Market Watch | Bitcoin | $11,813 | 7 day: -4.3% | | Ethereum | $405 | 7 day: -8.1% | | All crypto | $368b | 7 day: -4.7% | | Bitcoin dominance | 59.0% | 7 day: unch | Prices as of 12:50 p.m. ET
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 Majority of CurveDAO vote-locks within one wallet CEO and founder Michael Egorov overtook 71% voting control of Curve's (CRV) ostensibly Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). Earlier, yearn.finance (YFI, YFII) had controlled as much as 58%. More: - Curve is an Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) project that has attracted $1b in Total Value Locked (TVL), according to DeFi Pulse.
- (Note: DeFi Pulse figures could be 2-4 times higher than real figures.)
- For more on Curve, see our prior issue of Inside Cryptocurrency.
- Curve lets holders of its CRV governance token lock up their tokens to obtain a separate voting token, veCRV.
- Only 6.7% of the 10m float of CRV tokens are vote-locked.
- Egorov half-apologized and decreased his control to 60% after reporters questioned him.
- Egorov said on Telegram, "I mean, I can abstain from voting but better to fix it in a proper way."
- CurveDAO's current vote-locks can be accessed here.
Decrypt 
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 Satoshi Nakamoto Regarding decentralization. Today's Curve headline about one person's takeover of an allegedly decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) prompts a clarification of this important term. - Merriam-Webster defines decentralization as the spread of power away from the center, or the dispersion or distribution of functions and powers, or the delegation of power from a central authority to regional and local authorities.
- Decentralization is a commonly used term for a future goal of cryptocurrency projects' governance structure, but rarely describes the current reality of any project.
- Almost all cryptocurrencies that claim to be decentralized are actually controlled by a few individuals or small oligopolies.
- Ethereum (ETH) famously made a centralized decision to reverse its DAO theft in July 2016.
- Zcash (ZEC) was minted in a private ceremony with less than a dozen participants.
- A periodic majority of Bitcoin SV (BSV) hashrate can be controlled by one person.
- Writer's note: Decentralization is an exceedingly common term in the crypto industry. Because decentralization is more of a goal than a reality, I mindfully include qualifiers before the term such as "purportedly," "quasi," "somewhat," and "ostensibly." I try to prevent these qualifiers from becoming too cumbersome for reading, so I include them only when the issue of centralized versus decentralized control is especially pertinent. If you have any thoughts on this subject, just click "reply" and let me know! — Aaron
Even Bitcoin? - Bitcoin (BTC) was individually hardforked...
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 Screenshot of proposed 2020 IRS Form 1040 The IRS has proposed moving a cryptocurrency question up to the front page of Form 1040. IRS Form 1040 is the most popular individual income tax return document, signed by hundreds of millions of U.S. residents. A more prominent law: - The question asks the filer if, at any time during the fiscal year, they received, sold, sent, exchanged, or otherwise acquired any financial interest in any virtual currency.
- If the IRS' new 1040 draft becomes the official version, everyone who files a personal tax return will be forced to answer this question.
- The question appeared on Schedule 1 in the 2019 version of Form 1040.
- Not everyone has to file a Schedule 1. Schedule 1 is for additional income and adjustments besides regular (Form W-2) wages.
- Failure to report cryptocurrency transactions was so rampant during 2018 that the IRS physically mailed tens of thousands of letters (Forms 6174 and 6174-A) to delinquent tax filers.
U.S. Internal Revenue Service
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 iDex.market homepage Binance attracts more DeFi attention with its listing of iDex.market (IDEX). Notwithstanding IDEX liquidity totaling 0.02% of Binance's liquidity, Changpeng Zhao says that his team "will do our best to help all projects grow." - Ethereum-based cryptocurrency exchange iDex.market was one of the world's most liquid, non-centralized exchanges during early 2018.
- It slowly fell out of favor after regulators put pressure on all exchanges to adopt Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) practices.
- In November 2018, the SEC charged Zachary Coburn who ran IDEX's competitor EtherDelta with operating an unregistered securities exchange.
- Originally, IDEX required no identity verification. Similar to LocalBitcoins, once iDex.market rolled out KYC/AML practices, its liquidity declined substantially.
- iDex.market currently prohibits U.S. residents from trading many of its token pairings.
Growing the industry together? - Changpeng Zhao commented on his listing of IDEX, saying that Binance supports decentralized finance (DeFi) exchanges, "even if they may be wrongly perceived as competing." In his opinion, "It's not competition, it's growing the industry together."
- Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Binance DEX is its inconsequential decentralized exchange, responsible for 0.004% of Binance's liquidity.
- iDex.market has a membership token (IDXM) that provided trading fee discounts and other privileges, but it has fallen out of favor as the exchange's liquidity has dried up.
- IDXM is worth less than $1m and was not uplisted to Binance.
- Today, iDex.market processes $1m in average daily volume. In contrast, Binance claims to process $5.8b.
- iDex.market's eponymous liquidity reward token (IDEX), which did receive a Binance listing this weekend, has already quintupled in price this year, yet still has a current market capitalization of $60m, less than 2% of the $3.1b Binance Coin (BNB).
Binance
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 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) co-founder Roger Ver finally breaks his silence. Unsurprisingly, he's not happy. - We've been covering Roger Ver's silence amid Bitcoin Cash's most lucrative uplisting of the year here and here.
- The centimillionaire still has not thanked Barry Silbert on the launch of Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust (OTCQX:BCHG).
Instead, Ver wrote four sentences. - First, he enumerated the properties of BCH "before the IFP [Infrastructure Funding Plan] nonsense."
- Second, he assessed the current state of BCH, "Now all we have is a bunch of internal arguing."
- Third, he said Bitcoin ABC's IFP is "derailing" BCH.
- Fourth, "ABC, please stop."
Background context: - A proposed update to BCH would mandate all newly minted blocks donate 8% to a development fund. The proposal is dividing the community and dissidents are threatening to hard fork within a few months.
- Earlier this year, the BCH community rejected an initial version of its controversial Infrastructure Funding Plan (IFP).
- Bitcoin ABC has been pushing for a foundation model, complete with a voting board, to address concerns.
- For anyone conducting further research, note that Roger Ver owns the popular news outlet bitcoin.com which is syndicating analyses of the IFP situation.
Roger Ver
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Quick Hits: - The IMF tweeted an explainer video about cryptocurrencies.
- Reporters reveal email phishing and scam tactics used by Coindesk impersonators.
- Frank Chaparro conflates the current DeFi boom with the dwindling quality of traditional high-yield interest investments.
- Coinshares now manages over $1b.
- The Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed an AI to detect malicious "cryptojacking" and prevent the unauthorized mining of cryptocurrencies on supercomputers.
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 |  | Written and curated by wide-eyed bitcoin watcher since $1, Aaron Wise. Streaming headline junkie, Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, 2017 founder of Cryptocurrency Newsfeed. Temporarily based in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. |  | | Editor | Edited by Eduardo Garcia in New York. Eduardo is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School M.A. Science program and writes regularly for the New York Times Climate Fwd: newsletter. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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