The eerie calm before the storm

225 licences have been issued in the last year, more than 100 companies withdrew their applications and eight were declined. Deepfake scams are becoming alarmingly sophisticated, and scammers are making full use of social media to fool the unwitting, says Gerhard van Deventer, head of enforcement at the Financial Sector…

Stablecoins, backed by real-world assets such as the US dollar, are on a rampage. Jon Ovadia, CEO of crypto exchange OVEX, explains how USD-backed stablecoin Tether, with just 100 employees, recently surpassed Goldman Sachs in terms of profitability. This, says Ovadia, will soon become a multi-trillion dollar business and account…

Louis Nel, co-host of the G-Crypt social media channel, talks about the emergence of some new and alarming scams, often using crypto vulnerabilities.

Katie Ananina of Plan B passport explains some recent updates to Portugal's Golden Visa programme that permits an investment into a bitcoin fund as a route to an EU passport. It seems other countries are eyeing this development with interest too.

Waheed Adam, chairperson of iTouch, explains that the threats from AI and deep fakes are very real, and how one multinational company lost $25 million to a deep fake fraudster pretending to be the CEO. iTouch has developed a digital authentication system using tokenisation to beat this disturbing trend.