| Bitcoin | $31,479 | 7 day: +15.9% | | Ethereum | $1,026 | 7 day: +38% | | All crypto | $851B | 7 day: +16.9% | | Bitcoin dominance | 68.4% | 7 day: -0.4% | Prices as of 2 p.m. EST
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Bitcoin hit $34,000 and regained 72% dominance among cryptocurrencies. It then crashed $7,000, yet it is still trading around $31,500. What a weekend! Bitcoin's market capitalization has increased by roughly half a trillion dollars during the past 12 months. We live in an incredible time. | |  Aaron |  |
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 Block.One Co-Founder Brock Pierce Today's edition will pay special attention to EOS, a $4B ICO by Block.One that settled securities charges by the SEC, yet numerous private lawsuits are still ongoing. Block.One's SEC settlement does not preclude other private lawsuits. Although some complaints against Block.One have been dismissed, litigation continues regarding its primary alleged violation: securities laws. Overview: - EOS has lost over $14B in market capitalization since its highs in April 2018.
- It has fallen from the fourth to the 15th largest cryptocurrency.
- Block.One and its co-founders Brendan Blumer, Daniel Larimer, Ian Grigg, and Brock Pierce, are still involved in 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, both in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- Pierce was served court papers for a fraud lawsuit during his own presidential campaign rally this September
Today's feature is a multi-part story that continues below... Law360 
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EOS promised great things. - One of the largest ICOs in history, EOS raised billions of dollars and boasted celebrity endorsers.
- In reality, there have always been concerns about the project's governance structure and the hands-off approach of Block.One, the company that launched the blockchain's code after a record-breaking ICO.
- EOS.io launched a purportedly decentralized social media platform on a $30M domain, Voice.com, which rarely exceeds a half dozen posts per hour from its "global community."
- Voice.com received a staggering $150M from Block.One before co-founder Brendan Blumer transferred authority to another CEO, Salah Michael Zalatimo, in an attempt to separate Voice.com from Block.One's legal issues.
Today's multi-part feature on EOS continues below... Law360
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EOS Tribe: - In September, EOS Tribe sounded a warning by moving away from the blockchain.
- They withdrew their status as a block producer candidate to focus on other blockchains and implementations of the EOS.io software.
- They cited concerns about the centralization of decision-making power in the blockchain as a primary reason. This propensity for concentration is baked into EOS, a blockchain that uses a delegated proof of stake (DPos) model whereby higher transaction rates are achieved by decreasing the number of nodes that participate in consensus.
This multi-part feature on EOS continues below...
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21 nodes with all the power ... mostly in China. - With EOS, 21 nodes have most of the power over the blockchain.
- These 21 nodes are chosen in an ongoing vote by token holders who stake EOS in votes for up to 30 block producers (BPs).
- These producers can move in and out of the top 21, but most of the BPs in today's EOS blockchain indicate that they are located in China. Several others are probably located in China but maintain appearances to the contrary.
Problems since the beginning: - EOS was born into controversy. Immediately after its ICO, BPs froze seven accounts that held stolen tokens obtained in the migrations of assets from Ethereum to EOS's blockchain.
- The BPs took this action on their own, as there was not an enacted constitution to authorize this action. One was later written but never ratified.
Today's multi-part feature on EOS continues below...
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More on China: - In June 2019, Brock Pierce admitted in a speech to the Tulip Conference that the EOS was governed by a "Chinese oligarchy."
- One of EOS's advertised benefits was its resistance to vote-buying. That changed last February with the introduction of the EOS User Agreement, which did not specifically forbid the practice. As a result, BPs have tended to extend their leadership positions this year.
- EOS's design concentrates decision-making power. Nevertheless, there is no direct evidence that EOS is in trouble of outright failure. The blockchain sees heavy usage but has not grown into its anticipated status as a highly secure database with high throughput.
- In general, the blockchain community is looking to Block.One to address concerns about the security of EOS, with some calling for the company to turn a portion of its tokens over to a proxy (escrow) pool.
- A proxy pool would permit users to deploy those funds as they see fit, which could force a change of guard among BPs and mitigate the centralization that plagues EOS.
Coindesk
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- Bitcoin hit $34,000 with over 72% market share (dominance) of all cryptocurrencies and has gained roughly $500B in market capitalization over the last 12 months.
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- New AML/KYC rules for the U.K. ATM operators are significantly reducing their profitability.
- Year-end recaps are in from all of the crypto outlets: Coindesk, CoinMarketCap, Reuters, TheBlockCrypto, Fundstrat, Decrypt, Brave New Coin, Messari, Kraken, Bloomberg, and hundreds of others.
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 |  | Curated by Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, and bitcoin follower since $1, Aaron Wise. Temporarily listening to news squawk boxes in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. | | | | Editor | Charlotte Hayes-Clemens is an editor and writer based in Vancouver. She has dabbled in both the fiction and non-fiction world, having worked at HarperCollins Publishers and more recently as a writing coach for new and self-published authors. Proper semi-colon usage is her hill to die on. | |
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