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February 20, 2019

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you."

- George Whitefield

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We officially launched on Product Hunt today and it would be awesome to get your support!

Come join us for conversation, feedback, or anything else that's on your mind. Visit here.

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MARKET

COIN	PRICE	24H
BTC	$3,974.45	- 0.39%
ETH	$147.01	- 0.94%
XRP	$0.328854	- 2.53%
EOS	$3.80	+ 4.59%
LTC	$50.95	+ 4.65%

*Information as of 10:30 AM EST

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ETF

The SEC is Now Reviewing Two Bitcoin ETF Proposals

According to the Federal Register, two Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) now sit before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In a nutshell, the firm...

1. VanEck/Solid X filed with Cboe
2. Bitwise Asset Management filed with NYSE Arca

This is the first time in 6 months that more than one proposal has awaited its fate from the SEC.

On the clock

For VanEck/Solid X, the ETF that has been delayed several times and even withdrawn this last month due to the government shutdown, the 45-day countdown starts today.

That means we're looking at a deadline decision date of Friday, April 5th.

Let's talk approvals

While the SEC has been reluctant to move forward with a Bitcoin ETF in the past, some believe the ecosystem has evolved to meet the regulator's standards.

Bitwise head of global research Matt Hougan told CoinDesk:

"A little more than year ago, we didn't have futures. A year ago we didn't have nearly as many firms making markets. A few months ago, you didn't have folks like Fidelity announced in the space. It's evolving really, really quickly."

Hougan also added that a number of firms now offer regulated crypto custody - an important factor for funds holding large amounts of digital assets.

Now, the ball is in the SEC's court again. An ETF would further evolve the space and bring Bitcoin under the SECs watchful eye, but a denial wouldn't mean anything different for the asset that thrived without Wall Street for so long.

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TRADING

Bitcoin Shorts Hit 6-Month Low While Volume Hits 9-Month High

Is the bear turning bull? Some investors are calling for a turnaround after short holdings on the Bitfinex exchange platform fell below 18,888 Bitcoin - a level not seen since August.

The low came just a day after Bitcoin climbed 8%, which likely caused investors to eat their shorts and take holdings off the table.

That's only one part of the formula.

Volumes are surging

Conveniently, at the same time, Bitcoin volumes are surging.

Yesterday, Bitcoin trading volumes netted a total value of $9.93 billion - the highest level seen since May 2018.

Tack on the 20% appreciation the asset has seen in the past few days and investors are feeling pretty confident in short term gains.

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BITCOIN

Elon Musk Stands Behind Bitcoin Saying it is "Quite Brilliant" But Too Energy Intensive

In a podcast released by advisory firm ARKInvest, famous entrepreneur Elon Musk shared his thoughts about Bitcoin.

Musk explained:

"The Bitcoin structure was quite brilliant" and cryptocurrency certainly "bypasses currency controls [...] paper money is going away, and crypto is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper, that's for sure."

But Tesla doesn't fit

Though his words positive words had waves of affirmation for the industry, he also mentioned that Bitcoin is too energy intensive at the moment.

For that reason, Tesla, his electric car company focused on sustainability, is staying out.

Musk stressed:

"It would not be a good use of Tesla resources to get involved in crypto. We're just really trying to accelerate the advance of sustainable energy."

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BITS

But wait, there's more...

• 🚀 Binance launched the testnet of its upcoming decentralized exchange.
• 💰 A crypto surveillance startup led by ex-Goldman Sachs employees just raised $3 million to cut down on crypto manipulation.
• ⛏ One mining pool accidentally received 600 times the normal block reward for mining Ethereum and netted $300,000.

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#125: Hacking the "unhackable"

Don't hate the player

Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here. Chain   Letter Blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and why they matter 02.19: Don't hate the player Welcome to Chain Letter! Great to have you. Here's what's new in the world of blockchains and cryptocurrencies.    The QuadrigaCX story has just kept getting wilder. Earlier this month the crypto world was hit with one of its craziest news stories in quite some time (which is saying a lot). It began when popular Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX claimed that it had lost access to around $140 million worth of its users' cryptocurrency because its CEO, Gerald Cotten, had unexpectedly died in December. He was the only one who knew the passcodes to access those wallets, the company said in court.   Soon after that, customers started having trouble making withdrawals from the exchange. This, combined with the fact that it took nearly a month before the company announced its CEO's death, began to fuel speculation online that perhaps Cotten hadn't actually perished while traveling in India, as had been reported. CoinDesk found a death certificate, but this speculation persists, probably due to the growing cloud of suspicion now shadowing the company.   Shortly after Cotten's death certificate surfaced, it was revealed that Quadriga had accidentally sent an additional sum worth around $400,000 to a wallet it cannot access. The plot gets even stranger if you start looking into the personal lives of Quadriga's executives, at least one of whom may not actually be who he says he is. Independent journalist Amy Castor has created a helpful timeline of all this—which dates all the way back to 2004. That's not a typo.     Blockchain security: We're learning the hard way. Last month's 51% attack on Ethereum Classic, the first one against a top-20 cryptocurrency, was a wakeup call. Blockchain hackers are getting better, and they're going after high profile targets.   Before last year 51% attacks, in which an an attacker is able to gain more than half of a network's mining power and use it to double-spend cryptocurrency, were mostly theoretical. But hackers appear to have made off with more than a million dollars worth of Ethereum Classic—and it was just the latest in a series of such attacks against several different coins in recent months. Slumping coin prices have played a role—as coin prices drop, miners turn off their machines and leave blockchain networks with less protection. Meanwhile, marketplaces have popped up offering mining power for rent. Put the two together and you've got a recipe for bad actors to break blockchains. Blockchain security doesn't end with protecting against 51 percent attacks and others that focus on the system's consensus mechanism, though. Smart contract security issues present a whole new can of worms. Read all about it in my new piece.   Technology journalism is more important now than ever. Our mission is to make technology a greater force for good by bringing about better-informed, more conscious technology decisions through authoritative, influential, and trustworthy journalism. Support our mission by becoming a subscriber today. Loose Change Fill your pockets with these newsy tidbits. In December, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) asked for public responses to a list of 25 questions about Ethereum covering a wide range of topics, from how the network is distinct from Bitcoin, to its planned transition to proof-of-stake, to cybersecurity. On Friday, the comment period closed and the CFTC posted the 42 responses on its website. Popular exchange Binance has discontinued the listing of five crypto-tokens for failing to meet its "high level of standard." (Binance) Bitmain has released a new Bitcoin mining chip that the company says is nearly 30 percent more power efficient than its predecessor. (CoinDesk) But it also appears to have lost $500 million during the third quarter of last year. (CoinDesk) BitGo, a startup that helps users securely store their cryptocurrency, has obtained an insurance policy of as much as $100 million to cover its offline wallets. (Bloomberg) The Money Quote "I did not quit social media, I quit Ethereum. I did not go dark, I just left the community. I am no longer coordinating hard forks, building testnets, or contributing otherwise."   —Afri Shoedon, a lead Ethereum developer who has acted as release manager for an Ethereum software client built by a startup called Parity, and has played a prominent role in the Ethereum community as a whole. The move is apparently in response to online critics who say he has a conflict of interest. Parity is developing its own blockchain interoperability protocol called Polkadot. (Twitter)   We hope you enjoyed today's tour of what's new in the world of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Send us some feedback, or follow me @mike_orcutt. Was this forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Blockchain—You've heard the term, now understand the impact. Business of Blockchain May 2, MIT Media Lab Cambridge, MA View this in a browser You received this newsletter because you subscribed with the email address: ‌contacto1745.send-mail@blogger.com‌ ‌edit preferences   |   ‌unsubscribe‌   |   follow us                ‌ MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

$500 million loss

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February 19, 2019 BITMAIN LOSSES: Mining hardware giant Bitmain lost about $500 million in the third quarter of 2018 amid an overall bearish market for cryptocurrency, CoinDesk has learned. The Beijing-based company recently provided an update on its financial results to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx), which is reviewing Bitmain’s application for an initial public offering (IPO) first filed last September. The update showed Bitmain earned around $500 million in the first nine months of last year, on slightly over $3 billion of revenues, according to a source familiar with the situation. The filing, which is not public, does not break down the results by quarter. However, Bitmain previously disclosed it had grossed profits of $1 billion in the first half of 2018. Subtracting that from a $500 million profit for the first nine months leaves it with a net loss of roughly $500 million for the third quarter. The company had also previously reported $2.8 billion of revenues for the first half, so the $3 billion figure for the first nine months works out to third-quarter revenues of just about $200 million. These are the first figures that clearly indicate the company’s reversal of fortune following the significant growth in revenues and profits over the past several years documented in the IPO application filed in late September. Bitmain declined to comment for CoinDesk's article, citing its pending IPO application, though Chinese media site Caixing later quoted an unnamed Bitmain representative saying "the rumors are not true." Full Story​ BITCOIN PRIVACY: Schnorr signatures, a code change likely to be one of the biggest coming upgrades to bitcoin, have now gone from a theoretical idea to real code, courtesy of technology startup Blockstream. Announced Monday, Blockstream has added a technology known as “MuSig” to its test cryptographic library, making it possible for developers to tinker with the Schnorr signature scheme and potentially find bugs. That the code is being opened up to the public to test is an exciting step because, if Schnorr is one day added to bitcoin, the new digital signature scheme could add privacy and bitcoin scalability improvements down the line. Full Story TOKEN TRACTION: Coinbase has acquired blockchain analytics startup Neutrino as part of a wider push to offer more diverse crypto assets across borders. “This is particularly important as we work with regulators and agencies in different countries to bring new assets there,” Coinbase’s director of engineering and product, Varun Srinivasan, told CoinDesk. He added that Neutrino would help Coinbase identify “which new tokens are gaining value and gaining traction in the space.” Srinivasan said the acquisition will help Coinbase research new assets while simultaneously ensuring the cryptocurrency exchange can identify undesirable activity, like theft, without handing over internal information to external companies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Full Story​ Product Announcement: CoinDesk adds BSV to the Crypto-Economics Explorer 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, CoinDesk's explorer provides users with a comprehensive way to view the crypto-economic forces that shape an asset's market maturity, growth and potential. We've recently added a new cryptocurrency to the explorer: BSV. Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision (BSV) was created out of the hard fork of bitcoin cash (BCH) on Nov. 15, 2018. A segment of the ecosystem wanted to increase the blocksize more quickly as well as limit potential smart contract features. The split was led by nChain Chief Scientist, Craig Wright, who is also renowned for claiming he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the original creator of bitcoin, without extensive evidence. Since its fork, it has consistently remained as a top 20 coin by market cap. It also migrated businesses and developers from BCH to its ecosystem. The coin claims to seek to emulate the proposed original vision of bitcoin by emphasizing onchain scaling as quickly as possible. The animation shows the crypto-economic interest across five categories: price, exchange, network, social and developer across the past week of BSV activity. Price fell by 7.3 percent over the week as the price declined from $67.34 to $62.40. For comparison, BTC dropped 1.25 percent in price over the past week. BSV's market cap is also only 1.73 percent the size of BTC's. Exchange volume didn't fluctuate that much as it dropped 0.41 percent in exchange interest from 6.10 percent to 5.69 percent. Feb. 8 saw high exchange volume of about $94 million but then dropped to a low of $59 million on Feb. 14. Just under half of the exchange volume occurs across Bit-Z, IDCM, BitMart, IDAX, and DragonEx as of Feb. 15. The trade pairs associated with that volume are either BSV / BTC and BSV / USDT, with most of the volume coming from the BTC pair. According to the crypto-economic rankings by network interest, BSV ranks 17th. The network (onchain) activity had some interesting jumps. Starting at 2.23 percent on Feb. 8, it climbed to a high of 3.92 percent, dropped to a low of 1.73 percent, and settled at 2.61 percent. Transaction Volume started at $132 million which fell to a low of $43 million, and ended on a high of $200 million. However, transaction counts started at about 4,400, hit a high on February 9 of 5,700, a low of 2,300 on Feb. 11, even higher on Feb. 13 with 6,400, and settled at about 5,000. These two metrics are both onchain fundamentals but can run not always in parallel from a growth perspective, considering their correlation for the past week has been 0.3. According to the crypto-economic rankings by network interest, BSV ranks 6th. The developer activity also had an intriguing week. It started at 6.7 percent on Feb. 8 but then jumped to a high of 9.47 percent by the end. It actually surpassed a fellow bitcoin fork, BTG, on Feb. 12 reaching 9.29 percent compared to BTG's 8.55 percent. In fact, according to the crypto-economic rankings by developer interest, BSV sits right under XRP, on par with XLM, and as stated right above BTG.  According to the crypto-economic rankings by social interest, BSV ranks 20 out of the 20 cryptocurrencies currently tracked. It didn't fluctuate much from about 2 percent. BSV has the least number of sub-reddit subscribers at 812 and active ones at 9. This might indicate centralized communications within Reddit. The main BSV twitter account, @_BitcoinSV, also has about 8,000 more followers than the @btc main twitter handle for BTC.  BSV will be interesting to watch through these various categories not just from a singular gauge of its health but also for the general studying of how cryptocurrency forks evolve post-fork.  For an in-depth view of crypto data, you can also check out the CoinDesk Crypto-Economic Explorer here. STAYING BULLISH: Bitcoin has passed through the 100-day moving average for the first time in four months following a move to over $3,950 overnight. The cryptocurrency’s gains over the last two days indicate a willingness by the bulls to test the upper range of the ascending triangle. However, bitcoin is overbought on the daily time frame, so a pullback may be in order in the near term. Still, we wouldn’t be surprised if bitcoin breaks through $4,000 first. Full Story​ BEST OF THE BEST   SLUDGEFEED: Bitbond, a blockchain startup that provides loans to businesses, has received the regulatory green light in Germany to conduct a security token offering (STO), according to Sludgefeed. The firm announced that the country’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) approved Bitbond’s application under the German Banking Act to become a licensed asset broker. Apparently, that makes it the first blockchain-based finance firm to be regulated by BaFin. “We are the first regulated blockchain company to set new standards. It is important for us to show the investors who trust our platform that we are acting according to transparent rules,” said Bitbond founder and CEO Radoslav Albrecht. THE REST   FINEXTRA: Spanish banking giant BBVA has issued a €35 million structured green bond using its own blockchain platform to negotiate the terms. As reported by Finextra, structured bonds are negotiable assets with fixed maturity. For the bond, the investor – Spanish insurance firm Mapre – opted for a six-year-term bond linked to the five year euro swap rate.  BBVA said that using a permissioned blockchain cuts issuance time and provides traceability and immutability for negotiations and agreements. BANGKOK POST: By one metric, Thailand ranks second globally for ownership of cryptocurrency, according to research reported in the Bangkok Post. Conducted by social media management platform Hootsuite and global agency WeAreSocial, the Global Digital Report 2019 said that 9.9 percent of Thai internet users own cryptocurrency. South Africa came in first place with 10.7 percent, while Indonesia was third with 9.5 percent. The international average was 5.5 percent, the study found.  Other notable stats from the report include that Thailand provides the highest level of access to internet banking services internationally, with 74 percent of the population served. Sweden (71 percent) and Turkey (68 percent) were the runners up. WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Copyright © 2019 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