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November 21, 2018 INSURANCE GAP: Insurance coverage for crypto startups may total $6 billion – and that's nowhere near enough for a space where three leading exchanges each conduct $1 billion in trades every day and the overall market cap, even after an 11-month bear market, is $140 billion.  Insurance is also important for institutional investors starting to enter the space. While much of the focus for major institutions looking to set up crypto-related products has been on custody, insurance is equally critical. Theft insurance in particular is highly sought after, in case someone is able to make off with a firm’s private keys. Considering the difficulty involved in obtaining insurance in this space, it’s perhaps notable then that one exchange in particular has secured a large chunk of it. Coinbase may have as much as $250 million, more than twice the $100 million that would be expected for a typical exchange. Full Story STRESSED OUT? Bitcoin Cash SV appeared to suffer from a “reorganization attack” on Monday when two blocks had their transactions overwritten. However, what looked like an attack may actually have been the result of a stress test. Conducted by the Bitcoin Cash Professional Stress Test group, the event saw more than 24 million transactions sent on the Bitcoin Cash SV chain, causing nodes to fall out of sync with each other and temporarily creating a mini-fork of the network.  The reorg occurred when the nodes on the network worked to re-merge the by-then competing chains.  The large block sizes designed into Bitcoin Cash SV may have contributed to the issue, Bitcoin Unlimited chief scientist Peter Rizun told CoinDesk, explaining that larger blocks propagate more slowly. Full Story BOARDING BITFURY: Crypto miner and software producer Bitfury Group has added a former member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to its board of advisors and a tech investment fund founder to its board of directors. Announced Tuesday, former SEC commissioner Annette Nazareth and Korelya Capital founder Antoine Dresch will help guide the company as it works to expand.  Bitfury CEO Valery Vavilov Explained that Dresch brings “years of experience in investment banking and mergers and acquisitions,” while Nazareth provides “comprehensive knowledge on financial markets and regulation.” Full Story CoinDesk’s Crypto-Economics Explorer aggregates data points across the industry to measure the size and opportunity of crypto markets. In addition to price and market cap, our new tool provides users with a comprehensive way to view the crypto-economic forces that shape an asset’s market maturity, growth, and potential. On the chart above, you can see how various cryptocurrencies measure on the graph. XRP shows better "exchange" and "social" scores than it does for "network" and "developer." XMR and ZEC show over-performing "developer" scores. ETH has the most robust profile across all five categories, second only to bitcoin. Use our new tool to learn more.   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.   Register Now RELIEF RALLY: Bitcoin's $500 recovery from 14-month lows seen yesterday indicates that sellers are finally paying heed to record oversold conditions on the 14-day RSI. In fact, the RSI has now also dropped below 30 on the 3-day chart for the first time since January 2015, so a stronger bounce to $5,000 may unfold over the next few days. Full story BEST OF THE BEST FORTUNE: Despite banks and payments firms touting blockchain as the next disruptive technology for cross-border settlements, not everyone is sold on the concept.  In a Fortune piece, TransferWise co-founder and chairman Taavet Hinrikus said the payments firm has actually explored various blockchain technologies, but still hasn’t found anything that can help the firm function in a cheaper and faster way. Part of the problem, he said, is that not enough banks are adopting the technology to make it the "prevailing" payments system. Even in Ripple's case – which has been explored by various banks – Hinrikus said the number is still limited.  “If every bank in the world was going through the Ripple network, it would be amazing. Yet how many banks are using Ripple today in production? It’s a very short list,” he said. THE REST YALE E360: Can a cryptocurrency help save Africa’s rhinos? So asks Yale Environment 360 in a feature looking at a new token called, of course, rhino coin. The crypto project aims to help protect the remaining populations of rhinos from armed poaching groups and comes with the backing of South African ranchers who raise the animals. The token is, unusually, backed by stocks of farmed rhino horn, which is one of the world’s most valuable commodities (worth up to $125 per gram on Asian black markets, the piece says). But there’s a catch: The project rests on the hope that the global ban on rhino horn trading will be lifted, and investors in the project are speculators, waiting for horns to be legally sold with large markups. There's plenty of resistance to that prospect across the globe, however, and rhino coin holders may never see a profit. THE INDEPENDENT: Skating, shooting and a trip to a beer factory? Those are the side attractions of attending North Korea’s upcoming international blockchain and cryptocurrency conference, The Independent says. The Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference will take place in April next year, with blockchain industry experts publicly invited to the country for the first time. Costing around $3,750, attendees will get an all-inclusive stay and a seven-day tour of the country. Unless you’re a journalist, or hail from Israel, Japan or South Korea, that is. Sorry folks, but you’re apparently not welcome. WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Consensus: Invest Keynotes Jay Clayton Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz Register Now Copyright © 2018 CoinDesk. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 250 Park Avenue South New York, NY, 10003, US Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list