Top cryptocurrency news on July 19: Major stories on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies

Most major cryptocurrencies have fallen in the past 24 hours, with bitcoin down 1.9 percent. The current global cryptocurrency market capitalisation is $1.28 trillion, a decline of 2.59 percent in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin is trading 1.9 percent lower at over $31,500, while ether is down nearly 5 percent at over $1,800. Read details here

A Picasso painting is to be sold in tokenised form, allowing investors to buy "shares" in the work, Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum announced. Sygnum joined forces with Artemundi, a fund specialising in art investments, to offer the shares in Picasso's 1964 work "Fillette au Beret". "This marks the first time the ownership rights in a Picasso, or any artwork, are being broadcast onto the public blockchain by a regulated bank, enabling investors to purchase and trade 'shares' in the artwork called Art Security Tokens (ASTs)," Sygnum said. The value of the work, which measures 65 by 54 centimetres (29 by 24 inches), is estimated at four million Swiss francs (3.6 million euros, $4.2 million), the Zurich bank said in a statement. As on stock exchanges, investors will be able to buy and sell shares in the painting on a secondary market through blockchain technology. ASTs will go on sale for a minimum subscription of 5,000 Swiss francs, Sygnum said, stressing that it is regulated by Switzerland's financial market watchdog FINMA. The work itself will be stored in a highly secure location, Sygnum said. (AFP)

Biteeu India announced a partnership with SpaceChain for the launch of its digital security infrastructure into space onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket under the rideshare program. The space node created for Biteeu by space-as-a-service solution provider and partner SpaceChain is installed on a YAM-2 satellite carried by a rocket. The mission was made possible by satellite operator Loft Orbital. This marks Biteeu as the first cryptocurrency exchange in the world to leverage the high security of space-grade infrastructure for ultra-secure Bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions, and having its public satellite key backed up on a space node. Once activated, the space node will be capable of processing multisignature Bitcoin transactions. Multisignature technology requires more than one private key in order to authorize a bitcoin transaction from a crypto-wallet address, rendering the transaction more secure than standard single-signature methods. Various security mechanisms held by the Biteeu.in space node, including the latency in communication between the ground stations and satellites of up to 12 hours, prevent cyber fraud and theft as hackers are unable to move digital assets out quickly. (PTI - Business Wire India)

In June and July, the cybercrime cell of the Pune police received four such complaints from software engineers working in Pune. Hackers locked their data and demanded ransom to encrypt it. Police said the techies were working from home because of the pandemic and that they were either using unsecured internet connections or had not updated their firewalls. The hackers targeted their data, especially important files that had been compressed by the techies to transmit from their laptops to their official clients or their offices. “The hackers ask users to pay ransom in cryptocurrency like bitcoin. If the ransom is not paid on time, the amount is doubled. If payment is not made, the data is deleted,” Rohan Nyayadhish, a cybercrime expert, said. Read more here.