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CRYPTO COVER-UP: The New York Attorney General’s office has alleged that crypto exchange Bitfinex lost $850 million and subsequently used funds from affiliated stablecoin issuer Tether to secretly cover most of the shortfall. Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday that Bitfinex had sent the $850 million in customer and corporate funds to payment processor Crypto Capital Corp. Bitfinex responded that the funds were not lost, but had in fact been “seized and safeguarded” and it was working to retrieve them. Full Story
HIGH STAKES: A new proposal by Vitalik Buterin, the creator of ethereum, suggests he is considering increasing the rewards for validators who would secure the operation of the next version of the world’s second-largest blockchain – ethereum 2.0. Rather than relying on a proof-of-work consensus protocol enforced by competing miners, ethereum 2.0 will rely on a proof-of-stake consensus whereby validators stake their own funds and attest to blocks and transactions being created on the network. Roughly $160 million in ETH could be earned annually from staking if Buterin’s proposal is adopted. Full Story
INTERNAL ISSUES: The non-profit entity behind ethereum’s hottest decentralized startup is wracked with infighting, a legal letter obtained by CoinDesk reveals. The letter is from an attorney representing five board members of the Cayman Islands-based MakerDAO Ecosystem Growth Foundation (MEGF) who say they were pressured to resign by CEO Rune Christensen in late March. MakerDao told CoinDesk that changes had been made to the board amid “growing pains.” Full Story
TOBACCO TAX: Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is working on a “public blockchain,” an executive has said. Specifically, the New York-based multinational would use the technology to track tax stamps on cigarette boxes, which are valuable, manually dealt with and easily counterfeited. That costs the industry and governments $100 million a year. The exec estimated that Philip Morris could save $20 million off the bat by automating processes and reducing fraud with the traceability and transparency afforded by a blockchain. Full Story |
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| RESISTANCE REVISITED: Bitcoin's recent pullback to $5,000 from five-month highs above $5,600 marks a failure to beat the crucial 50-week moving average (MA) hurdle, currently at $5,477. A similar rejection at that resistance line ended up killing the nascent bull market in 2015. Further, the daily chart is reporting a bearish divergence of the RSI. As a result, deeper drop below $5,000 in the short-term cannot be ruled out. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
OBLIGATORY BLOCKCHAINS: Should the U.S. government mandate the use of a single blockchain standard for supply chains? FedEx CIO Rob Carter believes so. As reported by Computerworld, Carter said at a blockchain event that the technology can bring industries “authenticity.” Yet the government’s response tends to be that the tech is not widely adopted. “My response to that was, 'You're the government. You can mandate that it's widely adopted,'” he said.
THE REST
DATACENTER BUG: Another day, another new type of crypto-mining malware… Trend Micro reported Friday that it has detected a form of botnet malware that can illicitly mines cryptos, as well as perform DDoS attacks and remotely execute code to steal information. The variant targets vulnerable versions of Atlassian’s Confluence Server and Data Center products. Since the malware can put resources at risk, Trend Micro says companies should continuously monitor for security risks.
MEDIA'S SAVIOR: A new startup wants to leverage blockchain technology to develop more sustainable journalism. Pack, a New York-based company, wants to facilitate crypto payments and smart contracts to create paid-subscription models for news organizations. And the Columbia Journalism Review is testing out its front-end product, reports Breaker.
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WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER  |
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