Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Coinbase benefit

To view this email as a web page, go here.
November 7, 2018

COLD STORAGE: Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been quietly offering employees up to $5,000 a year for treatments like egg-freezing through fertility benefits startup Carrot. The perk is aimed at retaining diverse employees, on top of Coinbase's existing health insurance options.

The benefit puts Coinbase in an elite category of employers with Google, Apple, and Facebook, which also offer the unusual egg-freezing benefits.

The perk signals how Coinbase, which recently raised $300 million in a funding round valuing the company at a record $8 billion, is leveraging its ample resources in a fierce competition for blockchain talent. Full story

SHREM SUIT: Early bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem has pushed back against the claim he stole 5,000 bitcoin from Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

In court documents, Shrem calls the Winklevoss brothers' assertion that he stole the bitcoins "dead wrong," while also arguing against a prejudgement motion to freeze some of his assets.

The Winklevoss brothers claimed in a lawsuit unsealed last month that they paid Shrem $1 million to purchase bitcoin on their behalf, but that he withheld 5,000 coins. Shrem instead contends that another individual asked him for assistance storing 5,000 bitcoins in cold storage, but he did not personally own them at any point.

To support his case, Shrem submitted logs of some bitcoin transactions, indicating that 5,000 bitcoin was transferred into, and later out of, a wallet affiliated with him.

Shrem goes on to state that he "never moved those bitcoin again." Full story

NEW ASICS: Bitmain is launching two new bitcoin mining machines based on state-of-the-art 7-nanometer chip technology.

The crypto hardware manufacturing giant says its new Antminer S15 and T15 devices will be powered by its recently revealed 7nm ASIC processor (powerful chips designed to crunch specific algorithms), and will go on sale Thursday.

The new miners "possess industry-leading hash rates designed to mine with the SHA256 algorithm," according to a tweet from the company. Full story



CoinDesk Research tracks many different metrics in the crypto economy. Exchange interest is important in determining the trading activity for each individual crypto's buyers and sellers in the market.

We observed exchange volume for each cryptocurrency, for Tuesday, November 6.

BTC had the highest at $4.2 billion followed by ETH at $1.6 billion and BCH at $908 million.

Highlight: BCH has on average had about half of its recent exchange volume. The increase is most likely caused by short term traders buying. They are incentivized by the November 15th potential fork of BCH that would double their units of BCH on the two new chains.

For more research insights, check out the CoinDesk Research section here.
 


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

LOOKING DOWN: Bitcoin's technical indicators have grown increasingly bearish in the last 24 hours, adding credence to the bullish symmetrical triangle breakout witnessed over the weekend. Notably, the RSI is holding at the highest level since early September, indicating scope for a rally to $6,800. Full story

BEST OF THE BEST

NATURE: Crypto mining requires more energy than the conventional mining of metals, according to a new study published in Nature.

From January 2016 to the end of June 2018, the researchers estimated that mining bitcoin, ether, litecoin and monero consumed an average of 17, 7, 7 and 14 megajoules (MJ) to generate $1, respectively. On the other hand, mining of aluminum, copper, gold, platinum and rare earth oxides consumed 122, 4, 5, 7 and 9 MJ per USD, respectively.

They conclude that (aluminum aside) crypto mining consumed more energy than conventional mining to produce an equivalent market value.

They add that, over that period, mining for the four cryptocurrencies was estimated to produce 3–15 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

That situation, if confirmed, is unlikely to diminish anytime soon. The paper also says that, with three of the four cryptocurrencies showing generally increasing hashrates, energy requirements are likely to continue to grow. 

THE REST

BLOOMBERG:
 When railroad stocks collapsed after a bubble in the 1800s, it didn't mark the death knell of the railway. Nor did the dot-com crash destroy the internet. Instead they weeded out the bad companies and paved the way for a technology revolution.

So, perhaps this year’s crash in the value of cryptos is just what’s needed for “the next step forward," says an opinion piece from Bloomberg. From suspect projects raising fund via ICOs to the environmental impact of mining, the crypto space has issues to iron out, according to author and professor of economics Tyler Cowen. 

The “popping of … bubbles can be good, both to bring prices back to reality and to impose discipline and identify the most useful innovations,” he says. And maybe this “do or die” moment is just what the crypto industry needs to bring out its best.

THE NEXT WEB: Luxury Swiss watchmaker Hublot has launched a watch to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the bitcoin white paper, according to The Next Web. Named "Big Bang Meca-10 P2P," the timepiece is a limited edition 210 – a reference to the 21 million bitcoins that will ever be mined. 

The watch will only be purchasable with bitcoin, and while the price has not been officially disclosed, a different report suggests it will cost around $25,000 in the cryptocurrency (around 3.8 BTC).

The device has a 45mm case made from black ceramic and will sport a unique ID number relating to the bitcoin transaction used for its purchase engraved on its bezel. A 10-day power reserve also references the 10-year anniversary. 

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
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
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  

 

Token Migration, Miner Bounty, Intriguing Content and a Map of æmbassadors!

Dear æternity community,

The Mainnet is almost here! All teams are working hard to prepare for the next major milestone in æternity's history. The majority of the dev team's efforts is now dedicated to fixing the few remaining bugs, running extensive load and performance tests, and various final optimizations The æpp and marketing teams are primarily focused on token migration: their main goal is to make it as easy as possible for users to migrate in Phase 0. The process of AE token transfer is being optimized, and guides and FAQs are being prepared. A Mainnet category will be created in the Forum, and used for supporting users during the migration process and beyond. November will be full of exciting developments!

Here is a summary of what happened in October:

AE Token Migration

In order to prepare all AE users for the important process of transferring their AE tokens to the Mainnet, we published a detailed post explaining how token migration will happen before and after the launch of æternity's platform. It includes screens from the migration website that is being developed, and is a must-read for any AE user.
AE TOKEN MIGRATION

Bounty: Multi GPU Miner

Currently, to mine AE, an æternity node needs to be associated with each GPU used for mining. In a rig of six GPUs, six nodes must be running in parallel. To try to address this inconvenience, we are announcing a bounty for an open-source multi GPU miner that runs on Ubuntu. Get the details and join the hunt by clicking the button below.
MINING RIG BOUNTY

Map of æmbassadors

æternity's decentralized team of æmbassadors is growing! We want to update the community with the latest state of this initiative by sharing a map, photos, and a few graphs all featured in a short blog post. Learn more and become an æmbassador by clicking on the button below.  
MAP OF ÆMBASSADORS

æternity Twitter PR and Tech Accounts

We aim to keep the community informed of all media mentions of æternity that we are aware of, so we created a dedicated Twitter PR account. Make sure to follow it! We also launched a Twitter account for the dev and æpps teams. After the Mainnet launch, we plan to use this account for important announcements that will affect users, miners, and æpp developers. We recommend you follow it to get notified about critical updates.

Development and æpp Updates

Last month, in addition to their extensive work on token migration, the æpp team introduced a JavaScript SDK and presented their approach to æpps usability testing. The dev team managed to integrate IDNA 2008 and replay protection, improve node sync, state channels, system stability, optimized the VM and started extensive protocol testing. Read all development updates here. 

October Content

In October, the second part of the "Can Decentralization Win?" series was shared, focusing on self-sovereign identity and encrypted messaging in a decentralized social media platform. The many advantages of functional programming languages for blockchain development were discussed in a blog post published in Hacker Noon. Vlad from the team did an in-depth interview for Crypto Bulk, discussing all æternity features, use-cases and more. Finally, Philipp Piwowarsky, the team lead of æternity's Elixir implementation, shared his views on Erlang, inclusive payments systems, and what it is like to educate a new generation of developers in a short interview.

Events

To stay up to date with where and when to next meet the team, have a look at our events list by clicking the button below.
ÆTERNITY EVENTS

Meme Competition Winner

We organized a fun Meme Competition and made good use of the community's creative energy. We were excited to receive more than 50 memes dedicated to æternity. After an internal vote, the team selected the winner - a meme that reminds us of the virtue of patience.

Thank You for Your Ongoing Support!

 
If you would like to interact with the team or community, please feel free to join one or more of the channels below.
Social Media Channels
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google+
##aeternity on freenode
Blogs, Forums & Chats
We are thrilled to have you with us!
The æternity team
Our mailing address is:
info@aeternity.com

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list