How BitMEX Pushes Bitcoin Fees Higher For Everyone

Binance, Akon bank on Africa while Dutch officials tell crypto firms: comply or die

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May 6, 2020 By Daniel Kuhn If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.  TOP SHELF Justin Sun's Tron platform successfully applied for a $2 million pandemic relief loan intended for small businesses. Coinbase has scooped up employees from the now defunct TokenAnylist startup while BlockFi has poached two executives from Credit Suisse and American Express to join its lending firm. Here's the story: Transaction Throttling  BitMEX’s daily broadcast of transactions may be spiking Bitcoin fees. The exchange broadcasts thousands of transactions at once around 13:08 UTC (9:08 a.m. ET), leading to a fee increase every day, pseudonymous Bitcoin researcher 0xb10c contends. Crypto Across Emerging Markets: Africa Binance, Akon and other crypto pioneers are placing bets the future of money will be defined by African markets, where cryptocurrency awareness and usage surged dramatically over the past year. Exchange volume has steadily increased on the continent, with a notable spike during the COVID-19 crisis.  Comply or Die Dutch crypto companies must register with the Netherlands’ central bank by May 18 or cease operations immediately, the monetary authority said Monday. De Nederlandsche Bank is moving quickly to enforce Dutch anti-money laundering laws, which passed the Dutch Parliament last month. Trouble Down Under The CEO of fintech firm iSignthis has accused the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) of abusing its market-leader position by trying to delay the launch of ClearPay, a blockchain-based trading system on the rival National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX). Movers & Shakers Nervos Incubator Nervos has launched CK Labs, a virtual incubator, for early-stage startups building decentralized applications (dapps) on its public blockchain platform. The platform is headed up by Ben Morris, veteran of Status, an Ethereum-based messaging platform. Coinbase Consolidation Crypto intelligence firm TokenAnalyst has shut down after nearly three years in business. Several employees have been scooped up by Coinbase, a representative confirmed.  Traditional Hires Crypto lender BlockFi is adding two traditional finance executives to help the firm roll out new products and expand into new markets. Former American Express executive Wittney Rachlin will join as chief growth officer and former Credit Suisse executive David Olsson as global managing director of the European and Asian markets.  All But Omni Tether growth is hitting all-time highs across multiple blockchains, but the first protocol to support Tether is being left behind. Omni Layer, built on Bitcoin, has suffered negative growth in Tether transactions for the last 12 consecutive months.  Bitfinex Flex Bitfinex saw revenues of $21.4 million in Q1of 2020. This represents a near doubling of revenues from last year’s first quarter. (The Block)  Land Records Swedish startup ChromaWay aims to make land ownership in Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay more transparent by putting records on a blockchain. The company announced its LAC PropertyChain pilot on Tuesday. Tron's Relief? Justin Sun’s blockchain platform Tron will receive $2 million in U.S. coronavirus relief intended for salary protection. (Decrypt) Seed Capital  Bitcoin mining firm VBit DC brought in a $1.1 million seed funding round to build a mining operation in Alberta, Canada. (The Block) Power to Burn Ukraine's energy minister has advised the country’s state-owned nuclear power operator to consider using excess electricity for mining cryptocurrencies. Last week, a Chinese city asked blockchain firms to sop up extra hydropower produced during the upcoming rainy season. (The Block)  Privacy Deep Dive As the coronavirus crisis puts pressure on tech startups, privacy-focused firms are poised to last. A reliance on privacy intrusive contact tracing and “identity passports” to combat the viral spread is leading to a conscious effort to prevent data fragmentation and privacy leaks. “The move to remote working and widespread use of shadow IT devices has multiplied cybersecurity risks,” creating a huge opportunity for security-focused companies, said Radoslav Dragov, the Blockchain Lead for Europe at IDC. COINDESK LIVE: LOCKDOWN EDITION CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition continues its popular twice-weekly virtual chats via Zoom and Twitter, giving you a preview of what’s to come at Consensus: Distributed, our first fully virtual - and fully free - big-tent conference May 11-15.  Register to join our seventh and final session Thursday, May 7, with speaker Felipe Duarte from DAOCanvas to show you how to roll your own DAO, hosted by Consensus organizer Bailey Reutzel. Zoom participants can ask questions directly to our guests.  MARKET INTEL Daily Gains Bitcoin jumped to a high of $9,220 at 10:20 UTC on Wednesday, having settled above $9,000 the day prior to register its first close above that psychological support in two months. Open interest – or the number of futures contracts outstanding on the CME – also rose to $351 million on Tuesday, the highest level since July 10, 2019. Shorting Bitcoin A new token lets traders make gains whenever bitcoin’s price falls. Swiss fintech firm Amun launched its BTCSHORT (BTCS) daily inverse token Wednesday, which returns a gain based on bitcoin’s (BTC) inverse price movements in a given 24-hour period.  CoinDesk Monthly Review: April 2020 CoinDesk Research's monthly review of crypto markets overviews returns, volatility and correlations of bitcoin, ether and other crypto assets - all in a macro context. Plus, we track growth in stablecoins and look at what past halvings can tell us about the upcoming one. The report is free to download. COINDESK PODCAST NETWORK The Breakdown Why crypto matters for financial inclusion, featuring Celo’s Marek Olszewski. WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Copyright © 2020 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 here.

Ex-investment bankers join BlockFi / Wealth manager claims banks are advising against crypto / Crypto Masterclass

Inside Cryptocurrency .

Inside.com Part of   Network May 05, 2020

Happy Tuesday! Just a quick reminder: If you subscribe to our premium content, you'll receive Inside Cryptocurrency ad-free five days a week. Right now, we're offering 50 percent off of our monthly plan (only 25 slots left!) if you use the promo code Crypto50. By signing up, you'll get these features to keep you on top of your game: Full access to content five days a week, with an ad-free experience. Q&As with crypto experts, such as this interview with Ray Youssef, CEO and co-founder of Paxful. The latest studies and reports on crypto, including our own in-depth analysis. Our daily Masterclass with leaders from the crypto space giving their views on market conditions. Click here to upgrade to premium! Stay healthy, stay safe, Rebecca

Market Watch Bitcoin is up again today as it gets closer to the $9,000 mark. The market is a mixed bag with many in the red and green. The biggest mover for Tuesday trading is StreamrDATAcoin, which is up nearly 19 percent in 24 hours. Bitcoin $8,903 +1.44% Ethereum $205 +0.58% XRP $0.216 -0.17% Tether $1.00 -0.01% Top 100 Winner: StreamrDATAcoin $0.079 +18.95% Top 100 Loser: Maker $341 -4.59% Prices are as of 1:20 p.m. ET.

Two former investment banking executives have joined BlockFi ahead of Bitcoin rewards card launch. BlockFi has hired to ex-investment banking executives to continue the growth of its operations despite current market conditions. The two who have joined are... To find out more, sign up for Inside Crypto Premium. Simply use the code Crypto50 to get 50 percent off. Click here to upgrade to premium! SUBSCRIBE NOW TO FIND OUT MORE

A wealth manager claims investment banks are advising clients against crypto. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are, allegedly, advising clients to stay away from crypto... To find out more, sign up for Inside Crypto Premium. Simply use the code Crypto50 to get 50 percent off. Click here to upgrade to premium! SUBSCRIBE NOW TO FIND OUT MORE

Crypto Masterclass, featuring Gavin Smith. Our Crypto Masterclass feature showcases a well-known thought leader or expert in the crypto space, including their visions and advice for the future. "The price impacts of Bitcoin halving have previously been unpredictable – and a global crisis only adds to this uncertainty on this occasion." To find out more of Smith's views and receive our Masterclass every day, sign up for Inside Crypto Premium. To take advantage of 50 percent off on monthly plans, simply use the code Crypto50. Click here to upgrade to premium! SUBSCRIBE NOW TO FIND OUT MORE

Zcoin to end founder reward and increase development funding after September halving. The privacy coin has announced the division of its block reward for the next four years, which will take effect following its September halving event... To find out more, sign up for Inside Crypto Premium. Simply use the code Crypto50 to get 50 percent off the monthly plan. Click here to upgrade to premium! SUBSCRIBE NOW TO FIND OUT MORE

Mike Novogratz outlines his bullish stance on Bitcoin. The CEO of Galaxy Digital appeared on CNBC's Closing Bell yesterday, where he outlined his views on hard assets such as Bitcoin and gold. In his opinion, it is these assets that are currently trading in, whereas stocks are out. Turning his attention to Bitcoin, he spoke of its upcoming halving event next week, where the block rewards to miners will be cut in half, comparing it to the printing of more money from central banks in light of the economic crisis. Stating that the bulk of his risk is in Bitcoin, Novogratz said that there have been new investors entering the crypto space, which is starting to see real activity after what he called a "long desert." @CNBCCLOSINGBELL/TWITTER

Robinhood raises $280 million in Series F funding round. Led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, the stock and crypto trading app had been seeking to raise $250 million at a valuation of $8 billion. Yesterday's announcement has seen the platform surpassing its goals at a valuation of $8.3 billion. Other participants involved in the Series F include NEA, Ribbit Capital, 9Yards Capital, and Unusual Ventures. Robinhood supports crypto coins such as Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. With the additional funds, Robinhood will invest in scaling its platform, build new products, and boost the build-out of its operations. This means hiring new staff across its offices, including its newest in Denver. ROBINHOOD

This newsletter was written and curated by Rebecca Campbell. She has been writing and reporting on various industries for the past 10 years, more specifically tech in the last three.  Editor Beth Duckett is a former news and investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic who has written for USA Today and other publications.

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IBM, Mastercard Join a New Enterprise Blockchain Effort

While Ethereum passes a milestone and faces new competition

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May 5, 2020 By Daniel Kuhn If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.  TOP SHELF There's a lot of action happening in enterprise grade blockchains. Big Blue's preferred chain Hyperledger is being tapped by three energy grid operators, a new consortium to establish digital identities for public and private organizations and has been shown to perform better than expected in a medical supply chain pilot. Elsewhere in the crypto-verse, Bitcoin's difficulty setting is increasing while Ethereum is seeing a burst in transactions. Though both may soon face a new competitor, with the imminent launch of NEAR. Here's the story:  Big Blue Goes Green With Blockchain IBM has created a new blockchain consortium with three of Europe’s electricity grid operators to help smooth the transition to renewable sources of energy. The Equigy platform will use Hyperledger Fabric to share charging data between consumers, aggregators and three energy providers in Northern and Southern Europe.  Digital Identities on Hyperledger The ToIP Foundation is building a solution to the problem of digital identity and how to maintain trust between various counterparties. A vast ecosystem of public bodies and private companies, including Mastercard, IBM and the Canadian Province of British Columbia, are working on establishing decentralized digital trust, which will live within the Linux Foundation.  Drug Blockchain Better Than Expected IBM, Merck, Walmart and KPMG’s drug-tracing blockchain pilot on Hyperledger Fabric has exceeded the benchmarks outlined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the group announced Monday. In their final report to the FDA, the partners said, "this technology might be able to address the foundational requirement of track and trace for [the Drug Supply Chain Security Act] in addition to establishing trust between trading partners." Reweighing Gram Returns Telegram won’t repay its investors in gram tokens after all. After twice delaying the launch of its TON blockchain, the company is contractually obligated to pay investors back 72% of their investments immediately, but has offered to pay investors 110% of their investment in equity or gram tokens if they wait a year for the network to go live. Lawyers advised the firm "not to pursue an option involving grams or another cryptocurrency due to its uncertain reception from the relevant regulators." 'It's Gravy,' Turkish Authorities Said iMiner, a Turkey-based company, has been granted a license to operate up to 6,000 mining rigs. The mining company has so far spent 311 billion rials ($7.3 million) on setting up the biggest mining operation in the country to date. Getting Harder Bitcoin mining difficulty – a measure of how hard it is to compete for block rewards – has neared an all-time high in the network’s last adjustment before the halving event, roughly seven days away. This adjustment is the second time that mining difficulty has topped the 16 T threshold and follows the second-largest decline in the network’s history in late-March. Ethereum Killer? NEAR, a blockchain project that aims to compete with Ethereum, closed a $21.6 million token sale led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by some 40 other investment firms including Pantera Capital, Libertus, Blockchange and Animal Ventures. The creators are targeting April 22 for a mainnet launch of its Proof-of-Stake blockchain.  Busy Days Meanwhile, Ethereum’s network is experiencing its busiest days in 10 months amid increased issuance of stablecoins and the runup to Ethereum 2.0. The seven-day moving average of the total number of confirmed transactions on Ethereum’s blockchain rose to 845,400 on April 30 to hit the highest level since July 1 , 2019, according to the data source Coin Metrics.  Milestone Block Ethereum has mined 10 million blocks in five years of existence. Ethereum’s protocol prints a new block every 20 seconds, compared to Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism, which usually will create a new block of transactions every 10 minutes. (Decrypt) New Suit Puerto Rico-based Bitcoin Manipulation Abatement filed a lawsuit against Ripple and its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, alleging they had violated securities laws when hosting its $1.1 billion XRP sale. Incorporated last year, BMA accuses Ripple of publicly promoting the sale to investors to drive up demand and maximize profits, without registering the sale with the relevant regulator.  Ongoing Suit The long and tumultuous lawsuit between Craig Wright and the brother of his former business partner has a tentative trial date, July 6. The Kleiman estate is suing the self-declared inventor of Bitcoin for half of the suspected 1 million bitcoin trove Wright had mined with Dave Kleiman. (Decrypt) Trade Function Trading messaging platform Paradigm will launch a trading feature that makes it easier to execute derivatives trades. (The Block)  Salty Hackers A hacking group has installed crypto mining malware into a company server through a weakness in Salt, a popular infrastructure tool used by the likes of IBM, LinkedIn and eBay. "The mining attempt spiked CPUs and quickly overloaded most of our systems, which alerted us to the issue immediately,” an incident report reads.  The Long Read Fintech guru David Birch wrote The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony, a book that seemingly foresaw the future. What was once a niche theory, that digital dollars could displace the sovereignty of money, is now front of mind for central bankers, regulators and the builders of new monetary systems. The world, it appears, is heading to a Cold War between a competing set of programmatic currencies, all with their own designs and purposes. Birch sits down with Jeff Wilser to discuss the coming state of the world where we will have to choose between “between the Federal Reserve and Microsoft (between dollar bills and Bill’s dollars)? Between Facebook’s Libra and China’s Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (DCEP) system? Between spendable drawing rights (SDRs) and Kardashian kash?”   COINDESK LIVE: LOCKDOWN EDITION CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition continues its popular twice-weekly virtual chats via Zoom and Twitter, giving you a preview of what’s to come at Consensus: Distributed, our first fully virtual – and fully free – big-tent conference May 11-15.  Register to join our sixth session Tuesday, May 5, with speaker Amy Davine Kim from the Chamber of Digital Commerce to discuss upcoming guidelines from the Financial Action Task Force, most notably the Travel Rule, hosted by Consensus organizer Aaron Stanley. Zoom participants can ask questions directly to our guests. MARKET INTEL Investor Interest? Bitcoin failed to plant a flag above $9,000 early on Tuesday. Still, on-chain data suggests spiking investor interest. The seven-day average of the number of unique addresses active on the network rose to the highest level since June 29, 2019. “We have observed a significant increase in ‘new money’ entering the ecosystem,” said Matthew Dibb, co-founder of Stack. Not for Buffett. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says he's having a hard time finding attractive investments as the coronavirus ravages the global economy. Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that the 89-year-old Buffett described in February as having "no value," is up 23% this year to about $8,870. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index of large U.S. stocks, which Buffett routinely endorses for amateur investors, is down 12%. CoinDesk's First Mover team reports, shares of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett's insurance-to-utilities conglomerate, are down 21% in 2020. Let Them Eat Gold Other institutional players, including hedge funds, are betting on gold as a refuge from “unfettered” currency printing. (Financial Times, paywalled) COINDESK PODCAST NETWORK The Oracle of Omaha In the latest episode of The Breakdown, Nathaniel Whittermore unpacks the “Woodstock of Capitalism,” or the 4.5 hour long virtual Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, addressing why Warren Buffet is sitting on $137 billion in cash and is hesitant to invest.  WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Copyright © 2020 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 here.