Binance teams up with BBVA to let customers keep assets off exchange, FT reports
The Spanish bank is working as one of only a small number of independent custodians for the world's biggest crypto exchange, the report added, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. BBVA did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment while Binance could not immediately be reached.
The move comes as Binance faces heightened regulatory scrutiny worldwide and as crypto exchanges seek to reassure investors about fund safety in the wake of FTX's 2022 collapse.
Last February, U.S. authorities fined Binance more than $4.3 billion penalty for violating federal anti-money laundering and sanctions laws through lapses in internal controls at the company, while its founder and chief executive Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison.
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The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity buried in Kyiv
Viktoriia Roshchyna, the Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity last year, has been buried in Kyiv, in a ceremony attended by relatives and colleagues who paid tribute to her singular professional courage and the importance of her work. Roshchyna was reporting on Russia's systematic policy of extrajudicial detention and torture in occupied parts of Ukraine, before falling victim to it herself. She died at the age of 27 last year in murky circumstances, after more than a year in Russian captivity. Her body was returned earlier this year with some of the internal organs missing. On Friday, an Orthodox church service at the golden-domed St Michael's Cathedral in central Kyiv was followed by speeches on Maidan, the city's central square. Mourners included Roshchyna's editors and journalistic colleagues, diplomats, MPs and members of the public who came to pay their respects. She was later buried at the Baikove cemetery. Colleagues described Roshchyna as a passionate and driven journalist, who pursued her work with such an intensity that she was often difficult to manage. She refused to take no for an answer and insisted she had to see the situation in occupied territory for herself. Editors, reluctant to accept the risks of her self-commissioned assignments, also knew that her work was shining a unique light on one of the darkest and hardest-to-access aspects of Russia's war. 'She is the bravest person, the bravest journalist, I have ever met in my life. That's not an exaggeration, it's a fact,' said Sevgil Musayeva, the editor in chief of Ukrainska Pravda, one of the outlets for which Roshchyna worked for, in a speech on Maidan. 'Once she started something, she never quit,' said the Ukrainian journalist Angelina Kariakina, who worked with Roshchyna at the Hromadske news website. 'If she started a case, a story, we editors never had to remind her that something was happening further in the story. She simply never abandoned her characters or her stories.' Roshchyna was taken captive briefly in Russian-controlled territory in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion in spring 2022, but was subsequently released. However, she continued to travel to occupied areas to bring back stories of life under Russian control, and was taken captive again in August 2023. 'Viktoriia was a person who didn't know the word 'no'. Everyone explained that she shouldn't go to occupied territory. No editors were ready to take responsibility for this, but she still understood that this was her mission, and did it,' said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an MP and the head of the Ukrainian parliament's committee on freedom of speech. 'She was genuine, and genuine people often burn with intensity, and with that fire they ignite everyone around them, but very often this passion costs them the most precious thing – their health and their life,' he added. Roshchyna's death in captivity was investigated by the Viktoriia Project, a consortium including the Guardian, Ukrainska Pravda and other reporting partners, earlier this year. For months after her disappearance, there was no news of Roshchyna, who was held, like many Ukrainian detainees, without contact with the outside world. It was only in May 2024 that Russian authorities admitted, in a letter to her father, that she was being held in captivity. Roshchyna was last seen alive on 8 September 2024, and there were rumours she was due to be included in a prisoner exchange. Ukrainian investigators are still working to establish exactly where and how she died. Sources close to the official Ukrainian investigation disclosed to the Viktoriia Project that examination of Roshchyna's body after its repatriation earlier this year showed the hyoid bone in her neck was broken, damage which can occur during strangulation. The body was also returned with the brain, eyes and larynx removed. Roshchyna was posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, earlier this month. She received it 'for her unwavering belief that freedom will overcome everything,' Zelenskyy wrote on X. Roshchyna spent nearly nine months imprisoned at pre-trial detention centre number 2 in the city of Taganrog, which was repurposed as a holding centre for Ukrainian detainees and has been identified as one of the worst places for torture and mistreatment. Earlier this week, Ukraine's national police service and its chief war crimes prosecutor announced that Aleksandr Shtoda, the head of the facility, had been formally placed under investigation. At the funeral, Roshchyna's editors vowed to continue investigating the circumstances of her death and the specific people who were responsible. 'Our task is not to leave the theme of the occupied territories, however hard it is,' said Kariakina. 'The best way to remember her is not just with words and memories of the work she already did, but to continue this work.'
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Why ‘dynamic pay' is the new way to rip you off
Workers are having their wages cut by new 'dynamic pay' schemes, unions and academics have warned. The practice of surge pricing came under fire after firms used demand to drive up the cost of Oasis reunion tickets. Some gig-economy workers, including Uber drivers and Deliveroo workers, are having their own problems with surge pricing, because their pay is adjusted based on real-time demand. The pay models are based on algorithms. Instead of receiving a predictable, formula-based fee per task, workers are being offered personalised payments for each job. A University of Oxford study published in June found that Uber's 'dynamic pay' system, introduced in 2023 and which alters pay as well as passenger fares, is cutting driver earnings on higher-value trips. Unlike the familiar surge pricing that bumps up fares during busy times to get more drivers on the road, the 'dynamic' system also tweaks how the fare is split, often meaning Uber takes a bigger cut and drivers end up with less. Reuben Binns, an associate professor at Oxford's Department of Computer Science, said: 'The higher the value of the trip, the more of a cut Uber takes. So the more the customer pays, the less the driver actually earns per minute. • What is Ticketmaster, the $22bn music giant under fire for 'dynamic pricing'? 'Workers try all sorts of things to cope — switching apps, refusing certain jobs, tracking their own data — but they're always a step behind the algorithm. 'Platforms are getting more secretive over time. They've moved from a relatively transparent system to a much more complicated one. If this model becomes widespread, it raises big questions about how workers can plan their finances.' Katie Wells, an academic from Georgetown University in Washington DC who studies algorithmic pay systems, said similar models are appearing in other sectors, including healthcare in the US where nurses bid for shifts. She said: 'Uber's personalised wages and prices echo what's happening with grocery prices, plane tickets, and other goods increasingly being priced with granular data.' One London-based Uber driver, who asked to remain anonymous, said: 'I have noticed that our fares or the amount we receive have gone down. Plenty of the drivers I know complain that Uber is deducting more than expected. Many drivers are getting frustrated. 'One of my fellow drivers said he wants to quit Uber because he feels like it's tormenting him as he works so hard just to make £140 a day. I reject a lot of jobs based on fares now. You have to see what job brings you more money.' The former Uber driver Ronak Kazi, 39, said the pay system often felt unpredictable. 'We would get very different amounts for very similar jobs,' he said. Henry Chango Lopez, general secretary of the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB), said: 'The spread of dynamic pricing models should worry us all. These systems keep workers in a constant state of anxiety — forced to make hundreds of snap decisions a day without any transparency into how pay is calculated. It's not just that the game is rigged, it's that workers aren't even allowed to know the rules.' Lopez said that many drivers were working 70-hour weeks under the model and still struggling to cover basic costs, noting that Uber's adoption of dynamic pay preceded the largest driver strike in UK history. • Read more money advice and tips on investing from our experts The GMB union says the lack of transparency in how platforms calculate pay highlights the inequalities between workers and operators, increasing insecurity in already low-income roles. Alex Wood, an assistant professor in economic sociology at the University of Cambridge, said: 'Platforms use dynamic pricing to manage supply and demand, but these systems are highly opaque. It's impossible for workers to know how much they will earn, causing insecurity and anxiety in a population where many already earn below the minimum wage.' A Deliveroo spokesperson said: 'Our rider pay model is designed for flexibility and transparency. All riders have access to information on how orders are offered and how fees are calculated on our website. Riders have the freedom to determine when, where and whether they will work and earnings are measured based on factors such as the time riders spend on each order.' An Uber spokesman said: 'We do not recognise the figures in this report. We're focused on offering people a safe, affordable and easy option to get where they need to go and are proud that thousands of drivers continue to make the positive choice to work on Uber as passenger demand and trips continue to grow.'
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Putin's warlord ally flying migrants into Europe
Vladimir Putin appears to have teamed up with a Libyan warlord to trigger a fresh migrant crisis in the European Union. The European Commission has tracked an increased number of flights between the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi and Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Officials said the pattern suggested possible co-ordination with Gen Khalifa Haftar, the military strongman who controls much of eastern Libya, to facilitate a wave of illegal migration into the bloc. It could mark a repeat of the summer of 2021, when tens of thousands of would-be asylum seekers were helped across the borders of Belarus in what officials warned was a Russian-orchestrated attempt to destabilise the EU. 'We are monitoring recent Minsk-Benghazi flights operated by Belavia Airlines,' a commission official told The Telegraph. 'The frequency and nature of these flights, particularly within a short timeframe, raise questions about potential co-ordination or facilitation of irregular migration flows.' Open-source data reviewed by The Telegraph shows a spike in flights between the Libyan city and the Belarusian capital on the flag-carrying airline in recent months. In May, there were just two flights between the cities, jumping to five in June and four in July. In the past, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, had been accused of allowing migrants to land in Minsk on similar flights before helping transport them to makeshift camps on the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. From the camps, the migrants were said to have been advised by Belarusian officials on how to cross the frontier without being detected. Analysts have since said this was done in co-ordination with Putin to distract from his forces massed on the borders with Ukraine before his invasion in February 2022. After launching the bloodiest conflict since the Second World War, the Russian president has ordered a series of hybrid attacks on Nato and EU nations supporting Kyiv's defence. In the first seven months of this year, the EU has recorded around 5,000 illegal crossings at its eastern land borders. While this is down from last year, the few flights between Libya and Belarus could lead to a new influx of arrivals across the frontier. Some in Europe say Putin could use his growing influence in Libya to once again target the continent. The Russian president has invested efforts in building a presence in the North African country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. As Russia evacuated its Syrian bases, there was evidence equipment was being moved from the port of Tartus to Libya. When Haftar held a parade of his Libyan Arab Armed Force last month, it showcased hundreds of Russian armoured vehicles and air defence systems. He is known to control a small army of people smugglers operating out of Libya, one of the main crossing points from Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean. 'The fact that Russia is increasing its influence in Libya is precisely our concern, and that's why we must also engage with Libya,' Magnus Brunner, the EU's migration commissioner, told Politico last month. 'There is certainly a danger that Russia will use migrants and the migration issue as a whole as a weapon against Europe. This weaponisation is taking place, and of course we also fear that Russia intends to do the same with Libya.' Mr Brunner was one of a group of high-ranking EU officials on an ill-fated visit to Benghazi last month, which was abruptly scrapped after the delegation landed at the city's Benina airport before being told they were persona non grata. Belarus has been identified by Frontex, the agency that polices the EU's external border, as one of the main challenges the bloc faces in its fight against illegal migration this year. The evidence suggests that Lukashenko, Putin and Haftar have teamed up to exploit the frontier once again. 'Migrants are used as an instrument by the regime to put pressure on the European Union's borders, and our neighbours are really suffering from this,' Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus's exiled opposition leader, told The Telegraph. 'This is all the actions of Lukashenko and just business for his regime and a tool to put pressure on the EU for the principled and strong position in supporting democracy.'
