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SECURITIES GUIDANCE: SEC Director of Corporation Finance William Hinman says the agency plans to release "plain English" guidance explaining how and when cryptocurrency tokens might be classified as securities.
Speaking at the D.C. Fintech Week conference on Monday, Hinman said developers can use the guidance to determine for themselves whether a token looks like a security. The guidance will also explain how developers can register their offerings.
For example, if investors buy into a token offering with the expectation of a return on investment, the SEC will likely consider such an offering to be a securities sale, he explained.
If any developers are still unclear, they can get in touch with the agency's new FinHub to receive feedback, he went on to say. Full story
TETHER'S LETTER: Deltec Bank and Trust chairman Jean Chalopin told CoinDesk that a letter released by Tether last week describing its banking relationship was "authentic."
This confirms Tether's banking partner for the first time in months, after Wells Fargo first cut off correspondent banking services to the company in early 2017.
While Chalopin affirmed that the letter is real, he reiterated that Bahamian law prevents Deltec from sharing any information about its clients. Full Story
DECENTRALIZED ENERGY: An ethereum project called Lition is quietly helping real German citizens find cheaper energy.
Launched earlier this year, Lition is already a licensed energy supplier in Germany with clients in major cities, including Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. They are now using its decentralized market connecting them directly with energy producers of all sizes.
According to Lition’s CEO, Richard Lohwasser, multinational energy intermediaries have too much influence and don't give users enough choice in what type of energy they can buy. Slicing out the middlemen also cuts costs. According to Lition, this saves customers an average of 20 percent on their utility bills, and increases power plant revenue by up to 30 percent.
As a result, Lition's plan is to cut them out completely. Full story
AIRDROP CLAMPDOWN? China’s central bank is looking to clamp down on so-called airdrops – free distributions of crypto tokens. In its financial stability report for 2018, the People's Bank of China (PBoC) said that "disguised" initial coin offerings (ICOs) including airdrops continue to rise, despite its previous efforts at cracking down on sales of crypto tokens.
The PBoC said that some crypto firms are moving their projects overseas and using agents to invest on behalf of investors from China. While other projects are not issuing tokens in public to directly raise funds, but are rather giving away free tokens while reserving a part of the total supply. These firms then try to use speculation in the secondary market to boost their tokens' prices in order to reap profits, the central bank said.
The PBoC said it would remain “very vigilant” and coordinate with other agencies to monitor the crypto industry in order to educate and protect investors. Full story |
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CoinDesk Research tracks many different metrics in the crypto economy. Developer interest is important in determining the software activity for each individual crypto's underlying technology.
We observed contributors on each cryptocurrency's unique software repository on GitHub, the popular development website, for Sunday, November 4. A contributor is someone who has contributed to a project by having a pull request merged but does not have collaborator access.
BTC had the highest share at 13 percent followed by QTUM at 12 percent and LTC at 11 percent. QTUM over-performs its 27th rank in market cap (of $347 mn) in grabbing that 2nd place. Also, LTC ranked 7th in market cap, ranks 3rd in contributors.
It's important to note that GitHub development is not representative of all development that occurs within a specific crypto ecosystem. Decentralized developers could be writing code under the radar. Also, private companies could be building technology around these platforms that's not shown directly in GitHub.
For more research insights, check out the CoinDesk Research section here.
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|  Jay Clayton Chairman of the SEC |
 Kelly Loeffler CEO of Bakkt |
|  Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz |
 Jeffrey Sprecher Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange & Chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. |
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| LOOKING UP: Bitcoin could be building for a move towards $6,800, having witnessed a bullish breakout yesterday. Further, the ethereum-bitcoin exchange rate (ETH/BTC) is also looking north, as demand rises for alternative cryptocurrencies. Full story |
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BEST OF THE BEST FORBES: Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism – which allows all network nodes to stay in agreement on the state of the blockchain – is “flawed” and needs to be replaced, argues Forbes contributor Gerald Fenech. With “well-documented” issues that “threaten to be fatal” to the cryptocurrency, other projects are now seeking alternative options, such as proof-of-stake, proof-of-contribution and more. While bitcoin is “still being figured out,” Fenech writes, “a key challenge exists in developing an effective consensus mechanism that doesn’t compromise the notion of decentralization.” But some compromise may be required, he argues. THE REST BLOOMBERG: Real-estate transactions are a time-consuming and a costly affair – and one U.S. county is eyeing blockchain as a potential solution, says a piece from Bloomberg. Franklin County, Ohio, is planning to move all of its land parcels onto a blockchain platform in the next two to three years. The project will also put all participants in real-estate transactions, including sellers, lenders, agents and insurers, on the platform with the expectation that the home-buying process can be reduced to as little as a few seconds using a mobile app. It could also cut down on costs and fraud. Using blockchain and smart contracts to automate the industry could eventually be a threat to title firms and others, but that may be some time coming, says the article. Getting all the relevant property databases onto the blockchain could take many years, said an expert, and in the meantime, the industry is likely to get more efficient in response to the threat from the nascent tech. BUSINESSLIVE: Every year, South Africa corruption in public procurement brings losses in the billions of rand, according to a piece from BusinessLIVE. But, as elsewhere, blockchain technology is being considered as a solution – promising to make procurement systems more efficient and transparent, and less likely to end up in disputes, the article suggests. With as much as 50 percent of the country's procurement spend (cited as around $56 billion) possibly being lost to corruption, building a blockchain platform for participant identification and registration, and information sharing (including contractors' histories) could bring huge benefits, despite the legal and technical challenges, the piece suggests. |
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WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER  |
Consensus: Invest Keynotes |
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|  Jay Clayton Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission |
| Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz |
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