As per a recent news correspondence, a lawyer has been appointed by a Nova Scotia’s court in Canada to have access to the encrypted laptop of the deceased CEO, Gerald Cotton of QuadrigaCX, which is a major Canadian crypto exchange. The laptop which is believed to provide access to $190 million of QuadrigaCX customer funds has been currently handed over to someone for monitoring. The Court has appointed a monitor, Ernst & Young Inc., an independent third party to oversee these proceedings, so that customer obligations are addressed. Even, creditor protection has been filed which would allow to work diligently through the process and ensure the viability of the company. The laptop was previously held by QuadrigaCX representatives.

QuadrigaCX which is a cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE) provides its customers services for the exchange of virtual currency into various assets, such as fiat or other digital currencies. The platforms usually work solely online, providing transactions in electronic forms and taking fees for them, though there are also some brick-and-mortar businesses that use traditional payment methods. Debit and credit cards, postal money orders and other kinds of money transfers are accepted to make an operation using a DCE.

Currently, the assets are stored in a cold wallet, and the court believes this QuadrigaCX case is not a case of typical bankruptcy. The creditors have the rights to consider changing the jurisdiction to proceed with the case in future.

This week the company has been asked by the court to appoint one of the ‘Big Four’ auditing firm, the Ernst & Young as an independent third party to follow up and monitor the proceedings. Ernst & Young (EY) which is a British auditing and consulting company would be following up the company financials. In terms of cryptocurrency, EY representatives have a positive attitude toward the technologies of blockchain and digital currency. Unlike the other three companies in the Big Four, EY supports the Bitcoin community.

The QuadrigaCX management has asked for a month of stay for proceedings which is expected to end on Mar. 7. The investigation team would be searching almost $190 million which is apparently inaccessible following the death of Cotton. In the worst scenario, if the missing keys are not found, the lawyers representing QuadrigaCX would be looking forward to selling the company to satisfy the debts.

Recently, QuadrigaCX which is a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange had to face financial difficulty since the death of the CEO, Gerald Cotten who reportedly died of complications from Crohn’s disease.

One of the leading publications in Canada has published the death certificate and have expressed their concerns about Cotten’s death. The users do not have access to its wallets, and the CEO has not left evidence of passwords.

A report published by Markets Insider reveals that Nvidia has earned a whopping $1.95 billion in revenue via its crypto business. However, the official financial statement of the company has claimed a crypto-related revenue of $602 million. RBC analyst, Mitch Steves, told that the actual number is at least three times higher.

“We think NVDA generated $1.95 billion in total revenue related to the crypto/blockchain. This compares to company’s statement that it generated around $602 million over the same period,” Steves alleged.

During the third quarter of 2018, Nvidia chief financial officer Colette Kress said to its investors to not expect any revenue from its crypto business. And at the time, the company’s shutdown of its cryptocurrency venture caused a decline in its stock price.

In August, Kress said, “We believe we’ve reached a normal period as we’re looking forward to essentially no cryptocurrency as we move forward. Our revenue outlook had anticipated cryptocurrency-specific products declining to approximately $100 million, while actual crypto-specific product revenue was $18 million, and we now expect a negligible contribution is going forward.”

During the past five months, however, a majority of analysts have associated the decline in the performance of the company to the 85 percent fall of the cryptocurrency market.

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress has emphasized in August that it pulled out of the crypto sector. Now, the narrative that the correction in the cryptocurrency market is hurting the firm’s numbers has elevated.

RBC recently published a report that revealed that the company’s ties with the crypto market are deeper than how they were initially presented late in 2019. RBC analyst Mitch Steves added that the revenue Nvidia generated from its crypto mining equipment manufacturing business from April 2017 to July 2018. The revenue is ascertained to be over $2.75 billion.

However, Steves suggested that the numbers cannot be fully confirmed and that Nvidia has 75 percent control over the GPU-related crypto mining market. Between January 25 to January 29, the stock price of Nvidia fell from $160.15 to $131.6, which is more than 18 percent. Such a large short-term drop in market valuation is unprecedented. However, throughout the past month, analysts claimed that the overall decline in demand for Nvidia’s gaming GPUs affected the firm’s performance negatively rather than the struggling crypto market.

In another report by the Motley Fool, it was alleged that gamers are not compelled to purchase Nvidia’s high-performance GPUs because of three factors:

• Most popular PC games are not graphically intensive
• New GPUs do not have killer features
• Gamers are not upgrading GPUs as frequently as before

A games, esports, and mobile market research firm, Newzoo, mentioned that the most sought out GPUs in the market are the GTX 1060, GTX 1050 Ti, and GTX 1070.

Nvidia challenged AMD, a graphics card manufacturer, in taking control of the low-end GPU market. Nvidia was successful in doing so, and this led to an overall decline in demand for high-end and expensive GPUs, a market where Nvidia is claimed to dominate.

It seems that the struggle of graphics card manufacturers has not been exclusive to Nvidia alone. Even AMD and smaller GPU makers have displayed poor performance throughout the last quarter of 2018.

Nvidia first started to show signs of underperformance in December 2018. During this period, CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer claimed that it was a forecasting mistake that caused Nvidia’s stock to drop rather than variables like the crypto market.

“Nvidia still makes the best graphics chips, which have become more powerful than traditional microprocessors. It still has a lead over the competition in a lot of uses, although you could argue that AMD’s catching up to them in the data center while Intel rivals them in self-driving vehicles. I think Nvidia made an honest forecasting mistake, although given that some of us saw it coming, it was definitely an avoidable mistake,” Cramer added.

Chinese tech giant Huawei’s chief executive has been charged with criminal charges for stealing trade secrets, misleading banks about its business and violating U.S. sanctions.

Huawei entirely denied committing any violation mentioned in the indictment. These charges were announced just before a critical two-day round of trade talks between China and the United States. Many trade analysts believe that these allegations could potentially dim the prospects for a breakthrough.

The tech giant has been accused of using paramount efforts to steal trade secrets from American businesses which include an attempt to remove a piece of a robot from T-mobile lab. The charged chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada last month, and the U.S. government is trying to deport her

Meng’s lawyer in Canada didn’t respond immediately to messages that seek comment. As of now, Meng is out on bail in Vancouver, and her case is said to be due back in court on Tuesday

Huawei is considered to be the world’s biggest supplier of network gear that is being used by phone and internet companies. The company has always been seen as a front for spying by the Chinese security services.

After the charges has been filed the company released a public statement saying “The company denies that it or its subsidiary or affiliate have committed any of the asserted violations of U.S. law set forth in each of the indictments,” it also added that Huawei is “not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng, and believes the U.S. courts will ultimately reach the same conclusion.”

On the other hand, China detained two Canadians soon after Meng’s arrest in an obvious attempt to pressure Canada for the release of Ms. Meng.

The Prosecutors who are handling Ms. Meng’s case say that Huawei was doing business in Iran through a Hong-Kong based company called Skycom and Meng has misled U.S. banks into believing that these two companies were separate.

Officials also claim that from the beginning of 2012, Huawei had created a plan to steal all information regarding T-Mobile’s robot, named “Tappy,” and the Huawei engineers clicked pictures of the robot, measured it and even tried to steal a part of it from T-Mobile’s laboratory in Washington state. When asked about the same to T-Mobile they declined to comment on the matter.

At a news conference with Attorney General, Matt Whitaker along with his cabinet officials commented: “As I told high-level Chinese law enforcement officials in August, we need more law enforcement cooperation with China, China should be concerned about criminal activities by Chinese companies, and China should take action.”

This case has set off diplomatic ruffle among the United States, China, and Canada. President Donald Trump commented that he would get involved in the Huawei case if it can help create a trade agreement with China. Eswar Prasad, an economics professor, and China expert at Cornell University along with other economists are worried that the criminal charges announcement made on Monday could potentially hamper the prospects of a deal.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Thursday advised the furloughed federal workers who would be facing a second missed paycheck to get loans to pay their pending bills. He also added he doesn’t understand why the federal workers have any issue availing loans.

Ross, who made a fortune buying distressed companies, said it was disappointing to see some federal workers not showing up to work after the shutdown.

Ross said, “So the 30 days of pay that some people will be out – there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it, and we’ve seen some ads from the financial institutions doing that.”

He also added, “So there is not a good excuse why there really should be a liquidity crisis, true the people might have to pay a little bit of interest.”

Ross’s comments came as the most extended ever shutdown in the United States’ history entered into the 34^th day.

President Trump on Ross’s comments said he had not heard anything about the comment, but he did understand.

“Perhaps he should have said it differently,” Trump told reporters during a trade meeting at the White House. “Local people know who they are when they go for groceries and everything else, and I think Wilbur was probably trying to say they will work along. I know that banks are working along. But he’s done a great job; I will tell you that.”

It should be reported here that the shutdown has affected around 800000 federal workers who have been furloughed. Many of them went to take the help of unemployment assistance, food banks or other work to try to make ends meet.

Democrats have reacted profusely to the comments of Ross.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked at a news conference, “Is this the ‘Let them eat cake,’ kind of attitude, or ‘Call your father for money?’ or, ‘This is character building for you?’” She also added that Ross’s comment was unfortunate as hundreds of thousands of men and women would be missing a second paycheck in the coming day.

U.S. Representative Jennifer Wexton, whose northern Virginia district includes many furloughed workers and federal contractors, said she invited Ross to visit food bank with her to show him the real woes.

Wexton said, “That’s one thing that’s been so striking about this entire process is the complete lack of empathy from the president on down through his administration, a complete lack of understanding of what day-to-day life is for regular people in this district.”

This is not for the first time that one of the people in the Trump administration tried to downplay federal workers’ plight. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett compared the furlough to vacation in an interview last month. Though he later clarified his stand is saying he understands workers are in pain.

Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and adviser to his 2020 re-election campaign, told online television outlet BOLD TV this week that the federal workers who had been furloughed were facing a little bit of pain to pay the bills, but they needed to make the sacrifice as the border wall, or national security is bigger than any one person.

She later explained on Fox News Channel on Thursday that she was extremely empathetic towards the furloughed workers, but her whole point was that the president had been standing firm on his position because this was really about the future of the United States, about fixing that immigration system.

Jim Hackett, Chief Executive of Ford Motor Co, said on Thursday that the company would be aiming to double its annual operating profit this year. Ford, the No.2 automaker in the U.S. had mediocre gains last year. Hackett’s comments on the coming year’s profits were made in an email to the employees at Ford.

Ford has been restructuring its operations worldwide, including plenty of cuts in Europe. The company also recently announced its new alliance with Germany’s Volkswagen to introduce self-driving and electric vehicles. This move will help both the companies save billions of dollars.

Ford’s fourth-quarter results announced on Wednesday, comprised of $7 billion operating profit in 2018 along with a profit margin of 4.4 percent, which is comparatively lower than the 6.1 percent reported in 2017. Ford has announced that it is targeting 8 percent operating margin in the upcoming quarter.

According to the email Hackett sent to the employees, 2018 was considered a mediocre year. He thinks the $7 billion which comes to 4.4 percent operating margin to be only half of the appropriate margin. He also mentioned that the company would be aiming for $14 billion although he has not given a timetable as to when the $14 billion targets will be hit. A Ford spokesman clarified that Ford was demonstrating to the employees how the margin target translates to the overall profit.

With 20 months experience on the job, Hackett said that it is time to bury 2018 in a deep grave and mourn over what could have been and focus better on the coming year.

Ford did not share a specific financial forecast for 2019 with Wall Street. It only mentioned that there is a potential for improving earnings and revenue. This is in stark contrast to General Motors Co, which is Ford’s larger U.S. rival. General Motors forecasted higher 2019 earnings on Jan 11, surpassing analysts’ estimates.

Hackett also said that he was angry at himself while looking through the 2018 results of the company. He speaks in his email about the competition which is better and how he believes that Ford is better than its 2018 results.

According to Hackett’s email, Ford is considering moving its timeframe to introduce electric and self-driving cars in its portfolio. He is trying to find out why it missed the trends in China, where Ford is losing money.  With China being the world’s largest auto market, this issue needs to be tackled quickly if Ford plans on doubling its revenue in the coming year.

Aimed at funding balance sheet expansion and accelerating growth of Iwoca’s product offerings and market share. The SME lender will use its award-winning technology to break the barriers obstructing access to finance for over 20 million European small businesses. While many firms are addressing the SME lending market, very few have a credit-product as advanced as Iwoca. Their industry-leading analytics and financial technology give them a competitive edge others will find hard to replicate.

The investment is preceded by another 7 million pounds invested in three European Financial Technology which are Tide, Previse, and DueDil as well as a 2.5 million in Unmortgage. The fintech venture capital firm Augmentum confirmed that these investments would allow exponential growth in the financial technology market worldwide. Augmentum is a unique fintech-focused venture capital firm in the UK, having launched on the main market of the London Stock Exchange in 2018. It gives various businesses access to patent funding and support, unrestricted by conventional funding timelines. The conglomerate of finance industry professionals specializes in investing in initial stage fast growing financial technology start-ups. They have globally selected a pool of disruptive start-ups that are innovating the banking, insurance, asset management, and wider financial sectors.

Iwoca is dedicated to providing fast, flexible source of business finance for all UK and European continental businesses. Their expertise range from retailers, restaurants, hotels to service providers that use Iwoca’s platform to fund various financial problems such as bridging short term cash flow gaps to investing in stock opportunities. From new start-ups to established businesses, Iwoca helps businesses from all walk of life secure funds and keep their ever going concern running. However, you must have a UK-based business and operate as a sole-trader, partnership or limited company to be eligible for membership. Start-ups on this lending platform have a limit of 10,000 pounds. Iwoca sheds visibility into the firm’s online accounts and bank statements, VAT returns and company accounts. Once approved, loans are transacted quickly without the usual complex paperwork which is synonymous with traditional business loans. The financial technology firm has funded more than 25,000 small and medium enterprises across UK, Germany, and Poland. This investment from Augmentum will give much-needed momentum to Iwoca and other financial technology start-ups that are looking for funding across the European continent.

The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will be starting tax filing season on the next Monday. There is a high chance of the season to become chaotic as the IRS is hard-pressed on workforce by the on-going shutdown.

This could be the worst chapter of the current shutdown which has been dragging for 34 days. As per analysts, one in every ten taxpayers could face problems with their returns due to the IRS funding shortfall. Analysts also added that the situation might worsen if the shutdown drags for a more extended period.

The annual tax filing season for Americans to file their 2018 returns is starting from January 28 to April 15. And due to the partial shutdown, the IRS has designated more than 46,000 employees, or nearly 60 percent of its workforce, to work without pay on jobs such as staffing taxpayer help lines and processing tax returns and facilitating refunds.

Representative Richard Neal, Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax policy, said, “People have figured out how explosive it could be, regarding not being able to pay down Christmas debt.”

Neal also added, “But when you call back 40,000 people arbitrarily, without any guarantee of remuneration, and ask them to pay for gas and things of that sort, their lives aren’t getting any easier because of it.”

Lawmakers on Neal’s committee hoped to learn more about the whole tax filing situation by a hearing with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin this week. But, the hearing has to be canceled as Mnuchin, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, declined to attend. Neal said he would be proposing more dates as per the convenience of Mnuchin.

“The fact that they’ve called people back is an indication of a chaotic situation,” Representative Bill Pascrell, a committee Democrat, said of the IRS. “It’s not just getting returns back to people in time, but getting the taxes reviewed in time. That’s very, very important.”

Representative Kevin Brady, the panel’s top Republican, said lawmakers should be aware of the impact of the shutdown on the IRS from the administration. Brady told reporters, “This is a bipartisan area of interest, to make sure this tax-filing season goes well.”

In the meantime, IRS has issued a statement stating it continues to prepare for the next week’s start of the tax filing season and it has started calling back its employees to be able to work efficiently.

As per analysts, the taxpayers filing electronically or with the help of professionals should not face any difficulties, but the lower-income filers are those who will be mainly impacted as they depend on the IRS for guidance to file tax.

There could also be problems as it will have to guide the taxpayers about the new tax policy landscape created by Trump’s sweeping 2017 tax overhaul.

Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center think tank said, “The longer you make people work without paying them, the more problems you’re going to have.”

The National Treasury Employees Union, a union that represents IRS employees and has sued in court to prevent the government from forcing them back to work without pay, said the number of workers working without pay is increasing and they are facing financial hardships to pay the mounting bills.

Representative Vern Buchanan, a Florida Republican, said he expects the shutdown to end soon and he wants good coordination between the Congress and Trump to do that. Buchanan said, “If it doesn’t, we’re going to have to find a way to work with people financially because there are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck.”

The shutdown has been affecting not only the lives of federal workers but also the American economy. The Trump administration and the Congress should soon reach a consensus so that the health of the economy is not damaged for a longer term.

After the global disruptions through trade wars and local issues like Brexit, the moods of the businessmen have indeed gone down. The on-going World Economic Forum is also not prone to that change. Many business elites from across the globe who have raised doubt over the performance of economy this year. The head of world’s largest hedge fund also has explained about the state of the economy in the forum.

“We are in this Goldilocks period right now. Inflation isn’t a problem. Growth is good, everything is pretty good with a big jolt of stimulation coming from changes in tax laws,” Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio said in Davos, Switzerland.

He also added in an interview with CNBC, “There is a lot of cash on the sidelines. … We’re going to be inundated with cash if you’re holding cash; you’re going to feel pretty stupid.”

But, he is not the only leader who had expressed confidence in the economy last year at the same forum. Tax cuts by President Trump and the Jobs Act had somewhat cooled the fears stemming from trade protectionism and tough immigration policy. The then CEO of Goldman Sachs also talked about animal spirits being out last year.

But, now the situation has changed a lot. The stock market has recently taken a plunge forcing the S&P to post worst year in the decade.

This year World Economic Forum has seen the mood and expectations of the business elites going to the opposite direction.

“Everybody’s skittish, you talk to enough people, and you express your skittishness, and it echoes, and it just keeps compounding,” Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, James Gorman, who’s led the bank since 2010, told CNBC on Thursday. “By the third day everybody’s a little depressed, and I spoke at a dinner we hosted last night with a bunch of CEOs and clients, and I said I don’t get it, I mean I don’t get it, we’re not living in a depressing economic world at the moment,” he added.

When asked about the potential trouble in the economy for this year, Bridgewater’s Dalio reversed his tone of last year and said he sees a significant risk for the year 2020 in the form of Recession.

“It’s going to be globally a slow up. It’s not just the United States; it’s Europe, and it’s China and Japan,” the billionaire investment titan said, “Where we are in the later [economic] cycle and the inability of central banks to ease as much, that’s the cauldron that will define 2019 and 2020.”

Contradictions-

Every year’s pessimism and the opposite state in the U.S. economy has become a trend in WEF. This is also criticized this year including Guggenheim’s global chief investment officer.

“Coming

[to Davos]

last year, there was such euphoria after the tax cut, the stock market was making new highs,” said Scott Minerd, global CIO for $265 billion at Guggenheim. “This year, everybody’s concerns about an economic slowdown, recession, the trade war. So I’m thinking to myself, time to go the other direction.”

“I got suspicious that this place is the land of contraindication,” he added.

As of now, the U.S. economy is not in a total bad shape. The numbers of Americans applying for the unemployment benefits decreased to a 49-year low last week, as per the Government data. Meanwhile, country’s GDP grew at 3.4 percent in the third quarter of 2018 and job creation has been on the brighter side for last year.

The current earning scenario also is telling a similar story. More than 70 percent of companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings have topped consensus profit expectations on the growth of about 11 percent, according to FactSet.

“I think we’ve got to put things in perspective. Davos people are in an environment of world leaders, and they’re talking on a high level, ” said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail trade association. “When I talk to my retailers, they’re asking me ‘how do you see the consumer’ and ‘how might they be positioning themselves in 2019?’”

He continued, “The consumer is not overleveraged, balance sheets are in a good position and gas prices are lower, I think you have to make a lot of assumptions if you think we are on a path to recession.”

Not Rosy-

The situation all across the world is very uncertain.

World’s second largest economy has slowed down in growth. The country’s benchmark Shanghai Composite is down by more than 26 percent over the last year. China and the United States have engaged themselves in a bitter trade war over tariff and balance of trade.

The scenario in Europe is no better. The pan-European composite is also down by 10 percent in the last 12 months.

Bank of America economist Michelle Meyer said, “The global backdrop is more concerning now than it was last year. We’ve seen a steady weakening in China and the Euro area; I think that last year there was lots of optimism about what would come from the [federal] stimulus. It’s certainly helped support growth, and consumer spending got a nice bump, but that growth has really slowed since then.”

Yet, Meyer said recession prediction would be premature. She also added this year’s WEF would let us know more about leader’s feelings than expectations.