Saylor, BlackRock, & Browser Extensions

Saylor Steps Down to Step UP for Bitcoin

MicroStrategy co-founder and bitcoin defender-of-the-faith, Michael Saylor, has stepped down from his position as CEO of the business intelligence firm, MicroStrategy, in favor of assuming the title of ̶C̶h̶i̶e̶f̶ ̶B̶i̶t̶c̶o̶i̶n̶ ̶O̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶r̶ Executive Chairman. The new title will now allow him to focus all of his efforts on doubling down on the company’s bitcoin position.

Under Saylor’s direction, Microstrategy raised a total of $2.4 billion in debt to purchase bitcoin, and as one mid year it held approximately 129,699 BTC.

The role of CEO will now go to the current President of the company, Phong Le, who said he sees the transition as “business as usual”, according to sources at Coindesk. MicroStrategy (MSTR) stock prices jumped by almost 15% right after the announcement on Wednesday.

Coinbase and BlackRock Sittin’ in a Tree

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has partnered with Coinbase to provide BlackRock customers with direct access to crypto. According to the official Coinbase blog, BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management platform, Aladdin, will use the Coinbase Prime platform to “provide crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage, and reporting capabilities to Aladdin’s Institutional client base who are also clients of Coinbase.” Joseph Chalom, Global Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at BlackRock, expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership:

“Our institutional clients are increasingly interested in gaining exposure to digital asset markets and are focused on how to efficiently manage the operational lifecycle of these assets. This connectivity with Aladdin will allow clients to manage their bitcoin exposures directly in their existing portfolio management and trading workflows for a whole portfolio view of risk across asset classes.”

Coinbase has recently announced multiple changes to their operations including a newly redesigned mobile wallet, new NFT marketplace, and elimination of their Coinbase Pro platform. Coinbase Prime currently serves over 13,000 institutions worldwide.

Privacy Corner:

Be Careful of Browser Extensions

A browser extension is a small piece of software that allows you to customize your web browser. They can be fun, such as those that change every photo you see to a picture of Nicholas Cage. They can also be helpful, doing things like autofilling your passwords or blocking trackers. They’re a very popular way of getting more functionality from your browser, and you can place them as little icons in your browser toolbar, to do things like find coupons, correct your grammar, or even leave a trail of sparkles behind your cursor.

But there is both and light side and a dark side to browser extensions, and you should be very careful you understand what an extension is doing before installing it.

Dangers:
Permissions

You’ll notice that extensions ask for permissions when you install them: Most extension say they need “the ability to read and change all data on the websites you visit” in order to work. What does this mean in reality?

It means that this browser extension is going to be able to:

Modify the pages that you're looking at by adding code that can steal your passwords, log your keystrokes, or steal your cookies.
Track your browsing history which they can then sell to advertisers.
Insert ads into the pages you visit, or even reroute your traffic.

The limit is your imagination.

Does this mean that every extension you give permissions to is stealing your passwords? Of course not. But the fact that you’ve given them the ability to should make you very wary. Which leads us on to our next danger.

Hacked and Repurposed Extensions

Outright malicious extensions are more common that you might realize. But they’re not the only danger.

A hacker might get access to a legitimate extension’s codebase. In 2017, Chris Pederick, maker of the popular “Web Developer for Chrome” extension fell victim to a phishing scam. Hackers took over the extension, which started to inject ads into browsers, and run malicious JavaScript for its 1 million plus users.

An extension might be sold and repurposed. The popular YouTube extension “Particle”, which allowed users to change YouTube’s user interface, was purchased and the new owner immediately turned it into adware.

Once installed, browser extensions update themselves. This means they can switch out the code that’s been installed on your computer at any given time, without the user even knowing.

Fingerprinting

More privacy extensions doesn’t necessarily mean more privacy. Browsers like Firefox, Brave, and Tor work hard to protect you from browser fingerprinting. You are likely undoing some of those protections by throwing a whole bunch of customizations like extensions on top of the browser. Using a really popular extension, like uBlock Origin, isn’t a huge deal because lots of people use it. But if you then add a password manager as well, you’re now part of a smaller group that has both uBlock Origin and that password manager. The more extensions you add, you're pretty quickly becoming a party of one. By installing more extensions to try to be more private, you actually end up sticking out very uniquely.

Light Side of Extensions

Browser extensions can also be useful for making your browser a lot safer. There are many great browser extensions, for example those developed by privacy-conscious groups like EFF, who created Privacy Badger. UBlock Origin is a well known privacy extension that will help you block tracking. Also, password managers should be an essential part of your internet usage, and they often come in the form of browser extensions. The takeaway is not to stop using all extensions, but rather to be cautious before installing them.

How to Use Extensions Safely

Ask whether you really need to install that extension in the first place. It’s like giving out keys to your front door: There might be one or two people you feel you could trust with those keys, but you definitely don’t want to hand them out to everyone. You can also look for a browser that already has the features you’re after, built in by default. Brave browser is the best out of the box browser for tracking protections, and we highly recommend it.

Make sure you really trust the developers of an extension before installing it. If you don’t know anything about the developers, or the extensions isn’t used by many people, have caution.
For any extension you install, grant it the least privilege needed: You’ll be asked to choose when the extension is allowed to operate, and you can pick either “on all sites”, “on this particular site”, or “when you click the extension”. Whenever possible, have the extension only operate when it’s clicked, so that it’s not reading your content at all times.

Finally, delete any unused extensions.

There are some awesome extensions out there that can make your browsing experience better and safer, just make sure you understand what you’re doing before diving in.

Watch our full video about browser extensions here: