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OVERSTOCK REVAMP: Digital retailer Overstock has shuffled its leadership to prepare for the upcoming launch of its security token trading platform, tZERO. Steve Hopkins, former chief operating officer at Overstock's blockchain venture fund Medici, resigned to head up tZERO. He will be replaced by Medici's former chief technology officer, Joel Wright.
Medici president Jonathan Johnson explained that the move indicates the importance of technical expertise within Medici’s leadership, telling CoinDesk that “because Joel is so deep in there [understanding the tech], we can have a double level of depth in technology, and that’s going to be useful for us.”
Overstock general counsel Stanton Huntington is also shifting, moving to Medici to fill the same role there. The trading platform is expected to launch by the end of this week. Full Story
ACCIDENTAL AIRDROP: South Korean crypto exchange Coinzest accidentally sent over $5 million in bitcoin to clients in an airdrop – and now it wants the crypto back.
The exchange announced last week that some 6 billion Korean won (around $5.3 million) in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were sent to customers due to a computer error, according to CoinDesk Korea. The exchange was trying to airdrop We Game Tokens (WGT) when the incident occurred.
Further, due to the server issue, some customers also received Korean won from the exchange. The exchange has no plans to compensate users for any losses suffered through its server issues.
Coinzest’s server issues were resolved by Jan. 19, and the company plans to roll back transactions to restore its assets. It has also asked customers to return funds they received by mistake.
As of Jan. 19, about half of the won was returned.
Some traders who received bitcoin instead of WGT reportedly sold their new holdings immediately, causing bitcoin's price to flash-crash on the exchange to just $50. Full Story
BROKEN BEAM: Newly released privacy-oriented cryptocurrency Beam reported Monday morning that its blockchain was experiencing technical difficulties.
The team announced the issue on its official Twitter account, saying that its network had “stopped at block 25709” and that it was investigating the matter.
Several hours later, the project tweeted an update saying, the issue had been identified and a fix was due within the hour. "Funds are safe," it added.
Finally, the fix was committed on GitHub, with Beam saying in a post-mortem: “The root cause of the issue was that two cloned wallets (most likely created by copying the same wallet.db file) both sent the same cloned UTXO to the blockchain, which resulted in incorrect cut-through processing and ultimately to an invalid block.”
At its January launch, Beam became the first live cryptocurrency to be based on Mimblewimble – a protocol that makes transactions confidential and virtually untraceable. Since then, though, the crypto has faced some technical issues. On Jan. 9, the team discovered a “critical vulnerability” in its wallet software that could have put users’ funds at risk by allowing attackers to modify transactions. Full Story |
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 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, CoinDesk’s explorer provides users with a comprehensive way to view the crypto-economic forces that shape an asset’s market maturity, growth and potential. Network interest is important in determining the activity occurring within a blockchain’s internal ecosystem. Today, Jan. 22, we observed one metric within network interest: mining revenue. This is the total global revenue earned by miners from transaction fees and block rewards per day. The top five coins by mining revenue are: BTC draws by far the most revenue, earning nearly 4x of 2nd place ETH and 15x of 3rd place LTC.
Note: Mining most concerns Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies that use that consensus system rather than other newer forms that don’t rely as heavily on it. Also the totals are converted to USD on the day mined, so they don’t fully illustrate the mine-and-hold strategy of some miners.
Check out the CoinDesk Crypto-Economic Explorer to learn more.
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PARTNER
 CryptoKitties and CoinDesk are teaming up to turn one lucky blockchain fan into their own CryptoKitty, a totally unique non-fungible token that can’t be copied and lives forever on the blockchain. To enter, head to the contest page and submit your email. Share the contest on your social channels for extra entries and an even better chance to become your own immortal Kitty NFT. |
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| STABLE (FOR NOW): Bitcoin's price has stayed between $3,500 and $3,700 since Jan. 11 – the longest stretch in such a narrow range since the end of October. At the time, bitcoin's price stayed between $6,350 and $6,500 before falling after nearly two weeks. The current period, too, may also end with a downside move, the charts suggest. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST ZDNET: The perpetrator of Iceland's "Big Bitcoin Heist" has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison after being convicted of stealing nearly 600 crypto mining computers and staging a jailbreak after his initial arrest, ZDNet reported. Sindri Thor Stefansson was arrested last year for stealing nearly $2 million in mining equipment in late 2017, alongside nearly a dozen other individuals. Six others have been similarly convicted, though they face shorter jail terms. After his arrest, Stefansson booked a flight from his phone while in jail after his initial arrest, jumped out a window, took a taxi to the airport, and flew to Stockholm on the same aircraft that also transported the nation’s prime minister. He was later re-arrested in Amsterdam and extradited back to Iceland. THE REST SWISSINFO܁ CH: The Tezos blockchain project got off to a bumpy start with internal disputes and resulting lawsuits. But now that things have calmed, the chief of the foundation that oversees Tezos hopes that the platform can move forward to do good. According to a piece from Swissinfo.ch, Tezos Foundation president Ryan Jesperson dreams that the project can help to lift people out of poverty. “Tezos could be leveraged to improve the plight of the poor in developing countries,” Jesperson said. “It can empower people in areas where there is government obfuscation, no transparency or infrastructure.” While that particular use case has its skeptics, he feels that payment systems or micro-insurance projects that “operate out of the reach of corrupt officials or profit-driven banks are the way forward.” If that is to happen, though, it will have to be driven by the community surrounding Tezos, not the foundation itself. Further, there are regulatory compliance issues and lawsuits from disgruntled investors to take into account. If they can be overcome, Tezos’ ‘proof-of-stake’ mechanism and on-chain governance give it an edge, Jesperson believes. COMPUTER WORLD: MIT, Stanford and five other universities are working together to develop a blockchain network with its own cryptocurrency, Unit-e, that can rival Visa for transactional throughput, says Computer World. The proof-of-stake-based blockchain system is being built to get around the traditional Achilles’ heel of blockchains to date – scalability – and is said to enable up to 10,000 transactions per second. A Switzerland-based non-profit is funding the effort, according to the piece – doing so to promote open blockchain technology. “Advancements in distributed technologies will enable open networks, avoiding the need for centralized authorities,” a representative said. The project was formed “with the goal of enabling and supporting this revolution.” Unit-e, which already has backing from Pantera Capital, is slated to go live later this year. |
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