for past criticisms of X. “The Federal Trade Commission seeks to punish Media Matters for its journalism and speech in exposing matters of substantial public concern — including how X.com has enabled and profited from extremist content that proliferated after Elon Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter,” the group said at the time. Now, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan has granted a preliminary injunction in the nonprofit’s favor.

Sooknanan has agreed with the group that the FTC’s investigation is “a retaliatory act” and has noted that it is “likely to succeed on its First Amendment retaliation claim.” She wrote in her decision that such probes would deter other reporters from speaking again. “Indeed, the FTC’s [investigation] has had its intended effect.” Apparently, because of the probe, Media Matters has “decided against pursuing certain stories about the FTC, Chairman Ferguson, and Mr. Musk.”

“The court’s ruling demonstrates the importance of fighting over folding, which far too many are doing when confronted with intimidation from the Trump administration,” Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, told The New York Times. “We will continue to stand up and fight for the First Amendment rights that protect every American.” As the publication notes, courts had also blocked investigations into the group by the attorneys general in Texas and Missouri. Musk’s lawsuits against the nonprofit, however, are still ongoing.

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August 17, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

ZKsync’s Airbender zkVM Proves Ethereum Blocks in 35 Seconds

by admin June 25, 2025

Matter Labs, the developer firm behind the layer-2 network ZKsync, unveiled at the Permissionless conference its new cryptographic prover “Airbender” on Tuesday.

A prover is a key component for layer-2s, as it generates zero-knowledge proofs that are then posted to the base layer blockchain (in this case Ethereum) — a crucial process in linking the two chains and ensuring its security.

The ZKsync team claims that Airbender is the fastest of its kind, delivering Ethereum block proofs in 35 seconds with a single GPU, outpacing its competitors benchmarks.

Having fast speeds can save on transaction fees: “we’re entering fraction of a cent territory which is critical for key use cases, including micropayments, high-frequency trading, and decentralized social,” said Alex Gluchowski, the co-founder of Matter Labs, in an interview with CoinDesk. “Faster proofs unlock faster finality, cheaper apps, and crucially, proofs that can be generated anywhere, not just in massive GPU farms.”

The new prover, which is an open-sourced zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM), is based on RISC-V, a newer programming framework that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested to replace the current EVM, because it will make the blockchain more efficient.

“We started building ZKsync Airbender over a year ago because we saw where Ethereum needed to go, and what ZK apps would eventually demand,” said Gluchowski. “Vitalik’s recent post was a great affirmation of our plans, but this path has been in motion for a while.”

While Airbender is still early in its rollout, Matter Labs has released an app that lets developers test out the new prover. If all goes according to plan and the ZKsync governance process approves it, Airbender will be included in a protocol upgrade later this summer, according to Gluchowski.

“ZKsync Airbender proves Ethereum blocks in 35 seconds using a single GPU. That’s the start of something ground-breaking: home-proving, real-time cross-chain UX, and ZK apps that can verify on the fly. This is the foundation for an Internet of verifiable, interconnected chains,” Gluchowksi said.

Read more: Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum’s EVM With RISC-V

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June 25, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Craft delightful 3D figurines from blocks and bring them to life in Block Factory

by admin June 6, 2025

Allow your creativity to take center stage with Block Factory, a new building game from publisher Shiro Unlimited and developer OverPowered Team. In Block Factory, players will be able to utilize different machines to stack, shape, cut, and paint individual blocks before turning them into 3D figurines.

BORDEAUX, France – June 4, 2025 – Block Factory, the calming and creative building game where you craft delightful 3D figurines from blocks from publisher Shiro Unlimited (Northgard, Wartales, Dune: Spice Wars, Ale Abbey) and developer OverPowered Team, comes to PC via Steam on July 11, 2025, as revealed during the Shacknews E4 Indie Remake showcase.

Enjoy a serene and rewarding automation and building experience where creativity takes center stage. Bring miniature figurines to life by building flowing factories that turn individual blocks into charming creations. Take a laid-back approach, refining each step of the production process at your own pace, building from simple starting points to intricate assembly lines in a peaceful factory world.

Enter a flow state while building figurines, utilizing an array of machines to stack, shape, cut, glue, and paint bricks during each step of production. Experiment with different workflows and new machines, developing creative workflows across 24 highly replayable stages tailored to players of every style.

Let creativity shine in Creative Mode. Design custom 3D figurines block-by-block and implement workflows to bring them to life. Find the joy in creation and automation, sharing completed figures with friends and other players via Steam Workshop support. Download others’ creations, opening a world of endless possibilities.

Celebrate the thrill of creation by adding completed figurines into evolving themed dioramas. Each diorama offers a unique opportunity to showcase your creative output, adding figurines like red pandas, seafaring ships, and racecars to imaginative scenes.

“Block Factory encourages players to find the optimal solution to automated production challenges,” said Pablo López, Co-Founder and Designer at OverPowered Team. “Whether working to complete stages or tackling player-created figurines, the only limit is your creativity. We eagerly await seeing players’ imaginative figurines and the factories best suited to build them when Block Factory comes to Steam on July 11!”

Block Factory comes to PC via Steam on July 11 for $9.99 | £8.50 | 9.99€ with a 10% discount at launch. The game will offer English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and Simplified Chinese language support.

For more information, wishlist the game on Steam and follow Shiro Unlimited on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.

Stay tuned to GamingTrend for all your gaming, tech, and entertainment news!

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June 6, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

VPN Usage Spikes in France as Pornhub Blocks Users Over Age Restrictions

by admin June 6, 2025

In brief

ProtonVPN reported a 1,000% surge in signups within 30 minutes when French users sought to bypass new, countrywide age restrictions for porn.
Both Proton and Pornhub criticized the law, warning that mandatory ID collection by third-party or offshore sites could create dangerous repositories of sensitive personal data.

French Pornhub users rushed to ProtonVPN this week after the adult site blocked access from France in protest of new government-mandated age verification rules, the company said, claiming that signups for the service surged 1,000% in just 30 minutes.

ProtonVPN is part of a suite of privacy tools developed by Proton AG, a Switzerland-based company best known for its encrypted email service, ProtonMail.

While ProtonVPN reported a 1,000% surge in French signups this week, it didn’t disclose the number of users it had in the country before the spike, making the figure difficult to interpret.

Still, ProtonVPN ranks among the more widely used VPNs worldwide.

According to Appfigures, it was downloaded 3 million times on Google Play in May, with an estimated 620,000 additional downloads via the Apple App Store.

By comparison, NordVPN saw about 1.7 million downloads across both platforms, and ExpressVPN totaled around 690,000.

Proton acknowledged the surge and voiced concern about the broader implications of mandatory age verification laws—and the unintended ways virtual private networks, better known as VPNs, are being used to circumvent them.

“We built Proton VPN to help people in authoritarian countries bypass online censorship. An access gateway for porn was obviously not what we had in mind,” a Proton spokesperson told Decrypt. “But VPNs can be used this way, and signups from France have temporarily increased by a factor of ten.”

Virtual private networks encrypt internet traffic and mask IP addresses, allowing users to browse privately and access region-restricted content.

The decision to block access to Pornhub followed a French law enacted in May 2024, requiring adult websites to verify users’ ages—a measure Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, criticized as futile.

The company argued that the rules made French citizens more vulnerable to data theft and illicit content, while failing to protect children, a sentiment echoed by Proton.

“We believe the age verification approach is not the best way of restricting children’s access to illicit content,” the Proton spokesperson wrote. “There’s no such thing as age verification for children only; it’s age verification for everyone.”

Proton said that allowing offshore porn sites or other third parties to collect IDs from adults creates a central repository of sensitive information, which carries serious risks of blackmail and data misuse.

Attempting to access Pornhub from France, users were met with a declaration from the company lambasting the French government’s actions.

Instead of website-level age verification, Aylo and Proton support device-level verification as a more effective solution.

“All it requires is that the government enforce regulations on three companies–Apple, Google, and Microsoft–the three operating system manufacturers requiring age verification at the device level prior to accessing adult content,” Aylo said in a statement.

Digital restrictions have repeatedly driven users to adopt alternative technologies.

In December 2020, major credit card companies—including Mastercard, Visa and Discover—blocked payments to Pornhub after a New York Times investigation alleged the site hosted illegal content, including child abuse and nonconsensual videos.

Mastercard permanently ended its relationship with the platform, while Visa suspended payments pending further review. In response to its payment services being cut, Pornhub began accepting cryptocurrency for its premium subscription service.

The surge in VPN signups marked another front in the ongoing battle over anonymous access to adult content.

Lawmakers are increasingly turning to age verification laws to shield children from explicit material.

Other countries enacting these measures include the United Kingdom and Germany. In the U.S., 19 states—including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, and Texas have enacted age-verification measures in recent years.

Edited by Josh Quittner and Sebastian Sinclair

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June 6, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

TikTok now blocks search results for #SkinnyTok

by admin June 4, 2025

TikTok no longer shows search results for the hashtag #SkinnyTok. Critics who supported this block said some videos with that label were promoting disordered eating and other unhealthy or risky diet behaviors. We’ve reached out to TikTok for comment on this development.

France’s Minister of State for Digital Affairs Clara Chappaz was one of the politicians leading the pushback against this particular hashtag. She has been campaigning against #SkinnyTok with both French and EU regulators since April. “These videos promoting extreme thinness are revolting and absolutely unacceptable,” Chappaz said. “Digital tools are marvellous in terms of progress and freedom, but badly used they can shatter lives … the social networks cannot escape their responsibility.”

While blocking search results for potentially harmful hashtags is a positive step, it only places hurdles in the path of people who want to seek out similar videos. “Users are savvy,” Cornell University professor Brooke Erin Duffy told The New York Times. “They know how to work these platforms and how to evade their content moderation systems.”

A block on one hashtag is just the latest in TikTok’s piecemeal approach toward content that could encourage eating disorders. In 2020 it placed restrictions on ads that might “promote a negative or harmful body image,” such as fasting apps and weight loss supplements. TikTok began a partnership with the National Eating Disorder Association in 2021 to offer more resources for users with eating disorders. Later that year, it also introduced a new approach to the For You page in an effort to reduce the impact of watching too many repeated clips on a negative topic.

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June 4, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

BitMEX Blocks Lazarus Phishing Attempt, Calls Tactics ‘Unsophisticated’

by admin June 2, 2025

BitMEX said it has thwarted an attempted phishing attack by the Lazarus Group, describing the attempt as using “unsophisticated” phishing methods by the notorious North Korea-linked group.

In a blog post published on May 30, the crypto exchange detailed how an employee was approached via LinkedIn under the guise of a Web3 NFT collaboration.

The attacker tried to lure the target into running a GitHub project containing malicious code on their computer, a tactic the firm says has become a hallmark of Lazarus’ operations.

“The interaction is pretty much known if you are familiar with Lazarus’ tactics,” BitMEX wrote, adding that the security team quickly identified the obfuscated JavaScript payload and traced it to infrastructure previously linked to the group.

A likely failure in operational security also revealed that one of the IP addresses linked to North Korean operations was located in the city of Jiaxing, China, approximately 100 km from Shanghai.

“A common pattern in their major operations is the use of relatively unsophisticated methods, often starting with phishing, to gain a foothold in their target’s systems,” BitMEX wrote.

Examining other attacks, it was noted that North Korea’s hacking efforts were likely divided into multiple subgroups with varying levels of technical sophistication.

“This can be observed through the many documented examples of bad practices coming from these ‘frontline’ groups that execute social engineering attacks when compared to the more sophisticated post-exploitation techniques applied in some of these known hacks,” it said.

The Lazarus Group is an umbrella term used by cybersecurity firms and Western intelligence agencies to describe several hacker teams operating under the direction of the North Korean regime.

In 2024, Chainalysis attributed $1.34 billion in stolen crypto to North Korean actors, accounting for 61% of all thefts that year across 47 incidents, a record high and a 102% increase over 2023’s total of $660 million stolen.

Still a threat

But as founder and CEO of Nominis, Snir Levi warns, growing knowledge of the Lazarus Group’s tactics doesn’t necessarily make them any less of a threat.

“The Lazarus Group uses multiple techniques to steal cryptocurrencies,” he told Decrypt. “Based on the complaints we collect from individuals, we can assume that they are trying to defraud people on a daily basis.”

The size of some of their hauls has been shocking.

In February, hackers drained over $1.4 billion from Bybit, made possible by the group tricking an employee at Safe Wallet into running malicious code on their computer.

“Even the Bybit hack started with social engineering,” Levi said.

Other campaigns include Radiant Capital, where a contractor was compromised via a malicious PDF file that installed a backdoor.

The attack methods range from basic phishing and fake job offers to advanced post-access tactics like smart contract tampering and cloud infrastructure manipulation.

The BitMEX disclosure adds to a growing body of evidence documenting Lazarus Group’s multi-layered strategies. It follows another report in May from Kraken, in which the company described an attempt by a North Korean to get hired.

U.S. and international officials have said North Korea uses crypto theft to fund its weapons programs, with some reports estimating it may supply up to half of the regime’s missile development budget.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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June 2, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Waluigi Hits Coin Blocks In Mario Kart World In The Weirdest Way

by admin June 2, 2025

Mario sports and racing games bring out the weirdest behaviors from the Mushroom Kingdom’s zany characters, and Waluigi is a prime example of this. The animation team for Mario Kart World must have had a field day with Luigi’s lanky nemesis, as displayed by video footage of a Mario Kart World demo capturing something that might be easy to miss during gameplay.

In a video on X posted by user Mr. Duby, Waluigi gets a Coin Block item, which grants the player coins upon hitting it. But as seen in the video, Waluigi makes the unconventional decision to kick the Coin Block upwards.

It’s a rather impractical, yet impressively flexible move. Say anything you want about Waluigi, but he’s anything but boring. Traditionally, Mario and friends hit coin blocks with their fists, but Waluigi seems to want to go out of his way to showcase his impressive limberness.

And it’s not just Waluigi who mines coins from blocks using an unexpected body part — his buddy Wario straight up uses his derrière to hit blocks. One has to wonder how Wario and Waluigi would approach the fairly standard action of hitting blocks if they were in a traditional Super Mario platformer.

Waluigi has always been characterized by quirky and expressive animations in the Mario spin-off games, from his romantic rose pose in Mario Party 8 to his shockingly crude celebration in the Mario Strikers series. He might have missed the cut for Super Smash Bros., but at least the Mario sports games are blessed with his chaotic unpredictability.

Mario Kart World, poised as the killer app launch game for Nintendo Switch 2, has a wild cast that features background characters, like Penguin from Super Mario 64, and limbless enemies that have no business of driving karts, such as Pokey. We’ll have to see how they approach the challenge of hitting a coin block, and the internet will surely get a lot of fun GIFs out of those.

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June 2, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Nintendo Blocks Fans From Sharing Switch 2 Ads In Its News App

by admin May 27, 2025

Nintendo’s emphatic dislike of sharing has reached a bizarre new level, with the Nintendo Today app now stopping users from screenshotting or videoing its advertising material.

Nintendo Switch 2 Could Launch With Almost No Reviews

Nintendo Today is just ads. There’s nothing wrong with that—plenty of people want to get new Nintendo information—and the app is a fun, if cumbersome, way of hearing the latest about what Nintendo is hoping you’ll buy. But, whichever way you slice it, it’s a commercial tool for plugging games and devices. Today on Today, underneath a cute animation from Tears of the Kingdom, you can watch a 21-second video about Donkey Kong’s hand slap in forthcoming Switch 2 title Donkey Kong Bananza.

“Cool!” you might think. “James’ll love that! I’ll grab a screenshot of the video and send it to him.” Or, if you don’t know James, you might think, “Ooh, I’m so excited for Donkey Kong Bananza! I’m going to post a video clip of this on my BlueSky account!” Except, no, you won’t do any of this. Now all you’ll get is a black screen. Here’s a screenshot I took today:

Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

I can right now, on an Android phone, still screenshot the text-based stories, such as the one plugging the new Switch 2 “All-in-One” carrying case, and I can capture the screenshots recently uploaded from Mario Kart World. (Except, with the latter, the shots are included in landscape, in an app that only runs in portrait, with no way to zoom in or rotate them. Just stellar work.) It’s just videos that are being blocked.

Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

Let’s be unambiguously clear: Publisher-provided screenshots and videos of a game are advertising. They have only ever been advertising. The games media is guilty of having allowed such things to be commoditized, fighting one another for the “exclusive” to publish such commercials on their own website, then becoming furious when another site reprints the adverts they wanted to be the only one to show. But ads they remain.

They exist to promote a game, with the intention of building interest and excitement in a product, and the goal of increasing sales. That’s it. That’s what they’re for. And here’s Nintendo, very cleverly encouraging millions of people to install an app on their phones that only serves to show its users these ads, and then going out of its way to stop their being shared? That’s bonkers.

But, it feels very par for Nintendo’s course. Sharing is such an anathema to this company that it even applies it to its own game footage and trailers—clips you’d imagine were created with the express purpose of being seen by as many people as possible. But no! Shut that shit down! People might get ideas.

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May 27, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Microsoft’s Smart App Control blocks malware and has ‘lighter impact on your PC’s performance’

by admin May 25, 2025

With Windows 11 22H2, Microsoft introduced a new component to its security suite, aiming to prevent malicious applications, dubbed Smart App Control (SAC). This feature complements Microsoft Defender, blocking untrusted or unknown code from executing on a proactive basis. Now, in an updated blog post pushing the feature, Microsoft claims a performance boost compared to traditional AV solutions, though small print indicates you will require a fresh Windows installation to use this feature.

Traditional antivirus software, such as Microsoft Defender, adopts an “Innocent until proven guilty” approach. These solutions are largely reactive, trusting programs until their behavior triggers an alert. Microsoft Defender employs signature-based detection, behavioral checks (heuristics), and cloud protection to prevent malicious software on your system. When faced with novel (zero-day) malware or polymorphic threats, which can bypass signature checks, Defender falls back to heuristics, observing the malware’s actions until it detects suspicious behavior.

Here’s where Smart App Control enters the fray, employing a proactive methodology, operating on the principle of “Guilty until proven innocent.” It assesses the application’s security by vetting it against Microsoft’s Intelligence Security Graph (a cloud-based reputation service). If this test is inconclusive, it attempts to validate the application’s digital signature, to ensure its origin from a trusted developer. The application is blocked by Windows Security if it is predicted to be malicious in the first check or unsigned in the second check.