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JUST THE START? U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges against EtherDelta founder Zachary Coburn are likely just the beginning. An individual familiar with the agency told CoinDesk that crypto trading platforms are going to be a significant priority for the regulator moving forward.
Indeed, founders of crypto exchanges which conduct business in the U.S. should likely speak to counsel, said Andrew Hinkes, an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law. He told CoinDesk that the SEC's action indicates that, simply because an exchange is decentralized, does not negate responsibility for the founders.
Byrne & Storm partner Preston Byrne agreed, telling CoinDesk, “It doesn’t matter whether you sell the business or operated it a year ago or a few years ago … American securities laws are going to be enforced." Full Story
UNFROZEN: A federal judge has lifted a pre-judgement motion to freeze Charlie Shrem's assets, as his first legal victory in an ongoing lawsuit filed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss two months ago.
The Winklevoss brothers contend that Shrem stole 5,000 bitcoin from them in 2012, a charge Shrem denied in a previous filing. The case will now proceed to trial, with Southern District of New York Judge Jed Rakoff setting an April 2019 date.
Both parties will have a week to amend any pleadings and file for discovery, according to public court filings. Full Story
CRYPTO CONFLICT: Bitcoin cash appears to be heading towards an all-out tech war. Craig Wright, who famously claimed he is Satoshi Nakamoto (but has yet to prove it), is gearing up for a fight over the future of the bitcoin offshoot, one year after it first forked from the bitcoin blockchain.
Ahead of an upcoming hard fork, due in a week, he proposed that miners of Bitcoin SV (the version of the software that he supports) should utilize their hashing power to mine empty blocks on the Bitcoin ABC blockchain, essentially freezing any transactions from occurring and thereby endorsing an attack on the competing protocol. Full Story |
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CoinDesk Research tracks many different metrics in the crypto economy. Developer interest is important in determining the software activity for each individual crypto's underlying technology.
We observed commits on each cryptocurrency's unique software repository on GitHub, the popular development website, for Thursday, Nov. 8. Commits are effectively revisions to a file in a repository, which enables a project to track what changes were made and by who. This metric indicates ongoing development activity and progress.
Top 3 cryptocurrenies: - Monero (XMR): 242 commits
- Bitcoin (BTC): 192 commits
- Lisk (LSK): 126 commits
Highlight: Surprisingly, monero occupies first place in contrast to its ninth place in market cap ($1.8 billion). It has 21 percent more commits than top cryptocurrency bitcoin (market cap at $112 billion), which came in at second place. Lisk is another intriguing addition to the top 3, considering its 29th place in market cap ($311 million).
It's important to note, however, that GitHub development is not representative of all development within a specific crypto ecosystem. Decentralized developers could be writing code under the radar. Private companies could be building technology around these platforms that's not shown directly in GitHub. Also, not all commits are created equal, as some will mark major changes and others may be just minor code tweaks.
For more research insights, check out the CoinDesk Research section here.
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|  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. |
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| GOING DOWN? Bitcoin's reversal of the recent uptrend is gathering pace, with prices falling to five-day lows below $6,350 this morning. Yesterday's rising channel breakdown seems to have emboldened the bears and prices could move toward the recent higher low of $6,200 as a result. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST ECONOMIC TIMES: What’s in a name? A lot it seems... Indian crypto exchange Unocoin has said in a piece from The Economic Times that it made a major mistake when it branded its machine for depositing and withdrawing fiat currency as an ATM, which, by definition, requires legal permission before installation. Sathvik Viswanath, CEO of Unocoin, admitted that it was an “inadvertent marketing error” that led to the seizure of the machine and his arrest weeks ago. He made the comments after being released by the police. “It is just a kiosk which enables our customers to transact with us and not really an ATM that requires the banking regulator’s approval,” Viswanath’s lawyer argued in the piece. An investigation is likely to decide if Unocoin broke any law for the labeling error. THE REST
HACKER NOON: Fiat currency-pegged cryptocurrencies, or stablecoins, are proliferating as a means for crypto exchanges to connect to the world of traditional finance. Yet, there is a major potential issue, says an article from Hacker Noon: "They are backed by one of the most volatile assets on earth." While this may seem far-fetched now, the piece cites economics experts as saying that a major financial collapse may be on the way, and stablecoins are not equipped to handle a big collapse in fiat values. Instead, the author, Henry Finn, touts alternative solutions: asset-backed stablecoins. Gold, perhaps, or even better diamonds. In the 2008 financial crash, he says, while gold dropped 25 percent, diamonds only dropped 6 percent. Finn envisages as his ideal a stablecoin backed by an index of real-world assets. That, he says, would “always maintain a certain value,” even if some of the assets crash in value. ARS TECHNICA: Blockchain-based voting would destroy public trust in elections. At least that’s what Ars Technica says, writing in response to an article in the NYT penned by blockchain advocate and author Alex Tapscott that said the polar opposite. In his piece, Tapscott argued that blockchain voting systems would increase voter participation and help restore trust in the electoral process. Ars Technica’s opinion piece, authored by Timoth B. Lee, though, says “Tapscott is wrong – and dangerously so.” Tapscott, it continues, “ignores” all the ways that foreign governments might compromise a blockchain voting system without breaking the cryptographic algorithms it’s built on. Government systems could be hacked, as could users’ devices, while election officials could be bribed – all of which could be used to gain access to illicit votes and alter results. And while paper based voting may not be perfect, it works pretty well and is well understood by voters. Blockchain, argues Lee, is little understood by the masses and even experts would have trouble identifying irregularities during an election. |
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WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER  |
Consensus: Invest Keynotes |
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|  Jay Clayton Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission |
| Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz |
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