Price Investigation / North Korea / Norway / India

Subscribe | View in browser Inside Bitcoin will not be publishing tomorrow or Friday, in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We'll see you Monday!       $BTC (1:10 p.m. EST): $4,485.36 (-3.46%) // 90-day high: $7,382.19 // 90-day low: $4,248.12 / / More… $BCH ABC (1:11 p.m. EST): $230.98 (-4.18%) // 90-day high: $703.41// 90-day low: $200.13 // More… $ETH (1:11 p.m. EST): $133.75 (-4.33%) // 90-day high: $365.71 // 90-day low: $127.89 // More… $LTC (1:12 p.m. EST): $33.46 (-3.06%) // 90-day high: $74.80 // 90-day low: $32.41 // More… $XRP (1:12 p.m. EST): $0.43 (-2.59%) // 90-day high: $0.61 // 90-day low: $0.26 // More… Here are the 10 most important stories about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies today       1. The US Justice Department is reportedly investigating whether bitcoin's rise last year was propped up illegally. In particular, investigators are looking into whether tether was used to manipulate prices. Federal prosecutor launched a criminal probe into cryptocurrencies earlier this year. They now suspect that trades on Bitfinex used tether to coordinate bitcoin's price moves illegally, helping lead to the digital currency's 1300 percent price gain last year. –CNBC       2. A major cryptocurrency conference has been planned for April … in North Korea. The Korean Friendship Association announced that the country will host its first Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference this spring. The event will last eight days and will be hosted at North Korea's Science and Technology Complex. The itinerary includes visits to several locations such as the Great People's Study House, Museum of the Korean War, Pyongyang University of Foreign Languages, Kaeson, the border between North and South Korea, and even a beer factory. –ETHEREUM WORLD NEWS       A 6-week MIT Blockchain Course Be guided by MIT faculty as you learn to harness the power of blockchain technology to solve real-world business problems in your organization. ​​​​​​​       3. Norway's government plans to end electricity subsidies for cryptocurrency miners. Starting in 2019, miners will have to pay the normal electricity tax in the country. They were receiving a discount on electricity taxes in an effort to help the industry grow in Norway. The removal comes at a terrible time as the price of bitcoin has crashed more than 30 percent in the past week, threatening the profitability of mining operations. –FORBES       4. The Indian government expects to finalize a bill to regulate cryptocurrencies next month. The Indian Supreme Court is currently hearing petitions against a crypto banking ban that the Reserve Bank of India put in place earlier this year. The court has directed the government to file an affidavit within two weeks that details cryptocurrency regulatory progress. A panel will be set up for later this month where draft regulations will be discussed. –BITCOIN.COM       Has your business tried newsletter ads? Our readers (like you!) are highly sophisticated and consider Inside to be a trusted source of news. How does sponsorship work?  1. Pick your audience (examples: founders, executives, marketers, developers, high-earning consumers) 2. Pick your geo (examples: USA, NYC, West Coast, etc.) 3. Sit back and watch the results roll in Click here to get started       5. The South Korean government will use blockchain to trace beef in an effort to add transparency to the food supply chain. –COIN TELEGRAPH 6. Bobby Lee, the co-founder of BTCC and brother of litecoin founder Charlie Lee, believes a bitcoin price between $250,000 and $500,000 is still possible. –ETHEREUM WORLD NEWS 7. Bitcoin has been here before – the cryptocurrency's crash that ended in January 2015 was worse than this year's 75 percent drop. –COINDESK 8. IBM and Columbia University will partner on two blockchain accelerator programs aimed at helping startups innovate at scale. –COIN TELEGRAPH 9. Giga Watt, a bitcoin mining company based in eastern Washington, has filed for bankruptcy. –COINDESK 10. Last Thanksgiving came during bitcoin's boom, but if you bought cryptocurrency at that time you have since lost big. –CNBC       Written and curated by David Stegon. He has been a reporter for 15 years, the past 10 focused on technology. Follow him @davidstegon. Editing team: Lon Harris (editor-in-chief at Inside.com, game-master at Screen Junkies), Krystle Vermes (Breaking news editor at Inside, B2B marketing news reporter, host of the "All Day Paranormal" podcast), and Susmita Baral (editor at Inside, recent bylines in NatGeo, Teen Vogue, and Quartz. Runs the biggest mac and cheese account on Instagram).       Capitalize on the economic opportunities offered by blockchain technology with MIT Sloan.

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November 21, 2018 INSURANCE GAP: Insurance coverage for crypto startups may total $6 billion – and that's nowhere near enough for a space where three leading exchanges each conduct $1 billion in trades every day and the overall market cap, even after an 11-month bear market, is $140 billion.  Insurance is also important for institutional investors starting to enter the space. While much of the focus for major institutions looking to set up crypto-related products has been on custody, insurance is equally critical. Theft insurance in particular is highly sought after, in case someone is able to make off with a firm’s private keys. Considering the difficulty involved in obtaining insurance in this space, it’s perhaps notable then that one exchange in particular has secured a large chunk of it. Coinbase may have as much as $250 million, more than twice the $100 million that would be expected for a typical exchange. Full Story STRESSED OUT? Bitcoin Cash SV appeared to suffer from a “reorganization attack” on Monday when two blocks had their transactions overwritten. However, what looked like an attack may actually have been the result of a stress test. Conducted by the Bitcoin Cash Professional Stress Test group, the event saw more than 24 million transactions sent on the Bitcoin Cash SV chain, causing nodes to fall out of sync with each other and temporarily creating a mini-fork of the network.  The reorg occurred when the nodes on the network worked to re-merge the by-then competing chains.  The large block sizes designed into Bitcoin Cash SV may have contributed to the issue, Bitcoin Unlimited chief scientist Peter Rizun told CoinDesk, explaining that larger blocks propagate more slowly. Full Story BOARDING BITFURY: Crypto miner and software producer Bitfury Group has added a former member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to its board of advisors and a tech investment fund founder to its board of directors. Announced Tuesday, former SEC commissioner Annette Nazareth and Korelya Capital founder Antoine Dresch will help guide the company as it works to expand.  Bitfury CEO Valery Vavilov Explained that Dresch brings “years of experience in investment banking and mergers and acquisitions,” while Nazareth provides “comprehensive knowledge on financial markets and regulation.” Full Story CoinDesk’s Crypto-Economics Explorer aggregates data points across the industry to measure the size and opportunity of crypto markets. In addition to price and market cap, our new tool provides users with a comprehensive way to view the crypto-economic forces that shape an asset’s market maturity, growth, and potential. On the chart above, you can see how various cryptocurrencies measure on the graph. XRP shows better "exchange" and "social" scores than it does for "network" and "developer." XMR and ZEC show over-performing "developer" scores. ETH has the most robust profile across all five categories, second only to bitcoin. Use our new tool to learn more.   Jay Clayton Chairman of the SEC Kelly Loeffler CEO of Bakkt Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz Jeffrey Sprecher Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange & Chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc.   Register Now RELIEF RALLY: Bitcoin's $500 recovery from 14-month lows seen yesterday indicates that sellers are finally paying heed to record oversold conditions on the 14-day RSI. In fact, the RSI has now also dropped below 30 on the 3-day chart for the first time since January 2015, so a stronger bounce to $5,000 may unfold over the next few days. Full story BEST OF THE BEST FORTUNE: Despite banks and payments firms touting blockchain as the next disruptive technology for cross-border settlements, not everyone is sold on the concept.  In a Fortune piece, TransferWise co-founder and chairman Taavet Hinrikus said the payments firm has actually explored various blockchain technologies, but still hasn’t found anything that can help the firm function in a cheaper and faster way. Part of the problem, he said, is that not enough banks are adopting the technology to make it the "prevailing" payments system. Even in Ripple's case – which has been explored by various banks – Hinrikus said the number is still limited.  “If every bank in the world was going through the Ripple network, it would be amazing. Yet how many banks are using Ripple today in production? It’s a very short list,” he said. THE REST YALE E360: Can a cryptocurrency help save Africa’s rhinos? So asks Yale Environment 360 in a feature looking at a new token called, of course, rhino coin. The crypto project aims to help protect the remaining populations of rhinos from armed poaching groups and comes with the backing of South African ranchers who raise the animals. The token is, unusually, backed by stocks of farmed rhino horn, which is one of the world’s most valuable commodities (worth up to $125 per gram on Asian black markets, the piece says). But there’s a catch: The project rests on the hope that the global ban on rhino horn trading will be lifted, and investors in the project are speculators, waiting for horns to be legally sold with large markups. There's plenty of resistance to that prospect across the globe, however, and rhino coin holders may never see a profit. THE INDEPENDENT: Skating, shooting and a trip to a beer factory? Those are the side attractions of attending North Korea’s upcoming international blockchain and cryptocurrency conference, The Independent says. The Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference will take place in April next year, with blockchain industry experts publicly invited to the country for the first time. Costing around $3,750, attendees will get an all-inclusive stay and a seven-day tour of the country. Unless you’re a journalist, or hail from Israel, Japan or South Korea, that is. Sorry folks, but you’re apparently not welcome. WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Consensus: Invest Keynotes Jay Clayton Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz Register Now Copyright © 2018 CoinDesk. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 250 Park Avenue South New York, NY, 10003, US Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Manipulation Accusation 😲

November 21, 2018

ARCHIVE

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"What can't kill Bitcoin, makes it (us) stronger."

- Mark Wittkowski

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MARKET

COIN	PRICE	24H
BTC	$4,496.13	- 2.92%
XRP	$0.437756	- 4.09%
ETH	$134.08	- 2.87%
BCH	$231.72	- 4.78%
XLM	$0.198421	- 3.77%

*Information as of 10:00 AM EST

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REGULATION

US Department of Justice Opens Probe into Tether

Investigation into manipulation

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an investigation into Tether to determine if the stablecoin issuer has engaged in manipulating the price of Bitcoin.

According to the report from Bloomberg, the DOJ has already had an ongoing investigation into the cryptocurrency market but has narrowed its focus to Tether and Bitfinex. For reference, Bitfinex is managed by the same company as Tether.

The DOJ is concerned that Tether and Bitfinex have fraudulently propped up the price of Bitcoin using their stablecoin.

Writing on the wall

In June, a research team at the University of Texas concluded that the stablecoin Tether (USDT) was instrumental in driving the price of Bitcoin to $20,000 in late 2017. The research team concluded that "purchases with Tether are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices". In addition, Tether has been accused of not having enough reserves to back their $2.76 billion outstanding tokens.

Tether has repeatedly refuted the claims brought against them. It has shown bank documents proving their reserves, but some are still wary about the integrity of the stablecoin issuer.

Adding insult to injury

Bitcoin has already been beat up enough over the past week. If the DOJ finds that Tether artificially inflated the price of Bitcoin, many investors could lose faith in the integrity of the market.

Looking to institutions and exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval, if the DOJ finds that Bitcoin trading is a manipulated market, it will not look good for the young asset class as that was one of the main reasons for the first set of ETF rejections.

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PREDICTION

Tom Lee Doubles Down on His $15,000 End of Year Prediction

Background on this bull

Tom Lee is a is a Managing Partner and the Head of Research at Fundstrat Global Advisors with over 25 years of experience in equity research. Lee is an esteemed institutional investor and has been top-ranked by Institutional Investor every year since 1998.

Bull stays bullish

With just about a month left in 2018, Tom Lee is reiterating his price target of $15,000 for Bitcoin by the end of the year. Lee's prediction assumes a more than 3x move for the king of crypto in just about a month.

He recently changed his year-end target from $25,0000 to $15,000 but has stood his ground at that mark even as Bitcoin has fallen from around $6,000 into the lower $4,000s in just a few days.

Here is his reasoning

Lee explains that Bitcoin has dropped in value for the same reason some of the large tech stocks are slumping, "markets have seen a liquidity dry up". He compares Bitcoin to a high growth stock and the equity market has seen a shift in preference from growth to value.

Just like most investors, Lee is betting on institutions entering the crypto market. Another reason Lee is so bullish is the anticipation of regulatory clarity. He believes once the government embraces cryptocurrencies the market will rebound. Lee is betting on a lot to happen in just a month.

Here is what the investor had to say about institutions:

"The next wave of adoption is institutional. There is a crossover happening. This is just an awkward transition. Institutional backing will come soon. You will get it partly through infrastructure, like Bakkt, which is launching soon."

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INSTITUTION

Bakkt Delays Bitcoin Futures Launch to January

Pushed to January

According to an official announcement, Bakkt is delaying the launch of Bitcoin futures trading until late January.

Previously, eyes were set on December 12th for launch. Now, Bakkt CEO Kelly Loeffler says that "volume of interest" and the "work required to get all the pieces in place" are the main reasons for the later launch date.

In addition, Loeffler adds that the new launch date is "subject to regulatory approval" - possibly indicating that Bakkt has yet to receive such approval.

New teases

Outside of the launch date change, Loeffler's announcement also included new features and hinted that there may be more to come.

Previously the trading platform had its eyes set only on physically settled Bitcoin futures. This is a new concept in which traders receive actual Bitcoin instead of the cash equivalent like existing Bitcoin future exchanges.

Yesterday, however, Loeffler added that Bakkt has received insurance for the Bitcoins in cold storage and are currently working on securing insurance for the warm wallet within the Bakkt Warehouse architecture.

With the new launch date, it gives Bakkt some extra breathing room to continue building the much-hyped platform.

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HACK

Hackers Target Make-A-Wish Foundation for Cryptojacking

CoinImp infection

According to a new report from cybersecurity firm Trustwave, the website of Make-A-Wish Foundation was infected with a popular cryptojacking script called CoinImp.

Though it's unknown how hackers managed to add the script to the website's code, Trustwave found that the script was working and was using the computing power of visitors to mine Monero (XMR).

Since Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency and easy to mine on a simple computer, it is usually the coin of choice for cryptojackers.

Under the radar

Allegedly, this case was interesting because the hacker employed a handful of techniques to avoid detection. It is still unknown how long the malicious code was up for.

After Trustwave made the discovery, the company immediately contacted Make-A-Wish to get the code removed. Shortly after, without a response from the non-profit, the code was removed from the website.

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BITS

But wait, there's more...

• Authorities in the U.S. state of California have arrested a 21-year old New Yorker for the alleged theft of $1 million in crypto using "SIM-swapping."
• The Colorado Division of Securities has issued another batch of cease-and-desist orders against allegedly fraudulent initial coin offerings (ICOs).
• U.S.-based bitcoin mining firm Giga Watt has declared bankruptcy with millions still owed to creditors.

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