Market Watch | Bitcoin | $10,640 | 7 day: -0.7% | | Ethereum | $343 | 7 day: -4% | | All crypto | $337b | 7 day: -1.5% | | Bitcoin dominance | 58.6% | 7 day: +0.6% | Prices as of 4:15 p.m. EDT
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 The European Commission Brussels-based European Union executives will advance deglobalization initiatives that will likely benefit European blockchain projects. - EU leaders have tasked the European Commission with identifying areas where the bloc relies too heavily on non-European countries, especially the U.S. and China. The Commission should also suggest plans to amend the situation using artificial intelligence, 5G, cybersecurity, and blockchain.
- The EU Commission will be utilizing a considerable amount of the 2021-27 budget for deglobalization efforts, including focused support for local industrial alliances, European Battery Alliance, Clean Hydrogen Alliance, an Internet of Things (IoT) consortium, and blockchain and cybersecurity projects.
Reuters 
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 Chart of XRP Ripple's (XRP) Executive Chairman Chris Larsen wants to leave the U.S. and leave his court battles behind. Speaking during the Los Angeles Blockchain Summit, Larsen expressed frustration at domestic "hostility" towards cryptocurrencies. - Larsen and Ripple CEO Bradley Garlinghouse have been defending themselves against harmed XRP investors who allege that Ripple's initial coin offering (ICO) was an unregistered securities offering.
- During the summit, Fortune interviewed Larsen, who said that Ripple could relocate its headquarters as a result of this regulatory "hassle," naming the U.K. or Singapore as possible options.
- A group of investors, led by Bradley Sostack, filed a lawsuit in May 2018 against Ripple and Garlinghouse – Sostack alleges Ripple defrauded investors.
- A major defense launched by Ripple's legal counsel was to avert the allegations of fraud by demanding proof of Ripple's misrepresentations of XRP's utility and its alleged misstatements of XRP contracts from December 2017 to January 2018, as alleged by Sostack.
- In 2018, another investor in Ripple's ICO, Vladi Zakinov, led another class-action lawsuit in District Court for the Northern District of California.
- Ripple argued that those plaintiffs were late in filing. Ripple also argued that Ripple did not sell XRP tokens directly to the plaintiffs.
- Last month, the plaintiff's amended complaint argued that Ripple's XRP tokens are unregistered tokens under the SEC's guidance.
- Larsen's personal liquidations of XRP have made him a billionaire.
Besides the lawsuits: - Larsen also spoke about MasterCard's (NYSE:MA) central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative. The $340b payment processor has central bankers actively working within its controlled, private sandbox.
- Larsen also hopes that Biden will win the presidency and positively impact the cryptocurrency industry. Larsen believes that Biden could provide carbon emission tax credits for cryptocurrencies' energy-intensive mining operations and assist in repatriating bitcoin mining rigs from overseas.
Coindesk
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 Block.one co-founder and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Brock Pierce Reviewing the ongoing Block.one (EOS) lawsuits. Plaintiffs allege that EOS' $4b initial coin offering (ICO) was an unregistered securities offering. - Block.one and its co-founders Brendan Blumer, Daniel Larimer, Ian Grigg, and Brock Pierce, are still involved in two class-action lawsuits regarding their conduct during the ICO: Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund LLC et al. v. Block.One et al. and Williams et al. v. Block.One et al.
- Block.one has already settled one complaint by the SEC, for which it paid a $24m fine. That SEC settlement allows other, private, "damages" actions against Block.one.
- Importantly, a penalty fine paid to the SEC is not equivalent to disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, nor restitution to harmed investors. Disgorgement and private lawsuits can often amount to far larger total penalties, even by orders of magnitude.
About EOS' unregistered ICO: - Block.one's ICO of EOS tokens lasted a full year.
- Plaintiffs Chase Williams and William Zhang have led class-action complaints about the conduct of Block.one and its co-founders, Blumer and Larimer, during those 12 months.
- According to court filings, by Oct. 3, attorneys at Grant & Eisenhofer PA became lead counsel and are advancing a newly consolidated class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- Block.one's leadership allegedly disseminated false accounts of EOS's ability to decentralize, engaged in "aggressive marketing" including a billboard in Times Square, and allegedly lied in various conference speeches.
- Blumer, a Block.one executive and business partner of Larimer, was actively involved in EOS' ICO. Blumer currently resides in Hong Kong.
- As mentioned earlier, in 2019, the SEC claimed that Block.one held an unregistered ICO that violated the federal securities laws' registration provisions between June 2017 and June 2018, raising billions.
Regarding Voice.com - EOS.io also launched an EOS-based, purportedly decentralized, social media platform on a domain that it purchased for $30m, Voice.com.
- EOS claimed that it would reward social media influencers for quality contributions in EOS-linked Voice tokens.
- With leadership distracted by litigation battles, activity on Voice.com has slowed to a crawl.
- Voice.com received $150m from Block.one before Blumer transferred authority to another CEO, Salah Michael Zalatimo, in an attempt to separate Voice.com from EOS' co-founders.
Conclusion: - The newly consolidated class-action lawsuit is the last major attempt for harmed investors of EOS' ICO to recover some of their losses.
- Block.one spokespeople have reiterated that the company intends to defend its actions in court.
- It is important to note that lawsuits are civil, not criminal, charges.
- Although some complaints against Block.one have been dismissed, its primary violation ⏤ violations of securities laws ⏤ is still being litigated.
- EOS' ICO still ranks as the largest ICO in cryptocurrency history. The OneCoin ICO also claimed to have raised $4b, but that figure was likely exaggerated. Ripple's "never ending" ICO of XRP has also raised several billion dollars and has not been precisely quantified, as it still continues today.
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Quick Hits: - Bank of Canada's research report shows potential security threats to a central bank digital currency (CDBC). To minimize the potential risks, the Bank of Canada suggests limiting transfers and balances, adding security protocols for storage providers, and modifying liability rules.
- Residents of the city of Verneuil-sur-Seine in northern-central France are using an app, Avosvotes, based on Tezos' (XTZ) blockchain to vote for a municipal infrastructure project.
- Crypto exchange BitMEX experienced its highest single-day net outflow of cryptocurrencies. Net outflows were approximately 45,000 bitcoin on Oct. 2 as investors removed their existing fund from BitMEX after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a civil enforcement action on Oct. 1 against BitMEX and three associated individuals.
- Major Payment Institution Xfers released an ostensibly FinCEN Travel Rule compliant stablecoin, XSGD. The stablecoin allows users with an existing bank account in Singapore to convert on a 1:1 basis the Singapore Dollar (SGD) into Xfers' SGD-backed stablecoin, XSDG, and vice versa.
- Tron (TRXO) founder Justin Sun again replicated Ethereum's decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem in a case study. (Sun famously copied parts of Ethereum and Filecoin's whitepapers for Tron's original whitepaper.) During the Los Angeles Blockchain summit on Oct. 6, Sun claimed that TRX is "better for DeFi ecosystems" than Ethereum, and he is paying developers to migrate to Tron's blockchain.
- Blockchain trade finance platform Contour completed a beta testing phase and began live production. Contour is owned and managed by eight shareholder banks, including Bangkok Bank, BNP Paribas, CTBC, and HSBC.
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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 writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
