TRANSFERS WITHOUT BORDERS: Next time some know-it-all confidently tells you there is no legitimate use case for bitcoin, send them this story about how Palestinians are using the cryptocurrency to connect to the global economy.
With no service from PayPal or equivalent (except a lackluster knockoff called PalPay, no kidding), bitcoin's permissionless and censorship-resistant properties have empowered a small community of users in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the West Bank to send and receive value abroad and shop online.
But that doesn't mean they're using it in everyday transactions, and even the Palestinian-born author of "The Bitcoin Standard," Saifdean Ammous, believes it will be a long time before that happens. Full Story
IT'S RAINING STABLECOINS: In another addition to the ever growing list of stablecoins, Xiong'An (Grandshores) Blockchain Fund announced that it will be releasing a Yen-pegged cryptocurrency.
The $1 billion blockchain fund, with backing from the Chinese city of Hangzhou, plans to launch the stablecoin late this year or early 2019. It claims to be in talks with a Japanese bank reagrding the same. Full Story
TOKENS ACCEPTED HERE: Back in the day, a New York City subway token would buy you a train ride, but it couldn't buy you a hot dog. Now, imagine if there were also hot dog tokens, Statue of Liberty tokens, panhandler and mugger tokens and so on. That's a lot of value that would have been rendered illiquid.
The multiverse of ERC-20 tokens is arguably in a similar situation today. Loi Luu, CEO and co-founder of Kyber Network, laments that these ethereum tokens are unable to meet a practical use case.
"Our main goal is to make tokens usable anywhere," Luu said.
So Kyber, a decentralized exchange, has secured partnerships with Etheremon, Coinbase Wallet and Peepeth for a project to make tokens usable for payments to businesses. Luu believes that this integration will further technological advancement and will be useful for dapps. Full Story | 
