SoFi launches crypto trading / Is Bakkt to blame for market crash? / Kik vs. SEC

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Presented by Subscribe | View in browser I'm back! It's been a crazy, wild, and interesting news week for crypto. Bakkt launched on Monday. The markets crashed on Tuesday. The stablecoins are looking good, but not much else. There still hasn't been a bounce back. Maybe we should just look at this as a time to buy. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the Top Bitcoiners list on Twitter. You might like to follow the subject of our No. 10 news item, @OhGodAGirl. -- Allen       Market Watch: It's been a rough week for crypto. Bitcoin and every major altcoin hit the floor Tuesday. In fact, for a couple of days, only stablecoins looked promising. If you're invested in Tether, it hasn't looked bad this week, so continue hedging. Something's up with Algorand, though. It hasn't looked good all week and has been in the bottom five at least twice. Today, it's the biggest loser of the top 100. ABBC Coin and Metaverse ETP have flipped. Yesterday, the latter was a top gainer and the former a top loser; their positions today are reverse. It's one of those weeks. Bitcoin: $8,307 (⬇️ 1.40%) // $149.1 billion market cap. Ethereum: $167.89 (⬇️ 0.39%) // $18.1 billion market cap. XRP: $0.24 (⬇️ 0.37%) // $10.4 billion market cap. Tether: $1.01 (⬆️ 0.37$) // $4.13 billion market cap. Bitcoin Cash: $220.38 (⬇️ 0.98%) // $3.9 billion market cap. Top 100 Winner: Loom Network: $0.03 (⬆️ 23.20%) // $33.9 million market cap. Top 100 Loser: Algorand: $0.17 (⬇️ 10.70%) // $68.5 million market cap. Prices are as of 12:43 p.m. EDT.       1. Alternative student loan lender SoFi is getting into the crypto trading market with its first three offerings. Through separate entity SoFi Digital Assets LLC, the company will roll out trading for Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum to 800,000 customers. The minimum order size is $10 with a maximum daily trading of $50,000 per individual. The company is giving away $25 in BTC for the first trade of $10. CEO Anthony Noto talks to Cheddar about the new platform. Litecoin founder Charlie Lee took it for a test drive and tweeted his praise for SoFi. -- THE BLOCK       2. Led by Bitcoin, the entire crypto market took a plunge this week and Mashable is asking if Bakkt is the culprit. Bitcoin fell as low as $8,165 after spending several months testing $10,000 and staying above its key support for an extended period. The fall was approximately 15 percent. All the major altcoins followed. Bakkt, with much anticipation, launched a Bitcoin futures market on Monday, but trading has not met expectations. The total first-day trading volume reached 71 BTC. Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky saw it as a signal that institutional investors weren't ready for BTC trading and that Bitcoin's $10,000 marker was too high. -- MASHABLE       A MESSAGE FROM VETTERY Keep your recruiting strategy competitive with Vettery's 2019 Tech Salary Report We aim 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. Get the report 3. Kik is shutting down its messaging app to focus entirely on its fight with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its cryptocurrency Kin. In June, the SEC sued Kik over its 2017 $100 million ICO. The SEC called it an illegal fundraise. In addition to shutting down its messaging app, the company is firing 100 employees while holding on to just 19. CEO Ted Livingston said he will bankrupt Kik to fight the SEC. Kin is not available on most exchanges, Livington said. -- THE VERGE Are you rooting for Kik or the SEC? Shoot me an email to allen.taylor@inside.com and let me know.       4. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added 11 bitcoin addresses to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. OFAC alleges that a group of Chinese nationals used the addresses for money laundering and drug trafficking. The addresses have not been sanctioned. Rather, they've been added to the list solely to inform the cryptocurrency community of the importance of identifying transactions that should be blocked. -- INVESTMENT WEEK       A MESSAGE FROM FASTLY Extend the power of your core cloud to the edge with our API-first platform. Bring your innovative ideas to life, faster. Our edge cloud platform moves data and applications closer to users, at the network edge — so you can deliver fast, secure, and scalable online experiences. Take it for a spin and test up to $50 traffic, free. 5. Wells Fargo introduced a stablecoin called Wells Fargo Digital Cash, a tokenized dollar that allows users to move money globally in "near real-time." In July, Wells Fargo said it was not allowing domestic banking customers to complete crypto transactions. The bank is not the first traditional U.S. financial institution to adopt crypto. JPMorgan launched a cryptocurrency in February this year. Last year, Goldman Sachs opened up a trading desk for Bitcoin futures. Wells Fargo's crypto pilot program is planned to go live in 2020. -- FORBES       6. Coinbase Pro added support for Algorand, Chainlink, and Stellar in New York. New York state requires a BitLicense for exchanges and custody services. Coinbase Pro added support for these altcoins in all U.S. states except New York in August, June, and March, respectively. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is on the record for saying scrutiny surround Facebook's Libra is misguided and says "it's the only way to truly change the game for people." -- SLUDGEFEED       7. Bitcoin dipped below $8,000 on Tuesday, its lowest price since June 12. The price dropped $1,000 in the course of 30 minutes. It was the third biggest daily drop in price for Bitcoin this year, according to Bitstamp. In other news, Arcane Research is warning investors of ongoing market manipulation, claiming BTC has dropped 2.27 percent per month on average since the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched Bitcoin futures trading last December.  -- COINDESK       8. Google claims to have built the world's most powerful quantum computer, able to perform calculations in 200 seconds that would take a normal computer 10,000 years to perform. A NASA document claims we could be entering a new age of quantum supremacy. The document was taken down because, according to a source at Google, it might not have been peer reviewed. Nevertheless, if there is any substance to the claim, quantum computing could have huge implications for Bitcoin. For instance, a quantum computer could use Shor's algorithm to ascertain a private key from a public key address. -- DECRYPT       9. Nexo accepts tokenized gold for instant credit lines and will soon offer interest-bearing accounts for gold. PAX Gold will be regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services and allow gold-backed lending. PAX Gold currently provides instant access in over 45 fiat currencies across over 200 jurisdictions. PAX Gold represents physical gold held in Brink vaults in London on the Ethereum blockchain. -- COVINGTON JOURNAL       10. ProgPow author Kristy-Leigh Minehan has resigned as Core Scientific chief technology officer. She cited potential conflicts of interest as the reason. ProgPow aims to level the playing field in Ethereum mining by negating performance differences between ASIC, GPU, and FPGA miners. Ethereum Classic Executive Director Bob Summerwill uninvited Minehan from the ETC Summit last week due to connections Core Scientific has with Craig Wright, Calvin Ayre, and Coingeek. -- BITCOINIST       Inside Bitcoin is written and curated by award-winning journalist and former newspaper editor Allen Taylor. Recognized by the Dallas Bar Association three times for excellence in legal reporting, Allen has since gone on to author, edit, or ghostwrite several white papers, books and e-books, and over 10,000 blog posts for clients ranging from small business owners to global management companies and corporate executives. Learn more about him on LinkedIn. Editor: David Stegon (senior editor at Inside, whose reporting experience includes cryptocurrency and technology).       Ad Vettery is changing the way people hire and get hired. Get in touch. Meet Fastly. 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