1. Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey wants to create his own crypto team to work on open source projects and report only to him. Dorsey took to Twitter on Wednesday to promote the positions. He wants to hire three to four crypto engineers and a designer. "Work from anywhere, report directly to me, and we can even pay you in bitcoin!" he tweeted. Dorsey added that this project will be Square's first open source initiative outside of its business objectives. "These folks will focus entirely on what's best for the crypto community and individual economic empowerment, not on Square's commercial interests," he added. –MASHABLE
2. The price of bitcoin inched above $4,000 per coin on Wednesday as altcoins continued to push the cryptocurrency market's value higher. The valuation of the crypto market rose $1.5 billion overnight as the price of bitcoin went above $4,100. The price of bitcoin has since come down some, but it has been flirting with the $4,000 barrier for more than a week. Some of the largest gainers in the altcoin space were Ontology, Ravencoin, Tezos, Huobi Token, and KuCoin, which all rose between 12 to 25 percent in a 24-hour period. –CCN
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3. Scammers created a fake website as part of a plot to mimic the popular Wasabi wallet. The malware pretends to be Wasabi, offering the user several links to Wasabi's actual platform or its GitHub page. One link on the site, though, features a download page with links to the "latest version" of the wallet – with one being a virus. Even worse, antivirus engines were unable to detect any malware inside the download although it exists. Late last year, Wasabi was listed as one of the preferred Bitcoin wallets for cryptocurrency fans in Iran. –THE NEXT WEB
4. Lightning Labs released a new feature called "Lightning Loop" that it hopes will improve the usability of the lightning network. Lightning Loop is a payment channel technology that lets users receive bitcoin in increasing quantities without having to close and reopen new payment channels. That would allow users to send payments quicker and for smaller fees. "Lighting channels are like tubes of money … Money moves around in the tube, but the total amount of funds remains constant," developers Alex Bosworth and Bryan Wu wrote. "So, unlike other payment systems, Lightning requires 'inbound capacity' in order to receive funds." –COINDESK
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Facebook Coin? Sorry, Not Buying It
The mysterious Facebook cryptocurrency project continues to get lots of attention. Yesterday, I linked to a story where Ross Sandler, an analyst for Barclays, thought a coin could bring the social giant an additional $19 billion in revenue each year. That number represented a best case scenario, Sandler admits, but he believes $3 billion per year is all but certain. While I respect Sandler's opinion, I'm not sure I see Facebook's cryptocurrency becoming that popular because of the social giant's larger reputation.
It has obviously been a rough year(s) for Facebook and it only seems to be getting worse. Will Facebook users trust the company to operate a digital currency, especially if it involves them sending traditional dollars – or even reputable cryptocurrencies – in exchange for the Facebook coin. I am skeptical, but I want to know what you think. Would you feel comfortable using Facebook coin? Why or why not? Hit reply to this email or message me on Twitter and let me know. -David
5. CoinDesk's Diana Aguilar writes about her turn with the Lightning Torch: "Now that my turn has passed, the overall experience left me with a sense of belonging with the bitcoin community," she wrote. "It was an inspiration to keep learning more about the blockchain world." –COINDESK
6. John McAfee remains confident that bitcoin will hit $1 million per coin by the end of next year in a Twitter spat Wednesday. –CHEPICAP
7. Cheollima Civil Defence started selling visas to enter North Korea on ethereum but they are only good once the country is liberated from its current rulers. –SMARTEREUM
8. A scammer on the blockchain-powered betting platform Auger continually creates invalid market as a way to take advantage of the platform's refund policy. –COIN TELEGRAPH
9. Bitcoin's hash rate keeps increasing, recently reaching its highest total since last November. –BITCOINIST
10. Captain Altcoin calls Toast Wallet a solid option for those looking to hold XRP. –CAPTAIN ALTCOIN
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: Kim Lyons (Pittsburgh-based journalist and managing editor at Inside) and Susmita Baral (senior editor at Inside, who runs the biggest mac and cheese account on Instagram).
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