Monday, August 17, 2020

Your bags are in for a treat - Stellar, Ripple and EOS want to grow your holdings, all in their own way

Ripple's sales, Bitcoin futures' all-time high and more
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August 18, 2020
By Daniel Kuhn
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TOP SHELF

XLM holders just hit a home run, Ripple launches enticing community program for hodlers, and Block.One gets punched, again. Here's the story:

Rocket Marathon
The Stellar Community Staking Marathon is like cotton candy for a kid. Billions of XLM are reserved for this proposal dating back from 2018. The Stellar Foundation Board has approved and released the program. Users have the option to claim as much as 25% more Lumens based on current account balances. More information about the event in the most recent Stellar blog post.

XRP Report
After it reported a surge in over-the-counter (OTC) XRP sales as it reaped the benefits of new liquidity-providing integrations with telco Swisscom Blockchain, swap execution facility Zero Hash and the crypto bank Sygnum, Ripple said here and now it is time to make a stand releasing the 2020 Community Incentive Plan. Seems like Christmas came early this year for XRP holders, with the possibility of increasing their balance by at least 20%. 

Back Backed
Litecoin creator Charlie Lee and Blockstream CEO Adam Back participated in a $3.1 million private security token offering (STO) for the online strategy game “Infinite Fleet.” The game is ​developed by Pixelmatic, founded by Samson Mow, who is also CSO at Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream. Announced Friday, the round was broken into two parts, with $2.75 million raised via Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) and $250,000 raised through the investment platform BnkToTheFuture.

Yuan Over Yon?
Digital currency should replace fiat in China's financial systems, according to a former vice president at Bank of China, one of the nation's four biggest state-owned commercial banks. The executive, Yongli Wang, said over WeChat that wide use of digital currencies would encourage monetary reform, bolster liquidity and place limits on excessive cash issuance. Wang, now a director of the Haixia Blockchain Research Institute, also said limiting digital currency as a replacement for cash could impact its market competitiveness. China is in the process of developing and testing a digital yuan through its Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DC/EP) system.

SegWit Sleuths
NetWalker ransomware, which last week triggered cybersecurity flash warnings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has extorted $25 million in bitcoin from its corporate and governmental victims during the months of the pandemic, according to a report by McAfee and CipherTrace. NetWalker is a “ransomware-as-a-service” that gains its access through COVID-19 phishing emails, steals internal documents and demands a payout. Approximately 2,795 bitcoins have been transferred to NetWalker wallet addresses beginning March 1, with evidence showing hackers are swapping this extorted payout into cold storage and SegWit addresses, possibly to reduce fees. 
 

QUICK BITES

  • Bison Trails hires ex-Goldman Sachs VP as legal head
  • Electric Capital raises $110 million for second fund, eyeing DeFi and layer 1s (The Block)
  • Coin Center CEO Jerry Brito  builds anonymous forum for free speech (Decrypt)
  • Bitfinex offers “up to” $400 million reward for bitcoins stolen during 2016 exchange hack (The Block)


AT STAKE


SEC investigation forces EOS.io creator Block.One to release their share of tokens to the current holders. 

The federal investigation has lead to accusations of Block.One being involved in practices related to "wash trading" during the initial 365 day EOS allocation period, with the purpose of artificially inflating the underlining token value. 

In an effort to appear as the good guy and without mentioning the lawsuit, Block.One has set up a gateway in order to redistribute the tokens. 
 

MARKET INTEL

Institutional Interest
Open interest, or open positions, in Bitcoin futures listed on major exchanges reached a new lifetime high of $5.6 billion on Saturday, surpassing the previous record of $5.36 billion in February, according to data source Skew. “The rise in open interest represents an accumulation of long positions by institutional traders,” said Matthew Dibb, COO of Stack. Open interest in futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) jumped to a record high of $828 million on Monday, surging 127% over the past 2.5 weeks alongside bitcoin's quick rise from $9,100 to $11,100.

Ethereum 2.0: How It Work and Why It Matters
CoinDesk Research's 22-page report covers the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0, from its technology and development road map to potential market impact as the foundational upgrade to the world's largest smart contract platform. Ethereum developers present commentary about the benefits and risks this new technology may bring. Download the free report.

OPINION

Taking the Economy Back From Economists
Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, is best known for her attempts to enter New York politics as a progressive advocate. She recently published, “BREAK ‘EM UP: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money,” about the monopolization of American industry and the antitrust actions being pursued. What follows is an abridged conversation with Teachout and CoinDesk privacy reporter Ben Powers. Read the full Q&A here. 

How do monopolistic companies create parallel government structures? 
  • There are clearly forms of private government that are smuggled inside our current public government and growing in power. If you ask somebody who is an Amazon seller what judicial system they care about, they care a lot about Amazon’s system and their own mechanisms for delisting sellers. These companies have their own intellectual property regime, their own punishment regime, and that is as important if not more so than the public one if you are caught within the web of one of these private, growing governments. 
You bring up decentralization a lot in the book. How might cryptocurrencies play a role in that?  
  • I think of these systems as incredibly important, but it all depends on what the governance mechanism is. When Amazon recently applied for a patent to use blockchain technology, which would basically require every seller to keep a ledger of where all their supplies come from, then basically the technology itself isn’t doing a lot of decentralization. The technology is in service of a centralized power. There is no such thing as no-governance regimes. When I talk to crypto advocates, they’ll often frame it as if it is a world with no governance. But there is never an absence of governance. In the end, someone controls supply. Technology itself can’t do quite as much work as I think some of the advocates think. But again, let’s have that discussion, because I think there’s just unbelievably powerful ways in which it can be used for the good. 
You talk about developing a “f–k-off” economy. What do you mean by that?
  • I’m trying to take the economy back from the economists. They’ve been acting like priests for 40 years and telling us that we, as mere residents of this society, have no business messing with economic terms like monopoly or antitrust, and we should just trust their assessments of efficiency. When you take the economy back for people and not economists, then things like wages matter again.

PODCAST CORNER

Open Source
Just because you’re not bullish doesn’t mean you can’t respect Bitcoin. CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen sits down with  Nadia Eghbal, author of the upcoming book “Working in Public,” about open-source software projects. 

WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER

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