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With the positive turn, the two-week MACD is the latest addition to the list of indicators calling a longer-run bullish reversal.

Experienced traders, however, may point out that the MACD is a lagging indicator. After all, the technical tool is arrived at by plotting the difference between the MACD line and the signal line, which are based on the backward-looking moving averages.

The indicator, therefore, tends to lag the price and has limited predictive abilities. Further, the longer the time frame, bigger is the lag. As a result, many would consider the bullish turn a result of the recent price rally rather than an advance warning of further gains.

It, however, gains credibility if we take into account the historical data, which shows the last positive crossover on the MACD, seen in July 2016, was followed by a 2.5-year-long bull market.

Two-week chart

On the two week chart (left), the MACD histogram is printing positive for the first time for 14 months, after having charted a bullish divergence, or a higher low, in November.

Notably, the MACD created a similar looking bullish divergence 10 months before the long-term bearish-to-bullish trend change, as represented by the falling channel breakout, witnessed in October 2015 (right).

It’s worth noting that the indicator moved above zero four months before the bullish breakout and 12 months before the mining reward halving (which reduces the supply of new coins) that took place in July 2016. The MACD’s latest bullish turn is already accompanied by a falling channel breakout on the chart and has also turned positive 12 months before bitcoin’s third reward halving, due in May 2020.

With history possibly looking to repeat itself, prices may continue to create bullish higher highs and higher lows in the run-up to the halving event, as seen last time around.

In the short-run, though, BTC may have a tough time finding acceptance above the crucial 21-month exponential moving average, currently at $5,239, as discussed yesterday.

As for the next 24-hours, the cryptocurrency may suffer a drop to $5,000 if key support just below $5,200 is breached, validating the bearish indicators on the short duration charts.

Hourly chart

On the hourly chart, the RSI continues to produce lower highs in favor of the bears as opposed to higher highs, while the MACD has turned negative.

The price, however, is still holding above $5,190 – a level, which acted as strong support (see horizontal line above) yesterday.

The bearish indicators would gain credence if the support at $5,190 is breached, leading to a deeper drop.

Acceptance below $5,190 would boost the probability of BTC completing the right shoulder of a bearish head-and-shoulders pattern on the 4-hour chart with a drop to the neckline support, currently at $5,000.

The bearish case would weaken if a potential bounce from the support at $5,190 ends up clearing psychological resistance at $5,300. That could be followed by a retest of the recent high of $5,466.

As of writing, bitcoin is trading at $5,241 on Bitstamp, representing a 1 percent gain on a 24-hour basis.

A huge surge in over-the-counter (OTC) trading popularity drove major cryptocurrency exchangeBinance’s $78 million Q1 profits, crypto news outlet Decrypt Media reported on April 17.

Speaking in an interview, CFO Wei Zhou said OTC, which is a method of wholesale cryptocurrency trading for large-scale investors, accompanied a volume uptick as bitcoin (BTC) rose almost $1,300 at the start of this month.

“Last month we saw a lot more volume than, say, three months ago,” he told the publication, continuing:

“This was mainly due to the increase in price of Bitcoin and altcoins over the past few months. We’ve witnessed more trading activity — and demand.”

Binance had revealed its similarly surging profits for the first quarter of the year this week, the $78 million figure dwarfing previous performance by 66%.

Major investor interest in crypto markets, Zhou said, is driving developers to create ever more diverse offerings to cater to their needs.

“A lot of people who historically worked for high-frequency trading firms have made the jump from traditional equity, and have launched new trading platforms in our space,” he added.

As Cointelegraph reported, that trend has found expression in the steadily mounting number of OTC products appearing on the market in recent months.

In addition to Binance, exchanges such as Bittrex and Bithumb have launched dedicated OTC trading desks. As Cointelegraph noted, their emergence comes despite the year’s previously lower market prices.

As prices increased, it further became apparent that traders in China, for whom OTC purchases of stablecoin Tether (USDT) are one of the few ways to legally enter the market, were paying premiums for coins in fiat terms.

The United States federal government is expected to raise its blockchain spending to $123.5 million by 2022 — an over 1,000% increase as compared with the $10.7 million it spent in 2017. The forecast was made in a report from IDC Government Insights, published on April 18.

IDC states that blockchain spending among state and local governments is also anticipated to grow, from $4.4 million in 2017 to $48.2 million in 2022 — similarly an almost 1,000% rise.

Federal civilian agencies — who reportedly spent less than $20 million on the technology in 2017 — are likely to spend over $80 million by 2022, the report continues. The Defense Department — which likewise spent less than $20 million in 2017 — could almost double this figure and hit $40 million by 2022, the IDC claims.

Government investment in blockchain technology is likely to evolve and expand to include more complex areas over time, the IDC’s research director Shawn McCarthy outlined:

"We believe asset management, identity management, and smart contracts will be the leading blockchain solutions for government. Early spending will focus on supply chain and asset management solutions, while spending in later years will expand to include more identity management and complex financial transactions."

IDC also notes that blockchain is likely to become a cornerstone technology for trade legislation, and is likely “to be implemented as a standard feature for some types of authorized international trade and also as a standard for many types of government procurement.”

In terms of specific implementations of the technology, the report argues that a hybrid blockchain approach — combining aspects of private and public networks — is likely to prove the most popular among government agencies.

As reported last month, the current Republican Minority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives has recently argued that blockchain should be implemented to improve the transparency of the legislative process and bring more security and accountability to government.

A separate IDC report from 2018 forecasted that worldwide blockchain spending would grow to $9.7 billion in 2021.

Spend.com announced that the Spend App is now integrated and compatible with both Apple Pay and Google Pay, available on iPhone, Samsung, and other Android devices.

Spend is now the first company in the world to offer this service tied to 16+ supported digital currencies. The Spend team has created innovative ways to transfer, spend and send digital assets and currencies. Spend users will be able to link their Spend Visa® Card and Spend Virtual Visa® Card directly to their Apple Wallet and Google Pay Wallet.

What does this mean? Traditionally, Apple Pay and Google Pay allow users to make secure purchases in stores, in apps and on the web, as well as send and receive money from friends and family [in Messenger]. Now, when linked to the Spend Visa® Card, users will be able to take advantage of all the supported digital and fiat currencies available within the Spend App anywhere Apple Pay and Google Pay is accepted. These features will be available on the release of Spend App v2.5.

The Spend App

With a quick and easy download from either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, theSpend App and Wallet will be the only digital wallet ever needed again. The Spend App allows users to store, withdraw, send, and spend more than 16 cryptocurrencies and 27 fiat currencies at over 40 million locations.

Spend users also have the ability to send funds around the globe and/or exchange various currencies all from their Spend App. Whether someone needs to send money to family in Europe or buy/sell different currencies, it can all be done from the Spend App, which currently supports:

16+ Cryptocurrencies

US Dollar

Canadian Dollar

Euro

24 Additional Fiat Currencies

In addition to being able to send, spend, buy and sell currencies around the globe, users will have the power of detailed analytics at their fingertips to track coins and currencies. Spend’s in-app analytics gives users instant access to the most up to date charts and figures on any currency or coin users choose to track!

App Benefits

Currency Swap: Looking to exchange CAD to USD or XRP to LTC. Exchange any currency instantly with Spend, where applicable.

Multiple Currency Support: Hold USD, CAD, EUR, and 24 additional fiat currencies and over 16 cryptocurrencies all within the Spend Wallet.

Performance: 99.9% uptime with enhanced performance infrastructure in place.

Compliance Built-In: Verify account identity instantly within the Spend App.

Buy Crypto & Send Fiat: Users can purchase 16+ cryptocurrencies from their linked bank accounts, right from the Spend App, as well as transfer funds in over 180 countries.

Secure Storage: Highest level of AES encryption with PCI DSS Level 1 Certification.

Connecting the Spend Wallet To The Spend Visa® Card

Once a user downloads the Spend App, they will be able to access and manage their funds anytime with the Spend Wallet & Spend Visa® Card. Once verified utilizing Spend’s in-app KYC system, users have the choice to immediately get issued a virtual card that can be used immediately at any merchant that accepts Visa® online. Users also have the option to order a physical card. In addition, Spend clients can earn up to 6% rewards back on all purchases. Cards are now available in the United States and Spend has secured issuers for its Visa® Card product in Canada, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions.

Spend offers its users three different levels of cards, each with its own unique benefits:

Spend Simple™ – Spend’s introductory Visa® card. Spend Simple™ gives users access to the platform and all the great features offered. Upgrades are always available to Spend Preferred and Black.

Spend Preferred™ – Spend’s most popular everyday Visa® card. Spend Preferred™ grants users a flexible spending limit for use as an everyday card with access to the Spend VIP Program and enhanced rewards.

Spend Black™ – Our exclusive Visa® card for elite users. With an optional sleek metal design*, Spend Black™ cardholders receive access to the highest spending limits, highest rewards, and Spend VIP Elite Program.

With all Spend Visa® Cards, users will enjoy advanced security features, an option of both a virtual or physical card, 24/7 support, as well as both card and wallet rewards, powered by Spendcoin [$SPND].

No matter what level of card users are looking for, Spend has the perfect card to fit their needs, when tied to the Spend App.

At no point can cardholders load cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin onto their Spend Visa® Card. All cryptocurrency will be converted to the appropriate local fiat currency first on the Spend Wallet and then that local fiat currency will be loaded on the Spend Visa® Card for use in purchase and ATM withdrawals.

Blockchain software firm Digital Asset will integrate their smart contract language DAML with Hyperledger Sawtooth, a modular platform for distributed ledgers. Digital Asset announced the development in a blog post on April 16.

In the post, Digital Asset revealed that it has begun working with Hyperledger members, Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP), in order to integrate the Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML) runtime with Hyperledger Sawtooth, which is a modular platform for building, deploying, and running distributed ledgers like blockchains.

The company explained that a number of the Hyperledger Sawtooth characteristics already comply with the DAML team expectations. “Hyperledger Sawtooth’s Transaction Processor has a very flexible approach towards roles and permissions, for example, and is based on a very natural DLT network topology of fully distributed peers. DAML is based on a permissioned architecture and Hyperledger Sawtooth can be configured to be permissioned without requiring special nodes,” the post details.

DAML removes smart contracts apart from the ledger by defining an abstraction over implementation details like cryptography and data distribution, which purportedly provides a ledger model accessible through a clearly defined application programming interface (API). DAML applications can be moved from platform to platform without complex rewrites.

Digital Asset first introduced DAML in April 2016, describing it as an expressive language designed for financial institutions to model and execute agreements through distributed ledger technology (DLT). Earlier this month, Digital Asset open sourced the DAML, making it freely available under the Apache 2.0 open source license.

Subsequently, the firm partnered with major cloud computing company VMware to integrate the DAML on VMware’s blockchain platform. The development will purportedly “allow for broader reach and support as a combined offering.”

Digital Asset also announced a collaboration with the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) to develop a new tool that can support the use of smart contracts for derivatives trading.

Demand for legal experts with blockchain technology knowledge is high, according to Major, Lindsey & Africa managing director Brian Burlant, who recruits for law firms and in-house legal departments. The news was published by legal news and information site Law.com on April 17.

According to Burlant, law firms are having difficulty keeping up with cryptocurrency and blockchain industry demands for lawyers because of a lack of candidates who really understand the technology. Burlant said that a lot of lawyers enter the space from regulatory practices or government, where they were engaged specifically in practices related to cryptocurrencies.

Burlant stated that “for law students and those early in their legal careers, coupling a practical business approach with a working understanding of the technology is a good way to go.” He further advised that law students focus on blockchain, and not on cryptocurrencies, as blockchain “will be a game changer.” Mary K. Young, a partner at Zeughauser Group,said:

“I think that the blockchain space was extremely popular for lawyers toward the end of 2017, and then the cryptocurrency crash happened, and a lot of lawyers who were working in crypto or blockchain went back quietly to whatever they were doing before, like Silicon Valley in the ’90s.”

Young also noted that privacy law has grown substantially, with most global and national companies having added capabilities in privacy and data security sector in the course of the last five years.

As recently published forecasts predict, global blockchain spending could account for almost $2.9 billion in 2019, which is an 88.7% increase from 2018. The financial sector will purportedly be the leading industry in terms of spending in blockchain development this year. Banking, securities, investment services and insurance services are forecasted to invest more than $1.1 billion out of the total global blockchain spending.

Additionally, a recent survey conducted by Big Four auditing firm KPMG revealed that most taxand finance executives do not consider adopting blockchain technology. At least 60% of respondents claimed they would like to deploy blockchain in their companies to automate some repetitive tasks. Nonetheless, 67% were not using the technology at the time, while the other 27% were not sure whether their company was using it.

Considering how new the cryptocurrency industry is, it should be shocking that there are already rumors about the government having their hands in it as well. However, the founder of DigiCash and inventor of Bitcoin’s precursor digital cash spoke publicly about the idea that the government has complete access to the cryptocurrencies of the masses.

Speaking at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit, David Chaum spoke about the future that he hopes for with the crypto industry, including private payments and the technology to engage in messaging. These concepts will soon be deemed necessary, says Chaum, but the most notable part of his speech came when he claimed that governments would have no problem with getting through elliptic curve technology, which is essential to the Bitcoinnetwork’s security.

David Chaum commented that he would personally “work in government and high stakes industrial security,” which is why he sees the elliptic curves as no barrier between the government and any given account. The government has the power to take down the market, he claims, and he added that these governments will act when they want to.

The speech went on, as Chaum said that:

“The growing popularity of mobile payments will result in a higher demand for privacy while online. It is clear that this demand has already started, considering the protests against Facebook for their mishandling of data of millions of users.”

As Chaum sees it, there are two possible fates for cryptocurrency and privacy. The first option is to gain better control over personal data, while the second is to succumb to governments and businesses and let them control it.

The latter puts this data at risk for being integrated into artificial intelligence efforts. Chaum stated:

“This is very serious, probably the biggest question of our time.”

The only way to at least delay or even stop these things from happening is to act quickly and act now, according to Chaum. However, this would not be the first time that the head of a project has encouraged and spread FUD in an effort to make a sale, which is especially common in the crypto world.

Along with Chaum’s work with the original digital cash, he also founded a blockchain platform that is quantum resistant and privacy-focused called Elixxir. Based on the data of this platform, it allegedly can handle over 100,000 transactions in a single second, while Bitcoin can only handle seven transactions.

An executive at electronics giant HTC is leading a new $50 million blockchain-focused venture capital fund, Proof of Capital, that includes a partnership with the firm, TechCrunch reports on April 17.

The new blockchain fund is reportedly held in fiat currency and focused on “regular VC deals, as opposed to token-based investments.” The fund will reportedly mainly target early stage blockchain firms in fintech, as well as the consumer sphere of blockchain ecosystem.

According to the firm’s LinkedIn profile, the San Francisco-based fund will have a particular focus on Asian markets and emerging economies.

Proof of Capital fund is led by three tech and VC figures, Phil Chen, who is currently developing HTC’s Exodus blockchain smartphone as the firm’s decentralized chief officer; Edith Yeung, partner at Silicon Valley-based global VC firm 500 Startups; and Chris McCann, who served as community lead at Greylock Partners, an early investor in Facebook, Airbnb, Linkedin and others.

According to TechCrunch, the fund includes a partnership with HTC, which will allegedly allow Proof of Capital portfolio companies to work with HTC directly to develop services or products for Exodus and potentially other HTC blockchain ventures.

Yeung, who has invested in more than 50 tech startups, stressed that the setup of Proof of Capital is traditional, noting that the team comes from a “more traditional VC background.”

Recently, Ripple’s investment arm project Xpring and Bain Capital Ventures invested in early-stage blockchain firm Robot Ventures.

Previously, the New York Times reported that Facebook was seeking support from various VC firms to develop its reported stablecoin. Following the reports, venture capitalist and well-known bitcoin (BTC) bull Tim Draper confirmed to Cointelegraph that he is planning to meet with Facebook to discuss the investment.

The prime minister of Pakistan has conducted a meeting dedicated to the digitization of government administration, local Egnlish language news outlet The News reported on April 17.

At the meeting, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan reportedly addressed such issues as digitization of government processes and blockchain technology’s impact on ensuring efficiency and transparency in its operations. Khan also highlighted the potential to eliminate bureaucracy and improve general service delivery in accordance with the government's vision.

The discussion also touched on a next generation trading platform for the country that would purportedly facilitate trade efficiency with Pakistan’s trade partners. Khan stated:

“The digitalization will also create much needed synergies among the government organizations for ensuring friction-less service delivery and improving ease of doing business in the country.”

Earlier in April, Pakistan announced it will implement new cryptocurrency regulations in the form of a licensing scheme for electronic money institutions in an effort to improve its track record fighting financial crime. The regulations will reportedly “help combating money laundering and terrorism financing while it will also help regulation of digital currency throughout the country.”

On April 1, Jameel Ahmad, the deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the nation’s central bank, declared that the institution aims to issue a digital currency by 2025. According to the official, the aim is to promote financial inclusion and efficiency and combat corruption. The complete deployment of the central bank digital currency, however, is set to happen by 2030.

The lack of standard global terminology for crypto assets is a major impediment for the adoptionof clear regulatory policies in the industry, according to a study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) released on April 16.

According to the report, a variety of major terms in the crypto industry is often used interchangeably and without a clear definition, which hampers global regulatory response.

Conducted with support from the Nomura Research Institute (NRI), the research provides a detailed analysis of the regulatory landscape on crypto asset activities in 23 jurisdictions. The research data was collected mainly through desktop research from November 2018 to early February 2019, the report notes.

According to the study, the term “cryptoasset” itself lacks a specific definition and is widely used as an umbrella term to refer to digital tokens that are issued and transferred on distributed ledger technology (DLT), specifically blockchain, systems. The research argues that the terms crypto asset and token have different meanings depending on the context.

As such, the report provides three major contexts for the definition of crypto assets. In a broad sense, the term encompasses all types of digital tokens issued and distributed on a blockchain. From an intermediate perspective, a crypto asset includes all types of digital tokens on a blockchain with open access, which do not necessarily need to perform a function. In a narrow view, crypto assets exclusively refer to digital tokens on open DLT systems that play an essential role in functioning, the report reads.

The researchers further outlined three major challenges that are faced by global regulators of crypto. Prior to the adoption of clearly defined, standardized terminology, regulatory jurisdictions should first understand the nuances of the different terms and identify the terminology that is most suitable to their regulatory objectives.

In addition, the CCAF research says that the 82% of analyzed jurisdictions have distinguished crypto assets that have characteristics of a security from other types of cryptos. Based on that, activities relating to crypto assets that are considered securities are automatically brought under the authority of local securities laws, the report says.

Recently, Cointelegraph reported that the French government is planning to convince other European Union member states to adopt cryptocurrency regulations similar to its own.

CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao announced in early April that the Singapore fiat “on-ramp” would be coming sometime this month. But speaking to CoinDesk Wednesday from Paris, Binance CFO Wei Zhou gave a more precise timeframe. 

 “Next week we are going to launch the Singapore simple buy/sell on-ramp,” said Zhou, who was in town for Paris Blockchain Week. “It will actually be a new product we are launching, as a very easy buy/sell platform so users in Singapore can buy and sell bitcoin with Singapore dollars.”

Zhou said that for now in Singapore, “it will just be bitcoin, but we hope to add more [cryptocurrencies]. For a lot of these regulated jurisdictions, it’s easy to start with things that people know and understand and you can gradually build on that.”

Binance began its project of building fiat-to-crypto gateways in January when it partnered with Simplex to let traders use Visa and MasterCard to buy a wide range of cryptos. Then in March, it launched Binance Lite in Australia which allows users to buy bitcoin at newsagents in over 1,300 locations across the country.

The company’s expansion in recent months has been both rapid and eclectic, taking in Europe and the U.K. via the islands of Malta and the British Crown Dependency of Jersey. The company has also set up in Uganda citing the need to bring financial inclusion to the underbanked in that region. It is currently the No. 5 exchange by 24-hour trade volume (when excluding no-fee trades and transaction mining), according to CoinMarketCap.  

Asked if the exchange had any designs on North America, Zhou said: 

“We have plans for U.S. but I can’t go into these right now.”

Clear the DEX

Binance has also embarked on plans to start a system of decentralized exchange (DEX), which is going to be built on Binance Chain, the exchange’s home-grown ledger to transfer and trade blockchain assets.  

In terms of the timing of that, Zhou noted that the Binance Chain testnet is up and running and “we hope to release the mainnet by the end of the month as well.”

He said there are a couple of reasons for pursuing a DEX route. As well as providing trading functionality, exchanges, by their centralized nature right now, hold customers’ assets, making them juicy targets for hackers.

“That is a risk that we do not want to take in the long run,” said Zhou

Speaking philosophically, Zhou also pointed out that change is the only constant in crypto. Two years ago 90 percent of trading was fiat to crypto; today 90 percent is crypto-to-crypto, he said. Hence:

“I think the key here is that innovation is going to happen regardless of whether it comes from us or other people – so we would rather be proactive.”

It’s possible to disrupt your own business model and do so in a virtuous way, Zhou added. “We are almost there, very close.”

Old money

Regarding the expectation that large swathes of institutional investors from the traditional finance world are waiting to enter the crypto sphere at some point soon, Zhou said Binance has seen institutional trading increase some 40 percent to 50 percent over the past six months.

According to Zhou, these institutional traders are leveraging Binance’s application programming interface (API), heralding a new type of institution entering the space. These players wield less capital than, say, a typical tech-focused hedge fund, but they operate in a way that is “highly nimble, highly algorithm-driven and highly efficient,” he said.

This will characterize the new money entering institutional crypto trading, said Zhou, adding:

“I think right now, all the world is focused on what they call ‘old money’ – which is great, but I think the style of a lot of these institutions just don’t move at crypto speed.”

In the context of crypto trading, algorithmic trading strategies interact directly with the technology of an exchange. Traders can develop their own applications, using programming languages like Python, and execute trades using the API.

“It’s basically my code fighting against your code fighting against another code – figuring out each one,” said Zhou.

Major global crypto exchange Binance has launched a crypto donation program to support the reconstruction of the Notre Dame cathedral, the firm tweeted on April 16.

Binance has initiated a donation program “Rebuild Notre-Dame,” calling the crypto community to support their campaign to restore the medieval cathedral that suffered “colossal damages” from a major fire that nearly destroyed the landmark on April 15.

In the post accompanying the new crypto-fundraising channel, Binance stated that the recent event was a “great moment of loss for culture, arts, and history shared by all humankind.”

The exchange launched the new donation channel on its charity platform initiated by the company’s social project The Blockchain Charity Foundation (BCF).

At press time, the campaign has amassed 28 donations in bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and Binance’s internal token Binance coin (BNB), totally accounting to 1.46 bitcoin, which is worth about $7,577 at press time.

Binance, the world’s third largest crypto exchange by daily trade volume to date, introduced its blockchain-powered donation platform within BCF in October 2018. The major crypto exchange has already launched a number of crypto-powered donation campaigns, including a recent campaign to support students in schools across Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia.

On April 15, BlockShow, an international blockchain event powered by Cointelegraph, launchedanother campaign to raise cryptocurrency for the Notre Dame cathedral reconstruction.

The development team behind encrypted messaging service Telegram’s forthcoming blockchainecosystem Telegram Open Network (TON) has partnered with German financial services provider Wirecard. The latter revealed the news in a press release on April 17.

TON Labs, which also functions as a knowledge base for decentralized project development, will work with Wirecard to develop new digital financial products, the press release reports.

The partnership comes a week after sources hinted that TON had moved to private beta testing mode, a watershed moment for the project since its massive private initial coin offering (ICO) last year.

“The addition of TON Blockchain to Telegram's growing ecosystem is opening new opportunities for business and technological innovation,” Alexander Filatov, managing partner at TON Labs, commented in the press release. He added:

“We are excited to partner with one of the world's most dynamic and innovative financial technology companies to bring synergetic new generation fintech solutions to the market.”

Details of the offerings the two entities will work on remain unspecified, Wirecard stating that announcements will come in stages without giving a timeframe.

“Their [TON Labs’] immense experience in highly scalable technology and decentralized solutions as well as the strong global growth of Telegram messenger will be instrumental for the success of our joint program,” Wirecard’s executive vice president of group business development, Georg von Waldenfels, added.

Wirecard meanwhile caught the attention of the mainstream media this week after Germany’s finance regulator informed prosecutors about potential market manipulation of its shares from January.

The TRON Foundation, an organization focused on the ongoing development of TRON (TRX), one of the largest platforms for building decentralized applications, has argued that price “instability” in the crypto market “creates a lot of skepticism about the long-term prospects of the blockchain industry.”

The organization explained in a blog post, posted on April 17, that “companies and institutional investors are sitting on the sidelines and not [using] blockchain or cryptocurrency as a form of payment because” of the extreme volatility of cryptoasset prices.

TRON-based USDT Will Help Stabilize Crypto Market

The Foundation’s recently published blog post revealed:

[High volatility in cryptocurrency prices] is a big reason why we need stablecoins on the TRON network. By implementing a [TRC-20 based] USDT on [the] TRON blockchain, we’re taking a [huge] step into a world representing stability — and into the world of decentralized finance.

The TRON Foundation’s management also noted that “users in [South] Korea will be able to quickly and efficiently transfer” USDT payments “back to relatives in Israel” or in other countries throughout the world. It added that “consumer electronics [manufacturers] will able to pay Asian suppliers and track the progress of their purchased goods every step of the way.”

More Trading Pairs For USDT Including BTT, TRX

Commenting on the Foundation’s decision to implement a TRC-20 based USDT stablecoin on the TRON network, Justin Sun remarked:

I think of USDT built on [the] TRON blockchain as a win for the blockchain industry and for our community. More people will be able to trade TRX, BitTorrent (BTT), and other TRC-based tokens through the TRC20 based USDT pair, creating liquidity. In turn, liquidity helps build confidence and trust that typically results in greater stability throughout the ecosystem.

As mentioned in the organization's blog, an “incentive plan to reward holders” of the TRON-based USDT token will be launched, “by airdropping super-attractive APRs over the first 100 days after launch.”

The incentive plan has been introduced in order to help “accelerate the transition from the USDT-Omni product” into a “more robust TRC-20 based USDT offering,” the TRON Foundation's blog stated. Going on to confirm that the TRON Foundation does not hold any user assets, the distributed ledger technology (DLT) development organization noted the funds are “safe and sound on [blockchain-enabled] exchanges and in individual wallets.”

Explaining why the introduction of the TRON-based USDT will help the cryptoasset ecosystem, Sun said:

As we introduce this new stablecoin, I ... firmly believe it will accelerate our push to be the leading platform for developers of dApps. We already have nearly 300 [dApps] on TRON in just a few months, and we aim to get to 2,000 by the end of this year. More people will be able to engage with these dApps as it’s a lot easier for people to understand and use a stablecoin in a consumer-facing use case.

In an April 5 court filing, Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the case, explaining that the parties had informed the court they had reached a settlement.

However, both parties have the right to reopen the cause and proceed to trial within 30 days, or by May 5, “if the settlement is not fully effectuated,” the judge wrote.

The terms of the settlement are confidential, Brian Klein, Shrem’s lawyer, told CoinDesk.

According to a separate filing by the attorney for the twins’ Winklevoss Capital Fund (WCF), the plaintiff in the case, “WCF and Shrem will each bear their own attorneys’ fees and costs. The case will not be reopened.”

In a statement provided to CoinDesk, Shrem said:

“From day one, I’ve maintained the allegations are bogus, and they are of course. After their attorney was sanctioned and they were ordered to pay my legal fees twice, we recently reached a confidential resolution, and I’m dismissed from the case. I’m thankful for Brian Klein and my legal team and pleased to have this behind me.”

Early days

The Winklevoss brothers had alleged, in their case filed in September of last year, that back in 2012 Shrem had accepted a total of $1 million to buy bitcoin on their behalf and later realized that Shrem had not given them the full value of the amount in bitcoin.

They claimed to be short by roughly 5,000 bitcoin, worth about $26 million at today’s prices.

At the time of the deal in 2012, one bitcoin was worth approximately $12.50.

Before the settlement was reached, Shrem had sought to depose the Winklevosses’ attorney, Tyler Meade.

That’s the question experts in the space are pondering with the recent announcement that Coinbase Custody will offer staking support for Maker, Tezos and Cosmos. The move means institutional investors will be able to vote on blockchain governance matters directly through their Coinbase accounts.

“We’re hoping to bring online, frankly, the majority of institutional investors,” Coinbase Custody CEO Sam McIngvale told CoinDesk. “We’re growing these three assets under custody and hoping to see an increased turnout of these votes.”

That this is possible is because blockchains like Cosmos, Tezos and Maker use staking to guide their networks.

Staking relies on participants essentially buying into the blockchain’s decision-making council. In addition to backing their votes with deposits – staking their claim with real assets – in Tezos and Cosmos stakers can also earn token rewards for fueling the network’s growth. But, in turn, these networks are beginning to face the same challenge democracies have grappled with for centuries:

How do we incentivize voting?

Lessons from Maker

This Coinbase Custody addition was driven by institutional demand, since few PoS token holders so far are actually participating in governance.

According to Becker, nearly 10 percent of Maker tokens were involved in a recent vote to hike fees related to ethereum-pegged stablecoin loans. While cryptocurrency researcher David Hoffman estimated only 0.58 percent of unique wallets holding Maker participated, Becker told CoinDesk the turnout was high among institutional holders that are able to vote. Indeed, he said the most recent fee-raising proposal had the highest turnout to date with 61 voters.

For many institutional holders, Becker argued, compliance requirements can still complicate the logistics of using tokens to vote.

“If you’re an institution and you represent third-party investors,” Becker explained, “you do need third-party custody as extra protection, to make sure those assets are looked after in a safe manner.”

That’s where the recent move by Coinbase comes in.

On one hand, a Coinbase voting interface could boost turnout by being convenient for the largest Maker holders, including Polychain Capital (founded by Coinbase’s first employee), 1confirmation (founded by an early Coinbase employee) and Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund (co-managed by a Coinbase board member).

On the other, Tezos holder and veteran crypto investor Meltem Demirors tweeted that Coinbase Custody could become a “wallet-driven proxy voting platform that influences, gathers, aggregates, and reports on user behavior.”

In response, Coinbase’s McIngvale said the custody solution is a business-to-business tool for institutions, not individuals. So there is scant “user behavior” to track.

Plus, he said there aren’t currently any plans to analyze or utilize voting data, adding:

“We are here to provide support, pure infrastructure and services to enable our clients to participate in these networks however they want to. What they’re doing is not really our business. In fact, our business is to protect their anonymity as best we can, and the security of their funds.”

McIngvale said the exchange already custodies roughly 4 percent of Maker tokens, less than the 6 percent Andreessen Horowitz owns by itself. Meanwhile, the Maker Foundation, which employs MakerDAO COO Steven Becker, owns more than 22 percent of the total Maker supply and only sells these tokens to institutions that previous holders like Polychain deem to be committed to participating in governance, according to Becker.

Tendermint Inc director Zaki Manian, co-creator of the Cosmos ecosystem, told CoinDesk each of the three PoS assets Coinbase Custody will support requires a unique approach to governance options based on whether the systems automate changes, like Tezos, or merely show sentiment, like Cosmos.

Either way, governance is often inseparable from politics.

“If a big validator [staker] votes for something early, it gives that proposal a lot more legitimacy,” Manian said, adding:

“I have a thesis that they [Coinbase Custody] are going to have a hard time keeping them [stakers] because … custody is designed not to be a nimble business and staking has to be a nimble business.”

So far, staking votes have appeared to revolve around money rather than infrastructure. Comparable to semi-automated Maker votes about stability fees for stablecoin loans, the first Cosmos vote was an affirmative move toward inflation.

“It’s going to be interesting because part of the dynamics of proof-of-stake is how frequently do people just vote to give themselves more money?” Manian said.

Binance wants in

Coinbase is hardly the only giant entering the game of stakes.

On April 3, Binance’s custody provider Trust Wallet also announced plans to support Tezos staking features by the end of Q2 2019. Unlike institution-centric Coinbase Custody, retail-friendly Trust Wallet will create delegation features on the mobile wallet first, then potentially add voting options down the road.

“We’re already talking to the Cosmos people to bring that [staking] technology to them,” Trust Wallet founder Viktor Radchenko told CoinDesk. “It’s going to be all open source so that any community, like Maker, who would like to come in and have this functionality will be able to do it.”

Radchenko said he believes custody providers and wallets should offer simplified interfaces for users “to be involved in the blockchain itself” when it comes to PoS governance.

From Manian’s perspective, exchange competition will benefit stakers and token buyers.

“Binance and Coinbase are both going real hard on bringing these features to various customer bases,” he said.

Additionally, Manian said the “elephant in the room” is whether exchanges like Binance and Coinbase will offer governance derivatives – the ability to buy votes without owning the underlying assets – to retain institutional stakers as the competition heats up.

So far no exchange has announced any intention to offer such derivatives. To the contrary, Radchenko said that token holders and issuers may be too preoccupied with voting dynamics these days, given how nascent the technology is.

“We plan to bring that functionality [voting] a little bit later just because there’s less usage [than staking],” Trust Wallet’s Radchenko said. “Governance features will come a little bit later, maybe not even this year.”

As for the value Coinbase aims to offer institutional players, McIngvale said:

“We’ll work with our clients to figure out how to grow their impact as they start to participate in more and more governance processes.”

Asia Times originally reported the trend April 17 referencing recent statements at this week’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings held in Washington DC.

Afghanistan, Tunisia and Uzbekistan are currently mulling the possibility of a Bitcoin bond, all three interested in the instrument’s potential to help out critical sectors of the economy.

For Afghanistan, a bond could be tied to metals, specifically the country’s $3 trillion lithium industry. Despite being set for expansion due to a shortage of lithium, Afghanistan remains stifled when it comes to borrowing due to international restrictions.

The answer, Asia Times paraphrases Central Bank of Afghanistan governor Khalil Sediq as saying, lies in crypto solutions such as Hyperledger Fabric.

This, he claimed, “could offer a way to access international markets via a first-of-its-kind financial instrument made possible with hyperledger’s blockchain technology financial services platform.”

Similarly buoyant about the concept was newly-installed Tunisian central bank governor Marouane El Abassi. Abassi, known for his progressive stance on technology such as blockchain, said a dedicated working group was already studying the feasibility of a Bitcoin bond.

Bitcoin and Hyperledger’s Blockchain technology, he indicated,

offers central banks an efficient tool to combat money-laundering, manage remittances, fight cross-border terrorism and limit grey economies.

In line with many other nations, Tunisia is also getting to grips with the idea of issuing a digital version of its national fiat currency.

IMF REMAINS CAUTIOUS

For Uzbekistan meanwhile, a Bitcoin bond could end up tied to cotton futures, Uzbek Ambassador to the United States Javlon Vakhabov told the Spring Meetings.

The approaches may yet gain mixed reviews from the IMF, in particular. Earlier this month, managing director Christine Lagarde again called for caution regarding cryptoassets, saying supervised testing would be preferable as a first step.

“One approach, undertaken in Hong Kong SAR, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere, is to establish regulatory ‘sandboxes’ where new financial technologies can be tested in a closely supervised environment,” she concluded in a blog post.

Above all, we must keep an open mind about crypto assets and financial technology more broadly, not only because of the risks they pose, but also because of their potential to improve our lives.

Lagarde likened the advent of early-stage cryptocurrency and associated financial technology to that of the telephone and its initial reception.

Akinyele just announced the formation of Bolt Labs, named after the BOLT protocol that aims to give lightning hubs shielded addresses for anonymous payment channels. The startup is launching with a $1.5 million seed round led by Dekrypt Capital and support from Ripple’s investment arm, Xpring, plus Lemniscap and Access Ventures.

Furthermore, Electronic Coin Company CEO Zooko Wilcox is advising Bolt Labs and helping the startup create its first proof-of-concept this summer for the privacy coin zcash, which doesn’t use lightning like bitcoin.

“Ultimately, interoperability is the goal,” Akinyele told CoinDesk about why the startup is working on compatibility for both bitcoin and cryptocurrencies without comparable scaling solutions. “Our design is independent of the underlying currency.”

Stepping back, BOLT is still an experimental software idea that theoretically applies directly to the cryptocurrency node, which communicates payment information to the broader network. Whether the software is integrated directly into a Layer 2 node like a lightning client or a Layer 1 node like zcash’s, the intention is always to protect information about the account, including who sends payments to it and how much the channel holds.

“The initial balance of the channel is hidden,” Akinyele said. “And now when you make a payment from this channel no one can link you to that payment unless you disclose the information.”

Dekrypt Capital co-founder Howard Wu told CoinDesk these types of features will be essential for cryptocurrency payments to spread without proliferating surveillance capitalism, a term coined by sociologist Shoshana Zuboff in 2014 to describe omnipresent surveillance and data collection online.

“A lot of credit card companies today, and advertising companies, acquire data from outlets like Best Buy or Overstock and sell this data to traders or other companies,” Wu said.

Referring to compliance requirements such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which prohibits companies from immutably storing some types of personal data, he added:

“We see that as being a risk, fundamentally, to privacy and compliance. Being able to have shopping sites integrate wallets [with BOLT] in the future would absolutely be interesting for helping to protect users.”

Dekrypt Capital co-founder Jon Allen also said that cryptocurrencies will only reach their decentralized potential for empowering individuals if there are options to spend crypto in ways that are closer to cash, without names and addresses.

“We also need a private, money-like currency,” Allen said.

Speaking to why Xpring invested in Bolt Labs, a Ripple spokesperson told CoinDesk:

“We’re believers that the combination of Layer 2 solutions like Bolt and interoperability technologies like Interledger will improve the experience for both developers and end users, thereby paving the path for the mass adoption of crypto.”

Baby steps

Akinyele told CoinDesk there’s still a long way to go before the first BOLT mainnet experiment launches later this year.

“I would liken [BOLT] to infrastructure that makes it possible to have instant, cheap and private payments for everyday purchases,” he said.

Lightning Labs engineer Alex Bosworth, who is partially responsible for the LND implementation Akinyele is modeling BOLT after, told CoinDesk that more privacy features are already being built into lightning itself.

“We’ll try to make private channels less identifiable,” Bosworth said. “We’re going to change it so that a two-of-two multisig on-chain looks like a single multisig, just like a normal spend. That will use more of a cryptography solution.”

This strategy of making payment hubs look like normal wallets, obscuring the individual payments that pass through them, will also use a cryptographic solution. Only time will tell how BOLT’s cryptographic solution will fit in with these lightning updates.

In the meantime, the nonprofit Zcash Foundation, separate from Wilcox’s startup, gave Akinyele more than $40,000 worth of grants in 2018 as the researcher geared up to launch Bolt Labs. Bolt Labs eventually plans to generate revenue by offering services to institutions involved in activities like over-the-counter trading, that require both significant scale and discretion.

Comparing the potential of BOLT-enhanced nodes to standalone lightning nodes, Zcash Foundation executive director Josh Cincinnati told CoinDesk:

“BOLT’s approach potentially offers more privacy and similar scalability characteristics that we think are worth researching and exploring.”

The sharp rise seen this month seems to have put the bulls in a commanding position for a long haul. The cryptocurrency has violated the most basic of all bearish technical patterns – the lower highs, lower lows – with a convincing move above $4,236.

Prices have also found acceptance above the 200-day moving average (MA), currently at $4,520, for the first time since March 2018, a sign of a bull market.

These gains look sustainable, too, courtesy of a sharp rise in trading volumes. For instance, 24-hour trading volume across all exchanges jumped to a 15-month high of $22.89 billion on April 3 – the day BTC solidified the bull breakout with a move above $5,000.

As a result, a drop all the way back to the monthly opening price of $4,092 on or before April 30 looks unlikely.

Bitcoin has posted April gains in five out of the last seven years.

The cryptocurrency gained 45 percent in the fourth month of 2013, its biggest April gain on record.

That record will likely stay intact, as BTC may have a tough time finding acceptance above multiple key resistance levels lined up above $5,200 in the short-run.

Monthly and weekly charts

As seen above (left), the 21-month exponential moving average (EMA) served as strong support in five months to October 2018. Further, a downside break of the line in November was followed by a sell-off to lows near $3,100 by December.

As a result, the 21-month EMA, currently at $5,237, is the level to beat for the bulls. Forcing a break higher, however, could be a tough task with short-term technical indicators reporting overbought conditions.

Other bearish technical lines located near the 21-month EMA could also keep the gains under check. For instance, the descending (still bearish) 10-month and 50-week MAs are located at $5,180 and $5,546, respectively. While the three-day chart’s 100-candle MA, currently at $5,239, is also proving a tough nut to crack, as discussed yesterday.

Usually, such a strong band of key resistance lines is breached after multiple attempts. So, the probability of BTC extending gains before the month end appears low.

In fact, the cryptocurrency may end the current month with lesser gains if the price finds acceptance below the crucial support at $4,912.

Weekly chart

BTC closed at $5,190 on April 3, confirming a falling channel breakout on the weekly chart. A similar looking pattern in 2015 paved way for a three-year bull run.

So far, however, the follow-through to that longer-term bullish breakout has been discouraging.

Notably, the cryptocurrency witnessed two-way business last week before ending on a flat note. The resulting doji candle is indicative of indecision among the bulls.

That buyer exhaustion would gain credence, inviting stronger selling pressure, if the cryptocurrency closes (UTC) below $4,912 (doji’s low) this Sunday. A bearish close, if confirmed, could yield a deeper pullback to levels below $4,600.

As for today, BTC may fall back to levels below $5,100, according to shorter-duration technical charts.

Hourly chart

An hourly close below the channel support, currently at $5,200 would validate the bearish divergence of the relative strength index (RSI) and fuel a drop to $5,100 and below.

The bearish divergence of the RSI would be invalidated if the price finds acceptance above the upper edge of the channel, currently at $5,250.

The additional funding means Chainalysis’ total for its Series B round now sits at $36 million. It raised $30 million back in February, in an initial round led by venture capital firm Accel Partners.

With the additional investment, Chainalysis said it aims to expand its Asia-Pacific business and open a new office to assist that effort.

The startup said it has already significantly grown its business in the region, claiming to have more than doubled client numbers and increased contracted revenue by “more than 16x” last year.

“Chainalysis plans to build on this momentum with a physical presence and deeper engagements with entities including Sozo and MUFG, who will provide critical market insights,” the firm said.

In April 2018, Chainalysis raised $16 million in Series A investment from Benchmark Capital, and launched a cryptocurrency compliance tool, called Chainalysis KYT (for “know your transaction”), which it says provides transaction analysis in real time.

MUFG Innovation Partners CEO and president, Nobutake Suzuki, said in yesterday’s announcement:

“Chainalysis’s compliance technology is important to providing the insight and anti-money laundering controls banks need in order to establish next generation compliance frameworks.”

Founded in 2014, Chainalysis notably helped investigations in the Mt. Gox bankruptcy case, in the attempt to locate the collapsed exchange’s missing bitcoin.

Last week, the startup published a public comment letter in response to a draft recommendation by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), saying that it is unrealistic and harmful for the crypto industry to expect exchanges to send know-your-customer (KYC) information to recipient platforms with every transaction.

After the incident happened, the president of the country, Emmanuel Macron, has affirmed that the Cathedral of Notre-Dame would be rebuilt again. Two huge companies announced a donation of around $300 million EUR and the president asked the people who could help that they should donate money for the reconstruction.

As soon as he saw the announcement, the crypto journalist Grégory Raymond (@MagazineCapital), has rallied the crypto community to support the reconstruction of the cathedral. According to him, the community should show its support to the world by donating money to be used in the reconstruction.

For better transparency and security, funds has been sent to a multisignature wallet owned by me, @AssoCDC and @davidprincay  : 3PxExW3bKza9SbYzdBLwvALbvX4yMDfLyX. More on @DameCryptos#notredamedescryptos https://t.co/BRC9lAKSev

— Grégory Raymond (@gregory_raymond) April 16, 2019

He released a tweet with an address and a QR code that could be used to send the money to the French government in order to pay for the reconstruction.

According to him, this was a sad moment but also an important opportunity to show the world how Bitcoin can be powerful in order to transfer funds in a completely borderless way without all the mess that centralized authorities generally make.

The crypto community has applauded his efforts in helping during such a dire time. A French Bitcoin community called Le Cercle du Coin (The Circle of Coin) has talked about his tweets saying that they will help, too, and will set up a multi-signature address in order to give more guarantees to donors.

As The Information first reported Monday, the company is seeking approximately $200 million in new investment. However, ConsenSys also projects $152 million in expenses in 2019, with $52 million in revenue, for an estimated $100 million cash burn, according to an investor deck obtained by CoinDesk.

The company is pitching itself to investors as a combination of three significant assets: equity in roughly 134 projects or companies, token holdings from major initial coin offerings and internal operations with significant long-term revenue potential.

With additional funding, ConsenSys expects to do the following through 2020: launch at least 10 blockchain networks, grow revenue to $100 million per year, tokenize 30 percent of activities in its so-called “mesh” of projects and help the ethereum community deliver its 2.0 upgrade.

ConsenSys 2.0.1

As CoinDesk reported last year, the company went through a major restructuring in order to focus more on businesses with revenue potential. This year’s slide deck gives some clarity about what the company is currently emphasizing.

“ConsenSys is building the products, platforms and companies to enable the tokenization of the $80 trillion global economy,” the slide deck reports in its first pages.

The deck describes the ConsenSys product strategy as comprising four “interconnected layers:” open platforms, the future of work, decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web 3.0.

It highlights several companies at each layer, including Grid+ and Gnosis, as open platforms; OpenLaw and Gitcoin, as the future of work; Trustology and ConsenSys Digital Securities, as decentralized finance (DeFi); and Kaleido and uPort, as Web 3.0.

A slide from the ConsenSys pitch deck.

Beyond those, the document says ConsenSys Labs has incubated 82 projects, its accelerator has worked with 27 and the company has directly invested in 35 companies between ConsenSys Ventures and ConsenSys AG.

Of all the projects, the deck places the most emphasis on four: PegaSys, Truffle, Infura and MetaMask.

It describes PegaSys as infrastructure for enterprise ethereum and ethereum 2.0, with a team size of 60 people. Infura is infrastructure-as-a-service for ethereum, with a team size of 18. Truffle is described as the ethereum development environment, with a team size of 20. Finally, MetaMask is a simple browser extension for using ethereum, with a team size of 17.

Meanwhile, the company holds large stakes (both in the form of equity and tokens) in companies that came up during the ICO boom. It represents its stakes in Gnosis, Grid+ and AirSwap as the most valuable while promising future token launches.

While acknowledging the tokens for these projects have lost a great deal of value, the document argues:

“We have conviction that our projects are focused on cryptoeconomic networks that will be essential and dominant in Web3 and have long term value.”

Revenue pipeline

The deck saves its strongest argument for last, perhaps suspecting that only real revenue will convince investors at this stage.

“After building the market and commercial engagement appetite, we refocused our business development efforts to build a broad enterprise and government pipeline across key verticals,” the deck contends.

The company earned $6.5 million in 2017, $21 million in 2018 and projects $52.3 million for 2019. Most of that revenue has come through services, primarily ascribed to the Solutions division.

Meanwhile, ConsenSys argues its deal pipeline (that is, contracts under discussion) has been growing rapidly, with $125 million in potential deals as of mid-March, and $10 million secured that month.

“We are shifting from smaller (~$200,000) advisory and proof-of-concept work to large (~$10 million ) product and platform development engagements,” the deck reports.

A request for comment was not returned by ConsenSys as of press time.

Now, Erik Voorhees, the CEO of the crypto company ShapeShift, has talked about how Bitcoin can be used as a sort of a escape hatch for this upcoming recession. According to him, when the traditional economy starts to collapse, we will see people start to use Bitcoin in order to protect themselves from the trouble that will be coming.

Will The Recession Actually Happen?

Nobody knows whether a recession will happen before it does. We can see signs, but the event that actually crashes the market and their exact date are unpredictable. What seems to be a solid bet is that we will eventually see a recession.

The main reason for the people who see the recession as near is that despite the fact that the global economy is doing fine, for now, some fiscal and economic indicators are not too good. For instance, the U. S. Treasury bond curve saw a negative spread recently, which also happened before the last three major crisis.

Debt is also rising a lot since the last decade, which is generally understood by economists as something really dangerous. Even after 2008, when the world saw how dangerous it was to keep rising debt, most central banks continue to do it. Some specialists accuse governments of not learning from past mistakes and believe that we may see some recession again.

During the last recession, the debt of the United States was $8 trillion USD, now it is $22 trillion USD, which does not seem to be very sustainable in the long term. The current president is not doing a lot to solve this issue, either.

Several people have drawn parallels between today and the Great Recession of 1929, which can be counted as another ominous sign.

The truth is nobody is actually sure whether this means that a recession is around the corner, but almost everybody knows that one will happen eventually. When? This year? Five years from now? Ten? This is very hard to precise.

Some predictions say that the U. S. will be paying more debts than it receives in taxes by 2022, which may also fuel a recession.

How Can Bitcoin Save Us From The Recession?

When the crisis happens (and it almost certainly will eventually happen), Bitcoin will be here. What does that mean? Venezuela actually gives us a great example at this time. The country is being ravaged by hyperinflation.

As the price of assets drop during the crisis and governments print more money or devaluate their currency to pay their debt, we will possibly see inflation, which will lead people to invest in more stable forms of storing value: Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is non-sovereign, has a hard cap and is impossible to control. It has all the characteristics which may lead people to invest in it during the recession. Basically, Bitcoin will be benefited from inflation that devaluates the U. S. dollar or by any crash in the stocks market.

San Francisco-based Kraken announced Tuesday that it will no longer support BSV, citing both community sentiment and ongoing litigation filed against the exchange by the coin’s advocates.

Kraken will disable BSV deposits on April 22, trading will cease on all trading pairs April 29 and, finally, withdrawals will stop May 31.

The move follows announcements Monday by two other prominent exchanges, Binance and ShapeShift, that they were delisting BSV in response to Wright’s behavior. Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), tweeted that Wright is “poisoning” the bitcoin community with his threats to sue people who called him a fraud because he has claimed to be bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

But Kraken was already negatively disposed toward BSV long before the kerfuffle started.

In December, during the contentious hard fork of bitcoin cash when it got split into bitcoin cash ABC and bitcoin cash “Satoshi Vision,” Florida-based mining firm United Investment Corp. filed a federal lawsuitagainst a group of defendants for supporting the ABC version, including Kraken and its CEO Jesse Powell. Kraken enabled BSV trading in November.

“They are suing us, our investors, well-respected and prominent figures in the community, and the community got to the point it’s fed up with it,” Powell told CoinDesk. “It’s completely antithetical to what this community is about.”

Community sentiment

On Monday, Kraken launched a poll on its Twitter account, asking people to vote for or against delisting BSV. At the moment of writing, the poll shows that around 70,545 users voted, 71 percent supporting delisting, seven percent opposing and 21 percent not caring.

“We at Kraken have our own strong opinions, and it’s like a bubble, so putting out a poll was the opportunity to get other people’s opinions,” Powell explained.

If the vast majority of the votes had been in favor of keeping BSV at Kraken, it wouldn’t have been delisted, but if the results were indecisive, say 50/50, the coin would still have been delisted, Powell said.

In the past Kraken has delisted other tokens, including Namecoin and Iconomi — the former because of its low volume and the need to support a technically onerous upgrade at some point, the latter because the protocol was changed by its creators.

The feud

The delisting wave started after Wright threatened to sue a pseudonymous Twitter user nicknamed Hodlonaut, known for starting the bitcoin Lightning Torch, and crypto investor and podcaster Peter McCormack, unless they publicly recognized Wright as bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Nakamoto.

“It looks they keep to use the law system to abuse it, suing anyone who says anything against them,” Powell said about BSV advocates.

Aside from ShapeShift and Binance, the crypto apps Blockchain, SatoWallet, Phantasma Chain and Bittylicious announced Monday they, too, would stop supporting BSV.

Powell said more exchanges may follow suit.

“The more players delist them, the easier it becomes to do it,” he said.

BSV camp responds

Reached late Tuesday, Ed Pownall, a public relations specialist who represents Calvin Ayre, owner and founder of CoinGeek.com and one of Bitcoin SV’s biggest supporters, referred CoinDesk to a newsletter article by Toronto-based investment firm Frnt.io.

“We believe that crypto and certain actors specifically are setting a dangerous precedent in the delisting of BSV,” the article said, explaining:

“Given the impact that trading venues can have on the visibility and price of a coin, such a subjective delisting sets a precedent which has the potential to increase the space’s vulnerability to manipulation. If a coin can be delisted due to some[one] not approving of a community/person’s legal activities, what’s to say that a similar narrative cannot be created in the future simply to support a malicious actor’s monetary interest.”

Later, Pownall sent a statement from Ayre, who called the delistings “a case of people in trusted positions abusing that trust and playing God with which token gets the most volume and market access. In essence, market manipulation.”

Ayre added that the exchanges seemed to be making decisions simply because “they don’t like one scientist that works on the platform. Craig doesn’t own BSV, not does anybody, so this appears to be very unprofessional. An exchange should just want volume of trading, not picking which horses it wants to win the race.”

Crypto adoption continues to increase as new companies and firms embrace the most popular digital asset in the market. Trippki announced that the Trippki Hotel Beta will be accepting virtual currencies for hotel rooms and stays.

Trippki Hotel Beta Accepts Digital Assets

Trippki is a hotel booking platform that is based on Ethereum (ETH) and it will be accepting digital assets from users that want to pay for their hotels. The firm aims at creating a better relationship between guests and hotels. Once the guest uses the platform, users receive rewards in Trip.

This is not the first integration that the company has performed with the crypto market. In the past, the firm allowed users to purchase hotel rooms with XRP. This attracted the attention of the XRP community that is very active on social media.

Now, the company has added support to Dogecoin (DOGE), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Monero (XMR), allowing users to use their favorite virtual currency to pay for their hotel stay.

Beers & #Bitcoin – fun days in Amsterdam amongst some other delights #bitholiday#blockchain evolution pic.twitter.com/HvotE66ksw

— Trippki (@Trippki_) April 15, 2019

This is not the first time that there is a company accepting virtual currencies for plane tickets, hotels or other touristic attractions. Bitcoin.Travel is perhaps one of the most popular and recognized sites that are dedicated to travel and Bitcoin (BTC). Users can easily purchase flights, hotels, accommodations, attraction tours and more, just by using Bitcoin. The site is operating in the market since July 2011.

This would clearly help increase adoption of virtual currencies. Not only the price performance is the most important but also the benefits related to using these digital assets.

Announced Tuesday, EY’s protocol, internally code-named Nightfall, has been developed over the last year by the consulting firm’s team of over 200 blockchain developers and will be published in May. The protocol was created for such use cases as supply chains, food tracing, transactions between branches of a company and public finance.

Like other enterprise blockchain platforms, Nightfall takes advantage of a technology called zero-knowledge proofs to allow private transactions on a shared ledger. But unlike most such endeavors, EY’s software is intended to run on top of the public ethereum network, not a private variant.

Further setting the project apart is the unusual approach EY is taking to intellectual property. The firm said it will not merely open-source the code – that is, release it with a permissive copyright license – but put it in the public domain, with no license at all.

“We want to maximize adoption and community involvement, we want people to adopt it, and adapt it, and improve it. If we retain ownership, people may not invest that much time and energy in something they might not control,” EY’s global innovation leader for blockchain, Paul Brody, explained at a press briefing. “The cleanest way to make everybody use it is just to give it away with no strings attached.”

Nevertheless, Brody suggested this was a difficult decision, telling reporters:

“A year of coding work. This is a million dollars worth of stuff we’re giving away.”

A fine distinction

Stepping back, “open source” and “public domain” are not synonymous.

“The terms are often used interchangeably. Legally, however, they mean different things,” said Preston Byrne, a partner at the law firm of Byrne & Storm.

Open-source, while it allows software to be used without paying royalties, means the author retainscopyright and can, in theory, revoke or change the license, although “I haven’t seen this happen in crypto even once, given that the ability to inspect the code and play around with it is a key selling proposition for protocol adoption,” Byrne said.

Public domain, on the other hand, involves a waiver of copyright. This is rarer in software, Byrne said, since “it doesn’t provide a clear licensing framework for later contributions to the codebase,” creating the potential for disputes if, say, copyrighted code is added to a copyright-waived codebase.

But if a company “simply wants to give away its work, without more, there isn’t a ton of risk in releasing to the public domain,” he said.

SAP, Microsoft, Carrefour

According to Brody, EY’s solutions for Nightfall will run in the Microsoft Azure cloud environment and are integrated with enterprise software from SAP, to give clients “a comfort that this is not new and scary. This is a mature technology backed by the world’s leading technology companies.”

One of the solutions already in testing is a system for tracking software license transactions for Microsoft’s XBox video games platform, EY said. Using the solution, Microsoft can monitor its interactions with multiple game vendors and avoid litigation related to royalty payments.

Other important partners include European grocery chain Carrefour, which is using EY’s blockchain solution to trace oranges, eggs, and chickens (it’s also a participant in IBM’s Food Trust blockchain); pharmaceutical producer Merck; Italian winery Placido Volpone; and an “Italian buffalo mozzarella maker” and “a big Japanese car maker,” Brody said.

“People are very undisciplined in the supply chain industry,” he said, explaining blockchain’s appeal in this area. “The beauty of non-double spending on the blockchain is that if a vaccine from a distribution center goes to a farm, it has to come out of a distribution center.”

Tokenize this

One of the most important principles EY is advocating with Nightfall is that an enterprise blockchain should deal not with hashes of digitized PDF documents, but with tokens bound to physical goods.

In pursuing this, EY took advantage of the ERC-721 standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on ethereum, the most famous example of which is the collectibles known as CryptoKitties. (EY’s advisers included William Entriken, the main author of the standard, and the cryptography scholar Mary Maller, one of the leading researchers of zero-knowledge proofs.)

“We have made a big investment in the token technology,” Brody said. “We built a special kind of token, which is ERC 721-compatible, to separate a physical asset from the legal ownership of that asset.” For example, while a car is on a ship on its way to a buyer, the shipping company doesn’t own that car.

Further down that road, Brody said, it will be possible to distinguish and tokenize different components of traded goods. “We can envision a future where a power company owns a battery in your car and you can use it whenever you plug it in.”

Into the great wide open

For more than a year, Brody has been evangelizing the benefits of public blockchains for enterprises, which made EY stand out among an enterprise crowd more favorably disposed to private or permissioned ledgers.

“Imagine every car maker and any shipment company runs their own private blockchain. A bunch of silos doesn’t scale too well,” Brody said. “While private blockchains are useful, they don’t solve the problem of a massive, scalable transformation.”

Just as enterprises grew comfortable using public cloud storage, they will also come to embrace public blockchains, Brody believes. And the blockchain they choose, in EY’s vision, will most likely be ethereum.

The reason is the vast majority of the money raised in the space has been for companies that built on ethereum, and the vast majority of blockchain developers code on Solidity, the smart contract language written for ethereum.

“That’s a kind of developer momentum that makes me believe that, imperfect or not, unless they really screw up, ethereum is the choice,” Brody said.

The Los Angeles-based digital asset manager filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Friday for a bond fund whose shares would be tokenized on the ethereum blockchain.  Arca hopes the SEC will approve the product later this year, a spokesperson said.

The Arca U.S. Treasury Fund would be available to the general public, but not traded on any stock exchange or alternative trading system, according to the filing.

However, shares in the fund (referred to as “Arca UST Coins”) would be represented as ERC-20 tokens, which run on top of ethereum. And Arca is framing the product as a form of stablecoin, or cryptocurrency designed to maintain parity with a traditional asset like the U.S. dollar, although the company cautioned that it may be slightly less stable than other such products on the market.

The minimum investment in the fund would be $1,000, with a target net asset value (NAV) of $1 per share. At least 80 percent of the fund would be invested in U.S. Treasury securities, with the rest in debt issued by various public or private entities inside and outside the U.S.

“It is therefore anticipated that the underlying portfolio, and the NAV of Arca UST Coins, will have relatively little volatility,” the document says. “Accordingly, although holders of Arca UST Coins could experience greater NAV volatility compared to typical stablecoins, such volatility will be relatively limited.”

Investors would receive quarterly dividends from the interest payments, according to the prospectus, although the fund’s “investment objective is to seek maximum total return consistent with preservation of capital.” In other words, stable value rather than big profits.

To buy shares from the fund or from another investor, traders “must first establish a wallet address through the Arca application and ensure that it is whitelisted with the Transfer Agent,” according to the prospectus. “Once an investor’s wallet address is whitelisted, the investor can use the Arca application to transfer money from a linked bank account to the Fund in return for shares of the Fund.”

It is not clear how many of these purportedly dollar-pegged tokens Arca aims to sell; the prospectus says the offering would need to raise $25 million for the fund to have viable operations.

Arca is not to be confused with NYSE Arca, one of several firms seeking to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S.

That bullish close, however, looks unlikely in the short-term, as the cryptocurrency has created a bearish candle on the daily chart, validating signs of bull exhaustion (doji candle) on the weekly chart.

A UTC close below $4,948 today would add credence to yesterday’s bearish candle, opening doors for a deeper pullback toward the 30-day moving average, currently at $4,550.

The stalled bitcoin (BTC) rally could again pick up the pace if a new resistance level above $5,200 is convincingly breached.

The market-leading cryptocurrency picked up a strong bid at lows below $4,200 on April 2 and jumped to 4.5-month highs above $5,300 on April 8, confirming a bullish reversal.

The rally, however, has stalled in the last few days, courtesy of overbought conditions and other factors, as discussed yesterday.

Notably, the three-day chart’s 100-candle moving average (MA), currently at $5,238, has been proving a tough nut to crack since April 2. As a result, that lesser-known average is now the level to beat for the bulls.

A convincing move above that MA resistance could bring in more buyers, reviving the prospects of the further rally.

As of writing, bitcoin is trading at $5,080 on Bitstamp, representing a 1.5 percent drop on a 24-hour basis.

3-day chart

The 100-candle moving average has recently been put to test for the first time since May 2018. Back then, the average was trending north, indicating a bullish setup and was located just above $8,400.

As of writing, it is sloping downwards, representing a bearish bias, and is seen at $5,238. That bearish signal, however, is of little concern to the bulls, as longer duration averages are lagging indicators.

That said, bitcoin has repeatedly failed to secure a three-day close above that average over the last 15 days. A break higher, therefore, may embolden the bulls and allow a sustained move higher toward $5,500.

That, however, looks unlikely in the short-run, as the repeated failure at the 100-candle MA is accompanied by early signs of bearish reversal on the shorter duration charts.

Daily chart

BTC created a bearish outside reversal candle Monday – a pattern that occurs when the day begins on an optimistic note, but ends with pessimism. The candlestick is widely considered a sign of potential trend reversal, especially when it appears after a notable rally, as is the case with BTC.

Traders, however, wait for confirmation in the form of strong follow-through, preferably a close below the candle’s low.

So, a UTC close below $4,948 (Monday’s low) would shift risk in favor of a deeper drop toward the ascending 30-day MA, currently at $4,550. It is worth noting that the 30-day MA served as strong support throughout last month.

A bearish close below $4,948 looks likely, as the 5- and 10-day MAs have produced a bearish crossover, validating the signs of buyer exhaustion seen on the weekly chart (last week’s candle was a doji).

That said, the longer duration outlook will remain bullish as long as prices are trading above $4,236.

The Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GBX) has a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the company announced this Tuesday, appointing Kurt Looyens, the former Country Executive for ABN AMRO Bank Spain to the top position.

Looyens, who has been with the exchange since July of last year, is replacing Nick Cowan as the CEO, who will now work exclusively as the CEO of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange (GSX) and the GSX Group.

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When Looyens joined the blockchain exchange in July 2018, he took on the position of Head of Business Development. Now, he will transition into the role of CEO. According to the statement, his leadership experience in corporate and private banking, as well as experience in running businesses, will help him tackle the top position.

Commenting on the appointment, Looyens said, “I am excited to take the reigns of the GBX as we embark on an exciting new phase of development. This is a very interesting period for the wider GSX Group, following last week’s announcement that the GSX Global Market (GSXGM) will now offer the listing of digital debt and digital fund securities on its multilateral trading facility (MTF).

“My experience building up regional businesses with ABN AMRO Bank, coupled with my in-depth knowledge of financial solutions for a global audience has prepared me to drive the GBX forward as a world-leading digital asset exchange.”

Before GBX, Looyens Spent 25 Years at ABN AMRO

Prior to his tenure at GBX, Looyens spent an impressive 25 years with ABN AMRO Bank, originally joining the firm in 1993 in relationship management. His most recent role with the firm was Country Executive and Head of World Citizen Services Spain & France, his LinkedIn states.

“We are pleased to have Kurt transition into the position of CEO of the GBX, following a very successful spell as Head of Business Development. His vast experience in finance, business development, and regulatory matters will provide the GBX with essential leadership to cement its position as a leading digital asset exchange,” added Cowan, the CEO of GSX.

“Kurt shares the overarching vision for the close interaction between the GSX and the GBX, with both entities working in tandem to capture the spirit of collaboration that has fuelled Gibraltar’s pursuit of blockchain innovation,” he continued.

Online brokerage Monex Group Inc., owner of the hacked Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, is considering adding crypto to its retail client offerings in a bid to become more competitive in the local brokerage market. The news was reported by Bloomberg on April 15.

As previously reported, Monex acquired Coincheck in April 2018 in the wake of the exchange’s industry record breaking $532 million hack in January of that year.

According to Bloomberg, Monex now sees its Coincheck involvement as potentially instrumental in restoring its erstwhile market dominance.

Founded in 1999, Monex was reportedly once the country’s most popular online brokerage, but has since reportedly been eclipsed by rivals such as Rakuten, SBI Holdings and Mastui.

Monex’s brokerage unit is thus mulling the addition of digital currencies to its offerings for retail clients in collaboration with Coincheck. Monex Securities Inc.’s new president, Yuko Seimei, conceded that a new strategy is critical to reviving the firm:

“We’ve fallen a little behind — we can’t deny that. If we keep doing things the way we have, we may not be able to close the gap.”

Amid increasing competition in the brokerage market, Japanese investors’ enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies could help the organization reclaim clients, Bloomberg notes. The Japanese yen currently accounts for ~46.5% of national fiat currencies traded for bitcoin (BTC), according to crypto statistics site Coinhills.  

As reported, under the stewardship of Monex, Coincheck took a series of measures to improve its protection and trading systems, as well as reimbursing those customers affected by the hack.

In mid-November 2018, Coincheck resumed crypto trading and was granted an operating license from Japan’s Financial Services Agency in December 2018.

Monex Group’s financial report on Q3 for the 2019 fiscal year revealed that Coincheck had halved its losses in Q3, as compared with the preceding quarter.

This March, Monex announced major changes to its management composition, appointing three Coincheck executive directors to Monex roles to enhance cooperation between the two firms.

This week, Money Forward Inc., the operator of one of Japan's most popular personal budgeting apps, announced a decision to halt its plans to launch a crypto asset exchange, citing profitability concerns amid the bear market.

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has meanwhile just opened registration for users of its crypto exchange Rakuten Wallet, which is set to go live in June.

Speaking to local financial news source Globes, the firm said it had let go of 15 of its 60 employees – less than had been speculated in the media.

The layoffs come amid a disappointing consumer reaction to the firm’s recently launched blockchain phone.  “Sales are not what we expected,” Sirin told Globes.

The device started shipping in November 2018, and notably features a cold (offline) crypto wallet that is effectively a second device in the same housing as the phone. The firm told CoinDesk in November that the wallet also it has a separate processor and users will interact with it on a second LCD screen for security.

In the Globes report, Sirin Labs also refuted media reports that it has not been paying its staff in recent months. Workers have just been been paid for March and will be be paid Tuesday for April, it said.

The problems at the firm, run by controversial entrepreneur Moshe Hogeg, come as a number of blockchain- and crypto-focused phones are hitting the market.

HTC launched its EXODUS 1 late last year. Initially available for purchase only with cryptocurrencies, the phone was made available for cash buyers in February.

Samsung has also moved to tap the attraction of blockchain features with its latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S10. On sale from early March, the phone features a crypto wallet, distributed app (dapp) partners and a digital signing app.

In January, Sirin’s Moshe Hogeg and another firm he founded, blockchain prediction market platform Stox, were reportedly being sued by a Chinese investor for over $4.6 million for allegedly misappropriating some of the crypto millions invested in the firm.

The platform ceased its activity in Israel late last year and laid off all employees, according to Globes.

A number of blockchain startups have been laying off employees over the last few months, with most citing as a cause the effects of the crypto bear market on company holdings and revenue.

Most recently, Indian exchange Unocoin has reduced its employee levels to just 14 from over 100 early last year. According to The Economic Times, the firm had tried unsuccessfully to raise further funding and had to cut costs as a result.

Unocoin intends to soldier on with minimal staff while it awaits a verdict from the country’s Supreme Court over a decision by the central bank to block banking services to cryptocurrency platforms, the piece says.

The proof-of-stake based Alogrand was first unveiled by MIT professor and Turing Award winner Silvio Micali in 2017. Over the course of 2018, the initiative netted some $66 million in funding, with backers including venture capital firms Union Square Ventures and Pillar, both of which funded Algorand’s $4 million seed round in February of last year.

Alogorand’s technological approach aspires to create a decentralized system that affords both scalability and security, as well as the elimination of the risk of “forking” or splitting into separate networks, as Micali detailed in a blog post published earlier this month.

According to the startup, the public release follows a private test period in which several hundred users took part. The then-invitation-only testnet first launched last July.

Now, Algorand hopes to attract a wider population of users to “ engage with TestNet and provide feedback on the quality, function, and overall experience of the TestNet protocol,” according to a press release.

“Opening TestNet to the public is a major milestone on our journey to the open source release of the technology, CEO Steve Kokinos said in a statement. “Today marks the latest step forward in our overall mission to enable the broader Algorand community to collaborate, innovate and contribute to the evolution of our public, permissionless blockchain platform.”

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Because banks that hold cryptocurrency aren’t widely available (and aren’t necessarily desired, either), entities that own cryptocurrency are solely responsible for it. This allows these entities to be free of the costs and regulations that come with typical banking services. However, it also means that if the crypto is lost, it’s almost impossible to get back.

Recently, Finance Magnates spoke with Eric Larchevêque, CEO of cryptocurrency hardware wallet firm Ledger, about the ways that secure crypto storage is evolving, and about how his company is working to support the cryptocurrency ecoysystem.

Technology Is Important, But It’s Not Enough

“The foundational technology of Ledger is based on secure hardware,” Larchevêque explained. “From the beginning, we wanted to build a professional solution that could get certified. We believe that the only way for the cryptocurrency industry to become professional (like to get more mature and really scale), we need to have standardization, we need to have certification, we need to have some kind of technological rules to build trust.”

“So, we’ve built everything on secure chips, because it’s possible to get certification–you can audit it and make sure it does what it says it does. This is based on this possibility and this promise that we have been able also to build solutions for enterprises. That’s one of the major points that differentiates us from our competition, because we have this approach based on secure chips and third-party certification.”

“Having the capacity to get certified and get audited is the only way to achieve maturity into the ecosystem,” he said.

However, Larchevêque acknowledged that technology in and of itself isn’t enough to keep the cryptocurrency ecosystem secure.

He explained that regulators play an important role in the work that his company does, especially when it comes to enterprise-grade solutions. “All these security issues can mostly be solved by technology, but to make sure that people use the right technology, you need regulation. So, it’s a combination of both.”

“To solve the pure security aspect of the management of the keys, you need a technical solution that can be based on secure hardware, et cetera. But you also have to process–for instance, if you can put in place solutions where someone can issue a payment, and two officers need to validate, then you need to have the compliance and the regulation to make sure that the way the operators are making their decision is in accordance with the best practice for the company.

Smartphones are the Future of Cold Storage

“Right now, for sure, the best way to secure your cryptocurrencies is to use a hardware wallet, because it provides isolation–cold storage that you can always use.”

However, “the most difficult thing with hardware wallets for adoption is that you need to buy a hardware wallet. So it’s not something that everyone wants to do. It can work for the first million, or the first tens of millions of users, but it cannot scale for hundreds of millions or billions of users.”

“So, we are pretty sure that in five years–or ten years, but most probably in five years–smartphones will have the right technology to ensure the right level of security. So, hardware wallets will still be a thing–I guess for some specific applications or for some people who prefer to have a dedicated device to store their cryptocurrencies.”

Larchevêque did say that hardware wallets won’t totally disappear. “[They] will still exist, but if we think about the real adoption of cryptocurrencies–either through decentralized cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or tokenization, stablecoins, et cetera–it will go through smartphones.”

“Today, it’s not the case because the level of hardware security in smartphones is not yet good enough, and there is a lot of fragmentation. But, a lot of smartphone manufacturers want to offer their customers the possibility to own their data–to have their own sovereignty regarding data, and crypto assets is a very good example.”

Therefore, this is the future that smartphone manufacturers are planning for. “So, on their roadmap…product-wise, they want to add secure chips, they want to add the right trusted execution environment to guarantee the security of crypto assets in smartphones.”

Ledger is planning for this future as well. “So, in five years, Ledger will most probably license much more of its technology to smartphone providers rather than selling hardware wallets as a device.”

”…A hardware wallet can be very good for an individual, it can be used by an institution, but it doesn’t scale.”

“When you have a hardware wallet, it’s for one individual. If you are a company or a financial institution and you want to secure hundreds of billions of dollars in crypto, you could use a Nano S or a Nano X,” he said, referring to two of Ledger’s most popular products.

However, “then, the question is ‘to whom do you give control of the device? Who has control of the Bitcoins?’”

“What happens if you have a hostage situation, for instance, in the company–it would be like having a hundred million dollars in cash in the safe of the company. That’s why a hardware wallet can be very good for an individual, it can be used by an institution, but it doesn’t scale.”

“So, we have introduced the Ledger Vault [platform], the technological answer to provide institutions with governance when managing their crypto assets.”

“So, basically, we offer all the solutions which are based on hardware security–so it can be on the server level, or it can be at the endpoint level; we offer all the solutions to be able to manage any kind of crypto assets with rules, such as someone can initiate the transaction, others can confirm it; you can have all the auditability, you can have all the trustability, you have all the connections to other kinds of back-offices.”

“So it allows an institution to build its cryptocurrency back-office. And it’s a technological layer–it’s really a technological response to the need of an enterprise to manage their crypto assets with teams and governance.”

Recently, Finance Magnates interviewed Alena Vranova, head of strategy at multi-signature wallet provider Casa. Although Casa also provides enterprise-grade cryptocurrency wallet and storage solutions, Larchevêque said that there were important differences between Casa and Ledger.

“Casa is a solution to do multi-signature,” Larchevêque explained. “What Ledger is providing is indeed multi-signature, but with much more rules. Casa is much more simple in its approach. The difference is more regarding the number of cryptocurrencies and the complexity of the rules that you can implement.”

“But Casa is using hardware wallet to make its multi-signature; some keys can be secured by a hardware wallet. With the Ledger Vault, the private keys are managed in what we call ‘hardware security modules.’ There are several sides which allow for much more flexibility–so I would say that the Ledger Vault is much more complex, and targets large financial institutions, or [any] institution that plans to manage a large amount of cryptocurrency.” Larchevêque said that Ledger Vault currently has roughly 30 customers.

This is an excerpt. To hear Finance Magnates’ full interview with Ledger CEO Eric Larchevêque , click the Soundcloud or Youtube links.

A new alternate reality game called Satoshi’s Treasure has hidden the keys to $1 million worth of bitcoin across the globe, forcing players to collaborate and improvise.

“A lot of people have joked we’re doing the bitcoin version of Ready Player One,” Primitive Ventures co-founder Eric Meltzer, the game’s co-creator, told CoinDesk. “The game is going to have a leaderboard to show which teams have the most keys.”

Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the keys to this bitcoin wallet were divided into 1,000 fragments, requiring a minimum of 400 key fragments to move the funds. Players can collect and unravel clues any way they want, even selling leads if they choose. Meltzer himself donated a significant portion of the bitcoin loot, with unnamed angel investors capping it off.

The game itself has no rules.

“Forget about the rules, just go goddamn play,” Meltzer said, adding that so far more than 6,000 people have signed up for the game’s mailing list for key updates.

Meltzer enlisted the help of zcash co-creator Ian Miers and 18 other contributors so that no single person knows the schedule or location of all the clues or keys. The logic puzzles are sprinkled across the internet and sometimes printed and pasted in the real world as well.

“There are some clues that are very scavenger hunt-y, and clues where it’s purely logic puzzles or math problems,” Meltzer said, adding that the end result will numerically yield a key fragment.

The first clue, released yesterday, seems to point users in the direction of the Blockstream satellite, which broadcasts data related to bitcoin.

There are plans to eventually launch an app to help players keep track of clues and updates, but it will not be required to play. The app will also be a conduit for sponsorship and partnerships with external brands.

“There is a company, basically so that we can pay people’s salaries,” Meltzer said. “Part of the meta game that I think people are going to like is trying to figure out who is behind this.”

That being said, Meltzer is just a figurehead. There is no single person, not even a member of the tropical island–based company (which island is a secret), who knows how the game will play out.

“When the winning team wins they do so by taking the bitcoin and we have nothing to do with this. We’re not giving the prize,” Meltzer said. “There are so many unknowns in this game that we kind of just want to see what happens.”

Teen gamers

One prospective player, 15-year-old German developer Malte Lauterbach, told CoinDesk games like Satoshi’s Treasure offer a teen-friendly way for his friends to learn about cryptocurrency.

“Earning bitcoin through games is a pretty cool idea,” Lauterbach said, adding his parents don’t like the idea of him getting involved with speculative trading. “It’s pretty cool having diverse teams with players all over the world.”

Lauterbach isn’t the only teen interested in Satoshi’s Treasure as a way to earn bitcoin without needing to own a bank account.

“A lot of [players] are young, it skews very young so far,” Meltzer said. “I don’t think it will stay that way.”

Lauterbach first heard about Satoshi’s Treasure through another gaming community he’s a part of. He and two teen friends from India and the U.S. are building an educational game about cryptocurrency markets on the developer tools site Repl.it, which is offering one bitcoin as the prize for the best money-themed game submission.

Amjad Masad, CEO of the developer tools startup behind Repl.it, told CoinDesk:

“A year ago we started noticing suspicious activity on our platform, and we found that someone built a huge mining infrastructure to mine bitcoin. We looked into it and found it was this 13-year-old kid. … There’s a huge interest in crypto from young developers.”

As for Satoshi’s Treasure, Lauterbach loves the idea of collaborating with people around the world while learning more about bitcoin.

Prize money merely offers an enticing twist.

“Instead of something like World of Warcraft gold, I could use bitcoin to buy real stuff instead,” Lauterbach said.

Recently the Winklevoss twins sat for an interview with Bloomberg Opinion columnist Barry Ritholtz. The twins, who run the Gemini Trust exchange, spoke about a variety of things including the next bull run, bitcoin replacing gold, and more.

The twins became well-known in 2010 for their portrayal in the movie “The Social Network,” which depicted their clashes with Mark Zuckerberg over the originator of the idea for Facebook. Since then, the 37-year-old brothers have started a self-regulatory organization to help crypto exchanges self-police.

When asked about the bull run of 2017, they replied:

“So 2017 we felt like, OK, we’ve seen this movie before. But each time the excitement gets ahead of itself, it tends to stabilize at a better floor than it was before. So instead of looking at the 52-week highs, look at the 52-week lows, and each of them is stepping up into the right direction. Now, the way we get there is kind of a wild ride in between.”

They think that there will another wave and it should be probably more exciting than the last one.

They are certain of a bright future for Bitcoin. They even think that Bitcoin is going to take over the gold market.

“Our view, at least with Bitcoin, is that it’s a digital gold. – Bitcoin’s market cap, I haven’t checked today but let’s say it’s a hundred million dollars, then gold is at seven trillion, if it’s better than gold it’s got to get that high.”

A renewed bitcoin bull run will be fueled by a maturing crypto market that could lure investors out of physical gold and into “digital gold.” If 10 percent of the gold trade were to shift into bitcoin, it would more than triple Bitcoin’s market cap.

Recently, Mike Novogratz had said:

“I think of gold as a store of value. Bitcoin provides a really interesting alternative to gold. Forget the other stuff that might come out of it. Forget the layer 2 solutions and payments and everything else. Just as its core, sovereignty should be expensive.”

The twins even commented about Fidelity moving into the crypto marketplace.

“I think it makes a lot of sense [Fidelity getting into crypto] and it’s a smart move. – The business case may not be there today but it will be there tomorrow and as these businesses work, getting there first is an advantage for sure. I think a lot of Wall Street got really close in 2017, and were about to take the plunge – but ended up backing away.”

Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin’s Brooklyn-based venture studio is looking to raise $200 million from external investors, The Information reported Monday, at a valuation of $1 billion.

The Information reports that ConsenSys is pitching Chinese investors with materials claiming the company aims to earn $50 million in revenue this year, primarily from contracts with enterprise and government clients. Last December, the Brazilian National Social Development Bank confirmed to CoinDesk it was in talks with ConsenSys.

ConsenSys was previously supported by Lubin’s personal fortune and employed up to 1,200 people in 2018. When the price of ethereum plummeted after the 2017 token boom fizzled, ConsenSys laid off 13 percent of its staff. Following a late-2018 re-organization dubbed “ConsenSys 2.0,” it became clear that partnerships with traditional, external investors were a priority.

Several former staffers told CoinDesk in January 2019 that more cuts were on the horizon.

The Information now reports that ConsenSys brought in “just $21 million in revenue in 2018.” It’s unclear how that income relates to the various startups under the ConsenSys umbrella. Several projects are seeking to raise capital on their own as independent startups, multiple sources tell CoinDesk.

A ConsenSys spokesperson declined to comment.

Blockchain-focused company Swisscom Blockchain AG has onboarded Ethereum (ETH) engineer Lukas Hohl as its new chief executive officer, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported on April 15.

Hohl, who previously served at various IT and finance companies, including Blockchain’s parent company Swisscom, business consulting firm BearingPoint, consultancy group Sofgen, and management consulting company Synpulse, will now lead the firm’s blockchain strategy and facilitate the further development of the company.

Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, chief digital officer at Swisscom, commented on Hohl’s appointment, saying that "in the past, Lukas Hohl has built and managed companies, managed complex large-scale projects, is well networked in Switzerland and internationally and fits perfectly into the young team of Swisscom Blockchain AG."

As Cointelegraph reported in January, Swisscom Blockchain’s former CEO Daniel Haudenschild unexpectedly left the firm. The news of Haudenschild’s sudden departure from Swisscom Blockchain came just a day before the executive accepted the position of president of the Crypto Valley Association.

At the time, the press release read that Wüthrich-Hasenböhler was set to take over as acting CEO of the company.

Last month, Swisscom — which is a Swiss state-owned telecoms and ICT firm — entered into a strategic partnership with global market infrastructure provider Deutsche Borse Group and Swiss and Singapore-based fintech company Sygnum to build out a compliant financial market infrastructure for digital assets.

The initiative reportedly focuses on creating a distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based ecosystem to support the nascent tokenized economy, which, the partners contend, “has the potential to reshape global financial markets.”

Mining cryptocurrency is one of the necessary procedures for most decentralized digital assets. With the exception of a few platforms, this process validates the transactions on the blockchain, though they can end up taking up a lot of power. Still, there is plenty of profit to make from these efforts, which is likely to be the reason why the President of Belarushas proposed the creation of a center to do exactly that.

President Alexander Lukashenko recently sat at a meeting in the High-Tech Park with multiple individuals directly involved with the IT industry. During this meeting, he proposed the creation of a large data center near a local nuclear power plant, serving as a place to mine cryptocurrency.

In a translated statement, Lukashenk said that their intention is to build farms, mine Bitcoin, and sell the tokens. He added that “they say that if there is Bitcoin, it’s not a problem to sell it.” However, he added that Belarus plans to completely support the efforts of digital assets and the local digital economy.

If the dates projected are accurate, then the first of the power units to be used for the NPP project will be commissioned in December this year. The second power unit will be happening in summer 2020.

Presently, Bitcoin is trading at $5,157.40, fluctuating by under 1% in the last 24 hours.

Launching a retail platform with futures offerings has “always been our plan,” Chou said. The company first began offering physically-settled derivatives products in October 2017, trading $1 million in its first week.

“Once the platform had proved stable and we got an operational cadence, we filed for a license with the CFTC,” Chou said, adding:

“For us this is a philosophically important move because bitcoin is available to everyone and we … really wanted to make our derivatives products available to all investors as well.”

Regulatory roadmap

The company filed for a license to offer futures contracts in November 2018, and has been engaged in a “constructive dialogue” with the CFTC since, Chou said. However, she could not comment on a timeline for when the CFTC might approve LedgerX’s application, or on what sort of reception the firm is expecting from customers.

The CFTC has already granted LedgerX two licenses, allowing the firm to act as a Swap Execution Facility (SEF), which is the company’s exchange platform, and a Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), which is the clearinghouse.

LedgerX’s DCM application is therefore just an additional license on top of its existing permissions. Operationally, the company is already set up to provide futures services, according to Chou.

She continued:

“We’re custodying [bitcoin] in the same way that we currently do, we’ve obviously been live and operational for more than a year and a half, and we have a license from the CFTC, the DCO license, that allows us to custody bitcoin.”

Since its launch, LedgerX has provided institutions with regulated physically-settled bitcoin swaps and options products, and claims some 200 different firms as customers.

While CME and Cboe both began offering cash-settled bitcoin futures in December 2017, no company has launched a physically-settled equivalent to date – though that’s not for lack of trying.

Several major firms plan to launch physically-settled bitcoin futures contracts, including Bakkt, the firm built by New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange; Seed CX, the crypto exchange backed by Bain Capital Ventures; and ErisX, a startup backed by brokerage TD Ameritrade.

However, all of these firms, too, are awaiting their own regulatory approvals, giving LedgerX a shot at being the first to go live with an actual product.

“This is a natural evolution and it stems from the fact that we’ve been operating a physically settled market for more than a year and a half so it’s been a natural [extension],” Chou said. “We’re always excited to be the first.”

As CoinDesk reported, LSEG and the FCA previously said they were working with 20|30 and distributed ledger technology startup Nivaura toward demonstrating for the first time that equity in a U.K. company can be tokenized and issued within a fully compliant custody, clearing and settlement system. With today’s news, the first stage of that plan looks to have been successfully carried out.

The project set out to explore “tools to help companies raise capital in a more efficient and streamlined way,” said the LSEG.

After the primary issuance of an equity token based on ethereum, “the next step will be to offer secondary transfers. Then we can work our way up the ‘capital stack’ to reinvent private equity and, public markets,” Tomer Sofinzon, co-founder of 20|30, told the Financial Times at the time.

Speaking to CoinDesk about the project in July, Dr. Avtar Sehra, CEO and chief product architect at Nivaura, said: “Someone can use our technology to do all the legal documentation, tokenize these assets and execute them. LSEG has then been forward-thinking enough to help get these orders out to the existing market.”

Ripple is described as the company that connects banks, payment providers, and digital asset exchanges via RippleNet to send money globally and provide a frictionless experience while the digital asset XRP, the “fastest and most scalable digital asset today” can be used by these payment providers to further gain access to new markets and reduce costs.

According to the stats provided by subredditstats.com for the Ripple subreddit, the subscribers’ number started showing some growth in mid-June 2017. The late 2017 period was the one when the subreddit saw the highest growth when it went from around 35k subscribers to 175k. Since then, it has slowed down and took more than a year to reach 195k subscribers.

While Ripple’s Subreddit growth wasn't much far behind Ethereum’s subreddit growth which has over 435k subscribers. But in comparison to Bitcoin, it is way behind as Bitcoin’s Reddit members are at 1 million.

In Ripple Subreddit, the top submission of the year is This guy, a car with number plate hodl XRP, is a believer. Other top submissions are XRP/USD trading pair on Binance, Ripple CEO saying expect dozens of banks to use our cryptocurrency next year, Binance to add XRP as a base pair, and XRP making it to the 2nd spot on Coinmarketcap.

In this subreddit, there have been 7 posts per day. The comments per day, in the meantime, has been going down since November 2018 hitting after 786. Now, it has come below 100.

The comments per/day rank that is the lower the better has been constantly going up since November 2018 as well. While at the end of last year it has been around 520, in March it reached 3899, taking a serious drop in April when prices took a hike at 1588 but are yet again on the ascent to around 2600.

As for the top keywords, XRP is at the top spot followed by Ripple, coinbase, hodl, cryptos, contributors, remittance, liquidity, escrow, links, high-profile, partnerships, binance, adopters, capitalization, currencies, lambo, bearish, ripples, 000%, and stakeholders.

Top posters of this subreddit are u/Panosmek (20714), u/Hodor7777 (17746) and u/dinotango (5936) while top posters by frequency are u/Hodor7777 (84),

u/Panosmek (73), and u/AutoModerator (30).

Meanwhile, XRP price is at $0.3278 with 24-hours gains of 0.53 percent, as per Coinmarketcap data.

Switzerland-based food giant Nestlé, French supermarket chain Carrefour and IBM have partnered to use the latter’s blockchain technology to track a famous French convenience food, the companies announced in a press release on April 15.

Nestlé and Carrefour, both of which are members of IBM’s Food Trust blockchain platform, will use the technology from today to track the supply chain of Mousline, a well-known brand of instant mashed potatoes.

Once it rolls out, shoppers will be able to scan a QR code with their smartphones to know exactly where the potatoes in a specific packet came from, as well as their journey to the specific Carrefour store.

“Using the QR code on the product’s packaging, each consumer will be able to use a secure platform on their smartphone to access information on the production supply chain, including the varieties of potato used, the dates and places of manufacture, information on quality control, and places and dates of storage before the product reaches the shelves,” the press release confirms.

The announcement comes just days after United States supermarket chain Albertsons said it was using Food Trust to track one of its products — iceberg lettuce — with the potential for more to follow.

Worldwide, around five million different food items already employ blockchain in their supply chain in some form as the industry niche grows.

“This partnership is based on the shared values of each company to bring consumers greater transparency in the food sector,” Carrefour continued in the press release. The firm added:

“By simply scanning a product using a smartphone, consumers will receive reliable and unfalsifiable information on the supply chain and production.”

As Cointelegraph reported, Carrefour has itself stepped up blockchain integration in recent months by applying the technology for tracking milk.

Extremely overbought conditions and other factors seem to have stalled bitcoin’s promising price rally.

Acceptance below $4,912 would validate signs of indecision on the weekly chart (doji candle) and open the doors for a deeper drop to $4,527 (200-day moving average).

A break above last week’s high of $5,347 would invalidate the weekly chart doji candle, although an immediate rally to $6,000 looks unlikely with the daily RSI still flashing overbought conditions.

Bitcoin’s recent price rally has stalled and signs of indecision are evident in the market just a week after a big bullish breakout.

The leading cryptocurrency closed at $5,190 on April 7, confirming an upside break of a bearish channel – the same pattern that paved the way for a bull market in 2015.

So far, however, the follow through to that bearish-to-bullish trend change has been anything but bullish.

The cryptocurrency witnessed two-way business last week, clocking a high and low of $5,347 and $4,912 before closing almost flat at $5,162.

So, the rally looks to have stalled due to the following three factors:

Overbought conditions

Bitcoin’s 14-day relative strength index (RSI), a widely followed technical indicator, jumped above 70.00 on April 2, signaling overbought conditions as the price jumped over 18 percent to highs above $5,000.

With the price climbing further to a 4.5-month high of $5,345, the RSI rose to near 90 levels, the highest since December 2017.

An extreme overbought reading is considered a sign the rally is overdone and is usually followed by a reaction – a price pullback or a consolidation, as is the case currently with bitcoin.

Prices then made numerous failed attempts to convincingly scale $5,300 in the eight days before a drop to $4,912 on April 12.

Bearish volume divergence

Bitcoin’s 24-hour trading volume across all cryptocurrency exchanges, as calculated by CoinMarketCap, doubled to $21 billion on April 2, validating the bearish-to-bullish trend change signaled by the break above the key resistance of $4,236 and the rally to $5,000.

As the cryptocurrency extended gains further to a fresh 4.5-month high of $5,347 on April 8, though, trading volumes tapered off to $17 billion, reinforcing the overstretched conditions reported by the 14-day RSI.

Hence, the pullback to $4,912 (Friday’s low) was not surprising. Prices have recovered by more than $200 over the weekend, but volumes are down further, to $10 billion. So, the recovery could be short-lived.

Forcing out weak hands before building breakout

The financial markets often test buyers’ resolve by revisiting former resistance-turned-support before building on a major bullish breakout. And that seems to be the case here.

For instance, BTC cleared the 100-day moving average (MA) hurdle on Feb. 19. The newfound support, however, was put to test multiple times in the 10 days to March 4 before a sustained move higher.

On similar lines, prices fell back below the psychological support of $5,000 last Friday and may drop even further to the 200-day MA, currently at $4,527, as the average is widely considered a barometer of a bullish/bearish trend.

The case for BTC shaking out weak holders with a drop to the 200-day MA looks stronger if support a $4,912 is breached.

View

Weekly chart

On the weekly chart, BTC created a doji candle on Sunday, which is widely considered a sign of indecisive market.  Interestingly, the doji appeared following a high-volume falling channel breakout. So, it could be considered a sign of bullish exhaustion.

Acceptance below $4,912 – the low of the doji – would confirm buyer exhaustion, opening the doors for a deeper pullback to $4,527 (200-day MA).

4-hour chart

On the 4-hour chart, BTC could be creating the right shoulder of a head-and-shoulders bearish reversal pattern.

A break below the neckline support at $4,988 would create room for a drop to $4,629 (target as per the measured move method).  

As of writing, BTC is changing hands at $5,142 on Bitstamp, representing a 2 percent gain on a 24-hour basis. 

The @TraceMayer Mayer Multiple and its move back above 1.0 might have just indicated the bottom of this bear market, just as it successfully indicated the two prior bear market bottoms.#BTC #Bitcoin#Crypto

Thread @woonomic @krugermacro @APomplianopic.twitter.com/qhZKJql05V

— CryptoKea (@CryptoKea) April 13, 2019

Kea claims that this simple fact “might have just indicated the bottom of this bear market.” The analyst looks to the fact that in previous market cycles, whenever the Mayer Multiple surpassed 1.0 after a capitulation event, “the bottom was in.” Following the Multiple’s moves past 1.0 came months of chop and range trading, which we saw this cycle during the price action seen from January to March. Thus, if history plays out in full, Bitcoin may begin to rally henceforth, and is most likely not going to see a lower low in this cycle.

If Bears Are Done, Where’s BTC heading?

A recent MarketWatch report, which cited a comment from the Bitcoin permabull, Tom Lee, among other industry pundits, would confirm that BTC isn’t looking all too shabby. And here’s Lee to explain where the cryptocurrency could head.

Lee, who heads Fundstrat as its research chief, claimed that the “risk appetite” for Bitcoin is currently positive, not negative as some cynics have suggested. He adds that with there being a growing number of investors looking to apply risk to there portfolios, the value of each BTC could easily top $10,000 during 2019. On Twitter, he confirmed that $14,000 was possible.

1/ Risk markets globally have rallied YTD big time and this is a tailwind for #bitcoin $BTC. As noted previously, S&P 500 YTD is 2.5 std dev = ~ $14,000 for BTC

It’s curious that Bitcoin correlation is now negative to equities (next tweet)

From @fundstrat_ken latest piece https://t.co/mgolqFqTbv

— Thomas Lee (@fundstrat) April 12, 2019

Lee’s other reasons for this semi-forecast include the fact that commodities often trade at 2.5 times their production costs, and the fact that there is evidence that whales, most likely institutional, are starting to flood into the crypto space once again.

Even if $14,000 doesn’t come to fruition, the consensus seems to be that as a result of macroeconomic factors, BTC and other decentralized digital assets will head higher by some amount in the coming years. Speaking to MarketWatch, Naeem Aslam, the chief analyst at Think Markets, claimed that the Federal Reserve’s pivot to new policies after 2008’s recession has made monetary policy a “joke.” He claims that quantitative easing, the purchasing of assets to ease an economy and promote growth, just “fueled buybacks and inflated asset prices,” meaning that “people will turn to digital assets.”

This isn’t a baseless theory. As Travis Scher, the head of investments at industry conglomerate Digital Currency Group, explains:

The most stark example is Venezuela. This is the first real example of adoption and unfortunately, when you look at bad central bank policy reaction, history tells us this won’t be the last.”

Bitcoiners call this shift from fiat to digital assets “hyperbitcoinization,” and is what many argue will catapult BTC to new heights with time. But no one is all too sure when global hyperbitcoinization will come to life.

North Korea’s cyber capabilities and financial networks pose a threat to Southeast Asia’s growing, yet vulnerable, cryptocurrency sector, according to British defense and security think tank Royal United Services Institute.

North Korea has been heavily sanctioned for years by the United Nations, the United States and other countries over its nuclear and missile ambitions. The reclusive state has also been accused of using cyberattacks to gain financial resources needed to keep its nuclear programs going.

The lifting of sanctions is vitally important to North Korea. It was in part due to disagreement over sanctions that saw the collapse of a second summit meetingbetween its leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam in February.

‘Sustained’ security challenge

In a report Monday, London-based RUSI said that as sanctions bite, the country has shown an increasing interest in virtual assets. It cited the alleged hijacking of crypto exchanges in South Korea as well as 2017′s “WannaCry ” global ransomware attack.

“North Korea has gone to extremes to raise funds and evade international sanctions, recently expanding these efforts to include the exploitation of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin,” David Carlisle, a former official at the U.S. Treasury department’s office of terrorism and financial intelligence, and Kayla Izenman, a financial crime and terrorist finance expert, wrote in the report.

“As a determined and sophisticated cyber actor in need of financial resources, North Korea is likely to continue to find ways of obtaining and exploiting cryptocurrencies,” they said in their report, “Closing the Gap: Guidance for Countering North Korean Cryptocurrency Activity in Southeast Asia.”

The WannaCry attack “signaled North Korea’s interest in, and ability to exploit, cryptocurrencies,” they said. And its cyber skills, coupled with the constant need for funds amid the squeeze of sanctions, point to the risk of a “sustained security challenge,” they added.

CNBC could not reach North Korea’s foreign ministry for comment on Monday but the country has in the past vehemently denied allegations of cybercrime.

In September, for example, the official Korean Central News Agency carried comments by a foreign ministry official denying involvement in the WannaCry attack, instead calling the United States the “chief culprit responsible for posing security threats in cyberspace.”

Southeast Asia is vulnerable

Southeast Asia’s growing virtual asset sector and lack of coordinated regulation present what Carlisle and Izenman called a “systemic risk” vulnerable to exploitation by North Korea, which they stressed has long used its countries to mitigate sanctions.

“North Korean networks have engaged in fundraising and have evaded trade and financial restrictions through the use of front companies, agents and deceptive financial techniques at banks across the region,” they wrote.

“Because Southeast Asia is also host to a growing number of cryptocurrency businesses and users, countries in the region could prove vulnerable to North Korea’s cryptocurrency-related activity as well,” the report said.

North Korea, for example, could seek to convert illicitly gained digital assets into fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar, euro, yen and yuan, the authors said.

“North Korea could cash out its cryptocurrency profits by relying on its extensive overseas financial networks to open and operate accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges in the region,” they said.

The report said Singapore is seen as leading the way in crypto-asset regulation in Southeast Asia, while Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand are working to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges in line with guidance from the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force, which sets global standards for fighting money laundering and terrorist financing.

But the report’s authors stressed that Southeast Asian countries need to take a series of measures, including assessing their risks and weaknesses in relation to North Korea, coordinating a regional regulatory response and beefing up law enforcement training to reduce their vulnerability — some of which they noted are already under way.

“If carried out with the appropriate urgency and in line with global … standards, countries in the region can succeed in making themselves less vulnerable to the risks of North Korean cryptocurrency activity,” they said.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is considering implementing blockchaintechnology to increase the strength of digital transactions, Indian business magazine Business Today reports on April 14.

The initiative of ten banks, under the aegis of the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA), aims to improve the NPCI by implementing distributed ledger technology, the publication underlines.

The NPCI, an umbrella organization that operates retail payments and settlement systems in India and includes 56 national banks as stakeholders, was set up with the guidance and support of the Reserve Bank of India and the IBA. The NPCI will focus on developing blockchain tech in the payment domain for boosting digital transactions, the article states. It also says:

"NPCI intends to develop a resilient, real time and highly scalable blockchain solution. It is proposed to develop this solution using an open source technology/ framework/solution."

As Cointelegraph wrote in July of last year, five major banks from each BRICS member, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the development of distributed ledger technology for enhancing the digital economy.

Back in last fall, experts in the blockchain field held debates during the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, underlining that blockchain technology will replace the world’s current paymentsystems, as Cointelegraph reported.

Spanish football club Real Madrid has signed a business deal with Fantastec SWAP, a blockchain-based football collectibles app, reports SportsPro, April 12, 2019.

Hala Blockchain

Blockchain-powered businesses are slowly making their presence felt on the football pitch as it was reported that one of the world’s most commercially successful football clubs, Real Madrid has entered into a partnership with digital collectibles platform Fantastec SWAP. Earlier in the year, the blockchain startup signed other football juggernauts including England’s Arsenal and Germany’s yellow and black football outfit, Borussia Dortmund.

As a result of the newly christened partnership, fans of Real Madrid will now be able to collect and trade official club merchandise such as player autographs and exclusive video content on a secure and transparent blockchain-powered platform. With Real Madrid on board, Fantastec is mulling further expansion of its SWAP platform.

Commenting on the partnership, Simon Woolard, product development partner at Fantastec said:

“At Fantastec we are all very ambitious and have a clear vision of how we imagine sport and fan communities will evolve over the coming years. Each of our products helps us learn more and more about fan behaviour and wants.”

He further commented on the company’s plans to partner with other giant clubs and sports teams, adding:

“We have good connections and wide-ranging experience which has helped us build solid and valued relationships with clubs and organisations across the world.”

Can Blockchain Disrupt the Football Economy?

Blockchain technology, in its relatively short existence, has managed to convince industry leaders the world over of the array of benefits it offers. The embryonic technology is being piloted at large scale in industries such as ,supply chain management, law, and real estate, among others.

With that said, it won’t be far-fetched to state that the technology could also change the paradigm of the football world as we know it.

In fact, cryptocurrencies, which is perhaps the biggest and most popular use-case of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to date have already piqued the attention of a number of football clubs.

BTCManager reported on November 24, 2018, how the Portuguese football club Sporting is mulling launching its own cryptocurrency.

Further, in September 2018 reports emerged that the Italian football Juventus is set to foray into the crypto world with the launch of the “Juventus Official Fan Token.”

Litecoin’s hash rate has reached a new all-time high after falling abruptly at the end of 2018. Litecoin (LTC) is one of the largest digital assets in the market and it is one of the oldest in the space. Litecoin’s network has never been as secured as now.

Litecoin’s Hash Rate Increases

2018 was a very hard year for virtual currencies and digital assets in the space, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin. Back in May 2018, after a bull run that the virtual currency experienced in 2017, Litecoin’s hash rate reached 342.88 TH/s. After it, the hash ratedropped down to 146 TH/s at the end of 2018. That represents a decline of almost 60% in less than a year.

In a shorter period of time, between August and December 2018, Bitcoin’s hash rate has also dropped 50%. Thus, Litecoin’s drop in hash rate took place in a very difficult moment for the digital currency market.

According to BitInfoCharts, Litecoin’s hash rate has reached a new all-time high close to 360 TH/s. Since the hash rate bottomed back in December, the power that the network had did not stop growing.

It is worth mentioning that the network’s hash rate has usually followed price movements. That means that when there is a bull run, miners enter the space trying to profit from the increased price in the digital asset.

If there is a falling market, miners tend to be less profitable and in some cases, they have to stop operating. The interesting point is that the hash rate could keep growing with the launching of new miners and a price increase in the future.

Litecoin is expected to be experiencing a halving in the near future. Since August, miners will be receiving 12.5 instead of 25 LTC per block. This reduction in the new issuance of coins could help the digital currency increase in price if the demand for the virtual currency grows or remains stable.

Litecoin’s hash rate could eventually reach 500 TH/s according to Litecoin.com if the digital asset is traded around $100 and if the mining equipment available in the market remains with the same capabilities.

Litecoin’s price has moved from $23 in December 2018, and it reached $97 a few days ago. That represents a price increase of 321%.

It is worth mentioning that Bitcoin’s hash rate has also been growing over the past months. Nonetheless, it did not reach a new all-time high as Litecoin. This is due to the fact that Bitcoin did not grow over 300% since it bottomed in December 2018.

Calvin Ayre✔@CalvinAyre

Vitalik is in essence an ICO scam lord and a Craig Troll fraudster. He is scared because he knows Craig invented Bitcoin and will now wipe out Eth with #BSV...if this is not true why does he froth on about Craig all the time?

Calvin Ayre✔@CalvinAyre

Eth is based on ICO scams as is Vitalik's fraudulent and failing attempts to rob Craig of his legitimate legacy as the primary architect of #Bitcoin. #CraigisSatoshi. https://ambcrypto.com/bitcoin-sv-ethereum-feud-continues-as-calvin-ayre-claims-vitalik-buterin-impersonates-craig-wright/ …

60

5:44 AM - Apr 9, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

30 people are talking about this

To this, Vitalik Buterin replied,

Michel Rauchs@mrauchs

 · Apr 11, 2019

Replying to @mrauchs

Appendix:

Funnily enough, Calvin Ayre called Vitalik a fraud himself just two days ago. https://twitter.com/calvinayre/status/1115369797427056640?s=21 …@VitalikButerin are you going to sue Calvin now as well for defamation?

Vitalik Non-giver of Ether✔@VitalikButerin

Nah, I'm too (libertarian | lazy) to do that at the moment.

46

5:54 PM - Apr 12, 2019

However, according to The Financial Times,

The company is aiming to raise $10bn from its IPO and recently told some of its investors that it could be valued at $90bn to $100bn, according to people familiar with the matter. The company was last valued at $76bn in a private fundraising in August.

Thus, the estimated valuation would surpass today’s Bitcoin market capitalization of about $89 billion.

The transportation company bases its projections on its leading technology, expertise, and massive network, which comprises millions of drivers, users, shippers, and other participants around the globe.

Moreover, Uber details in its prospectus financial data as follows:

Revenue derived from our Ridesharing products grew from $3.5 billion in 2016 to $9.2 billion in 2018.

Gross Bookings derived from our Ridesharing products grew from $18.8 billion in 2016 to $41.5 billion in 2018.

Consumers traveled approximately 26 billion miles on our platform in 2018.

Uber has become omnipresent. Its global ridesharing footprint covers 63 countries, encompassing a population of over 4 billion people, as shown in the graph below:

Digital Currency Group CEO, Barry Silbert adds that billions of dollars in private company stock will be unleashed from IPOs this year.

“The crypto asset class is going to be a huge beneficiary,” he says

YOU CAN ALREADY USE BITCOIN

Uber’s direct acceptance of payments in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may still be a long way off, however.

In the meantime though, some Uber drivers around the world are unofficially accepting BTC instead of their local fiat currency.

Some users in Argentina, for example, have expressed interest in paying for Uber with bitcoin while some drivers wouldn’t mind receiving some bits instead of the depreciating peso.

For instance, an Uber driver, under the Reddit username bjandrus, wrote that he was already accepting bitcoin off the books for rides. However, he complains, the process is problematic because the Uber app does not support BTC payments.

It remains to be seen which ride-sharing company will officially begin accepting bitcoin first.

However, paying for Uber in bitcoin indirectly is already possible. For example, there’s the gift card option from Bitrefill and others, including the Coinbase e-gift card supported in select EU countries and Australia.

There are also third-party services as well as cryptocurrency debit cards that allow you to pay for anything, including Uber, Lyft etc. using bitcoin.

In a video posted by Bitcoin.com’s official YouTube channel, he revealed not only the amount of Bitcoins he held, but also his diversified portfolio. Admitting he’s a “polarizing figure,” Ver stated that Bitcoin Cash has everything to be the “peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” except for the superior BTC’s hashrate.

On asked whether he still held any BTC, Ver said,

“I do still hold some BTC as well, but the vast majority I’ve traded for Bitcoin Cash because it is useful as cash. And I’m much more bullish about the future of Bitcoin Cash than I am about BTC.”

Citing the diversification argument, Ver stated that it is “smart” to hold a basket of cryptocurrencies, rather than a single coin.

Ver also clarified that his portfolio is diversified beyond just the aforementioned two cryptocurrencies. Ethereum [ETH], Monero [XMR], Dash [DASH], Zcash [ZEC], and a “bunch of tokens on Ethereum,” all found a place in his portfolio. Interestingly, Ver quite bluntly stated that he did not hold any digital silver. “No Litecoin,” he claimed.

The Bitcoin.com CEO added that he was the “second person ever involved with Ripple,” when he was approached by former CTO, Jed McCaleb, to provide seed capital. Despite the increasing use-cases for Ripple and its cryptocurrency XRP, Ver added that he “does not pay close attention to what is going on in the Ripple ecosystem.”

One of Ver’s most notable attacks against the king coin is the alleged “censorship,” that takes place on its platform. He added that r/BTC, the official subreddit for the top cryptocurrency, was “completely censored for about three years.”

He also claimed that there is constant manipulation of the posts, wherein users ‘posts are twisted to mean the “exact opposite,” of what they intend. Ver concluded his tirade by referring to the BTC community as,

“A bunch of censorship worshiping totalitarians that don’t understand the economic code that made Bitcoin successful in the first place.”

Ver’s beloved Bitcoin Cash [BCH] has been outperforming its peers in the coin market, by exhibiting a massive price rally in the past few weeks. BCH has since regained the fourth spot on the coin ladder, overtaking EOS and Litecoin [LTC].

A tweet published on April 12 by the research arm of major cryptocurrency derivatives platform BitMEX estimates that Bitcoin SV (BSV) miners have accumulated gross losses of $2.2 million.

The report released by BitMEX Research claims that BSV miners perceived a negative gross profit margin of 12% since the coin was created in a hard fork that split Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The estimate is based on mined coin count, current coin prices and lower bound mining electricity costs.

The tweet notes that, among costs, the estimate accounts for mining electricity only.

In November, in the run up to the BCH hard fork, BitMEX research launched a network monitoring tool for Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash. The resource, dubbed Forkmonitor, provided the data that BitMEX referred to in yesterday’s tweet.

In March, BitMEX Research also launched an Ethereum (ETH) node metrics website. The site, called NodeStats, shows data about five different ETH nodes and updates every five seconds. The website has been launched in partnership with BitMEX Ethereum data partner TokenAnalyst.

As Cointelegraph reported yesterday, the founder and CEO of major cryptocurrency exchangeBinace, Changpeng Zhao, warned that he will delist BSV if the creator of the altcoin, Craig Wright, does not alter his behavior.

The reaction from Zhao is seemingly motivated by the fact that Wright recently set a bounty over the identity of a Twitter user that called him a fraud for his claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator.

Decurret Inc. in March obtained a license from Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) to offer cryptocurrency-enabled spot trading services. The Tokyo-based firm confirmed that it was planning to list Bitcoin (BTC), as well as Ripple (XRP), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC) at the time of launch. It will further list Ethereum (ETH) this summer.

“As a registered service provider, DeCurret will launch spot trading services from Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Japan,” confirmed Decurrent. “As for opening accounts, DeCurret has started to accept users to open accounts from Wednesday, March 27, 2019.”

Launched in January 2018, Decurret is a byproduct of Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), the region’s first internet service provider. IIJ appointed its senior managing executive officer, Kazuhiro Tokita, as the representative director and president of Decurret, confirming an interoperable relationship between the two firms.

Decurret Inc, a Japanese exchange with over $5 billion capital has announced it will start trading #XRP, & 3 other digital assets on Tuesday, 16th April 2019!

Thanks @xrpthestandard7 for sharing!#XRPCommunityhttps://t.co/EsTHnJNg9tpic.twitter.com/H6ruqJxpsC

— PandaRippleXRP (@RipplePandaXRP) April 12, 2019

Such a reputed backing helped Decurret to attract investments from some of the leading financial and technology corporations. They included Mitsubishi UFJ Bank Ltd, East Japan Railway Company, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd, Yamato Holdings Co., amongst others. Decurret confirmed that its total valuation as of March 27, 2019, was ¥5.23 Billion, which roughly equals $46.68 Million.

Security Threats

Decurret’s approval followed a long history of cryptocurrency-related thefts in Japan. The legacy which started with Mt. Gox losing $450 million to an internal hack continued with theft reports in other regional exchanges. The Asahi Shimbun reported that Japan had witnessed $540 million worth of cryptocurrency hacks by June 2018.

“More than 60 percent of all cases, or 102 incidents, involved individuals who used the same ID and password for their e-mail account and other Internet services, such as online shopping, for cryptocurrency dealings,” the report revealed.

Such incidents led the FSA to issue a warning to Japanese bitcoin exchanges about their lax security protocols. The regulator further warned to revoke operational licenses if an exchange fails the security test. The Japanese police noted a drop in crypto-related hacking cases following FSA’s warning.

Japan to punish hacked cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck on Monday https://t.co/e1HxOfeqFD pic.twitter.com/k7dMxmJzii

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) January 29, 2018

Crypto Growth

Decurret claimed that it had spent considerable time in matching FSA’s standards, which is why the regulator granted them an operational license. The firm stated that it was setting up business plans and strengthening its base as a financial institution. It repeated a similar tone regarding its safety measures, which included administrative management system and user protections.

“DeCurret has been establishing a reliable service structure that allows digital currency [that] exists on the Internet, to be exchanged, sent/received, and stored,” Decurret claimed.

The FSA reviewed a total of 23 companies that were intending to launch a cryptocurrency exchange and granted license to only two. Rakuten, another Tokyo-based firm, received a legal node alongside Decurret to offer crypto-enabled spot trading services. The strict regulatory standards promised to make cryptocurrency investments attractive for the Japanese investors’ class, including the significant monies.

The bitcoin price recently established its 2019’s high towards $5,400. It was trading at $5,079 at the time of this writing.

The Russian Duma approved a bill that would enable the country to have a “Great Firewall” or “Iron Curtain” similar to what China has. The result of the law is that, whenever the government wants to, it can censor all incoming and outgoing traffic traveling through state-owned channels.

‘SOVEREIGN’ INTERNET JUST AN EXCUSE FOR HEAVY-HANDED CENSORSHIP

Privacy advocates have long warned about Russia’s alarming stance on internet regulation. The onerous intended purpose of this “sovereign internet” bill is to keep Russia online in the event of a crisis, but critics allege that it’s meant to give the government greater powers to censor and restrict internet access for Russian citizens.

Ameet Naik, who works for a network marketing service called ThousandEyes, told the Register:

“However, this would also force internet traffic through suboptimal paths, and through performance-limiting filtering gateways. This would most likely degrade the user experience for Russian users browsing sites and apps outside the country and provide an advantage to services hosted within the country, as we’ve seen happen in China.”

WILL ‘DIGITAL IRON CURTAIN’ STIFLE BITCOIN ADOPTION?

Russian regulations on cryptocurrency are still forthcoming, and the country has had a complicated relationship with Bitcoin.

According to proposed regulations, the government wants to restrict Russian traders to local crypto exchanges and also only allow “qualified” investors – e.g., those with a degree in economics and a certificate from the government – to trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

If the government is empowered with the ability to limit traffic beyond its borders, it would seem the ability to enforce such regulations would be significantly increased.

However, as demonstrated by China’s underground Bitcoin trading network, there’s only so much that government censors can do to stunt crypto adoption.

THOUSANDS OF RUSSIANS PROTEST ‘SOVEREIGN INTERNET’ – PARLIAMENT PASSES BILL ANYWAY

Russian citizens aren’t taking the proposed “Digital Iron Curtain” lying down. As many as 15,000 people recently took to the streets to protest the plan. While proponents of the bill argue that the country will benefit from having a “protected” country, many see the move as a power grab. The bill would force internet service providers to install hardware from Roskomnadzor, who are behind the nationwide bans on things like Wikipedia and Telegram.

The bill passed the Duma 320 to 15. There are still some procedural steps left before it becomes law. The Russian government would be left to decide when and if the “protection switch” would be flipped.

For crypto users, this would undoubtedly mean that all of their transactional traffic could become known to the government at any time. With strict regulations planned, the environment for not just internet usage but also Bitcoin adoption could go from unreliable to dangerous.

Notably, Russia-founded Telegram – which earned a ban in its native country for refusing to let law enforcement snoop on its users’ encrypted chats – reportedly launched the testnet of its cryptocurrency, dubbed Telegram Open Network (TON), this week. The company’s founders are among the many prominent Russian voices denouncing the plan to have a “sovereign” internet, and it’s fitting that their crypto project could be one tool that Russians use to fight back.

The new law amounts to a “kill switch” for Russia, something that was once floated as an idea here in the United States. Only a few countries in the world have this kind of control over the internet.

Seattle-based cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex dropped its trading fee to 0% on Thursday for New York residents to help them move their funds from their platform following the rejection of the exchange’s BitLicense application by New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).

In a recent post, Bittrex explained that the NYDFS denial requires the exchange to suspend operations in the state immediately. The official rejection document released by the NYDFS states the denial was due to Bittrex’s anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance practices — in addition to the exchange failing to agree to meet the capital requirement.Perhaps more alarmingly, the third reason for denial involves Bittrex’s listing due diligence process or lack thereof.

The NYDFS claims to have been unable to determine whether Bittrex had actually applied its own review policy to the 15 tokens chosen in the random sample. Additionally, several projects refused to complete the listing application or didn’t start it at all and Bittrex listed them anyway.

“We adamantly disagree with NYDFS’ claims and allegations in regard to our anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance practices,” said Bittrex. “Corporate responsibility is in our DNA and our commitment to regulatory and compliance guidelines is second to none. More specifically, today’s letter contains several factual inaccuracies that we feel must be addressed.”

Well I dumped everything that couldn't be dumped elsewhere. I really feel like sending a bill to NYDFS for these loses. So many unforeseen factors in this business. All other coins have or will be transferred to cold wallets or spread out across multiple exchanges.

— Bitcoin Dood (@BitcoinDood) April 11, 2019

This news, which is fairly surprising based on Bittrex’s reputation, comes several days after Luxembourg-based crypto exchange Bitstamp was granted a BitLicense.Bittrex notes that it plans to continue pursuing a BitLicense in order to continue offering its services to New York residents.

In November 2017, Parity released an official statement on Twitter about a bug in Parity multi-sig wallet that was accidentally triggered. The vulnerable smart contract that was deployed in July 2017 resulted in Ethereum worth over $280 million being frozen. Out of these funds, over $150 million was Polkadot’s funds, procured via an Initial Coin Offering.

Song’s question gained a lot of traction from the Ethereum community and other communities as well. It also grabbed Vitalik Buterin’s attention, who stated that this question was raised in the past, attaching the link to a video where he addressed these concerns.

The link redirected to TechCrunch 2018, where Buterin spoke about ‘Decentralization in the face of threats.’ Here, Buterin had presented a scenario where a third-party was pointing  a gun to his head, asking him to write a hard fork patch. In this case, Buterin stated that he would “definitely write a hard fork patch.” He said,

“[…] I will write up the code, I will publish it, I will do everything they say. If I do this, if I publish a hard fork patch to delete a bunch of accounts, how many people here would be willing to download and install the update and switch to that chain. I see relatively few raised their hands, this is called Decentralization.”

Source: Twitter

Jamyye, a Twitter user, commented,

“Anyone can code up a hard fork. It’s up to the community (pool owners, miners, full node operators, developers, exchanges) to decide which version of software to run. In the end, its all about the users who choose to use a version over the other, or none at all.”

Source: Twitter

However, this was followed by some questioning the outcome of the DAO hack, the cause for Ethereum’s chain split. Andres G Aragoneses, a Twitter user, said,

“good answer, but funnily enough, this actually didn’t happen with the DAO hard fork (and nobody knows if there were actually people with guns pointing to Vitalik’s head! heh)”

Ripple and XRP have been making strides in the cryptocurrency sphere with their many partnerships and collaborations in the cross-border payments sector. Ripple’s xCurrent-powered Money Tap faced a setback when one of the member banks announced that they would cease collaboration with the service from May 13, 2019. However, Asia is still invested in what Ripple Tech has to offer and this point was reiterated by a top CIMB Group official recently.

In an interview with Marcus Treacher, a member of Ripple’s Board of Directors, at the Ripple Regionals: Asia Pacific 2019, Thomas Tan Kok Kiong, Senior Managing Director, Group Treasury Sales and FX, CIMB Bank, said that Ripple had solutions for many of the industry’s grave concerns.

He primarily spoke about two aspects that made Ripple stand out in the industry; solutions for nested transactions and operation speed. Nested transactions, in layman terms, are database transactions that are within the scope of another existing transaction.

According to Kiong, remittance providers and operators face a lot of trouble due to nested transactions as they are unable to “see through these transactions”. He opined that the issue could spiral to a point where they are shut out and added that Ripple’s blockchain was the perfect solution to the problem.

He further said that CIMB Group had one of the biggest networks in South East Asia and that their partnership was mutually beneficial as it helped them both tread uncharted territories. He said,

“We are increasingly moving towards white collar and digital spheres. That is why it is important for us to work with Ripple. We hope that your technology will help us get closer to small guys and solve the problems plaguing he remittance industry.”

The Senior Managing Director also spoke about the SWIFT network and said that the tides were changing in favor of Ripple in the longer run. Kiong added,

“We have the SWIFT network currently and I think it will probably continue for a while. However, we also have emerging technologies such as Ripple and other similar players. Therefore, I don’t think there is anything wrong in hedging and joining these networks.”

The EVM is also a key technology that other enterprise blockchain initiatives such as Hyperledger have been reported in the past to build interoperability with.

“The design of the EVM makes low-gas-cost, high-performance execution difficult. We propose to move forward with proposals to resolve these problems by tightening the security guarantees and pushing the performance limits of the EVM,” writes the authors of EIP 615 Colvin, Brooklyn Zelenka, Pawel Bylic and Christina Reitwiessner.

However, as noted by Swende during today’s call, EIP 615 as proposed would require at least two hard forks to fully execute and “a positive speed effect” to actual code computations in the EVM would not be noticeable until the latter hard fork is executed.

“That’s my main concern about this EIP, it’s a lot of work but I don’t think it will lead to a much better EVM. It might be better for the external tools like if you’re doing a reverse analysis of the security properties of a smart contract,” said Swende.

Such tooling Zelenka suggested is essential to ensure continued “forward compatibility” with forthcoming EVM upgrades like eWASM and a smooth onboarding experience for smart contract developers in light of “an undetermined ethereum 2.0 release date.”

“There are other options for smart contract developers out there. We need to keep ethereum 1.x alive and that means continuing to move,” argued Zelenka on today’s call.

Agreeing to continue debate and discussion on the EIP in further weeks, Swende concluded that at present he remains skeptical about “implementing such large changes into the old engine which basically takes a couple of hard forks before it finally settles.”

But agreeing with uncertain sentiment around the future of ethereum 2.0, Harryson, who raised the initial question about ambitious, multi-hard fork upgrades said:

“We shouldn’t adjust our roadmap or thinking based on what ethereum 2.0 may or may not be.”

Binance Labs, the investment arm of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has granted $45,000 to three different projects. The news was announced in a blog post on Friday, April 12.

Per the post, Binance Labs has contributed $15,000 to each of its first three open-source Fellowship projects. The first project is Ironbelly, an open-source mobile wallet for the Grin blockchain that aims to enable customers to hold and transfer Grin cryptocurrency between people.

The second project that received funding is privacy-preserving messaging protocol HOPR. The product reportedly intends to provide privacy by sending messages through several relay nodes to the recipient.

The last project is upgradeable on-chain wallet Kitsune Wallet. As described by its developers Kitsune Wallet is “a smart contract-based account that will hold your crypto assets in a single contract (address) while being able to change appearance depending on your need.”

The Binance Labs Fellowship will reportedly onboard all three projects as the first “Fellows,” with further guidance and resources provided by the Binance Labs network. Flora Sun, Director at Binance Labs, said:

“We have seen firsthand how innovation depends on an engaged community of developers and entrepreneurs who imagine ideas and create new projects to bring products to market. The more talent an industry attracts to the space, the higher chance that it will be successful and Binance Labs hopes to further enable the overwhelming talent and builders of our industry.”

Last month, the government of Argentina agreed to co-invest in blockchain projects that are backed by Binance Labs and Latin American crypto exchange LatamEx. The country’s Ministry of Production committed to match investments of up to $50,000 in each project and will fund up to 10 blockchain projects each year over a four-year term.

Binance Labs released its first batch of blockchain projects from its Incubation Program last December. Following a try-out tour with over 500 applicants, Binance Labs selected only eight projects, each of which received $500,000 in seed funding and access to necessary resources and mentors.

Apart from the individuals and institutions who hold various cryptocurrencies, the poor state of the industry has also substantially affected certain services that either manufacture or just supply cryptocurrency accessories. Because of the state of the industry, Ledger has been hit very hard as it seems like most people are no longer interested in purchasing hardware wallets as they might think it’s not a worthy investment due to the fact the initial investment in crypto (which necessitated the wallet in the first place) seems to be crumbling. Consequently, Ledger might be letting go of at least 10% of its current employee base.

Will Ledger Really Fire 20 Of Its Staff?

Ledger has a staff strength of 200 people and according to an online French new service Presse Citron, the firm is seriously looking at the possibility of reducing that by about 20 but specifically in the support sphere of the company. However, the firm isn’t very keen on laying people off even as it faces considerably tough times. Ledger begun having issues with turnover and eventually kicked off Ledger Vault which is basically for asset management. This proved to be a great idea as the company’s proceeds went up after this. It’s possible that the recent bull run experienced in the market could help Ledger hold off on making a decision like this but if there’s a significant drop in prices again, the company might have to continue with this decision.

Other firms including Bitmain and Bithumb have successfully fired some of their staff because of the same bad market conditions.

Are Hardware Wallets Really A Thing?

Presse Citron also has it that Ledger may have earned up to 10 million euro monthly during its better days. According to the Ledger website, the company may have become the most popular hardware wallet in the world as it has sold more than 1.4 million Ledger Nano Swallets. The company’s wallets sell somewhere between $60 and $270.

Generally, hardware wallets are very important but opinions on whether or not they are necessary to vary quite differently. No one can really tell how many people in the world actually hold crypto. Even if all the accounts are counted, the number would likely be overblown as one user could hold multiple accounts. Some estimates based on some facts like the 10 million users Coinbase has, puts the entire figure for crypto account holders at about 100 million. With this number and the assumption that the number might still increase especially if the market continues to experience price surges, we might be able to conclude that the number of users who hold hardware wallets, even if there’s no exact figure, is high enough to earn Ledger 10 million euro in a month.

Ledger’s Future

Even though the firm is going through a difficult time, it is said that Ledger may have anticipated hard times when they made a lot of money and are probably well prepared for it. Generally, the future of Ledger might not be too bleak.

Further, VMware, a publicly traded company majority-owned by Dell Computer with more than 24,000 employees, will distribute the Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML) with its VMware Blockchain platform directly to customers and through partners.

“DAML has been proven to be one of the few smart contract languages capable of modeling truly complex workflows at scale,” said Michael DiPetrillo, senior director of Blockchain at VMware, in a press release.

According to the companies, VMware Blockchain “is deployed in enterprises worldwide,” although further details weren’t provided.

Palo Alto, California-based VMware first revealed last August that it had developed an open-source blockchain designed to be both scalable and energy-efficient, known as Project Concord. In 2017, the firm sought a patent for a system that would use blockchain as part of a wider effort to boost the speed of data transfers. Its main business is providing cloud computing and platform virtualization services to companies.

The team-up is the latest in a string of announcements by New York-based Digital Asset, which is best known for its former CEO, JPMorgan alum Blythe Masters, and its multi-year contract to rebuild the Australian Securities Exchange’s aging CHESS system using DLT.

The startup recently open-sourced DAML and began working with the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) to aid the Wall Street trade group’s effort to standardize data in complex financial contracts.

These developments followed a series of high-level departures, starting with Masters herself in December. (Co-founder Yuval Rooz succeeded her as CEO.)

The firm announced Thursday that it had hired Mike Blandina, who at various points in his career served as head of payments and credit engineering at PayPal and director of engineering for Google Wallet. Most recently, Blandina was chief technology officer and head of product and engineering at OneMarket, Bakkt CEO Kelly Loeffler wrote in a blog post.

“As our CPO, Mike will lead our efforts to converge a trusted ecosystem for digital assets with payments use cases, two elements of Bakkt that help bring real world applications to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,” she wrote.

As to the firm itself, Loeffler acknowledged that Bakkt is currently in a state of limbo as it awaits regulatory approval to launch, but likened the firm’s development to a marathon.

“As a former marathoner, this point in time recalls the stage in the training regimen when you’re putting in long runs with your training team,” she wrote.

Bakkt still has no official launch date after multiple delays, though Loeffler hinted that the exchange might provide more clarity soon, writing “race day is approaching.”

“There is more work to be done,” she said. “I’m proud to be going the distance with this growing team and of the culture we are building, while bringing digital assets into the mainstream economy.”

The firm is currently waiting on approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to list its bitcoin futures contract. Bakkt’s proposal would have it warehouse its own bitcoin, which may be a factor in this delayed approval.

That being said, Loeffler seemed undaunted, writing:

“We are mindful that the infrastructure we are building has the potential to create more opportunities for digital assets to grow in relevance and trust — by being more secure, investible and useful.”

Two South Korean universities will develop an entire Blockchain Campus with its own cryptocurrency, local English-language daily news outlet Business Korea reported on April 3.

Yonsei University, which already has an active blockchain community, will partner with Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech) for the initiative, which should launch in the second half of 2019.

A dedicated research center, entrepreneurial program outreach and other plans are already in the pipeline, while a student-centered project aims to increase day-to-day cryptocurrency usage.

Postech is developing a blockchain-based knowledge sharing system called Engram, which will feature a rewards system using a bespoke altcoin called Neuron. Neuron tokens will be exchangeable for goods in the university cafeteria, Business Korea reports.

In addition, a blockchain voting system will appear, with the technology used to ensure that no falsification of results can occur.

“Blockchain technology has innovative and destructive power to create a new concept industry,” Business Korea quoted Postech president Kim Doh-yeon as saying. The president added:

“It is meaningful that POSTECH and Yonsei University jointly design the future of core technology and establish educational and research foundations for future talent to prepare for the technology.”

The partnership is not the first for Yonsei, which late last year signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the local branch of the Tezos Foundation.

As Cointelegraph reported, training in areas such as smart contracts formed the major impetus behind the decision.

Based in Boise, Idaho, Albertsons operates nearly 2,300 stores across the U.S., including the Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, and Acme chains. With $57 billion in sales in 2017, it was second only to Kroger among supermarket companies, according to The Balance Small Business. Albertsons’ addition brings the total number of brands involved in Food Trust to over 80. 

Arguably the jewel in the IBM Blockchain Platform crown, Food Trust, which went into live production in October of last year, tackles a critical problem in the commercial food chain: the ability to rapidly pinpoint a dodgy batch of produce and surgically remove those tainted goods from circulation so that retailers don’t have to empty their shelves of every item in the affected category, be that lettuce, spinach, beef, etc.

It appears to be a compelling proposition. Most recently Food Trust signed up European supermarket giant Carrefour, to join other food business giants such as Walmart, Nestle, Dole Food, Tyson Foods, Kroger and Unilever. According to Big Blue, more than 500,000 traces have been conducted on the platform to date (each trace represents a single lot, although the number of items per lot varies from company to company).

Rucha Nanavati, group vice president for IT at Albertsons, told CoinDesk:

“I truly believe there’s power in numbers. Now all those big companies can come together and ask suppliers to come on the platform. We always had technology in supply chain but now with all the data you can gather the potential is there to take it a step further.”

She explained that the food industry has always had a firm focus on safety but said doing recalls efficiently is difficult, first involving the internal supply chain and then looking into the external supply chain. “What we had before wasn’t this efficient, that’s for sure,” she said.

As early as 2016, IBM and Walmart began testing blockchain to reduce the time to track goods. A proof of concept done with the Tsinghua University of Beijing focused on China’s massive pork market, reduced the time taken from days to minutes.

This can now be done in seconds flat, said Suzanne Livingston, offering director for IBM Food Trust. Whereas typically “these investigations can take months in some cases to get to a root source, some investigations don’t get to a root source so the companies are left to get all products off the shelf,” she said.

Nanavati said Albertsons is already thinking about the next categories of products to add, but that for now, the focus is on ensuring the romaine pilot succeeds, which will take “weeks” rather than the typical “months and months.” 

The Walmart mandate

Having been a key platform partner to IBM Food Trust, Walmart last year issued a mandate to all its suppliers of leafy greens stating that they had to get on to the blockchain by a deadline of the end of September 2019.

Asked whether Albertsons will follow Walmart in mandating that its suppliers use Food Trust, Nanavati said:

“I think we are in a position to do so. It is going to benefit the customers in general. Are we there yet? I don’t believe so. I think mandate or not, we would recommend it.”

It’s not uncommon for large retailers to demand quite exacting quality assurances from suppliers down the line. Nanavati said that Albertsons has seen some of its suppliers coming forward and asking to be involved in Food Trust.

As far as Walmart’s mandate goes, IBM’s Livingston said that while “it does work hands down if you make it a requirement,” she acknowledged some retailers are against this approach and don’t want to send a message entailing further requirements to their suppliers.  

“I see it being good and also having some drawbacks. I think it’s beneficial [to participate] for all parties whether you are mandated to do it or not because it’s in your best interests,” said Livingston.

Nanavati added that Albertsons has been working with IBM to make sure getting data on the blockchain is easy for suppliers large and small.

“I have this vision that I want some farmer who only has these two fields but we care deeply about them, that they be able to just use their smartphone and do something quick for tracing,” she said.

Looking beyond food safety, Albertsons is also exploring how blockchain can assure consumers of the provenance of its extensive “Own Brands” portfolio, worth about $11bn per annum. Carrefour also mentioned this use of the tech, in conjunction with an app which easily lets customers trace the life cycle of its organic chickens.

“The joke is consumers now want to know where their chicken’s parents were from,” said Nanavati.

Trusting competitors

It’s notable that IBM seems to have had a relatively smooth ride getting competing firms to join the Food Trust blockchain.

Livingston attributed this to careful consideration on the technical side of things regarding data privacy.

“We knew we would have competitors on this so we asked what they wanted,” she said. “They told us they wanted it to be permissioned and they wanted fine-grain access control on the data, to be able to stipulate who has access for every transaction and for everyone who comes into the system. If they want, they can make it completely private.”

She also said the establishment of a Food Trust Governance Committee has helped reassure players of a level playing field.

Looking at blockchain consortia in other industries, banks, for example, remain skittish about sharing data, even when encrypted. Meanwhile, ocean carriers don’t appear to trust each other enough to get on a distributed ledger together.

So is the food production and supply chain industry more convivial?  

Nanavati said a better word would be “responsible” since disasters in food supply chain can really impact people’s lives, concluding:

“This is not the place to compete in my opinion. This is one place where it’s about serving the interests of our customers. Food safety is paramount. It’s table stakes.”

Popular peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading platform Paxful has joined forces with biometrics firm Jumio to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) verification system. The partnership is in-line with Paxful’s commitments to further develop security on its site to meet the requirements of both customers and regulatory bodies.

Jumio’s Revolutionary Verification System

Jumio is an “end-to-end” identity verification solution designed to ensure compliance and fight fraud using biometric authentication. It’s AI-powered “Identity-as-a-Service” system matches facial recognition scans with ID document photographs in order to verify identity seamlessly and in real-time.

The service can easily connect with any product, application or platform to provide instant Anti-money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance procedures. The technology serves as an upgrade to improve existing knowledge-based authentication (KBA) and two-factor authentication (2FA) system.

The system represents one of the most advanced applications of augmented intelligence and machine learning within the identity verification sector, offering businesses a revolutionary form of regulatory compliance.

Enhanced Security

Paxful’s adoption of Jumio into its growing list of services will provide customers with a faster, more effective and more secure method of verification. The system is easier for customers to use than its existing email and phone verification, speeding up account registration and reduces potential fraud. It is supported on both mobile phones and via computer webcams, making it more widely available to a large customer base and as such a more attractive option for the company.

Fraud Accusations

Paxful was in the news recently when a group of Nigerian cryptocurrency traders accused the American company of robbery and fraud. The accusations followed a decision by Paxful to close the traders account based on potential fraudulent activity. The traders claimed the move resulted in them losing “tens of millions of dollars.”

Paxful responded with a statement ensuring customers that the firm would only shut down accounts that violated its terms of service. “All accounts that have been shut down have a reason for it. We will not shut down any account unless they violate our TOS (Terms of Service),” the statement read.

A group of Nigerian traders has filed a petition with Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in an attempt to get compensation from the cryptocurrency exchange.

Formula 1 has always been one of the biggest heavyweights in the global sports industries which promised significant profits to any startup that get a sponsorship deal with the league of fast and furious.

Naturally, it was only a question of time before blockchain projects began establishing cooperation with the organizers of this elite auto racing. Animoca Brands, an expanding developer of mobile games on blockchain headquartered in Hong Kong, announced that they have entered in an agreement with Formula 1 which stipulates the development and promotion of a new blockchain-based game F1: Delta Time.

The game will have a non-fungible token named NFT which will be used for intra-game purchases and allocation of bonuses. F1: Delta Time will provide players with an opportunity to exchange or sell skins, items, and other components using the token. This game will be released in a month and a week from now.

However, the history of relationships between Formula 1 and blockchain startups haven’t begun with this deal. Earlier this year, one of the widely recognized racing teams, namely Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, signed a sponsorship deal with FuturoCoin, a Polish developer of cryptocurrency that has a lot of similarities with Dash, in terms of code and functional features.

This is the multi-year contract that involves the placement of FuturoCoin brand logo on the overalls of all team members as well as the bullet-fast RB15 race car.

Formula 1 is undoubtedly a very spectacular sport that delivers a shot of adrenaline even if one watches it on TV. This is a global phenomenon which attracts lucrative deals from companies of different scale.

However, don’t forget that Formula 1 is, first and foremost, a sport which, like many other kinds of sport, could bring substantial profits to a devoted punter.

Since recently, the cryptocurrencies became a popular mean of placing bets on the outcome of sporting events. 1xBit, a leading crypto bookmaker, grants a range of betting on Formula 1 as well as 50 other kinds of sport.The avid bettors and racing addicts will certainly appreciate the Formula 1 promotion which offers a guaranteed bonus of one free spin for every 2 mBTC that you spend without getting any winnings in return.

Bitcoin now looks set to continue its climb within the previously discussed ascending triangle – typically bullish indicators – with a measured target set at $5,885 should BTC break above the upper trendline at $5,320–$5,350.

Hourly chart

So how do we arrive at the $5,885 target? We can roughly calculate the potential move by measuring the height between A and B (the upper resistance line and the lowest drawdown in price within the pattern). That figure is then added to the upper resistance line above point C at the point of breakout, producing a new figure as a price target.

As can be seen, an exaggerated bullish divergence has also taken shape on the RSI, recorded from April 8–April 9, meaning a continuation in price is being supported additionally by the indicator on the hourly chart.

Daily chart

The daily chart shows the bulls maintained a higher low above April 4’s red candle. That kept intact the bullish market structure above the key 100-period and 200-period moving averages yesterday, which are slowly beginning to converge for a bull cross.

Should those two lines cross bullish, then greater buying pressure would become the norm with a new bull run on the cards.

The RSI shows a divergence from price, printing lower lows while price continues to print higher lows, signaling greater bullish conditions ahead for the world’s top crypto by market value.

Users of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) MakerDAO (MKR) look set to raise the stability fee for Maker’s DAI (DAI) stablecoin by a further 4%, in the fifth such vote this year.

An ongoing governance poll, due to close within 8 hours today, April 11 (5 PM UTC), indicates that 50,579.23 MKR have been staked in favor of raising the stability fee by 4%, bringing it to 11.5% per year.

Other options on the poll included votes in favor of an increase of 1, 2 and 3% — or else not to raise the current fee at all. The second-largest majority, with 1,165.47 MKR staked to press time, has chosen a 2% increase — while the least popular option is for a 1% raise, with just 1.00 MKR staked so far.

278.52 MKR have been staked to press time in favor of not raising the fee and keeping it at its current 7.5% per year level.

A statement accompanying the governance poll — which opened on April 8 at 5 PM UTC — outlines that the need to increase the stability fee is driven by the fact that the DAI stablecoin is persistently failing to keep its 1:1 USD peg.

As previously reported, DAI is an ERC-20-based stablecoin ostensibly designed to maintain a 1:1 USD peg via the issuance of Maker-administered collateralized debt positions.

The two other factors proposed in the statement are identical to the rationale that was given in the preceding (fourth) stability fee increase governance poll: high inventory levels among market makers and prop desks, and insufficient impact from the preceding fee increase. As the statement outlines:

“In February, the Stability Fee was increased twice, each time by 0.5%. In March, the Fee was raised by an additional 2%, and then by 4% two weeks later. The impact of these combined increases was negligible, indicating that neither the target Stability Fee nor the incremental changes were appropriate.”

During a MakerDAO community call on April 9, head of community development Richard Brown said he was reasonably sure such increase votes would repeat until the DAI recovers its peg:

“Tensions are high and this is an important subject. Arguably [...] literally the most important thing we do at MakerDAO is the stability of the peg. Everything else flows from that.”

As reported yesterday, blockchain-powered event betting platform Augur has just launched a token denominated in DAI as part of a major upgrade to its platform, saying it will make trading less volatile as compared with Ethereum (ETH).

The MakerDAO token MKR, which grants voting rights, is currently ranked the 19th largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap and is down 4.5% on the day to press time.

Ripple’s developer ecosystem project Xpring and Bain Capital Ventures have invested in early-stage blockchain venture capital (VC) firm Robot Ventures, head of the fund Robert Leshner wrotein a blog post on April 10.

Leshner, who also founded Ethereum-based financial open-source protocol Compound, has already completed two investments within its new venture capital initiative.

Targeting fintech and product strategy disruptors, Robot Ventures invested in crypto mining firm Coinmine and Point, a startup developing new debit card solutions. As Leshner told Cointelegraph, both investments were completed in Q1 2019.

Leshner declined to reveal any additional information regarding the financial details of the investment by Ripple Xpring and Bain Capital.

Leshner introduced the Compound protocol in January 2018, which is an algorithmic tool for setting interest rates in money markets. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures, Compound aims to allow users and decentralized applications (DApps) to earn interest on Ethereum (ETH) and tokens, as well as borrow ETH and tokens to invest, use or short-sell.

Xpring is Ripple’s initiative to create a community of developers, entrepreneurs and companies engaged in blockchain technology. Recently, Ripple Xpring established a $100 million game developer fund along with blockchain platform Forte.

Bain Capital Ventures is a major American VC firm with around $3.6 billion of assets under management. Having supported companies such as LinkedIn and Jet.com, Bain Capital participated in a $133 million funding round of stablecoin project Basis previously in 2019.

Investors in both cryptocurrency and traditional finance know who Jamie Dimon is. Dimon, the chairman, and CEO of JPMorgan Chase has been a longtime opponent of the cryptocurrency industry, refusing to be involved. He made waves in the crypto community this year when he announced that the Big Four bank would be adding the JPM Coin, which many investors and crypto loyalists have refused to even call a cryptocurrency.

Most recently, Dimon was part of a group of CEOs that testified in Washington, DC. The group was collected to speak on the way that the cryptocurrency adventure has changed the financial sector over the last decade after the financial crisis.

The hearing started by introducing the technology, saying that the United States is behind the rest of the world in their own blockchain development. The lack of regulatory certainty received most of the blame, though a group of representatives submitted a bill yesterday that could potentially erase the doubt.

The hearing started with speaking to David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. He clarified that their company, so far, is not planning to launch a cryptocurrency desk. He said that cryptocurrency has yet to be classified as a currency, which appears to be part of the reason that they have abstained.

The attention was shifted to Dimon, as the representative at Capitol Hill pointed out that his former stance on cryptocurrency was that it was “not a real thing” in 2017. When questioned why Dimon had the change of heart, Dimon explained that his company believes that blockchain “will work over time,” considering all of the trials and testing it has undergone and continues to go through.

He continued, saying that his suggestion that cryptocurrency isn’t real is based on the fact that these assets are “not supported by anything,” saying that the value is entirely based on how much the next person is willing to shell out for it. With the JPM Coin, Dimon explains that the token is

“supported by a deposit at JPMorgan.”

Dimon focused on the speed and ease of use with the tokens, though the ultimate payments would be fulfilled with the user’s funds at the bank. The blockchain was highly praised for its data collection, allowing any participant on the ledger to see the same information as another person in real time.

Protection of consumers was another crucial concern since there are no regulations that discuss limitations on being a custodian. Speaking on the hurdles in this area, Charles Scarf of the Bank of New York Mellon said that anti-money laundering has been the greatest concern, which has been a similar problem for jurisdictions around the world as well.

Dimon has been the CEO for JPMorgan Chase since the end of 2006 and has been praised as ”one of the smartest bankers we’ve got” by former president Barack Obama.

The ongoing financial crisis in Venezuela has significantly tainted the country’s reputation. Inflation is too high that people are throwing away money on the streets of Caracas, the nation's capital. Mow, a little-known cryptocurrency association called Bitcoin Interest(BCI) has initiated a drive to help Venezuelans.

Story of 27550 lbs (12500 kg) of food and Venezuela https://t.co/1XF8JOMadN and https://t.co/rTXLTJwMYw #bitfinex #HitBTC #HODL #btcinterest

— Bitcoin Interest (OFFICIAL) (@btcinterest) April 10, 2019

The economy of Venezuela is nearly collapsing because of the massive hyperinflation in the country. Residents have lost faith in the local currency and the quality of is life is declining. Similarly, the government opted to introduce their own cryptocurrency instead of solving the issues facing the bolivar. The coin, known as Petro, was introduced by President Nicolas Maduro in February 2018 as a solution to the already plummeting economy.

A year after the launch of Petro, the economic situation in Venezuela has only worsened. The monumental failure is attributed to many reasons, with the main one being the absence of the 60 million barrels on which the value of the cryptocurrency was to be pegged. This is because of the widespread corruption both in the government and in the body that oversees petroleum production.

Amidst this doom and gloom, there appears to be a glimmer of hope – BCI is using Bitcointo provide support to Venezuelans affected by the economic crisis. The organization has started a social media campaign under the hashtag #FoodNotLambos, which encourages crypto investors to use their profits to buy food for the impoverished instead of buying posh Lamborghinis.

The philanthropic initiative by BCI is conducted by sending Bitcoin to an official living in Venezuela. This money is then converted into fiat by ‘Carlos,’ who then buys food and water. BCI has also made arrangements with local merchants who sell the foodstuff to Carlos at discounted prices.

In addition, Carlos has rallied like-minded individuals who offered resources for the transportation of the relief food. BCI confirmed that the food was delivered by 9 April. However, the delivery was interrupted by Venezuelan officials who wanted to know if the US was involved in the project. Given that the Trump administration has issues with Venezuela, any input by the American government would have jeopardized the efforts put in by BCI.

The BCI charity drive has received widespread support on various social media. BCI came into existence after a grad fork on the Bitcoin blockchain early last year. It is listed on the Bitfinex trading platform. Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency has struggled to attract investors, with some calling it a scam after it plummeted from a record $23.04 to a paltry $0.131.

Bitcoin now looks set to continue its climb within the previously discussed ascending triangle – typically bullish indicators – with a measured target set at $5,885 should BTC break above the upper trendline at $5,320–$5,350.

Hourly chart

So how do we arrive at the $5,885 target? We can roughly calculate the potential move by measuring the height between A and B (the upper resistance line and the lowest drawdown in price within the pattern). That figure is then added to the upper resistance line above point C at the point of breakout, producing a new figure as a price target.

As can be seen, an exaggerated bullish divergence has also taken shape on the RSI, recorded from April 8–April 9, meaning a continuation in price is being supported additionally by the indicator on the hourly chart.

Daily chart

The daily chart shows the bulls maintained a higher low above April 4’s red candle. That kept intact the bullish market structure above the key 100-period and 200-period moving averages yesterday, which are slowly beginning to converge for a bull cross.

Should those two lines cross bullish, then greater buying pressure would become the norm with a new bull run would be on the cards.

The RSI shows a divergence from price, printing lower lows while price continues to print higher lows, signaling greater bullish conditions ahead for the world’s top crypto by market value.

The head of United States regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reiterated its focus on the cryptocurrency space in a new speech on April 8.

Speaking at the SEC Speaks conference in Washington, chairman Jay Clayton highlighted the digital currency space while giving a broad overview of the organization’s activities and roles.

Clayton chose to touch principally on instances where existing laws had been used to deal with noncompliance from crypto entities.

“In the digital assets space, [...] the Division of Enforcement has brought cases that demonstrate that there is a path to compliance with the federal securities laws going forward, even where issuers have conducted an illegal unregistered offering of digital asset securities,” he said. The chairman continued:

“This path includes appropriate disclosures to investors so they can make a more informed decision as to whether to seek reimbursement or continue to hold their tokens.”

Clayton meanwhile also drew further attention to cryptocurrency’s appearance in the SEC’s in-house Examination Priorities for 2019, compiled in December by its Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations.

The comments underscore a persisting commitment to crypto and its impact on areas such as securities regulations, the U.S. taking slow but comprehensive steps to formalize their status at the national level.

Last week, the SEC released guidance on determining whether digital assets constitute investment contracts. The same day, April 3, the agency also concluded a new initial coin offeringtoken from startup TurnKey was not a security.

In recent months, the ongoing battle between the regulator and players involved in bringing a cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded fund to market has been more conspicuous.

Despite multiple delays and other setbacks, both the SEC and fellow body the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are continually reviewing the status of corresponding applications, Cointelegraph reported last month.

Peter R Rizun, the Chief Scientist of Bitcoin Unlimited, was previously in the headlines following his comments about the Lightning Network, the second-layer protocol proposed to solve Bitcoin’s scalability problem. The Chief Scientist is in the news again after he claimed that a Lightning Network user can lose all his money, without doing anything wrong.

Lighting Network, the second-layer solution, allows users to make off-chain payments, thereby ensuring faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions. The Lightning Network is dependent on the underlying technology i.e. the Bitcoin blockchain, and was mainly created to serve the needs of small transactions. It enables users to make payments without having to record them on the blockchain, until it is settled. Moreover, the Lighting Network can act as multi-currency routing network in the future.

Peter R Rizun had this to say about the LN on Twitter,

“A Lightning user can lose all of their money through no fault of their own, in an environment with high and volatile L1 fees. BTC’s block size limit ensures high and volatile fees whenever demand for block space spikes.”

To this, Emin Gur Sirer, a Professor at Cornell University, said,

“Satoshi did not design for blocks that are mostly full, and the devs who came afterwards have not been able to design a fee mechanism that leads to stable and predictable fees.”

Further, Jungans, a Redditor, questioned whether this was not the same for on-chain funds scattered across several UTXOs. Peter Rizun clarified that the two were different cases. He said,

Source: Reddit

The Lightning Network was in the crypto-space’s limelight recently after it crossed around $5 million per channel capacity, with the reason speculated to be the Bitcoin bull run. Further, the Lightning Network gained support from one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges Zebpay, after it announced Lightning payments in around 131 countries.

If you have been following crypto news, you know that there is a small bull run happening right now. Bitcoin’s price is going up and it does not seem to be ready to go back, so people are having opinions about the future all around. Some of them are darker than the others, though.

During a recent interview on CNBC’s Crypto Trader show, Richard Heart, a famous billionaire who made his fortune with Bitcoin, has talked about the future of Bitcoin. He was pretty optimistic about the future of the crypto asset in the long term, but not so much right now.

According to trader and investor, we are about to see the beginning of the end of the bear market. The crypto winter, as it has often been called, has made several victims so far, so most traders are really hoping that it will finally end, according to a man who made his fortune with cryptos, you may have to wait a bit before you get overconfident in the market.

Richard Heart has affirmed that the Bitcoin market is highly cyclical and that you can simply see the trends. By looking at the market, he believes, one can see that there was “a good bounce” before the market finally reached the true bear market. He sees similarities between that moment and this one.

There is the time in which prices are chopped around horizontally and then there is the capitulation. After that, you can buy in and you will not have many problems.

This is a very common tale, however, many people believe that the capitulation has already happened when the prices hovered around the low $3,000 USD mark. According to Heart, however, traders should not buy the assets right now because capitulation has not happened yet.

He also affirmed that if institutional investors get FOMO (fear of missing out), they may put some money on the table, but that it is still too soon.

The trader affirmed that we may not see the bull run now but that there is a big chance that we may see it until October 2019, which will bring us an “awesome price increase”.

Capitulation candles will show up soon, he believes, so when the prices finally go down again and hit around $3,000 to $4,200 USD once more, that is when you buy Bitcoin because you will have so much higher returns this way.

Just like BTC has done more than once in the past, he believes that we will see a big horizontal stretch and then the “chop” when the prices go down. So, if you buy now, you may lose 30% before the bull run.

He believes that there is no such thing as an instant bull run, so having the patience to invest at the right time is the best move if you want to maximize the amount of money that you can make while investing in BTC.

TradeStation Crypto, the digital assets arm of TradeStation Group, has partnered with Deltix to integrate its CryptoCortex product suite, which provides a dedicated platform to ‎facilitate cryptocurrency trading for institutional ‎investors.

Specifically, Deltix‎ says CryptoCortex provides broker/dealers and exchanges with FIX ‎and multi-cast data streaming capabilities, combined with REST and web sockets ‎interfaces. And in addition to its flexible pricing engine, the solution presently secures a ‎stable connectivity to more than 15 venues.‎

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For buy-side firms, CryptoCortex provides a one-stop platform for ‎market data aggregation, execution strategy, and back-testing environment, as well as ‎smart order routing and advanced execution algos.‎ The platform offers separate configurations for each of these use-cases. Deltix already has five institutional clients using the platform, including buy-side and sell-side firms.

Meanwhile, the US subsidiary of Japanese financial services giant Monex Group says it plans to launch its cryptocurrency services later this year.

For the new offshoot, TradeStation leverages its brokerage industry expertise to address what it perceives to be “key concerns and certain weaknesses in the current cryptocurrency ecosystem,” it said.

Monex expands into crypto space

After helping Coincheck remain in business, Monex has decided to venture into much more attractive markets through the cryptocurrency-focused subsidiary of its US brokerage arm.

There is currently no specified timeframe for the launch of the new platform, but Monex has previously filed a money service business registration with each state regulator. A money transmittal license (MTL) allows the venue to offer both crypto-to-crypto and fiat-to-crypto trading pairs.

Commenting on the news, John Bartleman, President of TradeStation Group, Inc., said: “Our focus will be to provide the tools and services that serious traders require to trade across multiple asset classes, including crypto, and we believe Deltix’s platform and technology will be a valuable resource to support these crypto market efforts.”

Ilya Gorelik, CEO of Deltix, added: “Deltix’s alignment with TradeStation Crypto should bring a new level of maturity and sophistication to the crypto trading space. Together with TradeStation, we bring many years of meaningful expertise to a nascent asset class. Using CryptoCortex, TradeStation Crypto users should, as liquidity provider connections and advanced features are added over time, have access to multiple sources of liquidity, smart order routing and algo execution.”

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The cryptocurrency firm has hired Ohio-based public accounting firm Cohen & Company for the audit.

Explaining the process of the audit, the accounting firm noted: “An examination involves performing procedures to obtain evidence about management’s assertion. The nature, timing, and extent of the procedures selected depend on our judgment, including an assessment of the risks of material misstatement of management’s assertion, whether due to fraud or error.”

Creating a Transparent Ecosystem

Last month, TrustToken partnered with accounting firm Armanino to provide real-time audit reports of its stablecoin. The platform will be available for public access and is scheduled for an April launch.

TrueUSD is not the only stablecoin publishing third-party audit reports of its currency chest. Circle, a Goldman Sachs-backed crypto startup, has also maintained a transparent approach by publishing audit reports of its dollar-pegged USDC every month.

However, the market leader of stablecoins – USDT – is still maintaining an opaque business approach as it is reluctant to conduct any third-party audit of its books. Meanwhile, Tether recently teamed up with Tron and launched a TRC20 version of USDT on its blockchain.

Explaining the importance of stablecoins in a podcast, Tron’s founder and CEO Justin Sun, said: “The stablecoin is the most important thing when we come to the infrastructure and the whole industry. I think this partnership means to the industry that in the future the USDT will be more reliable, faster and cheaper.”

The market for stablecoins is also becoming very lucrative and more and more firms are issuing fiat-pegged tokens around the globe. Earlier this month, TrustToken launched a pound sterling-backed token called TrueGBP. Canadian crypto exchange also jumped into the demanding market and introduced Canadian dollar-pegged stablecoin eCAD.

In March, a euro-pegged stablecoin also hit the market backed by the Blockchain Alliance.

Announced Tuesday night in New York, the reference code library is intended to help developers implement ISDA’s Common Domain Model (CDM) in solutions for trading and managing derivatives. The software is written in DAML, the smart contract language created – and recently open-sourced – by Digital Asset.

“Following our success at the Barclays DerivHack in London last year, we have been working closely with ISDA with the joint goal of standardizing processes across the derivatives industry,” Kelly Mathieson, head of enterprise solutions at Digital Asset, said in a press release. “We are very excited to now make this reference implementation available to users … enabling financial institutions to be in control of their own data.”

Stepping back, the CDM is a broad, ambitious initiative by ISDA, first proposed in 2017, to standardize the ways derivative trade events and processes are represented so that the IT systems of various entities can talk to each other, improving efficiency and trimming costs. U.K.-based megabank Barclays has estimated the CDM could save the financial sector $3 billion a year.

While CDM is not a blockchain-specific project, such data standardization is seen as a prerequisite for distributed ledger technology (DLT) to reap much of a benefit for the financial industry. Indeed, Barclays, a DLT trailblazer, has championed the effort, setting up an internal CDM adoption working group about a year ago. In June, ISDA published an initial digital representation of the CDM, so that the association’s members can access and test it.

Making things simpler

Digital Asset’s reference code library will help simplify and standardize the generation of derivative “life cycle” events (everything that happens over the course of a trade, from agreeing on terms to amending the contract to termination) defined in the ISDA CDM, the company said.

“This may otherwise involve a number of complex steps. For example, generating payments involves rolling out a calculation schedule and applying date adjustments, before calculating day-count fractions and interest amounts as defined in the ISDA CDM,” Digital Asset explained in a press release.

The reference code library will be available under an open-source license, and the specification will be compiled, or translated, “to executable libraries in other languages,” the company said. The ISDA CDM is now available in DAML on the ISDA’s Rosetta portal, along with Java and JSON.

A spokesperson for Digital Asset said ISDA is not paying the company to develop the reference application.

One of the most prominent startups in enterprise DLT, New York-based Digital Asset is best known for its former CEO, Wall Street veteran Blythe Masters, and its ongoing assignment to replace back-office systems for the Australian Securities Exchange.

PayPal announced last week that it would no longer process payments associated with academic essay-writing services, intended to give wealthy, lazy students in the UK a way to get qualified without working for it. Although the move might benefit the UK education system, it could cause the loss of jobs for thousands of academics living in the third-world – unless they discover Bitcoin soon.

Reports state that even before the news that PayPal would no longer facilitate payments associated with essay-writing platforms, the company had made it difficult for those living in countries such as Kenya. Of course, Bitcoin does not make you prove who you just because it thinks a payment is “abnormal” for whatever reason.

PayPal’s Censorship Highlights Once Again the Need for Bitcoin

Less than a week after NewsBTC reported on PayPal’s new fee structure potentially alienating merchant users and driving them towards crypto, another example of the company censoring transactions has come to our attention. As announced last week, the global payments giant will no longer work with companies that unite academic writers with students wanting to pay their way through a degree.

The move, according to a report in the Kenyan Tribune, has been influenced by the British Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, lobbying the firm last month. This, according to an extensive exposé by UK newspaper The Daily Mail, was prompted by 46 vice chancellors from various British universities demanding a ban on essay-writing website in the interest of protecting the integrity of UK institutions.

Although the move by PayPal might well help reduce the numbers of students obtaining degrees fraudulently, it also creates a powerful incentive for third-world academic writers who depend on such work to explore alternative payment methods – chief amongst these, given that the issue is essentially one of financial censorship, is Bitcoin.

In a lengthy post, a Kenyan academic writer explains just how big the essay writing industry has become in their home nation. Thousands of university graduates, unable to find work elsewhere, rely on high levels of income they can generate through producing texts for lazy, first-world students. The author of the piece details how they are paid more than $1,000 each month for their services, which in Kenya, is higher than the average professional wage.

Even prior to the latest news that PayPal would be withholding services to those believed to be writing essays for students to pass off as their own, the author of the post states that the company would frequently make it difficult for writers to be paid for their work. Examples of this include withholding supposedly large transfers (even as low as $2,000) from professionals until the company had performed various identification checks on individuals. The author believes that such checks were based on an assumption by PayPal that such a sum of money represented a large amount in Kenya and therefore, it must be associated with crime – something, which if true, is hugely discriminatory against those living in third-world nations.

With such relatively large sums of money on the table, it seems likely that any further crackdown by the UK on essay-writing services would just drive those producing dissertations to create their own websites offering services directly for Bitcoin. In fact, the latest move by PayPal might be incentive enough for them to look for less restrictive alternatives already.

The Michigan House of Representatives has passed a bill, HB 4102, on April 9 that would include cryptocurrencies in criminal codes regarding illegal actions for financial gain.

Michigan lawmakers have voted to introduce amendments to various sections of the Michigan Penal Code, specifying that cryptocurrency would be included in provisions relating to money laundering, embezzlement, credit card fraud and financial transactions involving the proceeds of a criminal offense.

The legislation also prohibits the collection of cryptocurrency — or any currency — for the fighting, baiting or shooting of an animal.

State Rep. Ryan Berman told the Detroit News that the bill was inspired by a case of a dog-fighting ring, wherein the organizer was prosecuted, but not individual participants, as they placed their bets using cryptocurrency, which was not expressly prohibited under the law.

Berman continued that the new bill provides a much-needed update to current criminal codes, some of which were written in the 1990s. He added:

“Digital currently is now a part of our economy. It’s a part of our society. So now it’s actually going to be written in the law.”

The legislation also defines cryptocurrency as “digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, and that operates independently of a central bank.”

The House of Representatives voted 108-1, meaning that the bill will now go to the State Senate for further consideration.

Last June, the Michigan state legislature introduced two bills that classify modifying data on a blockchain as a crime. HB 6257 says that any person who “falsely makes, alters, forges, or counterfeits a public record” and intends to “injure or defraud another person,” would be prosecuted of a “felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 14 years.”

The other bill, HB 6258 alters existing Michigan penal code to include definitions of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in addition to cryptocurrency. Both bills were referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee at the end of last year, following which no action has been taken.

Liechtenstein-based Bank Frick has issued an active Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH)-based tracker along with digital finance firm Bitcoin Suisse, the firm announced on April 9.

Starting today, Bank Frick will offer institutional and qualified investors access to its BTC-ETH tracker, the certificates of which will take the form of both a classic security and a token, according to Bank Frick’s press release.

Within the new initiative, Bank Frick acts as issuer and will be responsible for issuing cryptocertificates, which target qualified investors exclusively. In turn, Bitcoin Suisse acts as crypto broker and is responsible for the execution of the Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions via global crypto exchanges.

The announcement follows recent news about the appointment of Bank Frick’s head of blockchain banking as the new CEO of the Liechtenstein subsidiary of Bitcoin Suisse. On April 8, Bank Frick revealed that its blockchain expert Mauro Casellini will join Bitcoin Suisse as of July 1 to oversee the expansion of the local subsidiary.

Bank Frick CEO Edi Wоеgerer outlined a close existing collaboration between Bank Frick and Bitcoin Suisse, stating that Bitcoin Suisse is an important crypto broker for Bank Frick,, while Bitcoin Suisse uses services provided by Bank Frick, and the two companies share many of the same clients.

In February, Bank Frick launched an institutional cryptocurrency trading platform subsidiary called DLT Markets. By initiating the move, the bank purportedly intends to provide institutional investors “with fully regulated and secure multi-exchange access to the digital token asset class.”

Last year, Bank Frick announced its was offering direct investment and cold storage of five cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple (XRP), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).

The bill, first introduced last year by Reps. Davidson and Darren Soto, seeks to exempt certain cryptocurrencies and other digital assets from federal securities laws, allowing individuals to more easily trade or transact with select coins.

The act would amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1940, granting regulators such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) clarity on how they may enforce securities laws surrounding cryptocurrencies.

While the SEC has released staff-level guidance explaining how it might verify whether token sales are securities offerings, it remains unclear how cryptocurrencies that are not being used for fundraising might be classified.

In addition to Davidson and Soto, Reps. Josh Gottheimer, Tedd Budd, Scott Perry and Tulsi Gabbard – who is currently running for president – are cosponsoring the 2019 version of the bill.

Five of the cosponsors, excluding Perry, are members of the House Financial Services Committee.

New provisions

The TTA is largely similar to the bill introduced in 2018, but the new version will feature some changes, including a clearer definition of digital tokens that will be more inclusive of changing technology, according to the bill.

There are also provisions which strengthen consumer protection and preempt any state laws which would otherwise overlap with the act.

Last year’s Congressional session ended before the House Financial Services Committee or House Ways and Means Committee could vote on whether the full House should consider the proposal.

In a statement, Kristin Smith, acting head of Blockchain Association, told CoinDesk that the lobbying group is “pleased to support the re-introduction of the Token Taxonomy Act.”

“In light of the recent SEC staff guidance, the open blockchain industry needs regulatory clarity more than ever,” she said. “We believe that blockchain technology has tremendous potential and that we need smart, simple, and supportive legislation to make sure that the United States continues to be a leader in this ecosystem. We are grateful for the bill’s sponsors for their continued support for this vital technology.”

Major open-source browser Mozilla Firefox has launched new protections against crypto miningmalware in its new browser versions, according to a blog post published on April 9.

In its latest Firefox Nightly 68 and Beta 67 versions, Mozilla has enabled a new level of protection against crypto mining and fingerprinting hack attacks in a part of the browser’s Content Blocking suite of protections.

The new browsing feature has been developed in collaboration with privacy and security softwarefirm Disconnect, and represents a collection of blacklists of malware domains associated with fingerprinting and crypto mining scripts.

Disconnect’s blacklist is reportedly capable of blocking in-browser mining services such as Coinhive and CryptoLoot, according to tech news outlet BleepingComputer.

The new Firefox protection is currently not enabled by default, but can be enabled in the Privacy and Security settings’ section, the blog post notes, adding that the protections will be turned on by default in Nightly in the coming weeks.

As Cointelegraph reported at the end of August last year, Mozilla has already announced that it will block cryptojacking malware in future versions of Firefox.

Cryptojacking is a major hacking scheme that is defined as the secret deployment of users’ computing power to mine cryptocurrencies without users’ knowledge and consent. In December 2018, Bloomberg wrote that cryptojacking reportedly became the biggest cyber threat in many parts of the world, having overtaken ransomware threats.

Recently, a Japanese court acquitted a man who was accused of the illicit mining of crypto by using online crypto miner Coinhive. Previously, a Ukrainian man faced up to six years in prison for alleged placing crypto mining malware scripts on his own websites.

With additional reporting by Helen Partz.

The startup raised around $13 million in a Series A round last November, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Ripple’s Xpring and OKEx’s OK Blockchain Capital, among others.

Earlier this year, Securitize also partnered with blockchain infrastructure company OTCXN to help firms tokenize and sell securities by combining Securitize’s securities compliance platform with OTCXN’s custodial ledger system.

Blockchain security firm and wallet service BitGo has provided a newly launched digital asset trading platform, LGO Markets, with its custody and multi-signature wallets, according to a press release published Tuesday, April 9.

LGO Markets, which is focused on institutional investors, will offer BitGo services for hedge funds, family offices and asset managers that are working with BitGo.

Moreover, the clients of LGO Markets will be able to store their digital assets in BitGo Trust Company, regulated by the Division of Banking in the United States state of South Dakota.

As per the announcement, BitGo will also support the company’s Ethereum (ETH)-based native token LGO Exchange (LGO), which surged 18 percent in price in the recent hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Mike Belshe, CEO of BitGo, believes that the new partnership will contribute to creating a more decentralized market, where exchanges do not act as their own custodians. Moreover, he thinks that the solution will allow investors to trade more securely.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier today, a new report from weekly crypto outlet Diar shows that the trading of institutional Bitcoin (BTC) investment products has seen growth for the fourth month running.

These findings coincide with an earlier document by digital asset management fund Grayscale Investments, showing that institutional investors provide around 66% of capital inflow in the crypto industry.

In other custody news, in late March, French hardware wallet producer Ledger partnered with Hong Kong trust company Legacy Trust to offer cryptocurrency custody services to its institutional clients. The new offering will be based on Ledger Vault, Ledger’s institutional wallet manager.

Several bitcoin price indicators are turning positive on the charts, hinting at growing bullish momentum as the bitcoin block reward halving in 2020 edges closer.

For one, the “super guppy” – a combination of exponential moving averages designed to signal when price action flips from bearish to bullish and vice versa – has flipped green on the daily chart for the first time since Jan. 14, 2018.

Further, the 26-period exponential moving average (EMA) on the monthly chart has once more turned bullish, having been crossed to the downside in November 2018. The level was hard fought for and won over by the bulls early this month when the price of bitcoin (BTC) shot to $5,000 and then $5,200, crossing above the key EMA then bullishly planting its flag above it.

The shift is a welcome development for the bulls, who’ve managed to steer prices away from the recent monthly low of $3,194, last seen four months ago in December 2018, all the while slowly mounting pressure against the bears.

At press time, BTC is trading down 1.4 percent for the session at $5,159, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.

Daily chart

As mentioned, bitcoin’s super guppy has flipped green on the daily chart after a year and more in the red.

The shift is a telling sign that the bulls have solidly regained control of the markets and will continue to do so as long as they keep prices above the psychological level of $5,000.

Monthly chart

Besides November 2018, the last time bitcoin fell below the 26-period EMA was way back in December 2014, when prices dropped below that line for almost a year before finally crossing back above – a move that flagged a new bull run.

Supporting the trend change on the monthly chart is a shift away from bearish conditions above the neutral 50 line on the RSI, showing momentum is now back with the bulls after a decline since the market peak in late 2017.

If prices manage to sustain those two key indicators, it would go a long way to restoring full market confidence and potentially attracting larger pools of investors.

Total volume will also be important in the coming weeks as longer-term traders would like to see a steady increase in growing (bullish volume) on the next leg up.

The famous Russian analyst Vladislav Ginko has talked about Bitcoin once more. If you know something about him, you know that anytime that he decides to talk about BTC, it is something very controversial, so nobody is surprised with his latest claims.

Before now, he has already affirmed that the Russian government bought several billion of USD worth of BTC and that the private sector has done it as well. Now, he claims that there is no point in pricing BTC with fiat currency.

According to Vladislav Ginko, which works at the Presidential Putin Academy, standard market capitalization models make no sense in the crypto world. His argument is that basically everything that is priced in fiat currency gets corrupted in some way. Fiat, he says, is a “biased and unjust value”, so Bitcoin simply does not need that, he said, affirming that the crypto asset was the “alpha and omega” of valuation.

Ginko believes in something that is often called hyperbitcoinization, a future in which Bitcoin is officially recognized as the official reserve currency of the world and we start pricing stuff in Bitcoin instead of pricing it in fiat.

He affirmed that Bitcoin will eventually be more powerful than all fiat-based currencies and some governments would end up “succumbing” to Bitcoin.

Therefore, the whole idea here is that 1 BTC should equal 1 BTC, not a USD value. This is, he believes, the most valuable asset in the world, the new digital gold.

He also added that Bitcoin was like Noah’s ark and that it is governed by an “invisible hand”, as it has no central authority, unlike fiat currencies. He pointed out that no single country in the world can have control over BTC, not even the United States, and this is what makes it so powerful.

Bitcoin, he argued, is better than gold because it is so decentralized and useful. He gave several reasons why BTC is so good, like having almost zero transaction costs, safe storage, being resistant to censorship, being more liquid than gold and letting you become your own bank, one of its most powerful characteristics.

He also affirmed that gold has been losing some of its value recently and that Bitcoin never had such a long losing streak (despite having some very rough times in which the prices plunge a lot, but they generally go back up later).

The Problems That Bitcoin Will Face

Sure, hyperbitcoinization seems like a great future. However, you should notice that it is not going to be completely easy. Bitcoin has all the potential to do it, but you have to solve some relevant issues before actually being able to affirm that we the process of hyperbitcoinization will happen as people want to.

For instance, mining rewards will drop a lot in around 20 to 30 years. Because of this, miners will live off transaction fees, which will need to be higher in order to support the network. The technology would also need to be highly scaled in order to be used by everybody, which can prove to be a difficult challenge, as we have seen at the beginning of 2018.

For BTC to be able to be the base price of the world, we will still have to wait a long time, since it will take adoption going up first. Because of this, we have to make an enormous progress before Ginko’s idea can be a reality.

A LocalBitcoins trader who sold Bitcoin (BTC) to more than 1,000 people in the United States will serve two years in federal jail, a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of California confirmed on April 8.

Jacob Burrell Campos, a Mexican citizen, amassed more than $820,000 from Bitcoin sales on the P2P platform between 2015 and 2018.

Through a combination of cash meetups, ATM transfers and MoneyGram, Burrell served traders on the site without performing anti-money laundering (AML) checks and due diligence on the source of the incoming USD funds, prosecutors said.

In custody since August last year, Burrell pleaded guilty to the charges in October, acknowledging he and unnamed others took thousands of dollars across the U.S.-Mexico border daily and performed exchange transactions with Joseph Castillo, a San Diego-based precious metals dealer.

In addition to the sentence, Burrell will also forfeit his entire haul of $823,357 that he gained from the business.

The case forms the latest in an increasing number of similar stories involving U.S. informal traders, which authorities have pursued amid fears they contribute to the destabilization of the economy.

As Cointelegraph reported, Burrell originally faced up to five years behind bars.

“Today’s sentencing of Burrell is a reminder to those illegal and unlicensed money transmitters that the laws and rules apply to crypto currency dealings just as they do to other types of financial transactions,” David Shaw, Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego, commented in the press release.

Last week, a Canadian judge ordered the seizure of $1.4 million in BTC holdings from an online drug dealer, the country’s largest ever such forfeiture.

Andy Pag, the founder and coordinator of Mt. Gox Legal, told CoinDesk in an exclusive interview this week that he now believes ongoing legal issues – in particular, a single massive claim by startup incubator and former Mt. Gox partner Coinlab – may hold up the crypto exchange’s civil rehabilitation process for up to two more years.

Pag, who started Mt. Gox Legal roughly 18 months ago with the intent to advocate for the reimbursement of creditors, first revealed his opinion of the expected timeline in a private forum post last week, obtained by CoinDesk, which told creditors he would be stepping down from his role as coordinator at the end of the month.

The viewpoint put forth in the letter (attached in full below) conflicts with more optimistic assessments that creditors may be paid before the end of 2019.

Mt. Gox, at one point the world’s largest crypto exchange, went into bankruptcy in 2014 shortly after its operators discovered that some 850,000 bitcoins had been stolen from its wallets. While some of these funds were later recovered, the exchange never did.

However, partly due to the massive increase in price between 2014 and 2017, Mt Gox went from a bankruptcy proceeding to a civil rehabilitation process that remains ongoing.

That this occurred is significant: under bankruptcy proceedings, the exchange’s customers would receive the fiat equivalent to their holdings at the time Mt Gox entered bankruptcy. Under civil rehabilitation, the customers will actually receive the amount they lost in bitcoin instead.

When the Tokyo District Court, which is overseeing the case, first announced that Mt Gox would enter civil rehabilitation last June, claimants expected that they may receive their missing bitcoin as soon as this year. The claim by Coinlab, however, has since putting this timeline in jeopardy.

Now it appears to be impacting other efforts by creditors to self-organize to achieve reimbursement.

Legal slugfest

Coinlab, which has been backed by Tim Draper, Barry Silbert and Roger Ver (among others), entered into a partnership with Mt. Gox in 2012 to essentially act as the exchange’s U.S. branch. However, Coinlab sued Mt Gox in 2013 alleging that the exchange had failed to honor the agreement and asking for $75 million.

Mt. Gox then counter-sued, claiming it was Coinlab who breached their agreement. Neither case was resolved prior to Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy filing, though Coinlab did stake a claim against the exchange at the time of the filing.

“Coinlab originally put in a bankruptcy claim originally of $75 million which people thought was excessive … When we went to civil rehabilitation, everyone refiled the same claim, but Coinlab filed $16 billion,” Pag explained.

Edgar Sargent, a U.S. based attorney for Coinlab, told CoinDesk that he could not speak to the amount filed in Japan, and was not familiar enough with Japanese law or court proceedings to discuss the matter. Coinlab’s Japanese attorneys could not be reached for comment. Coinlab founder Peter Vessenes did not respond to a request for comment.

The first problem stems from the fact that the Mt Gox trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, normally attributes voting rights to creditors based on the size of their stake. This cannot happen with Coinlab until the claim is assessed.

Pag explained:

“Because it’s pending and it’s still disputed, the trustee can’t attribute fair voting rights if it’s accepted or zero voting rights if it’s rejected but … until it’s [resolved] the trustee can’t give them voting rights … It looks like it’s stalled.”

It could take the bankruptcy judge anywhere from several months to a year just to assess the claim. If Coinlab’s claim is rejected, the company can then litigate it in court, which would take another year. If the court rejects Coinlab’s claim, the company can then appeal, which would also take some time.

All told, Pag estimates that resolving whether or not Coinlab has a credible claim can take between 18 and 24 months.

Once that is resolved, only then can the creditors vote on a civil rehabilitation plan (and there is always a chance that there may be competing plans). Depending on the outcome, the potential payout to creditors will be dramatically different as well.

“We’ve started that process but it’s not finished and it’s not confirmed, it’s not confirmed that we’re in civil rehabilitation until the creditors vote on a civil rehabilitation plan,” Pag said.

Coinlab’s claim

Speaking generally, Sargent told CoinDesk that Coinlab’s suit comes from “a good claim,” adding that “it’s not just something that we made up.”

He confirmed to CoinDesk that he participated in a brief AMA on Reddit a few weeks ago, where he noted that Mt. Gox did not obtain a dismissal when Coinlab first sued the exchange, which it could have done “if the case were frivolous.”

In an email, however, former Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles told CoinDesk that Coinlab performed “close to zero” work for the exchange.

“Courts are likely to consider CoinLab’s case with some matter of urgency today and will likely try to get things handled quickly, but CoinLab has likely no interest of bringing a losing battle to its conclusion, and will likely try to extend the process as much as possible,” he said.

Coinlab is in a position of strength right now, “as they hold hostage the whole of Mt Gox’s distribution process,” though the company could end the situation quickly by signing a settlement. If a settlement is signed quickly, bitcoin distribution can begin by the end of 2019.

This might be the plan too – according to Pag, “a lot of creditors feel like it’s a very conscious strategy to try and force a settlement from the trustee. Most creditors don’t want them to receive a penny.”

While both Pag and his attorney have tried to reach out to the Wada Law Firm, which is representing Coinlab in Japan, neither has received any response.

Hibernation

Mt. Gox Legal is, in Pag’s words, the largest creditor group for Mt Gox. There are currently more than 1,000 members claiming more than 150,000 bitcoin, good for roughly 15 percent of the total value owed to creditors.

The group was founded in fall 2017 to advocate for Mt Gox’s shift from bankruptcy to civil rehabilitation.

“It started around 18 months ago when it became clear that the price of bitcoin was rising and the assets of the Mt Gox trustee was going to be more than the liabilities,” Pag explained. “Top Japanese lawyers are very expensive so [we pooled together].”

Mt. Gox Legal filed for the shift, possibly setting a number of legal precedents in Japan along the way. Pag explained that under such a transition, a company does not normally move from bankruptcy to civil rehabilitation, adding:

“It’s rekindling the legal entity enough that you can distribute assets but not restart it as a business.”

Pag is currently the coordinator for the group, with his activities overseen by a board of governors. Over the last 18 months, he’s flown to Japan a number of times to communicate with Kobayashi and gather updates for the members of the group.

“We’re quite a considerable creditor body and we’ve spent some time building up a relationship with all the players, the trustee, other creditor groups [and] law firms,” he said.

At the end of April, he’ll be stepping down.

“The more bitcoin’s price goes up, the more vultures are circling around. My personal worry is that we’re just going to be bogged down in litigation,” he said. “For me personally, and it’s a personal decision, it makes more sense to sell my claim.”

Mt. Gox Legal’s board has already begun the process to replace him, opening up nominations to bring in a new coordinator. While a new coordinator has not yet been confirmed, Pag expects that the group will likely shift into a hibernation state, as there will not be a lot that can happen until the legal claims have been sorted out.

Moving on

Rather than wait for the court system to sort out whether Coinlab has a legitimate claim, Pag said he intends to sell his claim, step down from Mt. Gox Legal and move on with his life.

“I’ve put my career on hold for 18 months and … It’s just a big regret that we’ve kind of been outplayed by other parties,” he said:

“In 2014 I had this money sitting there and it was this great big windfall and it was amazing and I had all these plans that I was going to put into place with it. It’s not losing the money that stung, it’s losing those plans and not being able to doing those things I wanted to do, and there’s a bit of a repeat here.”

A New York-based investment firm will purchase Pag’s claim for $600 per bitcoin. While he declined to name the firm, Pag said if other creditors reached out, he’d be happy to put them in touch.

“This isn’t the windfall that I was hoping for but it’s still a windfall and it’s a windfall today,” he said.

Pag said he has seen some backlash for this decision, which he understands. However, “this is a really personal decision that everyone needs to make for themselves,” he added.

He is not making a recommendation for other creditors to sell or not sell, Pag said, noting that many creditors have a shared identity born out of the fight to recoup their missing coins.

That being said:

“I had to ask myself how far do I stand on principle? When do I say enough is enough. Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy? I’ve decided I’d rather be happy and get on with my life.”

Major web browser Opera is releasing a new browser with a built-in cryptocurrency wallet. The development was announced in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on April 9.

Opera’s new browser Opera 60 (codenamed Reborn 3) features a native cryptocurrency dubbed Opera Wallet and a Web 3 explorer, which enables users to conduct transactions and interact with the blockchain-based internet, also known as Web 3. The browser also provides a virtual private network (VPN) feature in a bid to enhance users’ privacy and security.

The Opera Wallet purportedly synchronizes with the cryptocurrency wallet in the Opera browser for smartphones, so that wallet keys never leave the users’ smartphones. The release further explains:

“In practice, whenever they need to identify themselves to a Web 3 website or sign a transaction on the blockchain, users get a notification on their smartphone. They can confirm it in the same way they unlock their system, using, for example, facial recognition or their fingerprint.”

With VPN service integration, the company aims to ensure users’ security and privacy by establishing an encrypted tunnel which “protects users’ data from third parties and secures their geographical location.” Opera executive vice president Krystian Kolondra said:

“Blockchain technologies bring the power and control back to the people. They can securely sign transactions and identify themselves to websites, without unnecessarily oversharing their data.”

Opera first announced the addition of a built-in cryptocurrency wallet to its Android browser back in July 2018. Product manager Charles Hame said then that “our hope is that this will accelerate the transition of cryptocurrencies from speculation and investment to being used for actual payments and transactions in our users’ daily lives.”

Last month, Opera announced the upcoming launch of Opera Touch for iOS,  a Web 3 browser with an integrated crypto wallet and support for Ethereum (ETH) and interactions with decentralized applications (DApps). Prior to that, Opera added a new service that allowed users in Sweden, Norway and Denmark to purchase Ethereum through the Android version of the browser.

Earlier this year, blockchain-based browser Brave, an open-source, pay-to-surf browser based on Chromium that blocks ads and website trackers, partnered with news website Cheddar to offer its users limited time free access to premium content. Brave is also the default browser on Exodus, HTC’s native blockchain phone.

Highest bid on the house is in #BNB. auction is live. #UseBNB  pic.twitter.com/Pfu9oBOgb9

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) April 8, 2019

The event, put on by local real estate agency LJ Hooker and Trigon Trading, a local cryptocurrency firm, saw dozens attend the lavish house, as the auction was held beside a beautiful lagoon-blue lap pool. The house entranced the attendees so much that they actually managed to place down heavy bids on the house, all while the Bitcoin price jumped up and down from minute-to-minute.

Following many minutes of intense bidding, with people clutching their devices wondering if they really needed this glamorous home, especially when they could be HODLing crypto instead, the auctioneer closed up shop. In the end, the house sold for a jaw-dropping 457 BTC, which amounts to $2.4 million at Bitcoin’s current valuation. To put 457 BTC into perspective, here’s some numbers:‘

457 is the number of BTC mined in 36.5 blocks, which take approximately six hours to process. 457 is approximately 0.002176% of the entire supply of Bitcoin that will ever be mined. Long story short, 457 BTC is quite a hefty sum, that’s for sure.

The Bitcoin Pizza Imbroglio

That led me, personally, to the following question: Could the new owner of this house become the next Laszlo, a BitcoinTalk user who purchased two purportedly Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 BTC (now dozens of millions of dollars) in this community’s earliest days? In other words, could this 457 purchase turn out to be a bad deal over time, as a result of hyperbitcoinization and overall growth in the cryptocurrency market?

The answer: no, likely not. But the purchaser of this property might be missing out on a large amount of upside, especially if Bitcoin fills the need for a digital gold or store of value.

As reported by Ethereum World News previously, Mike Novogratz, a long-time cryptocurrency bull, sat down with Anthony Pompliano to express his thoughts on the Bitcoin market. In the extensive interview, Novogratz explained that while BTC is currently valued at 1% of the total value of all gold on the Earth’s surface ($7 billion to $8 billion), the digital asset could make a move on the precious metal eventually.

He argued that this is a journey that could occur over a 20-year period, rather than a one or two year period. Although such a time frame may turn off those with low time preference, the former Goldman Sachs partner noted that this could “easily happen.” Funnily enough, EOS’ Brendan Blumer also drew attention to this specific period too, explaining in a recent tweet that Bitcoin will make a move on gold’s de-facto go-to store of value status within the next two decades.

If this somewhat quixotic dream comes to fruition, the house purchaser would have missed out on $220 million in gains. Ouch? Maybe, maybe not. We will have to see.

In the coming release of Bitcoin Core, the 18th major version of the cryptocurrency’s most widely used software, the code will finally, natively allow users to connect bitcoin full nodes to hardware wallets.

It sounds technical, but it’s a big step for the security for users. Bitcoin full nodes allow users to verify that transactions actually took place, meanwhile, hardware wallets are considered one of the most secure ways to store bitcoin. Thus, making it easier to join the two together is a big win for users who want full control of their bitcoin – and don’t want to lose it.

Bitcoin Core lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan, who is in charge of coordinating the coming upgrade, told CoinDesk it’s one of the features he’s been most excited about for quite some time.

Still, the change is part of a much broader effort to make bitcoin full nodes easier to use for people other than just tech geeks. Casa, for example, has launched a node that works without much setup necessary, while developers of the bitcoin protocol are constantly trying to reduce how much data users need to store to run one (as users need to store every transaction ever sent on the blockchain, it’s pretty weighty).

As Bitcoin Core contributor Andrew Chow, one of the lead developers on the project, put it on Twitter:

“With this [pull request] merged, the upcoming Bitcoin Core 0.18 release will be finally usable with hardware wallets by using [Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI)].”

He admits it’s “still command line only and manual,” but argued “it’s a big step forward” because the functionality is finally there, even if in a somewhat clunky form. Developers will continue to make it easier to use down the line.

Eating your cake

So first off, why use a bitcoin full node in the first place?

In order to send a transaction on the bitcoin network, users need to connect to a bitcoin node. Full nodes now require a couple of hundred gigabytes of data, which is a lot, enough to fill a small laptop.

But it does serve a purpose, as rather than trust that someone else is feeding you the correct financial information, such as whether you really received a transaction or not, you’re able to validate this information yourself.

As the value proposition of bitcoin is to not trust others, some developers go as far as to argue that using bitcoin in a way that removes the full node defeats the purpose of bitcoin.

Bitcoin Core contributor Sjors Provoost, for example, has argued that running a full node is helpful for “knowing your bitcoin is real,” offering the example of Segwit2x, a proposed bitcoin fork from 2017 in which some companies, miners, and users proposed upgrading bitcoin to a larger block size.

There was concern that in the case Segwit2x broke bitcoin into two, mobile wallets relying on Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) technology would be susceptible to trickery from miners.

“That server can in theory also lie about your balance. In a scenario like SegWit2x, it could decide which side of the fork it wants to show you. With a full node you don’t have to worry about that,” Provoost told CoinDesk.

Then there’s the issue of privacy.

“The wallet software that normally comes with hardware wallets reveals your addresses to a third-party server,” Provoost continued. The full node would replace this wallet software, giving users privacy again.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to the trade-off between convenience and trust,” Bitcoin Core wallet maintainer Samuel Dobson told CoinDesk.

These problems are what’s fueling the idea that maybe one day “everyone” should run this full node software, so they don’t have to trust anyone else to send them accurate financial information.

“Yes, I believe that everybody will eventually run a full node. I wish a future where not having a full node will severely limit your user experience and the realm of things you can do with bitcoin,” as BTCPay creator Nicolas Dorier wrote in a recent blog post.

Secure, offline bitcoin

The other piece is hardware wallets are considered the most secure way to store bitcoin. That’s especially true when compared to storing them on internet-connected computers, which are often totally exposed to hackers.

“PCs are a much larger attack surface than a small dedicated device to store your keys, designed specifically with security in mind. They’re also less prone to random crashes or corruption which could cause you to lose un-backed-up keys on your computer,” Dobson told CoinDesk.

With this new tech in place in the Bitcoin Core software, users can store their bitcoin on an offline hardware wallet, then use their full node to verify the data they’re getting fed, such as transaction data, is correct.

The technology has been a long-time coming. Connecting hardware to a full node is also one of the key goals of Electrum Personal Server, pioneered by developer Chris Belcher. “Hopefully this software can be part of the plan to get full node wallets into the hands of as many people as possible,” he said in the project announcement post last year.

There are pros and cons to each project, though, Provoost admitted.

“The HWI project should reduce the number of separate software components needed, though at the moment I think it’s still less user-friendly [than Electrum Personal Server],” he said.

And there’s still a ways to go to get the graphical interface totally working. “Maybe one day in the future we’ll have this graphical picture that I showed you – and after that we’ll have unicorns,” Provoost said in his presentation on the topic.

Further features

While hardware wallet support in 0.18 has generated much excitement, As usual, the release is filled with other contributions from the pool of global Bitcoin Core contributors.

Dobson told CoinDesk about a few features he finds “exciting,” including refinements to a new “language” that the groundwork was laid for in an earlier version of Bitcoin Core. New commands will allow developers to use this language to “import descriptors.”

“You can provide such a descriptor to Core […] and it will parse it and import the keys, scripts, etc. into your wallet for you,” Dobson said, explaining further:

“This is the first step in a longer term goal to rework the wallet and support these descriptors natively within it, which will clean things up immensely and provide a much more natural behaviours, in line with how you would expect things to behave (and which don’t exactly behave that way currently).”

Dobson also pointed to a new “multiwallet” command, which will allow users to pair with multiple wallets within their bitcoin core full node. While the ability to use multiple wallets at once has existed in the code previously, 0.18.0 plugs the feature in the graphical user interface for the first time, so people no longer have to be full-blown developers using the command line to take advantage of the feature.

“Version 0.18 adds support to the GUI to do that, as well as a few improvements in how it works too,” Dobson said.

As of now, version 0.18 is in the “release candidate” stage of the software development cycle, meaning passionate bitcoin developers and companies are still testing it, picking away at the code in an effort to eradicate any bugs, before it’s released to the larger public to download.

According to project developers, it will be available for users to download in the coming weeks.

The CEO of Bitcoin.com stressed that Ulbricht had already served around six years in jail and urged people to sign a petition for his release. At press time, over 156,300 individuals had signed the petition.

The BCH advocate also revealed that the team was planning to organize a benefit concert for the ‘Free Ross’ campaign in Los Angeles this year.

Ver and many crypto-luminaries had previously criticized the prosecution, terming it too harsh a sentence for creating a mere e-commerce website.

Litecoin’s [LTC] Charlie Lee had also tweeted in support of Ulbricht,

“Whatever you think of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Road, does not deserve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.”

Ulbricht, a first-time offender, is currently serving two life sentences without parole, and an additional 40 years for all non-violent charges associated with the creation of Silk Road. Ulbricht intended Silk Road to be a free market experiment with the underlined idea – to maintain user anonymity, using Tor and Bitcoin. According to Ulbricht, individuals should have the right to trade anything, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. Tor was useful towards this purpose as it helped in maintaining user anonymity by concealing IP addresses.

Princess Eugenie of the United Kingdom and United States anti-human trafficking Ambassador John Richmond recently spoke in favor of using new technology like phone apps and blockchainto address human trafficking, Reuters reports on April 8.

At a conference in Vienna, Austria hosted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), experts noted that increased internet usage has expanded the ability of traffickers to exploit potential targets.

However, Princess Eugenie — the granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth — reportedly noted that technology could also help fight trafficking. Eugenie, who founded the Anti-Slavery Collective in Britain in 2017, said:

“I have learned about how blockchain is having a huge impact on supply chain management, and how an app in Britain can help the public report modern slavery at car washes.”

Eugenie was referring to an initiative by Coca Cola and the U.S. Department of State, and the Safe Car Wash App. The former began in March 2018, and aims to use blockchain technology to create a secure worker registry. The partnership aims to address the problem of forced labor by using blockchain’s validation and digital notary capabilities to create a secure registry for workers and their contracts.

The Safe Car Wash App recently found nearly 1,000 cases of slave labor at car washes in the U.K. The app was launched by the Church of England  and the Catholic Church in England and Wales last June, and allows users to enter their location and enter various indicators of the presence of slave labor, such as whether the establishment only accepts cash, or workers seem fearful.

Citing the Global Slavery Index by human rights group Walk Free Foundation, Reuters reports that there are 136,000 slave laborers in the U.K., which is 10 times higher than in 2013.

Anti-human trafficking Ambassador Richmond noted that technology itself cannot stop human trafficking, saying, “There is not an algorithm or app that is going to stop human trafficking.” Richmond did note however:

“But there are tech tools that can help people to do their job better. This is the slow, grinding, day-in, day-out work that can help make a difference.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would form a commission to study how cryptocurrencies and online marketplaces can be used to facilitate sex and drug trafficking.

Dharma will differentiate itself from others in the market by offering depositors a fixed rate of return on the crypto they make available to lend.

There’s a catch, though: Deposits will only earn interest when the assets are put to use by a borrower.

“We are doing fixed-term loans with fixed rates,” Nadav Hollander, Dharma CEO explained to CoinDesk, adding that the company has also worked hard to improve the user experience for all parties.

He said:

“There are a handful ways to earn interst on your crypto in a non-custodial manner, pretty much all of those require a high degree of technical knowledge.”

Originally announced as an open protocol, Dharma will pivot with this news, from a protocol to a company that’s facilitating the marketplace it created.

“We made a decision strategically as a company to go user-first rather than developer-first,” Hollander said. “With all that being said, the underlying smart contract is still primarily open source.”

Dharma has been facilitating loans already under a pilot that reached 2,500 users, Hollander said. According to a third-party explorer called Dharmalytics created by ConsenSys alum Matt Tyndall, $1.16 million in principal has been borrowed so far across 1,575 loans (as of Friday).

These users have come in under Dharma Lever, but as the startup pivots away from the protocol approach it’s retiring that name. The whole product is now just Dharma.

Brendan Forster, co-founder and COO of Dharma, said in a press release:

“We see the broader shift to blockchain-based financial services as the beginning of a much more efficient, programmable, and equitable financial system.”

How it works

It’s a lot like LendingClub, in that one person lends to another, only in this case it is all crypto.

Dharma has changed a lot since its white paper, which described a platform where outside parties would set themselves up to underwrite loans and facilitate identifying borrowers.

The firm – backed by Green Visor, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain and others – has now re-oriented itself to serve as the sole underwriter.

From a user perspective, this should not change much.

Like the other collateralized crypto lending products out there, Dharma asks that borrowers put up 150 percent of the value of their loan as collateral. Because there is much more demand to lend crypto than to borrow it, borrowers should be matched with a lender fairly quickly. Once they do, they can borrow ETH or DAI on 28-day terms with a fixed interest rate.

It’s at this moment that decentralized finance really stands out, Max Bronstein, the company’s marketing manager, told CoinDesk, because “borrowers get their principal in less than 30 seconds.”

If the value of collateral drops below 125 percent of the principal, the smart contract begins liquidating the borrower’s collateral.

In fact, that’s one of the two key risks that users face, what Hollander calls “volatility risk.” If the price moves badly against a borrower, they could be liquidated or suffer a painful margin call.

The other risk is technical: that Dharma might have made a mistake in writing its smart contracts. Here users are somewhat protected by audits and also the “wisdom of the crowd” brought to bear on open-source smart contracts.

“Those risks are all transparently understood,” Hollander said.

Sourcing supply

Currently, more borrowers are needed to make it all work.

To supply demand on the borrow side, the company is putting in a lot more business development work. Hedge funds that have partnered with Dharma early on to source borrow demand include Passport Capital, Formosa Capital, Spartan Capital and Wyre Capital.

“Although there is a lot of demand for market trading, we think that by making a much more useable interface we will be able to find more use cases,” Bronstein said.

Bronstein argues there will be demand from well-funded ICO startups with large ETH supplies and staff willing to accept DAI in lieu of dollars.

Either way, “There is much more interest in lending cryptocurrencies than there is in borrowing them,” Hollander said.

For now, Dharma is subsidizing lenders somewhat, as rates paid for borrowing are lower than the return lenders receive. Borrowers only pay 2 percent while a lender earns 4 percent on ETH and 5.5 percent on DAI, when their capital is in a loan.

This state of affairs is not unusual in this category right now, however.

“Dharma is far from the only project in the space currently subsidizing the market,” Anil Lulla, a principal at crypto data firm Delphi Digital, told CoinDesk in an email, adding:

“Even centralized options like BlockFi are offering a 6.2 percent return for anything underneath 25 BTC and 500 ETH. These projects are all competing for people’s crypto holdings and need to subsidize temporarily to attract new depositors and quickly gain market share.”

Bronstein struck a similar note.

“We think the winner of that battle will be on identity and brand,” he said. “Prices will converge.”

The DeFi stack

Borrowing and lending sound simple, but in finance, small tweaks make for completely different product lines.

With Unchained Capital and BlockFi, users put up crypto and get back fiat. With Compound, users lend and borrow in crypto, but all the rates float continuously based on real-time demand. With MakerDAO, there’s no loan term at all and an effective balloon payment whenever the user wants.

Dharma probably looks the most like the sort of financing most people are familiar with, but it’s still not quite like personal banking, Hollander emphasizes – except that it’s built to be easy for all participants to understand.

“Our approach is to build a non-custodial DeFi product … that can be used from any crypto wallet, including Coinbase,” he said.

Right now the length of all loans is 28 days. “We are working hard to allow more optionality,” Bronstein said, adding that the startup plans to add three- and six-month loan terms soon.

A few other aspects will change over time. Right now, Dharma subsidizes all of the user’s gas fees, but that may not continue forever. It also plans to eventually charge an origination fee, which will probably be the most notable illustration of its pivot from a protocol to a company.

Said Bronstein:

“We will be a very standard revenue-generating business. A normal company, making revenue off of good software.”

However, as Wood, who is overseeing the case, pointed out during a previous hearing, the exchange does not appear likely to recover. Last week, Ernst and Young (EY), the court-appointed monitor for the exchange, essentially agreed, saying that “the possibility that Quadriga will restructure and emerge from CCAA protection appears remote.”

The transition to bankruptcy will give EY, which will become the exchange’s trustee, greater investigative powers over the company’s missing funds, as well as allow it to begin selling off assets such as its trading platform, which could generate some revenue to make its customers whole.

Despite the decision to place Quadriga in bankruptcy, the stay of proceedings protecting the exchange and its directors from lawsuits will remain in effect a short while longer. Another hearing to discuss extending this stay was previously scheduled for April 18.

Widow’s assets frozen

Wood also ruled to approve an asset preservation order against the estate of Gerald Cotten, the exchange’s deceased founder, and his widow Jennifer Robertson.

Last week, EY explained that Quadriga’s funds “may have been used to acquire assets held outside the corporate entity,” suggesting misuse.

Robertson will retain the ability to send or receive funds through two accounts with the Bank of Nova Scotia, which include a personal account and a corporate account. However, EY will oversee any such activity.

All of Robertson’s other assets, including those held by her firms Robertson Nova Consulting Inc., Robertson Nova Property Management Inc. and the Seaglass Trust, will be frozen.

In addition to ruling on Robertson’s assets, participants during the hearing addressed third-party payment processors which may still possess funds belonging to Quadriga.

Billerfy, Costodian and 1009926 B.C. have until April 18 to work out how they want to share information with EY. Alto Bureau de Change and Black Banx (formerly WB21) are being compelled to return any assets they hold. Another processor, VoPay, said it will turn over all funds without asking for a service fee. EY has also been granted access to the systems of another processor, POSConnect.

A number of questions remain unanswered, including whether Quadriga actually holds the funds it claims to, how many creditors there are and whether EY has had any luck in accessing the exchange’s databases. A fifth progress report from EY is expected to be published by April 18.

he World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report about blockchain cybersecurity on April 5.

The report points out that most data breaches do not result from the level of skill of the hackers, but instead happen because appropriate security measures often are not implemented. The WEF further claims that while attackers do compromise blockchains themselves, they much more often try to exploit or compromise their deployment.

The WEF references the data breach of retail giant Target, which lead to both the CEO and chief information officer being fired, also mentioning that the director of the United StatesGovernment Office of Personnel Management and the co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment were forced to resign after a different data breach.

With the above in mind, the WEF notes that leadership plays a role in the security of a blockchain.

The report states that cybersecurity should be recognized as a core leadership discipline, and cites a related study by security journalist Brian Krebs. According to the aforementioned study, only 5% of the top 100 companies have a dedicated cybersecurity leader.

The WEF recommends that blockchain-related company heads establish a cybersecurity leadership position in their organization and ensure that the position is empowered enough to take the necessary actions.

As Cointelegraph reported in March, Israeli fintech companies that work with forex and crypto trading have been targeted by malware, according to a blog post from threat research department Unit 42 of cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks.

Also in March, Cointelegraph wrote that the number of hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices and cryptocurrency networks in Japan nearly doubled in 2018 when compared to the previous year.

The United States-based startup Sparkswap has completed a successful seed funding round to create a decentralized exchange based on the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network. A blog post revealed the development on Monday, April 8.

According to Sparkswap’s founder Trey Griffith, the company raised $3.5 million from investors including Initialized Capital, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital and Y Combinator.

The startup intends to create a decentralized exchange that will be protected from hacks, while still processing transactions on blockchain.

Sparkswap started testing its mainnet on Jan. 2, 2019, which is driven by Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Its core technology, Atomic Swap, allows users to trade across blockchains and settle the transactions instantly.

Following the seed round, the company is going to open trading to the public. In the beta stage, the transactions will be limited to the BTC/LTC trading pair while Sparkswap is testing its software.

However, Griffith told crypto media The Block that the company is considering enabling trading for other assets, namely ZCash (ZEC) and Ethereum (ETH).

Earlier this month, Radar, the startup behind decentralized exchange Radar Relay that raised $10 million last year, announced that it will soon release new Lightning Network developer tools. The solutions aim to bring new users to the crypto scalability solution, which was developed to provide nearly free and instantaneous transactions.

As Cointelegraph previously reported, blockchain development company Lightning Labs announced the initial release of the Lightning Network offramp Lightning Loop in March.

Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk by analytics firm Dapp Review, dapps on the tron network facilitated $1.6 billion in activity in the first quarter of 2019, with more than 432,000 estimated users. In total, 64 percent of dapps on the tron network now facilitate gambling, the study said.

These days, tron gambling apps range from digital dog racing to a “farm investment game” that promises players up to 100 times their initial token investment.

On the strength of such games, tron dapp volume surged to a new high in March 2019, according to Dapp Review’s data, with more than $102 million worth of transactions on March 15 alone – compared to roughly $16 million worth of volume the same day on EOS dapps and just under $4 million in daily volume on ethereum dapps.

Stepping back, Tron became independent from ethereum in June 2018 after the namesake Tron Foundation ran a $70 million token sale in 2017. Dapp Review CEO Vincent Niu told CoinDesk that EOS– another ethereum-inspired blockchain that also went live in June 2018 – surpassed ethereum when gamblers deterred by ethereum’s high fees flocked to EOS in late 2018.

The tron community took notice and began courting ethereum developers as well.

“In October 2018, we were contacted by representatives from the tron network and they asked us to participate in their accelerator,” Moscow-based Ruslan Marinov, founder of the casino dapp 888tron, told CoinDesk.

Tron gained its market advantage thanks to the popularity of such online gambling sites, Niu said.

Dapp Review’s Q1 2019 report estimates that 27 percent of tron dapps are casino games, with another 36 percent deemed “high risk” gambling games. The report found that just 37 percent of ethereum dapps that fall into both categories combined. (“High risk” gambling involves very little gameplay and a smart contract that determines payouts.)

Daily volume on Tron (yellow), EOS (green) and Ethereum (blue). (Chart courtesy of Dapp Review)

Attracting developers

Tron founder Justin Sun, in particular, has been a catalyst to the growth of this sector.

Although the Tron Foundation released a statement in March discouraging unlawful gambling dapps in Japan, the founders of several global gambling dapps told CoinDesk they received $10,000 or more worth of the stablecoin Tether as rewards for building their games for the Tron Accelerator hackathon in December 2018.

According to a Tron spokesperson, those funds came from Sun’s personal accounts and not the company itself.

It’s unclear how involved the Tron Foundation is in financially bolstering this gambling sector, beyond listing the games on the company’s official websites. A Tron spokesperson declined to comment on dapp gambling. We will update the story if we hear back.

“The blockchain itself brings a lot of freedom to people from, for example, China,” 888tron’s Marinov said. “By using a VPN they can gamble or use many other services.”

While developers across the ecosystem continue to make gambling portals on many blockchains, Sun’s recruiting strategy appears to have been particularly effective.

Dapp categories on the Tron network. (Chart courtesy of Dapp Review)

According to data provided to CoinDesk by the blockchain analytics firm Flipside Crypto, the price of tron tokens surged in early January, when these gambling dapps launched, and developer contributions have remained stable ever since.

However, Dapp Review’s Niu was less optimistic regarding overall engagement.

“Actually most of the users are just fake accounts,” he said. “If you look to the future, I’d say ethereum has more potential because a lot of people are working on token standards and other infrastructures.”

That said, Niu told CoinDesk that dapp transaction data suggests some players are merely using dapps to get tokens, especially in jurisdictions that forbid purchasing TRX with fiat.

On the other hand, EOS advocate and Sense CTO Ben Sigman told CoinDesk:

“People whose businesses and services are limited by governments are going to seek new areas to expand to where those limitations and laws aren’t present yet. That’s why gambling was a big part of the early internet too.”

Tokenized income

Niu said it’s still difficult for open-source developers to monetize their contributions to the blockchain ecosystem. Gambling dapps provide a conduit for such earnings, he said.

Marinov, for example, leads a team of 15 contributors. His token-fueled casino has an average of 1,500 daily users, which solely identify themselves with crypto wallet addresses. 888tron players bet TRX tokens and receive dapp dividend tokens for each bet, of which Marinov says $9 million worth of TRX dividends have already been paid out in the three months since launch.

“We have plans to organize a company, to set up an entity with the necessary licenses, all the legal stuff, starting in July of this year,” Marinov said. “We are investigating the best jurisdiction.”

Overall, Marinov estimated $300 million worth of TRX passed through the 888tron dapp alone.

In return, offering these developers prize money pays off tenfold for the Tron Foundation. Players cashing out 888tron dapp tokens contributed significant volume to the March 15 spike in tron dapp volume.

“Blockchain is the best solution for gambling and for gaming,” Marinov said. “Tron is a great blockchain. We were actually choosing from three blockchains, ethereum, EOS and tron. … They [the Tron Foundation] support developers.”

Tron (TRX) founder and CEO Justin Sun claimed that he thinks the Tron ecosystem will “officially collaborate” with Ethereum (ETH) this year. Sun made his comments during an interview on The Crypto Chick podcast on April 6.

More precisely, Sun said that he thinks “even within this year we will see Tron even collaborate, officially collaborate, with Ethereum.” In response to a question on Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s recent tweets about Tron, Sun stated that he thinks “competition brings a better product.” Sun also added:

“I think in the future we will even collaborate with lots of Ethereum developers and also the enterprises built on Ethereum before to make the industry better.”

Sun also announced that a second layer scalability solution for Tron, which he claims will increase transaction throughput at least 100 times and dramatically decrease fees, will be deployed in Q2 2019. Sun had recently tweeted about the solution — dubbed Sun Network — but had evidently refrained from naming a launch date.

During the podcast, Sun also noted that the Tron-based version of stablecoin Tether (USDT) is set to launch on April 9. Sun argued that the Tron-based version of the stalwart stablecoin will permit cheaper and faster transactions than the Bitcoin (BTC)-based Omni protocol USDT.

Sun also noted that in the second quarter of this year, Tron will also introduce a “new network with a privacy option,” based on the technology used by altcoin Zcash (ZEC).

As Cointelegraph reported in March, two major crypto exchanges — Singapore-headquartered Huobi Global and Malta-based OKEx — have announced their support for the Tron-based version of USDT.

On Friday, Radar, the startup behind decentralized exchange Radar Relay, which raised $10 million last year, announced that it will release newdeveloper tools for the blockchain scalability tool Lightning Network.

There have been publications by Bloomberg and other media houses last year regarding Bitcoin and the drastic drop in 2018. According to these sensational publications, BTC prices plunging by more than 80 percent after peaking in late 2017 was a clear indication that the world’s most valuable asset is indeed a “Bubble” ready to pop.

In their report, Bloomberg reports insisting that, “an asset bubble is just a rapid rise and abrupt crash in prices. Defenders of the efficient-market theory argue that these price movements are based on changes in investor’s beliefs about an asset’s true value.”

While claiming that it was a bubble, Bloomberg added that Bitcoin didn’t have the characteristics of previous bubbles. The report stated that the spectacular rise and fall of the cryptocurrency was due to some irrational behavior of new market entrants and poorly informed investors. UBS in its post in 2017 pointed out that BTC has all the hallmarks of a bubble. The bank advised its clients not to invest in the crypto market.

Ran NeuNer Defending Bitcoin

Ran NeuNer has now come out to note that he wouldn’t respect any publication that still calls Bitcoin a bubble as the price has dropped to currently trading at the $5,000 mark. In a Tweet, he says: “I can’t respect any publication that is still calling Bitcoin a bubble. Even if it was a bubble last year, I’ve never seen a bubble pop twice!”

The cryptocurrency market expert in his post pointed out that he hasn’t seen a bubble pop twice, and since the Bitcoin had crashed last year, then it would no longer pop again. NeuNer, while responding to a post on CNBC added that he expects that the talks of cryptocurrency collapse should be a thing of the past.

NeuNer added that “I would imagine two things by now; 1. Talk of Cryptocurrency collapse is a thing of the past. Not only is it here to stay but everyone knows this by now! 2. CNBC would be smarter in their selection of guests and articles.”

But he’s not alone. His sentiment is shared by a cryptocurrency market writer and expert, Joseph Young, who is of the opinion that if NASDAQ was able to double in value following its plunge during the dotcom bubble and the 2008 financial crisis, then Bitcoin has the potential to recover quickly in the medium term.

Bitcoin and crypto recorded 80% decline in 2018, worse than the dot com bubble, so they can't survive!

Well, Bitcoin had 83% correction in 2013 and 87% correction in 2014-15. So already, it survived from two dot com-like crashes in the past five years.https://t.co/3rLVsANh2p

— Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) September 12, 2018

According to his analysis, Young added that the BTC price surging past its 200-day moving average for the first time in 16 months is an indication that it Bitcoin could rally in the short-term. Bloomberg’s emerging markets analyst Michael Patterson adds that if the bottom was $3,122, then the cryptocurrency could be en route to a substantial increase in price movement over the coming years.

Since breaking past the $5,000 barrier, Bitcoin has been able to retain that price and could be on its way to surge higher over the coming weeks. So far, BTC has recorded a 60 percent increase in price since the start of the year.

With Bitcoin (BTC) recently surmounting $5,000 in a move that came straight out of left field, some are sure that bears are done. Jonathan, a forex and cryptocurrency trader, however, recently explained that it would be unfair to assume that the bear market is over. In fact, in a recent Twitter post, he seemed to hint that proclaiming a bear trend over is irresponsible.

There's a lot of self-congratulating/circle-jerking that "I"/"we" called the bear-market-over bottom & start of the new bull market. Pretty sure this happened w every $BTC rally since Jan 2018. Most of them made that same call, multiple times, in 2018. Should be the same outcome. pic.twitter.com/wzSzx3Onbc

— Jonathan (@jcho710) April 6, 2019

He recently explained that this same cycle of optimists calling for an end to the bear after a short-term, emotion-inducing spike always ended in disaster, looking to Bitcoin’s bear market rallies throughout 2018. Past performance isn’t indicative of future action, but considering the reliability of short-term upticks resulting in an eventual move to fresh lows, Johnathan might have a point. Certain technical indicators, too, could also be hinting that a move lower is inbound.

Nunya Bizniz recently wrote on Twitter that the last time Bitcoin’s one-week Guppy, a technical indicator that weighs moving averages to predict price trends, looked as it is now, BTC rallied into the top of its range, before a final capitulation event, which brought the cryptocurrency lower than the seeming bottom. Thus, if history repeats, BTC will move to as high as $5,600 in the coming weeks, before a rapid sell-off that brings the asset under $3,000 for mere days.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which reported consolidated revenues of $19 billion for the year ending March 31, 2018, says its Quartz blockchain solution now works with RippleNet.

“The Quartz Cross Border Remittances solution enables banks/payments systems to connect to newer DLT based payment infrastructures (like RippleNet) for processing of Cross border FX remittance transactions.

The Quartz Gateway seamlessly connects the TCS BaNCS Payments system to the blockchain based Payments platform using APIs, and supports services related to FX Quote finalization and debit/credit of beneficiary accounts. Leveraging this approach, existing/core systems operational at banks/ other payment institutions need not undergo changes in connecting to the blockchain platform, as this complexity is absorbed by the Quartz Gateway.”

TCS is part of Tata Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. The company says its global banking platform called TCS BaNCS services more than a quarter of the world’s population, processing more than one billion accounts.

“Deployed at more than 450 installations worldwide, it is the largest collection of components, enterprise and consumer apps for the financial industry made available through the cloud, helping firms become more agile and intelligent by leveraging the power of new and extended ecosystems.”

The company describes its blockchain solution Quartz as an API that connects to existing distributed ledger payment infrastructures and blockchain platforms to give companies the ability to implement near real-time settlement of remittances and lower foreign exchange conversion fees. It enable instantaneous tracking of transactions, boosts liquidity and reduces audit overheads.

Back in March, TCS announced Quartz will utilize Microsoft’s Azure blockchain cloud and R3’s Corda Enterprise blockchain platform.

The company has not specified which of Ripple’s suite of cross-border software solutions its Quartz platform connects to, or whether it supports Ripple’s XRP-powered xRapid. However, R3’s Corda Settler remittance platform does support XRP, which means XRP integration would be relatively easy for Quartz to offer its clients.

Says Rajesh Gopinathan, chief executive officer and managing director,

“On a secular basis, as large segments of the economy go through churn driven by digital disruption, enterprises are responding with technology-powered strategies – as in algorithmic retailing or connected cars – creating a huge opportunity for services providers like us.

Our investments in research and innovation, our deep domain and contextual knowledge, intellectual property and our collaborative approach to co-innovation, have been key to our participation in this opportunity.”

The Nasdaq, which plunged in value following both the dotcom bubble and financial crisis, more than doubled in value in the following five years of post-bubble recovery. Like the Nasdaq, bitcoin could recover rapidly in the medium-term, analysis suggests.

The Nasdaq more than recovered from both the dotcom bubble crash and the financial crisis. | Source: Yahoo Finance

With the 200-day moving average of bitcoin reversing its trend for the first time in 16 months and various technical indicators demonstrating a positive near-term trend for the asset, many industry executives and investment firms like Pantera Capital believe bitcoin has bottomed out.

IF $3,122 WAS THE BOTTOM, BITCOIN IS EN ROUTE TO A STRONG RECOVERY

As suggested by Bloomberg’s emerging markets analyst Michael Patterson, if bitcoin found its bottom at $3,122 in December 2018, the dominant cryptocurrency may be en route to a strong upside price movement in the years to come.

“If Bitcoin has in fact bottomed out, history suggests there could be further upside. The Nasdaq more than doubled in the five years after its post-bubble low and has since reached record highs that are well above its peak during dot-com mania,” Patterson wrote.”

Since hitting its 12-month low, the bitcoin price has rebounded to $5,000, recording a staggering 60 percent increase in value within less than four months.

Bitcoin is up 60 percent since December. | Source: CoinMarketCap

Previously, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist Mark Dow said that bitcoin investors should head for the exits if the asset fails to recover to the $5,000 to $6,000 region, as it would lead the asset vulnerable to a potentially large downside movement.

WHAT MAKES ANALYSTS CONFIDENT BITCOIN FOUND ITS BOTTOM?

Earlier this week, economist and global markets analyst Alex Krüger said that whether bitcoin has reached its bottom at $3,122 or not is not up for debate.

Purely based on technical indicators and data, Krüger emphasized that when the bitcoin price crossed $4,200, it broke out of its 16-month bear trend.

He said:

“The crypto bear market has been over for three months now. BTC breaking above $4,200 will mark the end of the bear trend that started in January 2018. Going to miss this big fellow.”

“This is not a call. Not a matter of aging well or not. A break above 4200 technically ends the bear trend that started Jan 2018. Facts don’t care about opinions. If strong selling resumes later on, that would represent a different trend.”

Moreover, fundamental analysts have said that there exist billions of dollars waiting on the sidelines in the cryptocurrency market to be allocated to crypto assets in the future.

Nearly $3 billion ready to flow into BTC and alts. https://t.co/kWTNCtbyZM

— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) April 5, 2019

The caution of strategists in the financial sector is that in the 1990s when Japan’s Nikkei plunged during an intense correction, it struggled to recover until 2009.

However, it is difficult to compare the price trend of bitcoin and major stock markets because of contrasting environments.

As seen in previous bull runs of the cryptocurrency market, cryptocurrencies tend to move in cycles. When the market is on an upside trend, parabolic movements are often spotted. When the market initiates a downward movement, it often suffers intensified volatility.

BITCOIN MOVES IN SHORT TIME FRAMES

Thomas Lee, the head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, said that bitcoin tends to record its biggest gains in a 10-day time frame of every year.

2/ Reminder that BTC generally generates all of its performance within 10D of any year.
–ex the top 10 days, BTC is down 25% annually since 2013 pic.twitter.com/zoEocEEZvu

— Thomas Lee (@fundstrat) April 2, 2019

As such, the way bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency market behave in terms of short-term price movement is drastically different than how major markets such as the stock market of Japan moves.

Industry executives remain confident that bitcoin has established its bottom because of the level of activity in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry across all leading markets including the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.

Speaking with host Rachel Wolfson, Sun says the importance of stablecoins is that they’re tied to fiat and are not exposed to the fluctuations of the crypto markets, allowing innovators and developers in the cryptosphere to more easily penetrate the payments industry, which requires a stable medium of exchange. Stablecoins also appeal to traders who want to be able to store the value of their cryptocurrencies without constant exposure to major price fluctuations.

Last month Tron (TRX) partnered with Tether to issue a new USDT coin on Tron’s network. Sun says it’s slated to launch on April 9th. The new TRC20-based USDT will support Tron’s growing network of decentralized applications including its popular gaming and gambling DApps.

“The stablecoin is the most important thing when we come to the infrastructure and the whole industry.”

“I think this partnership means to the industry that in the future the USDT will be more reliable, faster and cheaper.”

According to Sun, when the price of Bitcoin (BTC) spiked by 20% on April 1, the network struggled to meet customer demands for USDT transactions. Whenever there are big BTC price spikes or declines, Sun says the network fails to deliver peak efficiency. So the goal is to move USDT from its Bitcoin-based protocol called Omni to a better network: Tron. Sun says the move will benefit not only Tron but its competitors, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

“It’s impossible to use the USDT on-chain, and all of these problems will be solved after we launch the USDT Tron, and we migrate the majority of the USDT-Omni to USDT-Tron.”

“I think it will benefit the whole industry. Most of the congestion and the bad experience of the stablecoin comes from the Omni blockchain because this is an obsolete solution with extremely expensive, slow and also unreliable infrastructure for the stablecoin.”

Sun makes a pitch to big investors by establishing a fully functional stablecoin that he says will make payments and trades much more seamless and stable. Based on the TRC20 protocol, the smart stablecoin will support smart contracts and will introduce a privacy option as well.

“We’re getting lots of interest from these institutional investors. I think we’ll do everything to fulfill their requests because when the institutional investor gets into this industry they have lots of requests.”

“Lots of institutions don’t want people to know they’re buying cryptocurrencies. They don’t want people to know their accounts. They don’t want people to know how much money is in their accounts.”

After addressing the needs of crypto traders, Sun’s strategy for the stablecoin involves a second phase: cross-border payments for consumers. Sun is eying use cases that will allow Tron to compete with Stripe and Square which serve mobile users and e-commerce payments for merchants and shoppers.

“We definitely already have some enterprise partners onboard right now – so everybody can stay tuned for our announcement.”

Sun also addressed the Twitter account of Vitalik Buterin, co-creator of Ethereum, Tron’s primary competitor.

Toward a brighter tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/7FAWC7TS8z

— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) April 1, 2019

Sun, who has dished out his fair share of Twitter trolling, goofy jabs and snappy comebacks – largely involving avocados – seems to welcome the competition with open arms.

“We all know that Tron and Ethereum are competing in the DApp obsession, for sure, but I think that definitely produces a better product. So I think the competition between the Ethereum and the Tron benefits the whole industry, benefits all the DApp developers, benefits the DApp users as well. So definitely, I think this is a good sign. And also, in terms of the comments recently he made and the picture – first of all, I think by now I’m an advocator of the true love and the love and the brotherhood of the industry. I think in the future we will even collaborate with lots of the Ethereum developers.”

Sun highlighted a recent collaboration with Ethereum developers of the Loom Network, a second-layer Ethereum scaling solution.

“I think even within this year, we will see Tron even collaborate – officially collaborate – with Ethereum doing something good for the industry.”

Sun says Tron will launch its layer-2 scalability solution in Q2.

“This means 100x scalability. So right now Tron transactions are around 3-4 million every day, and this means that after the layer-2 solution being introduced to the Tron network, this is going to be at least a 100x-plus transactions in the future. And also the fee will be decreased dramatically. So I think this is huge news for all the Tron developers and also the users.”

Last month, reports surfaced on crypto mining research conducted by tech conglomerate Cisco with the following headline: “College kids are using campus electricity to mine crypto.”

Indeed, many students don’t have to worry about paying power bills, as per their university housing contracts, which tend to cover electricity expenses. That “free” power allows them to host cost-efficient mining rigs, where the only expense is the actual hardware. It almost seems too good to be true: Mining students receive a passive income, which can potentially cover the purchase of a few textbooks — or even pay for the whole semester and more.

However, there’s a catch: No electricity is actually free, and someone ultimately has to pay the price.

How popular is mining among students?

Cisco’s security researchers investigated cryptocurrency mining activity across various industry verticals. The research was carried out with the company’s cloud security platform Umbrella, which monitors clients’ network connections to screen malicious activity, allegedly revealing incidents of crypto mining.

According to the findings, university campuses are the second-biggest miners of virtual currency across industry verticals at 22 percent, second only to the energy and utilities sector, with about 34 percent.

As Cointelegraph reported, miner revenues began to wane in 2018 (the last full year for statistics), thanks to the crypto winter and its attendant price drop. That made mining less profitable. But hash rates have continued to increase, indicating that the global mining pool continues to grow, even as individual miners come and go.

Cisco threat researcher Austin McBride explained the trend to PCMag, saying that "you leave [the mining rig] running in your dorm room for four years, you walk out of college with a big chunk of change."

While running mining rigs in dorm rooms, students purportedly avoid electricity costs associated with cryptocurrency mining profitability, said McBride, adding:

"Mining difficulty for a lot of coins is very high right now — which means it costs more for electricity and internet than the profit you can produce from mining those coins. If you don't have to pay for those costs, then you are in a really good spot for making money on the university's dime."

Cointelegraph reached out to Cisco and Cisco Umbrella to clarify which campuses were monitored, but has yet to receive a response.  

A similar report was conducted earlier in March 2018, when cyber attack monitoring firm Vectra found out that both intentional cryptocurrency mining and cryptojacking was becoming more prevalent on college campuses than in any other industry.

As per Vectra, universities are not able to monitor their networks as closely as large corporations with high-budget IT departments, “at best [advising] students on how to protect themselves and the university by installing operating system patches and creating awareness of phishing emails, suspicious websites and web ads.”

Students who take advantage of this “free power,” in turn, are “simply being opportunistic as the value of cryptocurrencies surged over the past year,” Vectra’s blog post stated. Matt Walmsley, Europe, Middle East and Africa director at Vectra, told Cointelegraph that, while the scope of their research was international, he cannot disclose which universities participated in the study:

“The data was provided by from education establishments around the world on the understanding that any identifying information would remain anonymous.”

Therefore, while it is difficult to pinpoint the hot spots for college virtual currency mining on the map, the phenomenon seems to be quite popular overall. According to the 2019 Vectra report issued earlier this year, “cryptocurrency mining has surged in popularity with students and criminals, particularly among universities with large student populations.”

Is it really that simple?

One of the main things about mining in university housing conditions is that it has to be discreet — otherwise, the wardens might hear the noise and start investigating. Mark D’Aria, founder and CEO of Bitpro, a New York-based installation and mining operation management firm, told Cointelegraph:

“I suspect the vast majority of mining from college campuses isn't from what you would think of as mining ‘rigs’ — those giant machines with multiple GPUs [graphics processing units], purpose built for mining. ASICs [application-specific integrated circuits] are also certainly going to be extremely rare simply because they're so loud and hot that no one is going to tolerate them in their dorm room for very long. The student is going to need to explain that, and he's not going to get away with it for long.”

Instead, most of the mining seems to be coming from students' old-fashioned PCs, the Bitpro CEO suggested. Notably, casual machines could provide their owners with a moderate income even during the current, bearish market. Given that additional electricity-related expenses are covered by a third-party, of course. According to D’Aria:

“A gaming rig with a single high end GPU could produce maybe $1/day. But even a run of the mill laptop could produce a few cents as well. The important thing to recognize is that even though $1/day is small — if you don't have to pay for electricity, there's no reason for someone with a gaming rig or reasonably powerful laptop *not* to mine. It's literally free money.”

Moreover, generating cryptocurrency with a computer does not necessarily require substantial technical skills and knowledge. “It's extremely easy to do with services such as NiceHash [a crypto cloud mining marketplace], which can be set to automatically mine when you're not using your PC like a screen saver,” D’Aria added.

Indeed, Tom (a pseudonym to maintain confidentiality), a University of Mississippi pharmaceutical sciences student, told Cointelegraph that he used NiceHash with his gaming PC to mine Bitcoin for about two months, but soon decided to abandon the idea because of the continuously high workload and rising GPU prices:

“I was able to make about $120 USD if the price of bitcoin had stayed at $15,000. With bitcoin currently around $4,000 USD it may be profitable, considering I was getting free electricity. However, because of the strain on the system, plus the overinflated prices of GPUs, I wouldn’t do it anymore.”

Tom specified that, being a resident advisor in the dormitory, he was able to make inroads with the local maintenance assistant. That allowed him to make sure that his floor had sufficient air conditioning to host a miner:

“It would be impossible to tell if I had my PC on all the time, especially since it was a huge, 11- story building.”

Tom’s room felt chilly during the winter months, so additional heat was actually useful. He said, “I just used my computer instead of a space heater.”

However, sometimes, mining students get exposed. Ken (a pseudonym to maintain confidentiality), an Arizona State University undergraduate who studies applied physics, showed Cointelegraph a screenshot of an alleged email from a university staff member. In it, Ken was being informed that the security team “has detected a coin miner program” on two of his devices.

“We would like you to either uninstall the programs, or run a virus scan in the event that you were unaware of these programs, as this is indicative of malware on your devices,” it stated.

Ken indeed was using NiceHash at the time, as he confirmed to Cointelegraph. After consulting with fellow miners on the r/BitcoinMining subreddit, he decided to use a virtual private network (VPN) whenever he was mining, saying: “I already had one, and I made sure that it turned on startup and the internet kill switch was active so they couldn’t track me.”

However, once Ken had managed to mine “a couple of hundred dollars,” NiceHash was hacked, and the student lost a large percentage of his funds, as he hadn’t yet moved them to a private wallet.

Chris Partridge is a computing security graduate from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), who also mined cryptocurrency during his time in college, starting in 2015 and continuing until mid-2016. “I was curious about Bitcoin and that seemed like a good way to learn,” he told Cointelegraph. His setup was a bit more advanced compared with Tom and Ken, as he used “a couple” of Antminers, a BFL Monarch and a Prospero X1. Consequently, the amount of heat produced by his equipment was significantly higher:

“None of them [the mining rigs] were remotely current-gen even at the time, and all of them were heavily underclocked/undervolted/modded to be cooler and quieter. Living up in Rochester [New York), where it was freezing all the time, we had our window open 24/7 (even during blizzards!) and the miners pointed out into it, or else it became too hot in our living areas very quickly. It was a bit of a strain for my roommate and I, but he was a good sport about things.”

Partridge said that he was never caught in the act, despite a couple of room checks that occurred due to unrelated reasons. “Nobody seemed to care,” he said. “Especially since it was a very small operation — I suppose I came off as a bit eccentric, but no further investigation was prompted.”

Even though it wasn’t a profit-focused endeavor for the former RIT student, he walked away with around 0.4 BTC, which he then sold for a hefty sum of $6,000. The earnings came at just the right time: Partridge needed cash that would carry him through to an internship. After spending the money on general living expenses for a few months, he even had some left over for nonessential shopping:

“I also bought a Roomba, because if there's anything I'm going to spend profits from magic internet money on, it's a Roomba.”

There are even larger success stories: Marco Streng, co-founder and CEO of Genesis Mining, a large cloud mining company whose farms are located across several countries, claims that he essentially started his business out of a dorm room back in 2013. He declined to specify which university he went to, however, saying that it’s “the same anywhere in the world.”

“There was this kind of sauna atmosphere in my 10-13 square meter room, and the noise was really loud,” he told Cointelegraph. “We tried to mitigate it by putting some pillows over the miner and put it closer to the window to cool it down.”

Streng said that, while the uproar was attracting attention, his neighbors didn’t seem disturbed. “I mean, I found it annoying, but it was a trade-off for me,” he added. “I was excited, passionate, and there was an economical aspect — it created some money.”

Around 2014, Streng realized that the local student community had started to actively set up their own mining rigs across campus. “The rumour was spreading, so it [mining] got some traction,” he recalled. “The electricity bill of the student dorm went up quite significantly.”

When crypto market began growing and Streng’s activity became increasingly profitable, he realized that he could run “a few thousand of those machines,” establishing a mining operation on an industrial scale.

“That lead to the creation of Genesis Mining, one of the largest mining companies,” Streng told Cointelegraph. “I’m really happy that I did that in my dorm and found that opportunity. Otherwise, it would never have come this far.”

How legal and ethical is that?

While no university seems to have a specific policy in regard to cryptocurrency mining on its premises, in January of 2018, Stanford University issued a public warning against crypto mining on campus, arguing that school resources “must not be used for personal financial gain.” The warning also cited the university’s chief information security officer:

“Cryptocurrency mining is most lucrative when computing costs are minimized, which unfortunately has led to compromised systems, misused university computing equipment, and personally owned mining devices using campus power.”

Indeed, many universities seem to prohibit the use of their resources for personal financial gain — including the ones observed in this article. RIT’s code of conduct for computer use, for instance, states the following:

“No member of the RIT community may use an RIT computing account or any communications equipment that is owned or maintained by RIT to run a business or commercial service or to advertise for a commercial organization or endeavor. [...] Consistent with other specific policies, members of the RIT community should not waste university resources or use them for personal benefit or for the benefit of a non-university entity.”

However, not having specific rulesets for cryptocurrency mining might actually induce tax problems for educational institutions who (unwillingly or not) host such activity on their premises. As Selva Ozelli, international tax attorney and CPA, told Cointelegraph:

“Given that electricity is usually included in a student's tuition or rent, Universities would need to set policy as to whether they will allow cryptocurrency mining on campus premises or not or whether students should be charged extra for electrical expenses relating to cryptocurrency mining. If Universities do not set proper policy in this regard, they could subject themselves to tax problems. Because section 4, Q&A-8 of Notice 2014-21 states that cryptocurrency mining which is treated as a service activity should be treated as ordinary income in the year it is mined, and the expenses of mining — including electrical charges — deducted as incurred based on the matching of income and expenses."  

From an ethical point of view, the situation is also quite complex, and opinions vary even among those who benefited from mining on campus.

“I pay to have the room and since no explicit details in my contract punished overuse of electricity I figured I was fine, especially since I would have had to use a space heater anyway because students couldn’t control the temperatures in their own rooms,” said Tom from the University of Mississippi, denying that he was in the wrong for setting up a mining rig in his room.

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Partridge was more critical. “I don't believe it's ethical to mine at scale on college campuses,” he told Cointelegraph. “The electricity being ‘free’ to me isn't the same as the electricity being free, unfortunately.” The former RIT student recalled that he burned around $200 while mining in his dormarty, “assuming they get pretty solid commercial electrical rates.” He continued:

“Most people who claim that mining on campuses is ethical don't take into account an important second variable: this is not without risk. Student housing isn't designed to accommodate large quantities of electronic equipment, and couldn't suppress or otherwise contain electrical fires - that could easily lead to massive property damage and loss of life.”

Streng, the Genesis Mining CEO, believes that, while students can contribute to the decentralized network via mining, they shouldn’t exploit the resources of their universities and inform the local administration, if possible. “I think it’s great if a student wants to do it [mine in his/her room] and is excited about it,” he said. “But of course they have to pay their bills.” He continued:

“The new side-effect of the whole cryptocurrency idea is that someone living in a small room can turn electricity to money. There are many institutional setups — not only in education — when someone is paying for the electricity of a specific area, while residents have to pay a flat contribution no matter how much electricity they consume. I think those providers should be aware of these possibilities now and that people can make use of them. They should respect that and draft it into their agreements.”

Therefore, if universities continue to largely overlook mining on their premises, the phenomenon is likely to stay, allowing students to at least earn some beer money.

“I can't imagine any college student is going to turn down $30/month or even $5/month,” said D’Aria of Bitpro. “Even though they're dealing with small amounts on an individual basis, dorm room mining is introducing cryptocurrencies to a whole generation of young adults. It doesn't take them long to figure out how easy and useful it is to use something like Ethereum to split the cost of a 12 pack of natty ice — particularly when there's no credit card statement their parents can keep an eye on.”

Hashstac, a subsidiary of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange Group (GSX Group), has partnered with Singapore-based technology company STO Global-X to facilitate the issuance of tokens. The development was announced by the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GBX) on April 5.

GSX Group’s subsidiary Hashtacs Inc. and STO Global-X will jointly launch an integrated Tokenized Securities Exchange product that will purportedly allow stock exchanges and other qualified financial institutions to tokenize assets and boost trading, clearing and settling of digital securities.

“The collaboration aims to integrate STO Global-X’s tokenization platform and exchange technology with Hashstacs’ Securities Asset Trading Classification Settlement (STACS) Network. The solution will include an institutional-grade security token exchange and trading platform complete with multi-factor authentication and military-grade encryption,” the release further explains.

Last December, the GBX — which is another subsidiary of the GSX — announced that it is offering insurance on all of the assets listed on its platform through the partnership with local firm Callaghan Insurance Brokers. The police stated that “all assets in the custody of the GBX are fully insured, including both hot and cold wallets,” and it also “covers all forms of professional indemnity.”

GBX was launched in July of last year and raised a total of $27 million in funding. Over the past 24 hours, the exchange registered about $1.5 million in trades, currently placing it in 126th place on CoinMarketCap’s exchange rankings by adjusted trade volume.

— Jason Choi (@mrjasonchoi) April 6, 2019

Least Followed Crypto Funds Doing Well

Choi did not exclusively mention those Asian crypto funds nor did he provide statistics that could measure their success against the US crypto funds. He nevertheless gave a list containing funds that were playing a vital role in bridging the gap between the mainstream finance and cryptocurrencies. NewsBTC found that almost all of them had fewer Twitter followers.

Singapore-based Block Crafters Capital, for instance, had a one-year-old Twitter account with only 65 followers to its credit. Apparently, the fund was one of the major contributors to Aergo’s $30 million-fundraiser, a project that reportedly raised funding from Samsung and POSCO.

The blockchain project’s market valuation has been increasing since it went live across limited cryptocurrency exchanges. In December 2018, Aergo was worth $2.2 million in December 2018. But as of April, it was worth $14.56 million – a 561.818 percent jump.

Block Crafter Invested in Aergo Blockchain Startup, Whose Valuation Surged Impressively in Q1 | Source: CMC

Another one of Choi’s favorite crypto funds, Dragonfly Capital Partners, secured a $100 million worth of assets under management at launch. The fund has already deployed $20 million out of its pool to invest in diversified crypto projects. They include price-stable currency Basis and blockchain protocols developed by Spacemesh and Oasis Labs. Crypto exchange Binance is also one of the associate partners with the Oasis.

NewsBTC could not locate Dragonfly on Twitter.

In comparison, San Francisco-based Polychain Capital, one of the most successful crypto funds with a $1.04 billion AUM, had 10.2k followers on Twitter. In its neighborhood was Pantera Capital, another crypto fund, which had more than 44k followers on Twitter, and $810 million worth of AUM.

The Asian Crypto Sector Boom

Whether or not the Asian crypto funds outperformed their US peers is a topic worth exploring. Despite the outcomes, one cannot ignore the progress of cryptocurrency sector in the region. Jolyon Ellwood Russell, a Hong Kong-based finance partner at law firm Simmons & Simmons, toldFundsGlobalAsia.com that they were receiving new inquiries from local money managers about setting up new crypto funds.

“The asset managers’ appetite for setting up crypto funds has been robust in Hong Kong over the past four or five months,” said Russell, adding that crypto funds in Asia were growing and exploring various strategies beyond bitcoins.

Asian funds have shown an intense craving for new age cryptocurrencies and a whole new industry built around it. With more capital flowing into this space, alongside favorable sandbox regulatory environments (read South Korea), the sector is opening new investment opportunities for family offices, private banks, and high-net-worth individuals.

The Director of VanEck, one of the companies looking to launch a Bitcoin ETF, Gabor Gurbacs, is of the view that when inflation comes to the United States, Bitcoin could be one of the solutions to it. Through a tweet, the director says “I learned not ever to underestimate the United States. The U.S. is where some of the most ingenious, down to earth and hardworking people live, invent and build their futures. When inflation becomes a major issue, the U.S. will find a way out. And it might be related to Bitcoin.”

In a tweet referring to the limited amount of BTC, the VanEck exec stated that scarcity is the means and abundance is the end, implying that the scarce nature of Bitcoin could lead to wealth and ultimately curb any inflation effects on an economy.

Gurbacs has been impressed by the resilience of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies despite the challenges they face from regulators and financial bodies all over the world. He notes that “Bitcoin and many crypto projects continue to live despite heavy regulatory, financial, corporate and media pressures. We don’t have it easy, but nothing easy is worth having. The builders, innovators and hustlers will be remembered. Stay hungry and “don’t settle.”

Crypto Is Suitable For Hedging Inflation

Gurbacs is not the only with this view. The general feeling around the cryptocurrency space is that Bitcoin was designed to counter, hence the reason why Satoshi created only 21 million coins.

The fact that Bitcoin is not tied to any national currency means that it cannot be affected when any fiat currency becomes inflated. When a user purchases or receives crypto for a certain amount, they can cash them in for their local fiat currency, and this would effectively override devaluation of their currency.

The economic woes in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Greece have all seen people use cryptocurrency as a store of value so that they don’t lose their wealth due to inflation. According to some cryptocurrency experts, Bitcoin could also be used to hedge against a cashless society. In a post by Hasu, the rise of cashless society will most likely lead to people becoming more vulnerable to surveillance, financial control, and authoritarianism.

New article with @zhusu where we argue that the elimination of cash, even if most payments are already digital, will make society more vulnerable to surveillance, financial control, and authoritarianism.https://t.co/kRVwaJM7Cr

— Hasu (@hasufl) February 12, 2019

Hasu strongly believes that Bitcoin could help stop all that since it has features that make it impossible for government bodies to control the people’s finances and have authority over them.