QuadrigaCX update

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February 7, 2019 EXCHANGE'S LATEST: Fortis Escorts, a private hospital in the Indian city of Jaipur, has released details about the death of Gerald Cotten, former CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX. In a statement shared with CoinDesk on Thursday, Fortis Escorts said that Cotten was admitted to the hospital on Dec. 8, 2018 at 9:45 p.m. local time and died of cardiac arrest at around 7:26 p.m. on Dec. 9. Cotten was brought to the hospital in “critical condition” with “pre-existing Crohn’s disease and was on monoclonal antibody therapy every 8th week,” the statement from Fortis Escorts reads. At the time of admission, Cotten was diagnosed to be suffering from septic shock and other serious issues. “On 9th December, 2018, the patient suffered a cardiac arrest but was revived by CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation]. The patient heart condition continued to deteriorate and the patient suffered a second cardiac arrest at 6:30 p.m. [13:00 UTC],” the statement reads. “Despite the best efforts of our clinicians the patient could not be revived and was declared dead approximately at 7:26 pm. All standard medical procedures and guidelines were followed to treat the patient,” the hospital said. Cotten’s death is at the center of the concerns and rumors surrounding the QuadrigaCX exchange, which went offline last week owing millions to its thousands of customers. It seems the CEO died without leaving a way for the exchange’s staff to access the computer storing its funds. Full Story Need a refresher on the situation? Here's everything we know. RANDOM NUMBERS: At the cutting edge of blockchain research is a potential $15 million dollar venture by the Ethereum Foundation centered around a technology called Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs). Acting as a source of computer-generated randomness that is unpredictable and unbias-able, VDFs are envisioned for use in a highly-anticipated “proof-of-stake” (PoS) system called Serenity, which the ethereum network will migrate to in the next few years. What’s more, the ability to generate secure randomized numbers – if implemented in Serenity – would be a feature that can be leveraged by all decentralized applications (dapps) on the platform once integrated into the ethereum codebase. Speaking to current viability studies on VDF technology, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake told CoinDesk: “We’re basically doing all this groundwork to make an informed go, no-go decision on the bigger project. The bigger project is 15 million dollars on that order of magnitude. So we want to make sure that if we do go ahead it’s going to be successful.” Drake said a number of essential tests will be carried out by ethereum developers before a final call is made on the incorporation of the technology into Serenity. Full Story​ TORONTO LISTING: Voyager, a cryptocurrency brokerage startup founded by veterans of Uber and E*Trade, is going public on Canada’s TSX Venture Exchange through a reverse merger valued at $60 million. A reverse merger occurs when a privately held company acquires the majority of shares in a publicly traded one and the two firms are combined. In this case, New York-based Voyager Digital Holdings acquired UC Resources Ltd., the shell of a mineral exploration company that ceased operations in 2015, in an all-stock deal finalized earlier this week. The merged entity, renamed Voyager Digital (Canada) Ltd., will begin trading on Feb. 11 on the TSX, a subsidiary of TMX Group, the parent of the Toronto Stock Exchange. Stephen Ehrlich, co-founder and CEO of Voyager, told CoinDesk that the ability to issue publicly traded shares will give his company a currency (in the figurative sense) with which to make acquisitions to build its nascent business. “We’re actively looking for parts of the crypto ecosystem that fit with us, that fit with our mission and our culture,” said Ehrlich. “Having cash plus a public currency will make us more efficient and give us more opportunities.” Full Story Every quarter, CoinDesk Research takes stock of the key data, trends and events with its State of Blockchains reports. As our research efforts evolve and expand, we hope to provide amplification to a variety of perspectives within the crypto community. We reached out to analysts, builders, and lawyers to understand the industry from their unique vantage point. Check out the full article but here's a sample insight: "The last quarter of 2018 was a turning point for Bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency market. The Bitcoin Cash 'Hash War,' which resulted in the creation of the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) network fork, left many questioning their understanding of the interconnected nature of the ecosystem. Major Bitcoin miners battled in November, moving hash power off of the BTC network and onto BCH while selling large sums of many different coins to keep the war raging. The resulting price action was a shock to many, who thought that conflict on one chain wouldn't spill over onto theirs. In the coming years, as consolidation continues in the mining industry, investors and entrepreneurs alike will be wise to gauge the sentiment not only of the market as a whole, but of the key individuals who can turn their personal conflicts into market-wide turmoil. In 2019, I expect to see impressive growth of the entrepreneurial portion of the community, thanks to an ever growing set of tools built specifically to empower new breeds of Bitcoin businesses." — Vin Armani (@vinarmani), CoinText (Chief Technology Officer) We want to hear your perspective too! To add to the conversation, please fill out our survey. We will be releasing the results in the coming weeks. For more research insights, check out the CoinDesk Crypto-Economic Explorer here. SLOW SLIDE: Bitcoin closed yesterday at its lowest level for 7.5 weeks, dashing hopes of a bullish falling wedge breakout. The cryptocurrency also created a bearish outside reversal candle, signaling a continued "sell-on-rise" mentality. The path of least resistance, therefore, remains to the downside and only a convincing move above the 6-hour chart 50-candle MA of $3,434 would weaken bearish pressures. Full Story​ BEST OF THE BEST BREAKER MAG: The blockchain gaming industry is like the early days of the App Store right now, but that’s about to change, says a piece from Breaker Mag. Companies like Tron, the author writes, believe they have a way to take crypto to the masses and that’s via gaming. To that end, the, cryptocurrency project’s CEO Justin Sun, recently announced a $100 million fund to support developers building games using the Tron platform – funding he said was critical for mass adoption. “You need that developer community to make your product better,” he explained. And the scheme seems to be working. Sun said that over 2,000 apps could launch this year, with three to five Tron-based games going live daily. While the titles may be relatively basic for now, “It’s like the early days of the App Store,” said Sun. “Once you had games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, a lot more came out after. ... 2019 will be the year for games.” THE REST THE NEXT WEB: Discussing a related subject, The Next Web has published an article today that says platforms like EOS and TRON are attracting far greater decentralized app (dapp) development than ethereum. Of the top 50 dapps, it says, only three are running on ethereum. Of the remainder, EOS has 26 and Tron 21, with gambling being the most common use case. The main reason for the disparity, says TNW, is that ethereum has faced scaling issues that even its founder, Vitalik Buterin, has conceded are a block to demanding dapps. While scaling solutions are in the pipeline, they will be some time coming. The article adds that EOS and TRON are also currently seeing 94 percent of the monetary value being transacted across all dapps. Ethereum is left with just six percent, data from Diar indicates. MOTHERBOARD: A scammer has been abusing YouTube’s automated copyright system and demanding ransoms in bitcoin or cash via PayPal, reports Motherboard. “By submitting multiple fake copyright “flags” on videos, the scammer was able to bring at least two YouTube accounts to the brink of automatic deactivation under YouTube’s ‘three strikes’ policy,” the article says. The scammer even got the flags past YouTube staff who had checked the claims. One of the blackmailed accounts, gaming channel ObbyRaidz, received a message demanding $150 through PayPal or $75 in bitcoin to cancel the strikes and not submit a third that would see the channel shut down. YouTube reportedly said it had initially identified the requests as suspicious and asked the scammer – VengefulFlame  – for more information. When they complied, YouTube took down the videos in error. The videos have since been reinstated and the strikes removed, says Motherboard. The accounts that raised the flags have also been deleted, but only after two affected accounts had tweeted about the problem. WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Copyright © 2019 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