Chain-ges

More WeChat woes and a Stellar acquisition

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Sponsored by   September 10, 2018 CHAIN GAME: Blockchain startup Chain is being acquired and effectively rolled into the Stellar project. Lightyear.io has officially bought Chain for an undisclosed amount, with 100 percent of the startup's staff continuing on as part of a new venture.  According to Chain CEO Adam Ludwig, the change isn't so much about specific products but the shift to a public-network focus. As he remarked: "It's about the platform layer to make the network as powerful and useful as possible for those organizations that want to leverage stellar." Full Story WECHAT WOES: Messaging giant WeChat has blocked the official sales channel for Bitmain's Antminer line of cryptocurrency miners. The most popular texting service in China has recently begun blocking accounts related to cryptocurrency market prediction and analysis. Delphy, an ethereum based project, was just one of 30 other accounts that have been blocked. Full Story BITTORRENT SUITORS: Cryptocurrency startups Icon and Protocol Labs have joined the growing list of companies that considered bids on BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer filesharing startup that was ultimately snapped up by Tron founder Justin Sun. Other companies on that list include Block.One, which developed the EOS protocol. Full Story The value of cryptocurrencies is determined by more variables than just their price. The CoinDesk Crypto Compass shows how bitcoin has changed in a multitude of ways between August and September. There were minor deviations in Exchange (-4 percent), Social (-1 percent), and Developer Interest (-3 percent). At the same time, we logged a substantial increase in the Network category, with a 36 percent boost. This was largely driven by rising on-chain transaction volume. For more research insights check out the CoinDesk Research section here. SPONSOR SECTION   We made the first blockchain-recorded property deal in California a reality via our proprietary Transaction Platform. If you are looking to diversify your portfolio, we can help you find and securely pay with crypto for an investment property anywhere in the world. Visit our website for new opportunities.   GOING UNDER: Bitcoin is currently trading around $6,290, and Monday's technical charts show the potential for a drop below $6,000. Full Story BEST OF THE BEST BLOOMBERG: Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin believes that the era of big cryptocurrency price gains is all but over.  "If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn't an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore," Buterin told Bloomberg in a short interview. THE REST MEDIUM: Lou Kerner, partner of CryptoOracle.io, argues that the crypto industry is going to outperform the so called FAMGA (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon) as the leading source of wealth creation in the near future.  VENTURE BEAT: Cryptic Labs has just added two Nobel laureates in economics — Eric Maskin and Christopher Pissarides — to its advisory board. Maskin (Harvard University), will focus on game theory and mechanism design, with Pissarides (London School of Economics) advising on macroeconomic trends.   We've launched our new podcast, Late Confirmation, which are the top stories in the blockchain world, delivered daily from the team at CoinDesk, sponsored by the Oxford Blockchain Programme.  Listen to Latest Episode and Subscribe   WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER   ConsenSys Jobs Blockchain Jobs Circle Jobs BitGo Jobs Copyright © 2018 CoinDesk. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 636 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY, 10011, US Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list