 |
TETHER DONE RIGHT? IBM has teamed up with a startup called Stronghold to launch a cryptocurrency that’s pegged to the U.S. dollar.
The stablecoin will run on the Stellar network and is backed 1-for-1 with USD held at an audited, state-chartered trust company and ultimately insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC).
As such, the project resembles Tether, but with a little more reliance on old-fashioned sources of trust. Full Story
A NEW EXCHANGE: SBI Group, the Japanese financial services giant, announced Tuesday that its cryptocurrency exchange platform, dubbed VCTRADE, is officially online, following months of delays.
While it went partially live last October only to a group of pre-registered users, the service is now “fully open” to Japan residents aged 20 to 70. Yet the registration service has not been made available for corporate customers. Full Story
GREEN LIGHT: Coinbase said its plan to acquire several securities firms, including Keystone Capital Corp., Venovate Marketplace and Digital Wealth LLC, has been approved by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Through the acquisitions, the cryptocurrency exchange and Silicon Valley darling is hoping to seek licenses as a broker-dealer, according to its chief operating officer, Asiff Hirji. Full Story
RESEARCH BLAST
Like an onion, bitcoin has multiple layers. There's the underlying bitcoin blockchain and the emerging second layer known as the lightning network. The latter will allow higher quantities of transactions to occur off-chain so that they don't congest bitcoin's limited 2 MB blocks.
Over Q2 the lightning network grew in key areas. Node count jumped 77%, the number of channels increased 108% and network capacity (btc) increased 200%. The growth in activity is shown as well by apps like Y'alls, for reading and writing articles, and Hammercoin, an LN-based video game. More research |
|
|
|
|
SPONSOR SECTION
 At Finova Financial, we see blockchain and crypto replacing Wall Street with something bigger and better. Taking business and investment to the blockchain will lower barriers to entry while creating a more transparent and agile environment for enterprises and entrepreneurs. Visit our website and see what blockchain and crypto pioneers like Jeremy Gardner and Finova’s Gregory Keough have to say. Learn More |
SCALING KEY HURDLES: For the first time since May, bitcoin surpassed the crucial 50-day moving average (MA) on Monday at a price as high as $6,771, indicating a bullish pattern on the daily chart. Full Story
|
|
|
|
|
|  |
BEST OF THE BEST
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: What do you get when you pair a former Macau triad gangster and a mysterious Beijing firm that backs chess and poker tournaments in China? The SCMP piece’s answer to that is an initial coin offering (ICO) with $750 million raised “in less than five minutes.”
Kuok-koi Wan, or if you prefer his old gangster name, "broken tooth," has sold 450 million tokens since he launched the ICO for his "HB" cryptocurrency at an event in Cambodia.
Yet many concerns remain, as the article notes, over “the currency, the provenance of the Chinese company, and the chess and poker tournaments, the first of which was slated to take place in Hainan in October, that Wan would be providing prize money for in the form of HB tokens.”
THE REST
BLOOMBERG: Canada’s only actively managed crypto fund is, surprisingly, 91 percent in cash.
Interviewed by Bloomberg, the president and portfolio manager at Rivemont Crypto Fund explained that crypto is "not really in a bull market" and people are still waiting to "see if it's going down further."
TECHCRUNCH: The tech site profiles 0x, the decentralized trading protocol, whose ambition is to become the Craigslist of the crypto exchange world.
This project, as noted by TechCrunch, allows developers to build their own decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Started as a for-profit exchange itself, 0x’s team realized a “massive usability gap” in decentralized apps.
After raising $24 million in its ICO, it refocused on developing a DEX protocol to help overcome many problems the team saw in other crypto exchanges, including "crappy" user experience.
|
 We are launching Markets Daily, our trader-specific newsletter, tomorrow. Registration is open for all Blockchain Bites subscribers. To register, click here and add Markets Daily to your list of newsletters. Register Here |
WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER  |
|
| | | | | | |
