Friday, February 15, 2019

Grayscale tells all 🤔

February 15, 2019

Grayscale's Q4 Report Reveals Capital Inflow Concentrated in Institutions

Released Thursday, Grayscale Investments analyzed its cryptocurrency products and found some surprising trends.

Here's the breakdown of Grayscale's capital inflow for the fourth quarter:

Grayscale found 66% of the capital inflow could be attributed to institutions.
Investors in the United States accounted for 99% of the capital inflow despite having a total distributed geography of 67% United States investors.
Investors in the United States accounted for 99% of the capital inflow despite having a total distributed geography of 67% United States investors.

Allocation stays steady

Though the falling prices certainly aided to the deceleration of Grayscale's growth in 2018, existing portfolio managers show no signs of lowering their portfolio allocation to crypto.

While the allocation is still minuscule compared to other assets, funds indicated they have long-term time horizons for the new asset class.

Still, the bear market hasn't helped the growth of these funds with venture funds actually outpacing new crypto hedge funds in 2018.

ETHEREUM

Ethereum Wants to Avoid ASICs New Poll Shows

According to a new poll, about 76% of respondents are in favor of implementing ProgPoW on Ethereum.

The new upgrade would replace ETHhash, Ethereum's current mining algorithm, and also help fight ASIC miners from taking over the network.

The reason? ASIC miners dramatically increase mining competition which means GPU miners will have to splurge on more expensive equipment to keep up.

Caught in controversy

The decision to add ProgPoW has been an ongoing controversy for months.

Because the new code is ASIC resistant, the network isn't guaranteed to be free from ASIC miners.

Actually, some developers argued that making it harder to create an ASIC miner would actually only help the best mining manufacturing companies to secure significant market share in the industry.

Nonetheless, the code seems like it will move forward anyway with only 24% of respondents in opposition.

RIPPLE

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse Calls Out JP Morgan for "Missing the Point"

In a tweet published Thursday, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse took a stab at JP Morgan for launching their new digital asset called JPM Coin.

Garlinghouse explained:

"As predicted, banks are changing their tune on crypto. But this JPM project misses the point — introducing a closed network today is like launching AOL after Netscape's IPO. 2 years later, and bank coins still aren't the answer."

The future is public

Garlinghouse has been fighting the idea for the last two years as his startup Ripple looks to help banks interact faster and more seamlessly - just like JPM Coin.

In his first argument about the subject, Garlinghouse explained that bank coins like JPM Coin would create "an even more fragmented currency landscape than what we have today."

But the two could soon meet on similar turf. Though Ripple has torn through the industry and vigorously made partnerships to conduct trials, JP Morgan's influence will play to its strength.

BITS

But wait, there's more...

😨 Nvidia says crypto drop-off in the fourth quarter drove sales down.
🤨 Survey finds 41% of institutional investors will invest in ICOs within the next 5 years.
🍕 Crypto startup Fold is making pizza delivery possible with lightning.

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📌 Dev Update - New LIPs, Send LSK via iMessage, Create a Paper Wallet, Lisk Core 1.4.1 Security Fix and More!

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Another fortnight has passed and our development team has a number of updates to share with you.

Backend developer Mariusz Serek published "how implementing automation testing significantly improved development speed and code quality for Lisk."
The Science Team started new LIP threads in the LIPs Mailing List to gather feedback 📫
🔎Feb 13th - Fee System: proposes replacing Lisk's static fees with a dynamic fee system during the 'Network Economics' phase of the roadmap.
🔎Feb 5th - DPoS Voting: proposes changing to one vote per account.
Lisk Core 1.4.1 was released to Testnet and Mainnet yesterday with an important security fix.
Lisk Core 1.5.0 undergoes further QA Testing while 1.6.0's new architecture has already been implemented and 1.7.0 began integration of Elements into Core.
Lisk Elements 2.1.0 alpha release continues the integration of Elements' libraries into Lisk Core 1.7.0.
Lisk Commander 2.2.0 will bring enhanced node management functions to Lisk Commander. We will implement various commands to easily manage a Lisk Core node straight from our CLI. For example, "node:install" will allow you to install Lisk Core right from your local machine. 👏
Lisk Hub 1.10.0 introduces a newly designed splash screen, top menu and a simplified registration process with the option to create a paper wallet. Let us know what you think! 📣
Lisk Mobile 0.10.0 lets you send LSK via iMessage on iOS devices & 3D Touch on iOS and Android devices.

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CryptoWeekly #93

CRYPTO WEEKLY
January 15, 2019 | #93

THE MARKETS

BTC: $3,576.33 | +$133.40 (+3.88%) since last week
ETH: $121.10 | +$10.47 (+9.46%) since last week

SPONSOR

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GOOD READS

JP Morgan is launching its own cryptocurrency for payments
This week JP Morgan announced that it would be launching JPM Coin, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar that will be used to conduct international payments. While the stablecoin could pose a threat to Ripple on the remittances front, some are saying that the JPM Coin isn't a cryptocurrency at all. This is because JPM Coin will be running on a private blockchain that runs on Quorum, developed with help from the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. As a result, JP Morgan's cryptocurrency will likely function more like a closed payments network.

Binance reports it's still managing to remain profitable, despite bear market
Despite Bitcoin being down more than 80% from its all-time high in 2017, Binance recently reported that it's still remained profitable despite the downturn. By one estimate, the crypto exchange netted nearly $500M in profit last year, and it also leaped ahead of its competitors to become the largest exchange in the world by trading volume (with more than $700M in trades conducted in the past 24 hours).

Bitcoin could turn out to be the ultimate hedge against the cashless society
Many herald the rise of digital payments and the transition to a cashless society, but these two trends are actually quite different. Having a cashless society is particularly more problematic, as it removes cash as the only P2P payment vehicle that doesn't require an intermediary. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies still have the potential to fill this gap by providing a decentralized, untraceable method of payment.

The first US pension funds are starting to dip their toes into crypto investing
In a world first, a public pension fund has just invested in a crypto venture fund. This week Morgan Creek Digital announced that two Virginia-based pension funds would be leading the capital raise for its newest $40M crypto fund, which will be investing exclusively in blockchain and digital payments startups. The investment will be structured like a traditional VC fund, with a small amount of liquidity held in crypto.

Inside Nvidia's wild ride on the crypto rollercoaster
Nvidia's GPUs have been used for crypto mining since as early as 2014 - but the company didn't acknowledge how exposed it was to crypto-related demand for its hardware until the downturn in the markets last year. This year is likely to see more of the same - this week Nvidia announced its first revenue decline in five years, in a clear reflection of crypto's recent impact on its bottom line.

What's the key difference between public and private blockchains? It all comes down to trust
Many blockchain advocates identify the technology's trustlessness as a key value-add, but as security expert Bruce Scheier points out, this is a misnomer. The "trustless" nature of public blockchains inherently requires placing trust in the protocols themselves - but this can be a risky proposition, as recent hacks have illustrated. As such, businesses considering implementing blockchain on their own platforms should be careful to first assess how it changes their own systems of trust before moving forward.

Blockchain analysis has tied 5 addresses to missing Quadriga funds
After $190M in customer funds was lost by Quadriga last week due to the death of its founder, a massive search was started to find out where the funds went. This week, a forensic analysis discovered that the lion's share of the funds were diverted to 5 addresses clustered together, meaning they likely belong to the same entity. It's still not clear if Quadriga itself is in control of the funds, or if they're now sitting under a third-party cold wallet.

Wells Fargo's nightmare is Bitcoin's dream come true
Last week, Wells Fargo's banking systems went down entirely for nearly 48 hours due to a technical failure. The downtime illustrated Bitcoin's technical superiority for some, as nodes can now even be deployed by satellite in the event of a network meltdown - but as this Forbes piece points out, crypto's technical performance at the scale of global banking networks remains untested so far.

COMMUNITY NEWS

We just added 260 new blockchain companies, 125 new cryptocurrency companies, 14 new crypto exchanges, 2 new crypto media outlets and 13 new crypto VC's to CryptoList. Link
M&A deals in crypto set a new record last year. Link
Crypto forensics firm Chainalysis has just raised $30M in Series B funding. Link
IBM's blockchain mainnet has just gone live in Melbourne. Link
The latest XRP Ledger boosts censorship resistance more than ever. Link
Here's how much key blockchain jobs are paying. Link
Former Snap employees are launching a Forge platform for Ethereum developers. Link
Bitcoin is now mining its largest blocks ever. Link
Ripple's fundraising arm is investing in a XRP Community Developers Lab. Link
Mike Novogratz says a new wave of institutional money is about to flow into crypto. Link
Coinsquare, Canada's largest crypto exchange, has just acquired StellarX. Link
Ripple has just funded 29 universities to conduct blockchain and crypto research. Link
Meet Voyager, the no-fee crypto trading app. Link

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