Crash Continues / Bomb Threats / PayPal

Subscribe | View in browser ** Inside collaborated with This Week in Startups for a special year-in-review podcast episode, presented by Owl Labs. Check it out! iTunes | YouTube | Spotify | Soundcloud **       $BTC (1:30 p.m. EST): $3,235.64 (-5.16%) // 90-day high: $7,382.19 // 90-day low: $3,286.14 / / More… $BCH ABC (1:30 p.m. EST): $81.98 (-15.28%) // 90-day high: $703.41// 90-day low: $80.95 // More… $ETH (1:31 p.m. EST): $84.59 (-6.08%) // 90-day high: $365.71 // 90-day low: $85.11 // More… $LTC (1:31 p.m. EST): $23.06 (-5.04%) // 90-day high: $74.80 // 90-day low: $22.09 // More… $XRP (1:31 p.m. EST): $0.28 (-5.56%) // 90-day high: $0.61 // 90-day low: $0.26 // More… Here are the 10 most important stories about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies today       1. The cryptocurrency market continued to take heavy losses. Bitcoin Cash ABC led the fall as it dropped more than 13 percent in 24 hours. Bitcoin continued its drop, falling below $3,100 per coin. In total, all of the top 20 coins by market valuation all lost. Ethereum also continued to plummet, falling 13 percent itself to reach its lowest total since May 2017. –COIN TELEGRAPH       2. Scammers have sent bomb threats around the world in an effort to get bitcoin. They demand the cryptocurrency in exchange for not detonating a supposed bomb. So far, they have threated businesses, schools, and other populated locations in English-speaking countries. There is no evidence of any actual explosives, but the threats have caused evacuations in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand – and potentially elsewhere. –THE VERGE       Could this Shockwave Tattoo Removal Technology Change Everything? This patented shockwave technology can remove a tattoo 3-4x FASTER in a clinical trial than current standard of care lasers… and also has the potential for cellulite reduction and accelerating fat removal. Learn how you can get involved early in this exciting opportunity before our upcoming IPO on the Nasdaq.       3. PayPal has launched an internal blockchain-based employee incentive program. PayPal has avoided cryptocurrencies and blockchain to this point. There is belief that the employee program could be the beginning of a larger blockchain program. The employee platform rewards employees in cryptocurrencies, but they only have value inside of PayPal. Staff can earn tokens by joining innovation programs and contributing ideas. –CCN       4. Abra will give customers $25 in bitcoin for free, but there is a catch. Buried in the fine print of the promotion is the kicker: To get the reward, investors must buy at least $1,000 of BIT10, the company's ETF-style token. While that does equal a 2.5 percent reward, but investors may end up losing that before they see the reward. BIT10 is made up of the top 10 cryptocurrencies, so if they drop, so does the return for investors. –THE NEXT WEB       Hiring can be a numbers game—when considering salary, how much should you offer top tech talent? Vettery aims to make the recruiting process more transparent for job-seekers and hiring managers, across the board. And we noticed there's one thing people can't stop talking about: salary. We believe that when all parties are on equal footing, everyone is poised to have a better hiring experience. Download Vettery's 2018 Tech Salary Report       5. LinkedIn has named blockchain developer as the top emerging career. –COMPUTER WORLD 6. Blockchain – and its ability to verify transactions – was a hot topic at Miami Art Basel Week. –FORBES 7. Here's a look at the last 12 months of bitcoin (warning: it's not pretty). –MARKET WATCH 8. Bitcoin has lost 47 percent of its value in the last month alone. –COINGAPE 9. Litecoin does not need bitcoin to survive, one writer believes. –AMB CRYPTO 10. Porsche has arranged a $170 million loan using blockchain. –CCN       Written and curated by David Stegon. He has been a reporter for 15 years, the past 10 focused on technology. Follow him @davidstegon. Editing team: Lon Harris (editor-in-chief at Inside.com, game-master at Screen Junkies), Krystle Vermes (Breaking news editor at Inside, B2B marketing news reporter, host of the "All Day Paranormal" podcast), and Susmita Baral (editor at Inside, recent bylines in NatGeo, Teen Vogue, and Quartz. Runs the biggest mac and cheese account on Instagram).       ASC 606 on mind? Get exclusive access to expert advice on our live Webinar. Register Now.

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Token relief

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December 14, 2018 STATUS LAYOFFS: Ethereum messaging startup Status.IM has cut 25 percent of its staff members in a move to streamline the company in light of the ongoing crypto bear market. Co-founder Jarrad Hope announced the move to employees Monday. He explained that the company did not anticipate ethereum's price falling more than 80 percent over the past year, and combined with issues finding banking partners, the company was no longer sustainable at its size. In addition to the layoffs, he is asking employees to take a pay cut.  Status projects a 6-month runway with its current fiat holdings, not including roughly 190,000 ETH that the company also holds.  That being said, Hope explained, "The reality is that we will have to make another assessment end of Q2 which if the market hasn't picked up we will be forced to make the organization even leaner, and the remaining fiat and our large ETH holdings will be used to create a runway measured in years." Full Story NO TRADING: Crypto exchange SeedCX is taking a strong stance against potential conflicts of interest by barring its employees from trading any cryptocurrencies. The policy was quietly put into place last year, and appears to be one of the strictest in the still-young industry. Software engineer Alex Wachli explained that personal investments could impact how his team evaluates support for different assets. However, “I think everybody here is not here to try and pick and choose winners, and to let the market to decide. If we didn’t have these policies we might be biased and we might not be focusing on the right goals,” he told CoinDesk. The policy may be comparable to those found in traditional capital markets, though a litigation partner at Jenner & Block LLP told CoinDesk that it's still unclear what insider trading knowledge might apply to the crypto space.  “We don’t necessarily know what ‘material, non-public information’ means in a crypto context,” Justin Steffen said, referring to the type of information that may move markets. Full Story ICO EXCEPTIONS: SEC senior advisor Valerie Szczepanik hinted that there may be a way for token issuers to conduct a sale without having to register as a security or file for an exemption – but such instances would be rare, and subject to conditions.  Called no-action letters, the regulatory agency’s “crypto czar” explained that they could be “a way forward” for issuers who believe they can maintain investor protections but do not want to be classified as a securities offering. "The letters set forth exactly what the person plans to do or the entity plans to do and if it's something that the SEC feels comfortable with we can release a no-action letter for exemptive relief saying 'we can recommend no enforcement action," she explained.  However, the letters are not binding, and issuers would have to abide by the terms laid out in the approved proposal exactly. Even so, some startups have already begun applying for the option through the SEC’s FinHub program, she said. Full Story WALLCOIN: U.S. Representative Warren Davidson suggested using a cryptocurrency to crowdfund a wall on the Mexican border during an interview earlier this week.  During an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, the Ohio Congresman noted that he has already proposing privately funding the controversial border wall, which Democrats don’t want to pay for, but President Donald Trump has been pushing. Under the program, U.S. residents (or even Mexican citizens) would be able to fund the wall’s construction. “You could do it with sort of like a crowdfunding site or you could do a blockchain and you could have WallCoins, but you could raise the money and frankly if we get it right at the Treasury you could even pay with Mexican pesos,” he explained. Full Story While the cryptocurrency bear market may be disappointing, individuals surveyed by CoinDesk seem to think that development will be undeterred.  In one such poll, more than half of all respondents believed that new cryptocurrencies will be launched over the next year, with only 31 percent seeing fewer cryptocurrencies still operating at the end of that period. In contrast, the 10-year view was much bleaker, with the majority of respondents believing that there will be fewer cryptocurrencies at the end of that period.   Learn more about the crypto market in Q3 across price, network, exchange, developer, and social fundamental metrics in our recently released State of Blockchains report here. BUYERS BEWARE: Bitcoin’s bears have again come out victorious in their battle with the bulls, dragging prices below the tight trading range seen in recent days. As a result, prices risk falling to $3,000 in the near-term. Full Story BEST OF THE BEST FINANCE MAGNATES: Google’s artificially intelligent search algorthm is bearish on crypto, it seems. Some in the community are reportedly upset after searches for the term “bitcoin” brought up a description card that included the words: "collapsed economic bubble." Apparently after complaints, Google later updated the definition of the number-one crypto by market valuation to say: “Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a form of electronic cash. It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user-to-user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.” As the article explains, issues with Google’s search algorithm were highlighted recently at the U.S. Congress, when Google CEO Sundar Pichai was forced to explain that the AI examines every keyword based on “things like relevance, freshness, popularity and how other people are using it,” when asked why searches for the word "idiot" brought up images of Donald Trump. THE REST THE NEXT WEB: Privacy-focused browser Brave has tapped Google’s open-source Chromium code in its latest release, according to The Next Web.  The move means that users should see a 22% performance improvement and up to 10 seconds faster page loading times, accord to the firm. Brave has used parts of Chromium since launch, but its user interface plugged into the Muon library. Perhaps the most notable feature of the addition is that Brave 0.57 now supports Chrome extensions, which should make it less painful for Chrome users making the switch, says TNW. Still aiming to protect users’ privacy Brave said, despite its reliance on Google’s code, it’s not sending any data to the tech giant in the background. INFORMATION AGE: Social media giant Facebook launched a blockchain team in May, dedicated to explore how to best leverage blockchain across its services. But, in a piece published Thursday, Information Age asks, how exactly might the nascent technology help the company? The possibilities are almost endless, according to Arran James Stewart, co-founder of Job.com, a blockchain recruitment platform.  But he narrowed down the most likely possibilities to areas such as securely storing user data, boosting the capabilities of money transfers over its Messenger app, and managing the site's many merchants and related payments. Further, the piece goes on, since Facebook's record on protecting user privacy is not perhaps the best, blockchain could help there too. However, there could be a conflict between the immutable nature of public blockchains and the EU's "right to be forgotten" laws. Using a private chain, like Hyperledger Fabric, could largely sidestep that issue, Stewart said.  WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER 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