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R3JECTED: R3 is nothing if not bold. As CoinDesk's Ian Allison reports this morning, in June the enterprise blockchain startup approached the Utility Settlement Coin (USC) consortium and suggested that the project be built on R3's Corda platform.
This was an audacious proposal, to say the least, since USC since its inception three years ago has been managed by another blockchain tech vendor, Clearmatics. Despite R3's offer to fund the technical development and pay a share of legal fees, its overture was rejected by all 17 of USC's bank members during a vote. Full Story
DE-ANONYMIZATION: ShapeShift has launched a new membership program, offering users a range of benefits... and collecting their personal information. A pivot away from the "exchange without accounts" model is no fun for the company itself, as CEO Erik Voorhees wrote in a blog post, but was made due to the regulatory uncertainty in the field.
In the new program, which will become mandatory soon, users will receive discounts on exchange rates, volume-based rewards for transacting with the FOX token and higher transaction limits. Full Story
COIN SHOWER: And speaking of identity verification...in a bid to boost participation in its marketplace, blockchain startup Civic will pay for all ID checks for business partners' users from now until the end of the year.
A third of the total supply of Civic's CVC tokens is available for the promotion, with a current value of roughly $43 million. Full story |
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Three thousand three hundred and sixty-three — that’s the number of nodes on the Lightning Network. These nodes will help process transactions by creating channels directing bitcoin payments through the second-layer network. Lightning is a decentralized system using smart contract functionality in the blockchain to enable instant payments across a network of participants. It’s currently gaining steam and is forecasted to become the dominant layer for everyday bitcoin transactions. Saifedean Ammous, the author of “ The Bitcoin Standard," has suggested "the number of transactions in a bitcoin economy can still be as large as it is today, but the settlement of these transactions will not happen on bitcoin's ledger, whose immutability and trustlessness is far too valuable for individual consumer payments." For more research insights check out the CoinDesk Research section here. |
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| | BULL TRAP? Bitcoin is trading at $6,965 Tuesday after sliding below $7,000 despite strong technical indicators. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
BLOOMBERG: Here's another chapter in the saga of now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, whose alleged CEO (presented by his lawyers as a mere advisor), Russian national Alexander Vinnik, is facing money laundering charges and possible extradition to Russia, France or the U.S.
The new wrinkle is that now Vinnik might possibly shed light on interference in the U.S. presidential election. As the Mueller investigation revealed, Russian military intelligence (GRU), which allegedly hacked the Democrats' emails, used bitcoin to fund its operations — and cryptocurrency analysis firm Elliptic found that some of that bitcoin went through BTC-e.
THE REST
FAST COMPANY: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and IBM have joined forces on a blockchain-based system to track public health disasters like the ongoing opioid crisis.
The system will help CDC to accumulate data from medical providers, such as the reasons patients visit, the symptoms they display and the ways doctors treat them.
FORTUNE: Coursera is now offering a blockchain-for-beginners course in collaboration with startup Consensys.
The course takes about 10 hours to complete over five weeks, offers a certificate and costs about $99. As Consensys CEO Joe Lubin told Fortune, the material is mostly compiled from his firm's own presentations.
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: Crypto.com, the Hong Kong-based blockchain startup, plans to issue what's described as Asia's first cryptocurrency Visa debit card.
Using it, customers will be able to borrow fiat currency up to 40-60 percent of the value of cryptocurrencies they pledge to the company as collateral. More than 100,000 cards are going to be issued globally, the company says. |
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