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September 17-19, 2019

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LEDGER CLAIMS: LedgerX admitted Thursday it has not launched bitcoin futures, as the firm had previously claimed, after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said LedgerX has “not yet been approved by the Commission” to do so. Then in a series of tweets Thursday afternoon, LedgerX CEO Paul Chou said the CFTC asked the company to censor its tweets. He threatened to sue the regulatory agency for “anti competitive behavior, breach of duty, [and] going against the [regulations].” LedgerX would have been the first venue in the U.S. to offer physically-settled bitcoin futures, which are contracts that pay out in the underlying cryptocurrency rather than in cash. Full story

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Yesterday, ethereum celebrated its fourth birthday. Launched on July 30, 2015, the platform was the first of its kind to feature a Turing-complete virtual machine and native programming language able to deploy code of any algorithmic complexity. “Before ethereum, developers had to design and write extremely complex software,” said blockchain researcher Mihailo Bjelic. There are now roughly 800 monthly active developers building on the ethereum blockchain, according to data from Electric Capital. CoinDesk looks at what the next four years might hold. Full story

SHIFTING ATTITUDES: A team of former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) engineers is bringing trading and settlement of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, to a private blockchain network originally developed for enterprise. London-based LAB577 is rolling out the offering, the Digital Asset Shared Ledger, using the Corda Network. That’s the open-source blockchain system created by R3, a bank consortium that once personified the “blockchain, not bitcoin” ethos of 2015-2016. It’s a sign of how much the industry has evolved that DASL will be used to facilitate the trading of bitcoin, ether, and the like. Full story

CORE TRUST: Like it or not, there’s a bit of trust involved in the process of setting up, or “compiling,” the software at the heart of bitcoin – but a recent code change could help. Featuring container software Guix, a code change was recently merged into the most popular bitcoin implementation, Bitcoin Core, meaning it’s now ready for real users to try out. The change could help to limit the need for trust in code downloaded from operating system Ubuntu during the building process. “It’s been quite a journey, but #Guix support for deterministic, bootstrappable Bitcoin Core builds has landed in master,” Carl Dong, the main developer behind the project, tweeted last month. Full story

PORN PAYMENTS: Adult industry-oriented blockchain project SpankChain has launched a cryptocurrency payments platform. The move should help adult content providers maintain a reliable payments flow in the face of a largely reluctant traditional finance industry. The new SpankPay service allows users to pay with cryptocurrencies including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and litecoin (LTC), as well as the “privacy coins” zcash (ZEC) and monero (XMR). Full story

THE HALVENING: In approximately four days, litecoin (LTC) will undergo a scheduled miner reward halving – a process aimed at preserving cryptocurrency’s purchasing power. The reward is currently set at 25 litecoins ($2,500) per block and will drop to 12.5 litecoins ($1,250) per block on Aug. 5. With that transition, the protocol will be adding significantly fewer litecoins to the market after Aug. 5. Here’s what that will mean for crypto traders. Full story

3 MILLION LEFT: Bitcoin passed something of a milestone yesterday , with the news that around 85 percent of the total supply of coins has been mined. The Next Web reports that, as per blockchain explorers and data websites, over 17,850,000 bitcoin have been issued via the mining process. That’s just over 85 percent of the 21 million BTC that will ever be created. As the piece points out, bitcoin‘s finite supply endows the cryptocurrency with scarcity and, hence, value (unlike some fiat currencies we could name.)

WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER

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#156: “Crypto rogue” nations want to use blockchains to undermine the US dollar

Facebook says Libra may never see the light of day. In its quarterly report, the social network reminded investors that its proposed currency, called Libra, is "based on new and unproven technology," adding that the legal environment surrounding digital currencies is "uncertain and evolving." That could cause Libra to be delayed or even blocked, it said.

Facebook revealed its ambitions for Libra a month and a half ago. Since then, it has faced skepticism and backlash from government bankers and politicians, who have criticized Facebook's track record on privacy and warned that its plan to launch a private currency to billions of people could be risky.

However, during Facebook's quarterly earnings call CEO Mark Zuckerberg struck an optimistic tone, saying that the company will spend "however long it takes" to earn regulators' approval before launching. And a company spokesperson implied that the regulatory uncertainty around Libra and intense scrutiny of the project is part of the plan, telling CNBC: "Engaging with regulators, policymakers, and experts is critical to Libra's success. This is the whole reason that Facebook, along with other members of the Libra Association, shared our plans early." If you say so!

How America's adversaries could use cryptocurrency to push back. A news report published last week alleges that the administration of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has devised a new scheme to convert airline taxes into Bitcoin and ultimately US dollars and evade US sanctions. It's only the latest sign of the determination on the part of several US adversaries to conduct international trade using systems outside America's reach.

The role of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency gives America unique leverage over its adversaries during conflict: it can shut off access to the dollar-based financial system. But according to a new report from a national security-focused think tank in Washington, DC, Venezuela is one of four "crypto rogues"—Iran, Russia, and China are the others—that appear to have long-term ambitions to build new, alternative financial "pipelines" using blockchain technology. Read more here.

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Loose Change

Fill your pockets with these newsy tidbits.

DARPA is apparently investigating blockchain technology for "secure messaging" applications. (Decrypt)
The National Basketball Association has teamed with the creator of CryptoKitties to develop NBA-branded digital collectibles.(CoinDesk)
+This blockchain-base card game shows us the future of ownership (TR)
The US Internal Revenue Service has begun sending letters to more than 10,000 cryptocurrency holders warning them that they may have violated tax laws. (Wall Street Journal)

How the hell are cryptocurrency users supposed to file their taxes? (TR)
The US Securities and Exchange Commission will let a blockchain gaming company sell tokens without classifying them as securities—the first such "no action letter" for an Ethereum project. (Decrypt)
Monex Group, which owns the popular Japanese cryptocurrency exchange CoinCheck, has applied to join the Libra Association. (CoinDesk)