Bitfinex Under Investigation / Circle Granted Finra License / Crypto Markets Tank / Bitmain Backs Away From BCH

Inside Bitcoin presented by O'Reilly. $BTC (2:55 p.m. EST): $5,228.51 (-5.41%) // 90-day high: $5,642.04 // 90-day low: $3,391.02 / / More… $BCH ABC (2:55 p.m. EST): $259.98 (-7.81%) // 90-day high: $342.87// 90-day low: $108.89 // More

Presented by Subscribe | View in browser $BTC (2:55 p.m. EST): $5,228.51 (-5.41%) // 90-day high: $5,642.04 // 90-day low: $3,391.02 / / More… $BCH ABC (2:55 p.m. EST): $259.98 (-7.81%) // 90-day high: $342.87// 90-day low: $108.89 // More… $ETH (2:55 p.m. EST): $154.73 (-6.54%) // 90-day high: $184.38 // 90-day low: $102.93 // More… $LTC (2:55 p.m. EST): $72.13 (-2.62%) // 90-day high: $97.50 // 90-day low: $30.44 // More… $XRP (2:56 p.m. EST): $0.29 (-2.87%) // 90-day high: $0.37 // 90-day low: $0.28 // More…       1. The New York attorney general is investigating prominent cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex after accusing it of using illicit transactions to mask $850 million in missing funds. New York State Attorney General Letitia James has accused Bitfinex of taking $850 million dollars worth of the stable coin Tether from its bank account to cover shortfalls in its own. Tether is a stable coin that is backed by a revolving line of credit from Bitfinex. Bitfinex withdrew a substantial amount of bitcoin and ethereum from their cold wallets this morning totaling $185 million. -FORTUNE       2. Crypto finance company, Circle, has been granted a license from FINRA to operate an alternative trading system for secondary market trading of equities launched through its SeedInvest platform. Users of SeedInvest will now be able to buy and sell shares of startups who raised capital through the platform on the secondary market after their initial investment. SeedInvest is the first equity crowdfunding platform in the U.S. to receive FINRA approval allowing the trading of secondary securities. -THE BLOCK       A MESSAGE FROM O'REILLY The O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference Our program is designed for anyone making architecture-level decisions. Join hundreds of the best and brightest engineers, senior developers, tech leads, architects, and managers to discover what companies like Google, IBM, Ticketmaster, and Pivotal have learned in their real-world experiences. Save 20% with code INSIDE20.  3. The crypto markets shed $10 billion on Thursday and prices continue to decline into Friday. The top cryptocurrencies by market cap -- Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Bitcoin Cash -- are down a combined 16% in the past 24 hours and no currency in the top 10 by market cap has a positive price change in the past 24 hours. The drop coincided with news that the New York State Attorney General's office had accused Bitfinex of using illicit funds to cover its own shortfall, the sell-off and decline in cryptocurrency prices began throughout. -COIN DESK       4. Bitmain is distancing itself from its ex-CEO and founder Jihan Wu and the cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash. After its failed IPO and listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Bitmain - now under new management - will pull back support for Bitcoin Cash. When Bitmain filed its prospectus with Hong Kong regulators, it showed that it was holding just over 1 million BCH worth $900 million at the time. During the fork and creation of Bitcoin Cash and under the direction of Jihan Wu, Bitmain deployed 90,000 of its own mining rigs in favor of Bitcoin Cash mining. -COIN GEEK       A MESSAGE FROM ASANA Spend less time on busy work and make more time for the work that matters most.  Asana is the work management platform that helps teams organize goals, plan projects, collaborate on tasks, and automate recurring processes—all in real time, all in one place. In fact, customers report that Asana helps them achieve their goals 45% faster. Try it today and get 1 month free!  5. CryptoKitties parent company, Dapper Labs, releases a new Ethereum based wallet called Dapper built for blockchain gaming. -SLUDGE FEED 6. Bitcoin accounts for 95% of cryptocurrency involved crime, according to Chainalysis. -FORTUNE 7. Cryptocurrency broker-dealer Genesis Global Trading loaned $1.53 billion in crypto to institutional borrowers in the past year. -REUTERS 8. Beefchain is the first company to receive certification from the United States Department of Agriculture for a blockchain company. -FORBES 9. Tobacco giant Phillip Morris is going to use a public blockchain to track tax stamps and reduce the paperwork process. COIN GEEK 10. Follow Friday: Alex Adelman., at @ALEXADELMAN : Adelman is the founder and CEO of Lolli, a browser extension that allows you to earn bitcoin rewards when you shop online with their 500+ brand partners. Adelman continually educates his followers on bitcoin and cryptocurrency by sharing original thoughts and articles from reputable sources. You can listen to him talk about Lolli and bitcoin on the latest Baselayer podcast.       Written and curated by Darren Webb. He created Currencylists and has worked in marketing roles for a multitude of cryptocurrency and blockchain projects since 2014. Based in NYC, Darren loves to read and continue to learn about cryptocurrency and emerging technology in his spare time. You can find him on Twitter @Dwebbny. Editing team: Kim Lyons (Pittsburgh-based journalist and managing editor at Inside); Susmita Baral (senior editor at Inside, who runs the biggest mac and cheese account on Instagram); and David Stegon (senior editor at Inside, whose reporting experience includes cryptocurrency and technology).

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New York versus Bitfinex

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April 26, 2019 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​ 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​ 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.   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

Week 17: Komodo's Five Bullet Friday. Komodo does a podcast, jl777 starts a blog, and more.

Share Share Tweet Read Later Forward Five Bullet Friday Week 17: April 26, 2019 Komodo Team Members Jason Brown and Alright sat down for an hour-long interview with the Blocknation crypto podcast. Komodo Business Development Manager Jason Brown (polycryptoblog) and Development Tester Alright sat down with Drew Griffin from Blocknation's crypto podcast. The interview covers Komodo basics, customizing and launching independent blockchains with Komodo's technology, atomic swaps, updates about the new upcoming version of Komodo's DEX, and more. Be sure to give the podcast a listen! If you like the podcast, you can learn more about Blocknation here and you can follow Drew Griffin on Twitter. dPoW Demystified: An Essay by James 'jl777' Lee This week, Komodo's Lead Developer James 'jl777' Lee started writing a series of blog posts about Komodo technology, the mechanics of blockchain, and the power of Komodo's custom consensus framework.  In this blog post, jl777 describes dPoW, the blockchain industry's first security mechanism to recycle the hash rate of the Bitcoin network. While other projects have recently developed similar mechanisms, dPoW is still the only one that provides BTC-level security to prevent 51% attacks and it's the only one currently being used by several live, value-holding blockchain projects. Read all of jl777's dPoW post here. An Update On HempCoin (THC) Migration To Komodo Platform HempCoin (THC) is in the process of migrating to Komodo. The migration will be completed some time this summer, although no hard deadlines are in place. We will continue to provide regular updates as things move forward. This week, the THC migration received some media attention from AltBitNews. With both the blockchain and cannabis sectors growing rapidly, the THC project sits on the border between two booming industries and they're putting themselves in an excellent position to succeed by migrating to Komodo. Here's a short quote from the HempCoin website: "The KMD migration will be 1:1 swap, migrating to OUR OWN asset chain with the availability to LOCK UP 50k & 100k THC secured by dPoW. Benefits of migration include upsteam update capabilities, (when KMD or ZEC update their chain with a feature THC needs), privacy secured by zk-Snarks is optional, & notary nodes as an option to add an extra layer of security and consensus. KMD's tech supports HempCoin(THC)'s interest in providing the agriculture, farming & tobacco industries with the tracking capability required to audit & track a whole crop from seed to sale." The Komodo team is very excited to welcome HempCoin into the ecosystem. VOTE NOW! Komodo's Notary Node Election is in progress. Komodo's Third Annual Notary Node Election is in progress and the Komodo team is pleased with both the number and quality of candidates running for election this year. See the full list of candidates here. Don't wait to cast your vote! For more information about how to vote, please see the following guides: How to vote from Agama desktop How to vote from Agama mobile How to vote from a Ledger Nano S The Komodo team would like everyone to participate in the election to boost the strength and decentralization of the ecosystem. EscoDEX lists Komodo ecosystem project PirateChain (ARRR)! We're excited to announce that EscoDEX has integrated support for PirateChain, an independent blockchain launched within the Komodo ecosystem. PirateChain uses the same zero-knowledge privacy tech as Zcash but, unlike Zcash, all transactions must be shielded. Since z-transactions are mandatory, rather than merely optional, PirateChain offers an unparalleled level of privacy to its users. EscoDEX is one of the world's first digital asset exchanges to add support for z-address deposits and withdraws. ARRR can also be traded at DigitalPrice.io. Verus Coin releases new Public Blockchain as a Service (PBaaS) product suite! Verus Coin, a friendly fork of the Komodo blockchain and a huge contributor to the Komodo ecosystem, has released a brand-new Public Blockchain as a Service (PBaaS) product suite. The new Verus product includes several incredible features, including the ability to launch independent blockchains from within the wallet itself. The Komodo team would like to congratulate the Verus Coin team on this huge achievement! Tech Tuesday Update In this week's edition of Tech Tuesday, Komodo team member Mylo covers open blockchain design templates with Komodo's custom consensus framework, the new PHP library for creating addresses and working with Electrum servers submitted by Komodo Notary Node operator webworker01, and the HUSH project completing their migration to Komodo. To learn more about each of these topics, read the full Tech Tuesday update. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend! Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.