Deputy PM Oliver Dowden set to brief MPs on cyber threat posed by China

Published

2 years ago

March 25, 2024

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MPs are set to be briefed on the cyber threat posed by China today, while a smaller group of parliamentarians will be told about specific threats against them.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is applying to the Speaker’s office to make a statement to parliament about China on Monday, Sky News understands.

He is expected to tell parliament that Beijing is behind a wave of cyber attacks against MPs and peers, as well as accessing the personal details of 40 million voters in a hack on the Electoral Commission last year.

Meanwhile, three MPs and a peer are due to be told about recent cyber attacks against them.

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Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron is set to brief the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs on Monday evening as well, and the topic will likely be raised here.

Rishi Sunak has declined to brand China a threat, despite pressure from some wings of the party.

A Downing Street source told Sky News: “The prime minister has always had a robust position on China; we call [their behaviour] out.

“We can’t cut all links with China – that would not be a sensible thing to do, not least on issues such as climate change – and we need to know what they are saying, what they are trying to do, working with partners and our Five Eyes allies.

“But there is no doubt we have an ‘eyes wide open’ approach.”

China’s behaviour will come under particular scrutiny this year with the UK, the US, India and a swathe of other countries holding elections.

Speaking to Sky News, Alicia Kearns, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said: “I think politicians have to be concerned and also vigilant at all times.

“The reality is that hostile states will try to undermine our democracy, even in peacetime – if you want to call it that.

“This is the year where most elections around the world will be taking place as the biggest number of people to vote in one year ever. I am greatly concerned about what might be taking place not only in the UK, but around the world, and the way in which some hostile states may seek to try and influence the outcomes.”

Remarkable volte-face in UK-China relations

By Matthew Thompson, political correspondent

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. As parliament braces itself for yet another day of ominous warnings about the malign influence of China, it is worth a brief trip back to the halcyon days of 2015.

Then chancellor George Osborne landed in Beijing promising a “golden decade” of Sino-British relations.

Not long afterwards, prime minister David Cameron cosied up to Xi Jinping over pints in an English pub. It was an era of warm words, and open doors. China began playing a significant role in major British infrastructure projects such as 5G and nuclear power plants.

And yet, fast-forward less than ten years, and Chinese involvement in 5G has been scrapped; MI5 has outed an alleged Chinese spy working in parliament, and the Intelligence and Security Committee has warned that China is “prolifically and aggressively” targeting the UK.

The “golden decade”, it would be fair to say, has lost some of its lustre.

On Monday, we expect to hear that China is also conducting cyber attacks against sitting MPs. Lord Cameron, now foreign secretary, will be meeting Tory backbenchers to discuss their concerns on issues including China.

It is a remarkable volte-face. Some accuse Cameron and his successors of naivety. Not least the Americans, who warned of threats to UK national security. A more charitable interpretation would be that it was worth a try, to bind China more closely to the liberal international order.

But the Chinese have a phrase: “Honey in the mouth, dagger in the stomach.” It was first used to describe a treacherous Tang-dynasty courtier who lived over a thousand years ago. But its lessons should perhaps have been heeded much more recently than that.

And speaking about threats to MPs, Ms Kearns added: “I’ve had attacks on my emails, which emanated from China.

“The threat is real, they are trying to undermine our democracy.

“And if we do not have a public strategy of which the whole country can unite, we will have gaps in our resilience and that will leave us vulnerable.”

Ms Kearns’s warnings come following reports in The Sunday Times that Alison Giles, parliament’s director of security, is set to brief former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Conservative education minister Tim Loughton, crossbench peer Lord Alton of Liverpool and SNP MP Stewart McDonald.

All are critics of the Chinese government and members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a group of MPs from across the world who probe Beijing’s activities.

Luke de Pulford, the creator and executive director of IPAC, told Sky News the statements from the government follow pressure from the intelligence and security services.

“Ministers are finally able to say what they have wanted them to for ages – which is actually we have got a real problem,” he said.

“This is a very serious security threat,” he added.

The UK’s attitudes to China appear to be hardening.

Last year, a parliamentary worker was arrested on suspicion of spying for the country, and in 2022 the head of MI5 warned alongside his FBI counterpart that China was a “game-changing challenge”.

It is a far cry from the “golden era” the then prime minister Lord Cameron announced between the UK and China alongside Chinese premier Xi Jinping in 2015.

There has also been concern over the way Chinese-owned technology companies, like ByteDance’s TikTok or Huawei, handle data.

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Ms Kearns added: “I should be clear, this is the Chinese Communist Party, this is not the Chinese people, this is not in their interests.

“This is a Chinese Communist Party trying to achieve its objectives and goals at the cost of ours, and the reality is they will continue to try to make us vulnerable by making us dependent on them at home, whether it comes to data or technology.

“And they will continue to try to extract data with technology such as TikTok, and they will continue to try to undermine us by buying up allies around the world and rewriting the multilateral system.”

The Chinese embassy has been approached for comment.

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Bitcoin treads water at $90K as whales eat the Ethereum dip: Finance Redefined

Published

4 hours ago

December 5, 2025

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Bitcoin treads water at K as whales eat the Ethereum dip: Finance Redefined

Cryptocurrency markets saw another week of consolidation following last week’s long-awaited market recovery.

While Bitcoin (BTC) remained above the key $90,000 psychological level, investor sentiment continued to be dominated by “fear,” with a marginal improvement from 20 to 25 within the week, according to CoinMarketCap’s Fear & Greed index.

In the wider crypto space, the Ether (ETH) treasury trade appears to be unwinding, as the monthly acquisitions by Ethereum digital asset treasuries (DATs) fell 81% in the past three months from August’s peak.

Still, the biggest corporate Ether holder, BitMine Immersion Technologies, continued to amass ETH, while other treasury firms carried on with their fundraising efforts for future acquisitions.

*Fear & Greed index, all-time chart. Source: CoinMarketCap*

Investors are also awaiting the key interest rate decision during the US Federal Reserve’s upcoming meeting on Wednesday to provide more cues about monetary policy leading into 2026.

Markets are pricing in an 87% chance of a 25 basis point interest rate cut, up from 62% a month ago, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

*Interest rate cut probabilities. Source: CMEgroup.com*

Ethereum treasury trade unwinds 80% as handful of whales dominate buys

The Ethereum treasury trade appears to be unwinding as monthly acquisitions continue to decline since the August high, though the largest players continue to scoop up billions of the Ether supply.

Investments from Ethereum DATs fell 81% in the past three months, from 1.97 million Ether in August to 370,000 ETH in November, according to Bitwise, an asset management firm.

“ETH DAT bear continues,” wrote Max Shennon, senior research associate at Bitwise, in a Tuesday X post.

Despite the slowdown, some companies with stronger financial backgrounds continued to accumulate the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency or raise funds for future purchases.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate Ether holder, accumulated about 679,000 Ether worth $2.13 billion over the past month, completing 62% of its target to accumulate 5% of the ETH supply, according to data from the Strategicethreserve.

BitMine holds an additional $882 million worth of cash according to the data aggregator, which may signal more incoming Ether accumulation.

*Top corporate Ether holders. Source:* *Strategicethreserve.xyz*

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Citadel causes uproar by urging SEC to regulate DeFi tokenized stocks

Market maker Citadel Securities has recommended that the US Securities and Exchange Commission tighten regulations on decentralized finance regarding tokenized stocks, causing backlash from crypto users.

Citadel Securities told the SEC in a letter on Tuesday that DeFi developers, smart-contract coders, and self-custody wallet providers should not be given “broad exemptive relief” for offering trading of tokenized US equities.

It argued that DeFi trading platforms likely fall under the definitions of an “exchange” or “broker-dealer” and should be regulated under securities laws if offering tokenized stocks.

“Granting broad exemptive relief to facilitate the trading of a tokenized share via DeFi protocols would create two separate regulatory regimes for the trading of the same security,” it argued. “This outcome would be the exact opposite of the “technology-neutral” approach taken by the Exchange Act.”

Citadel’s letter, made in response to the SEC looking for feedback on how it should approach regulating tokenized stocks, has drawn considerable backlash from the crypto community and organizations advocating for innovation in the blockchain space.

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Arthur Hayes warns Monad could crash 99%, calls it high-risk “VC coin”

Crypto veteran Arthur Hayes has issued a warning over Monad, saying the recently launched layer-1 blockchain could plunge as much as 99% and end up as another failed experiment driven by venture capital hype rather than real adoption.

Speaking on Altcoin Daily, the former BitMEX chief described the project as “another high FDV, low-float VC coin,” arguing that its token structure alone puts retail traders at risk. FDV stands for Fully Diluted Value, which is the market value of a crypto project if all its tokens were already in circulation.

According to Hayes, projects with a large gap between FDV and circulating supply often experience early price spikes, followed by deep selloffs once insider tokens unlock. “It’s going to be another bear chain,” Hayes said, adding that while every new coin gets an initial pump, that does not mean it will develop a lasting use case.

Hayes said most new layer-1 networks ultimately fail, with only a handful likely to retain long-term relevance. He identified Bitcoin, Ether, Solana (SOL) and Zcash (ZEC) as the small group of protocols he expects to survive the next cycle.

Last year, Monad raised $225 million in funding from venture capital firm Paradigm. The layer-1 blockchain went live on Monday, accompanied by an airdrop of its MON token.

*Monad’s MON token up 40% since launch. Source:* *CoinMarketCap*

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$25 billion crypto lending market now led by “transparent” players: Galaxy

The crypto lending market has become more transparent than ever, led by the likes of Tether, Nexo and Galaxy, and has just hit an aggregate loan book of nearly $25 billion outstanding in the third quarter.

The size of the crypto lending market has increased by more than 200% since the beginning of 2024, according to Galaxy Research. Its latest quarter puts it at its highest since its peak in Q1 2022.

However, it has yet to return to its peak of $37 billion at that time.

The main difference is the number of new centralized finance lending platforms and much more transparency, said Galaxy’s head of research, Alex Thorn.

Thorn said on Sunday that he was proud of the chart and the transparency of its contributors, adding that it was a “big change from prior market cycles.”

*The crypto lending landscape has seen many new platforms in the past three years. Source: Alex Thorn*

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Portal to Bitcoin raises $25 million and launches atomic OTC desk

Bitcoin-native interoperability protocol Portal to Bitcoin has raised $25 million in funding amid the launch of what it describes as an atomic over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk.

According to a Thursday announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the company raised $25 million in a round led by digital asset lender JTSA Global. The fundraise follows previous investments by Coinbase Ventures, OKX Ventures, Arrington Capital and others.

Alongside the fresh funding, the company rolled out its Atomic OTC desk, promising “instant, trustless cross-chain settlement of large block trades.” The newly deployed service is reminiscent of crosschain atomic swaps offered by THORChain, Chainflip, and more Bitcoin-focused systems such as Liquality and Boltz.

What sets Portal to Bitcoin apart is its focus on the Bitcoin-anchored crosschain OTC market for institutions and whales, along with its tech stack. “Portal provides the infrastructure to make Bitcoin the settlement layer for global asset markets, without bridges, custodians, or wrapped assets,” said Chandra Duggirala, founder and CEO of Portal.

Decentralization — *Portal to Bitcoin team members, from left to right: co-founder and chief technology officer Manoj Duggirala, founder and CEO Chandra Duggirala, and co-founder George Burke. Source: Portal to Bitcoin*

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DeFi market overview

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the red.

The Canton (CC) token fell 18%, marking the week’s biggest decline in the top 100, followed by the Starknet (STRK) token, down 16% on the weekly chart.

*Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama*

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.