Monday November 19 2018, Daily News Digest

United States

Coinbase Custody Announces Support for Ripple’s XRP and OmiseGO (Altcoin Buzz), Rated: AAA

XRP and OmiseGO have been successfully added to Coinbase Custody. Coinbase Custody is designed to provide financial controls for institutions and companies seeking to trade digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. As of this week, XRP and OmiseGO are also part of that list. 

Ripple Surges by Over 7% Today As Crypto Markets Attempt Recovery (CoinGape), Rated: AAA

As the rest of the cryptocurrency market struggles to make a recovery, Ripple is leading the pack with a +7.79% increase in price over the past 24 hours of trading. Ripple is presently now trading back above $0.50 at the $0.52 handle, at the time of writing, after seeing a +2.75% price spike over the past 7 trading days.

Ripple Continues to Rebound, While Most Major Cryptocurrencies See Mild Wave of Red (CoinTelegraph), Rated: A

Saturday, Nov. 17: crypto markets have seen another mild decline, with losses across the top 20 coins by market cap reaching 4 percent over the past 24 hours.

Ripple, which overtook Ethereum (ETH) in terms of market share on Thursday, Nov. 15, continues to hold its place as the top altcoin, with a market cap of $19.9 billion, while Ethereum’s market cap amounts to about $18 billion as of press time.

Market capitalization of Bitcoin fell below 100 billion USD (Finance and Markets), Rated: AAA

Cryptocurrencies suffered a harsh blow during the week, wiping out billion of dollars from their market capitalization. Bitcoin dropped by more than 12% during the week, falling on Thursday to record low of 5,358 USD in more than an year.

Against the backdrop of sell-offs that began on Wednesday, the market capitalization of the Bitcoin fell below 100 billion USD on Thursday, a level that was last seen in October 2017. The market value the Bitcoin reached 97.179 billion USD.

Bitcoin’s repeated splits undermine its long-term value (Financial Times), Rated: A

Cryptocurrencies have been crashing again. Bitcoin has slumped to its lowest price in more than a year. More than $600bn in claimed “market capitalisation” has vanished from the universe of pseudo-money and digital tokens since early January.

SEC Investigating $ 50m Crypto Lending ICO, SALT (DCE Brief), Rated: AAA

Many prominent ICOs have renewed reason to feel anxious, after the Wall Street Journal reported November 15 that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has opened an investigation and issued subpoenas to Salt Lending Holdings Inc., which in August 2017 sold $50m in SALT tokens in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to be used as startup capital for their lending platform.

Big Cryptocurrency Player Based In China Establishes Foothold In Pacific Northwest (NW News Network), Rated: AAA

One of the biggest players in the global cryptocurrency space has established a foothold in the Pacific Northwest. China-based Bitmain Technologies held a ribbon cutting for a $20 million data center near the Wenatchee airport on Friday. A celebratory mood ran through the grand opening despite headwinds besetting the virtual currency sector.

Dash Is Able To Support Over 3 Million Transactions (TokenTops), Rated: A

“#Dash community we did it! The stress-test is now over. It was a huge success & we managed over 3 million @Dashpay transactions in 24 hours! That’s a new ATH record for a #Bitcoin based #Blockchain!” joyfully commented Mark Mason, head of Media and PR for Dash-focused news blog Dash Force News.

HOW TO BUY S&P 100 STOCKS WITH BITCOIN (Bitcoinist), Rated: A

However, trading platform WorldMarkets.io has just listed the entire Standard and Poor 100 stocks, to trade against bitcoin.

The platform intends to increase this functionality to cover the entire S&P 500 share index, and it isn’t stopping there. The UK’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 are all in its sights. Plus other major markets including Brazil, France, and Korea, and several ETFs.

CNBC’s Ran Neuner Urges Crypto Investors to ‘Dump BTC and BCH’ and fully Invest in XRP (ZyCrypto), Rated: A

Ran Neuner of CNBC, also the founder of Onchain has advised users to ditch Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash and focus solely on investing in XRP.

What Will be in Demand on the Decentralized Market in 2019? (Forbes), Rated: A

2017 had the most robust crypto market ever seen. In comparison, 2018 has had quite an unimpressive run within the crypto space with almost all coins careening down by at least 80% from their all-time highs.

Sectors that flourished in 2018 and will be with us in 2019

• Finance and E-commerce
• Trading – According to a 24hr ranking by volume compilation by coinmarketcap, OKEx had moved in excess of $513 million in 24, Binance was second with over $464 million while ZB.COM transacted over $430 million. The top three exchanges alone accounted for over $1 billion trade volume.
• Social Networks – Steemit which started in June 2016, has over 1 million users registered on the site. The Indorse platform has over 70,000 users monthly.

Nvidia Stock Didn’t Drop Due to Crypto Bear Market (CCN), Rated: A

In the second quarter earnings call held in August, Nvidia firmly emphasized that GPU sales to crypto miners have substantially declined.

At the time, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said that the company is no longer expecting any contribution from its cryptocurrency-focused venture.

SEC Orders AirToken and Paragon To Refund ICO Investors: AirToken Gained 70% (Crypto Potato), Rated: A

AirToken’s price has just experienced a huge surge, over 70% in a matter of two hours. The cryptocurrency’s price spiked soon after the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) ordered the company (Airfox) along with Paragon to refund all of their investors. As of now, the gains have decreased to 25%.

Smart Contract Developers May Be Held Liable by the SEC (Bitcoin.com), Rated: A

Smart contracts, explained the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), “provide the means for investors and market participants to find counterparties, discover prices, and trade a variety of digital asset securities.” In its Statement on Digital Asset Securities Issuance and Trading, published Nov. 16, the SEC referred to smart contracts five times, particularly in reference to Etherdelta, whose creator was prosecuted for operating an unregistered securities exchange that ran on smart contracts he’d coded. What this ruling means for developers, moving forwards, is a matter of some debate and great concern.

After Friday’s SEC Actions, Experts Say ICO Party ‘Is Truly Over’ (CoinDesk), Rated: A

In a pair of orders published Friday morning, the SEC announced it had settled charges with CarrierEQ Inc., otherwise known as Airfox, and Paragon Coin Inc., wherein both startups would register their tokens as securities, refund investors, pay penalties of $250,000 and file periodic statements with the regulator for at least the next year.

Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on public blockchain startups, believes the regulator is building up a body of case law against unregistered securities offerings and bad actors.

Crypto Wallet BitGo Adds Support For Five Stablecoins (BlockTribune), Rated: B

Blockchain security and crypto wallet firm BitGo has added support for five stablecoins, including CENTRE USD (USDC), Gemini Dollar (GUSD), MakerDAO’s Dai (DAI), Paxos Standard Token (PAX), and TrustToken’s TrueUSD (TUSD).

International

Bitcoin, Ripple (XRP), And Ethereum Are Getting Hit Again–Here’s Why (Forbes), Rated: AAA

Bitcoin, along with other major cryptocurrencies ripple (XRP), ethereum, bitcoin cash, stellar, and litecoin, have fallen again over the last 24 hours as investors and traders fret over a flood of warnings on the future of cryptocurrencies.

Top 5 Crypto Performers Overview: XEM, Ripple, Stellar, Bitcoin, IOTA (CoinTelegraph), Rated: AAA

XEM/USD
The digital currency is currently trading 95 percent below its lifetime highs of 2.14676437 hit on Jan. 4 of this year. Due to the huge fall, it’s difficult to analyze the weekly chart; thus, we are using the daily chart for our analysis.

XLM/USD

Stellar (XLM) has displaced EOS to take its place among the top five digital currencies by market capitalization.

BTC/USD

The BTC/USD pair has broken down from the critical support at $5,900 and is sustaining below it. If the price closes the week below $5,900, the fall can extend to the first support at $5,450 and below that to $5,000. The pattern target of the breakdown of the tight range $6,832-$5,900 comes to $4,968. Hence, we anticipate a strong support close to $5,000.

Tron [TRX] surpasses Ethereum [ETH] in terms of dApp volume with 422 million transactions (AMBCrypto), Rated: AAA

Reports show that IDEX, which is the most successful dApp on the Ethereum network has a transaction volume of 2430 ETH transactions in a span of 24 hours. Tronbet, on the other hand, has over 422 million TRX transactions.

IBM and Stellar Could Challenge Ripple in the Global Payment Industry (Use the Bitcoin), Rated: A

Both IBM and Stellar could be challenging Ripple’s intention to become a leader in the global payment industry. IBM has recently launched a program that allows consumers and merchants in the South Pacific region to make cross-border payments. Nevertheless, IBM is using Stellar Lumens (XLM) rather than other projects such as Bitcoin (BTC) or Ripple.

ERC20 Token List: The Top 25 Tokens by Market Cap (Blocklr), Rated: A

There are a lot of popular Ethereum tokens, but here is a top 25 ERC20 token list.

1. BNB (BNB)

Market Cap: $1,018,500,000*
Price: $7.77

2. VeChain (VEN)

Market Cap: $438,200,000
Price: $0.008

3. Maker (MKR)

Market Cap: $418,600,000 
Price: $574.81

4. OmiseGO (OMG)

Market Cap: $381,2o0,000
Price: $2.72

5. 0x (ZXR)

Market Cap: $298,900,000
Price: $0.547

Binance Coin (BNB) Now Available at 2.3 Million Merchants with CoinPayments Integration (CoinGape), Rated: A

The 14th largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the native token of the biggest crypto exchange Binance, Binance Coin (BNB) gets a huge boost of adoption with its integration with the payment gateway CoinPayments that has over 2 million vendors across 182 countries and supports more than a thousand cryptos.

Ethereum [ETH] is being attacked for its source code by EOS and other project developers, says Director of ETC (AMBCrypto), Rated: A

Lusardi explained how ETC is overlooked when it comes to the discourse about Ethereum killers or building the next big platform to host dApps and provide a decentralized platform. He said that although Ethereum and Ethereum Classic have had a success and long history of operation, people usually overlooked Ethereum Classic and went straight to Ethereum and Bitcoin because they are the top performing cryptocurrencies by market cap and even by volume.

He stated:

“And so when you’re a new entry like Tezos who’s just copying some ETC source code or EOS where it’s, Byte Masters’ third dysfunctional project, you end up in a situation where all they want to do is they want to attack Ethereum.”

Bank of England, Bank of Canada & Monetary Authority of Singapore Join in Publishing Report on Payments and Possible Use of Blockchain (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: A

• Model 1: is the collection of current and planned industry initiatives, which we consider to be the baseline for these discussions.
• Model 2 is based on an expanded role for in- country RTGS operators that act as “super- correspondents” for settling cross-border payments instead of relying on intermediary banks as correspondent banks.
• Models 3a, 3b and 3c are variations based on the settlement of cross-border payments between banks using W-CBDCs47. These are a tokenized, limited-access form of central bank liabilities used for wholesale interbank payment and settlement transactions.

Read the full report here.

This is how politicians should regulate the blockchain (Wired), Rated: A

Because of that, it makes sense to involve industry regulators early, not to get approval for the technology, but to avoid accusations of collusion. “I think regulators would like to join in the first sort of blockchain projects that come up, just to learn, and will probably get less interested when they realise this isn’t about collusion or pricing, it’s about industrial efficiency.”

There are other laws that will collide with blockchain, particularly with data privacy. Gerard notes that GDPR, the EU data regulation that came into force in May, requires companies be able to delete or update personal information, but one of the key selling points of blockchain is that it’s immutable.

Bad Crypto Headlines Making Clients ‘Nervous’ (CoinDesk), Rated: A

Pawczuk’s team is squarely focused on helping decades-old, global enterprises figure out how to use distributed ledger technology (DLT) to transform their paper-based business processes for a digital age. But recently, she said, these clients have been asking about the wilder side of blockchain they’ve read about in the news: the initial coin offerings (ICOs) that have incurred the wrath of the Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, or the illicit uses of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

She told CoinDesk:

“The boards are asking us about it because it’s in the news for bad actors, and boards are nervous that blockchain is affiliated with bitcoin and altcoins and ICOs, and what do boards do to protect their investors? So it hasn’t helped us, the association with the bad actors.”

OFF-THE-GRID BITCOIN TRANSACTIONS NOW A REALITY (Bitcoinist), Rated: A

The ability to send bitcoin (BTC) $5279.33 -0.8% without internet or data connection relies on the goTenna mesh network. First, Samourai wallet creates a signed transaction and passes it to the TxTenna app. This then broadcasts the transaction to nearby mesh nodes via a paired goTenna mesh device.

Four More Fake Crypto Wallets Removed From Google Play Store (Live Bitcoin New), Rated: A

Four new malicious applications have been identified by researchers this week.

All of the applications try to mimic legitimate altcoin wallet solutions. Two of the fake offerings purposefully target NEO users. One other is designed to defraud Tether’s USDT users.

European Union

Binance Sent $ 600 Million in Bitcoin for Just $ 7 (CCN), Rated: AAA

Two transactions destined for Binance’s cold walletcome to the fore and demonstrate both the power and irony of the blockchain. A transaction in block 550211 was a transfer of just over $1 million. For this transaction, Binance paid just over $8 in fees. The “high” amount of the fee is probably a matter of convenience, as the transaction was not particularly large at just 1550 bytes.

The other transaction, first flagged by Antoine Le Calvez of CoinMetrics.io,  is more notable for its size — $600 million at the time it was sent, making it the largest unspent transaction output existing today — but also illustrates the irony of Bitcoin transactions, whose fees are not based on the amount transacted but instead the amount of computer resources required to store the information. This second transaction, made in block 550155 several hours earlier, comprised 5981 bytes yet cost the giant exchange just over $7.

Binance CEO Hints at How XRP can Become a Base Currency on the Platform (Ethereum World News), Rated: A

ETH/USD Facing Uphill Task Near $ 194 (NewsBTC), Rated: AAA

It seems like the price may consolidate in the short term above the $165 level. Later, it could surpass the $178-179 resistance to extend the recovery. However, there is a major resistance waiting on the upside near the $192-194 zone. Moreover, there is a major bearish trend line in place with resistance at $193 on the 4-hours chart of ETH/USD. The trend line coincides with the 50% Fib retracement level of the last drop from the $223 high to $165 low. Besides, the 100 simple moving average on the same chart is also near $194-195.

The above chart indicates that ETH price is likely preparing for an extended correction above $179. However, upsides will most likely face sellers near $194. Finally, the price could decline once again towards $170 and $165.

Cardano price falls to yearly low as bear continues to enjoy its spoils (AMBCrypto), Rated: AAA

The one-hour chart shows Cardano’s [ADA] price moving sideways after a freefall from the top. The downtrend saw the price drop from $0.0743 to $0.061. The support was broken recently, with the price falling to its yearly low of $0.0581. The resistance has been holding at $0.0824.

Estonia Rewards Nearly 500 Crypto Exchanges And 400 Wallet Businesses With Licenses (Bitcoin Exchange Guide), Rated: A

Estonia is one of the first countries to widely support and approve a cryptocurrency industry in its country. The country has already issued 500 cryptocurrency licenses, at least according to news outlet Bitnovosti, which quoted Nikolay Demchuk, an attorney who works in the cryptocurrency sector.

Security Token Offerings: capital markets meets tokenomics (Times of Malta), Rated: A

Insofar as Maltese law is concerned, the key to distinguishing between STOs and other token offerings is the analysis of the token in accordance with the Financial Instrument Test introduced by the Malta Financial Services Authority under the Virtual Financial Assets Act (Cap. 590 of the laws of Malta). Where a DLT-Asset (an asset that utilises or is intrinsically dependent on distributed ledger technologies) qualifies as a ‘transferable security’, such an asset would be subject to traditional financial services legislation.

Blockchain Bundesverband Announces European Blockchain Think Tank, Will Present EU Token Regulation Paper (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: B

The Blockchain Bundesverband, an association for the promotion of blockchain technology in Germany, has announced a new think tank for token regulation. “thinkBLOCKtank” will release a joint paper supported by various European countries entitled EU Token Regulation as the group seeks to drive the regulatory status of token offerings. A public event has been scheduled to take place in Luxembourg on November 28th to present the token regulation document.

United Kingdom

Bitcoin (BTC) All Set For A Final, More Devastating Fall (CryptoDaily), Rated: AAA

The price action clearly shows that the Bitcoin (BTC) bulls failed to take the price above $5,560 despite numerous attempts over the last two days. The RSI has now entered overbought territory. This means that if the rest of the conditions remain the same, BTC/USD is expected to fall further in the next 24 hours.

Many in the crypto community still think that the price could fall to $4,000 or lower levels. However, the probability of that happening at this stage remains low. That being said, the probability of a fall to $5,000 is extremely high.

Asia

Japan Wants to Regulate Crypto Wallets, Breach of User Privacy? (NewsBTC), Rated: AAA

The Financial Services Agency (FSA) on Monday revealed its plan to regulate cryptocurrency wallet providers, ItMedia reported. The decision came during a cryptocurrency study group meeting after concerns over money laundering and terrorist financing were raised. The agency also looked into pressing matters related to the protection of crypto wallet users that remain mainly exposed to cyber attack and infrastructure failures.

Thailand’s Main Opposition Party Holds Primary Election on Blockchain (CCN), Rated: A

Thailand’s Democrat Party, the country’s main opposition party has become the first major political party in the world to carry out primary elections entirely on a blockchain.

Using a live e-voting system powered by the Zcoin blockchain, the party successfully conducted its primaries which involved more than 120,000 voters between November 1 and November 9.

Oxfam Launches New BlocRice Blockchain System To Help Cambodian Rice Farmers (Bitcoin Exchange Guide), Rated: B

Oxfam, a global charity organization, decided to launch a blockchain pilot project that aims at improving the conditions of Cambodian rice farmers. The information was released by Khmer Times, a local news outlet, that explains how the project will be carried out.

Latin America

Biggest Department Store Chain in Venezuela Goes for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash (The Daily HODL), Rated: AAA

Traki, the largest department store in Venezuela, is accepting cryptocurrencies for merchandise. The store supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Ethereum and Litecoin as acceptable forms of payment.

Canada

Canada Presents Three Possible Cryptocurrency Regulations In Anti-Money Laundering Committee (CryptoGlobe), Rated: AAA

Earlier this week, the Canadian House Finance Committee met and discussed the role of cryptocurrencies. As part of their regular meetings as required by the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA), cryptocurrencies became a hot topic, as regulators see them as an easy way to launder money.

Africa

Top Running Cryptocurrencies November 18th, 2018 – Digitex Futures (DGTX) (Crypto Block Wire), Rated: AAA

The top performing cryptocurrency of the day is Digitex Futures. Digitex Futures (DGTX) traded up 43.43% against the US dollar during the twenty-four hour period ending at 06:00 AM Eastern Standard Time on November 18, 2018. The market cap for DGTX is $53,178,678. Digitex Futures traded $801,738 worth of on exchanges in the past 24 hour period. One Digitex Futures token can currently be purchased for about $0.072723 or 0.000013013 BTC on major cryptocurrency exchanges. The amount of Digitex Futures in circulation is 731,250,000 DGTX.

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