Tuesday May 28 2019, Weekly News Digest

United States

Bitcoin Jumps Toward $ 9,000 in Best-Performing Month Since 2017 (Bloomberg), Rated: AAA

Bitcoin jumped on Monday, almost breaching $9,000 as it extended what’s shaping up to be the best one-month rally since before the token’s historic surge in 2017.

The largest cryptocurrency climbed as much as 10% Monday from levels late Friday, and was trading at $8,766 as of 10:40 a.m. in London. Rival coins were also stronger at the start of the week. Litecoin added more than 11% while Ether, the second largest digital token, rose 5.7%.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Rallies 10%: Bulls Remain In Driver’s Seat (NewsBTC), Rated: A

• The price surged more than 10% and broke the $8,500 and $8,800 resistance levels.

Bitcoin Is Back In Black As Cryptocurrency Prices Thaw (Bloomberg), Rated: A

Bitcoin Closes Weekly Candle Above $ 8,400, Stage Set For $ 9,600 Push (NewsBTC), Rated: AAA

Initially, though, some were wary that this was a fakeout, designed to trap bulls into thinking there was going to be a strong weekly close above $8,400. $8,400 is, of course, where this market topped in a bear market rally in mid-2018, and where BTC double topped in early-May.

Well, now that the weekly candle has closed decidedly bullish, some are adamant that anywhere to $9,600 to $10,000 for BTC is in the cards. Josh Rager, a team member at Level and a popular analyst, recently noted that now that the close was strong, he fully expects for a move to $9,600 to come to fruition.

Bitcoin Price Will Nosedive After Dead Cat Bounce: Crypto Blogger (CCN), Rated: A

In his May 26 blog post, Godbold observed that the bitcoin price has soared more than 120% between January’s low of $3,400 to its current value of $8,700. However, Godbold attributes that to a dead cat bounce, so crypto fans shouldn’t get too smug.

Before Craig Wright, the Escobar Family Owned Bitcoin’s Trademark (CCN), Rated: A

Before Craig Wright, the Bitcoin trademark was registered to none other than the Escobar family. That’s according to official documents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which show Pablo Escobar’s brother, Roberto Escobar, as the former main signatory on Bitcoin’s naming rights.

The U.S trademark office document 88055293 details the Bitcoin trademark’s former ownership under Coin Legal Ltd – a UK registered company.

Coinbase Launches Card To Spend Crypto Anywhere (Invest in Blockchain), Rated: AAA

Coinbase has launched a new visa debit card, called Coinbase Card, that lets users spend their cryptocurrencies in millions of locations across the world. The Coinbase Card app is available on both the Google Play store and the iOS App store.

How To Avoid Paying Coinbase Fees (Use the Bitcoin), Rated: A

In spite of being a reliable cryptocurrency exchange platform, Coinbase charges a fee of 4% on all transactions.

Nonetheless, there are many ways that you can avoid paying these fees by taking advantage of Coinbase Pro. Also, note that Coinbase and Coinbase Pro are owned by the same company with the former not charging any fees for specific transactions. Both have fees that are covered in detail below and then this guide will show how to avoid paying Coinbase fees.

Facebook plans to launch ‘GlobalCoin’ currency in 2020 (BBC), Rated: AAA

Facebook is finalising plans to launch its own crypto-currency next year.

It is planning to set up a digital payments system in about a dozen countries by the first quarter of 2020.

The social media giant wants to start testing its crypto-currency, which has been referred to internally as GlobalCoin, by the end of this year.

Facebook Could Fix the News Industry With Micropayments—Unless Kik Does It First (Fortune), Rated: A

It’s a problem that’s long flummoxed media outlets, and also one that’s increasingly frustrating consumers: The inability to pay a small sum, such as 25 cents or $1, to read an article online.

Trading app Robinhood preps major funding round (Yahoo! Finance), Rated: AAA

Stock and crypto trading app Robinhood is looking to raise at least $200 million in a new funding round, Bloomberg reports.

This would value the company at between $7 billion and $8 billion. The cash infusion is coming from existing investors, people familiar with the deal told Bloomberg. The funding talks are ongoing, but the company’s valuation could climb to as much as $10 billion in a subsequent round.

Litecoin (LTC) Price Analysis: Rally Could Extend Above $ 120 (Ethereum World News), Rated: AAA

Recently, there was a nasty upward move in bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, litecoin and ripple against the US Dollar. The LTC/USD pair formed a decent support base above $85.00 and recently surged above the $95.00 and $100.00 resistance levels.

Money Laundering? $ 17k Fee Charged on a $ 1k Litecoin Transaction (Finance Magnates), Rated: A

Either by mistake, misfortune, or an attempted misdeed, an anonymous Litecoin user paid a $17,500 fee on a Litecoin transaction that was worth under $1000. The transaction took place on Thursday, May 23rd, and was mined by the China-based mining pool LTC.top in block 1636831.

Ripple’s XRP records relatively low 24-hour trading volume even as prices hold above $ 0.35 (AMB Crypto), Rated: A

The cryptocurrency market has been exhibiting a bullish trend even as Ripple’s XRP steered its way to major declines last week. The digital coin was hovering below $0.40, with very low price action in 2019. XRP was ranked as the third largest crypto-asset with a market cap of $16.03 billion and a price of $0.38, at press time.

Justin Sun Announces Announcement; TRON & BitTorrent Prices Spike Accordingly (Hacked), Rated: A

Early on Sunday the TRON founder and CEO tweeted this juicy teaser to his +1 million followers. He wrote:

“Something huge and amazing going about #TRON and #BitTorrent. I will share with you after June 1. I think I have 70% to win and nail it. Fingers crossed! $TRX $BTT.”

The post was liked 1.4k times in just over 3 hours, and attracted over 300 comments. Many of Sun’s 1.17 million followers might be fake, but it seems that even bots can appreciate good humour.

Twitter Founder Set to Launch his Own Cryptocurrency (Altcoin Buzz), Rated: A

For most people, being the founder of a worldwide social media platform is enough, however, the same cannot be said of Jack Dorsey. Jack, founder of Twitter, is looking to create a successful payment system using blockchain tech. With everything going on in the crypto space, this project by Dorsey has attracted a lot of attention from crypto enthusiasts. Many of them believe the project will help create awareness as well as aid crypto adoption.

Amazon AWS Extends Support For Aelf Enterprise, The First Cross-Chain Blockchain (CryptoNewsZ), Rated: B

Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest computing platform, has recently listed Aelf Blockchain. Aelf also happens to be a decentralized cross-chain cloud computing platform. The announcement came via a tweet on Friday. The DLT platform said that the Enterprise users could easily get familiar with Aelf Blockchain.

One Dollar or One Bitcoin? Which One Would a U.S. College Student Choose? (CryptoGlobe), Rated: A

Around the beginning of this month, as a way of gauging young people’s awareness of Bitcoin, one YouTube channel (“Capital Creators”) conducted a very small informal survey of students at an American college. (This survey was first reported by crypto news outlet Bitcoinist earlier today.)

Here were some of their responses and the reasons for their answers:

• “Today, I want the bitcoin.” When asked why, he replied: “Because I follow Bitcoin.” (When asked if he had a way of receiving that bitcoin, the student replied “no”, and that he would need set up an app first.)
• “The dollar”. Why? “Because isn’t a bitcoin protected by a password and if you lose your password, you lose your bitcoin? I’m not going to lose the dollar.”
• “The dollar.” Why? “Because currently I have 83 cents to my name, so I kind of want the dollar now… Also, Bitcoin is risky. If I were to invest, I would invest in something other than Bitcoin.”
• “The bitcoin — that’s just worth like five grand right now, isn’t it?… I invested last year, right as it went up… I made like a thousand dollars in a week, and then I lost all of it.”

The Cat-and-Mouse Game of Crypto Regulation Enters a New Phase (CoinDesk), Rated: A

As CoinDesk managing editor Marc Hochstein explained last week , the new rules are likely to require exchanges and other custodial entities that take custody of their customers’ cryptocurrency to obtain identifying information about both parties before allowing a transaction over their platforms.

Blockchain Disruption Reaches Hollywood amid Startup’s $ 100M Funding (CCN), Rated: A

Proxicoin is a way for the ordinary blockchain investor to get a piece of Hollywood’s action. It announced that it’s gotten a $100 million injection from a Hong Kong fund. Central Wealth Fund’s David Lee said his people are “impressed” with the blockchain platform, which decentralizes funding for Hollywood movies. Other investors including Coinbase are already on board.

10 U.S. Politicians Who Moonlight as Undercover Bitcoin Bulls (Hacked), Rated: A

1. Vice President Al Gore on Bitcoin

“I think the fact that within the Bitcoin universe an algorithm replaces the functions of [the government]… is actually pretty cool.”

2. Senator Rand Paul Accepts Bitcoin

5. U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard Invested in Ether and Litecoin

6. New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson Is A Bitcoin Supporter

9. Starbucks CEO and Possible 2020 Independent Candidate Howard Schultz Is Looking Hard at Cryptocurrency

“I believe that we are heading into a new age in which blockchain technology is going to provide a significant level of a digital currency that is going to have a consumer application. And I believe that Starbucks is in a unique position to take advantage of that.”

Why a Crypto Index Wins in the Long Run. (Hackernoon), Rated: AAA

The dream of the average cryptocurrency investor is finding the next Bitcoin. A cryptocurrency that rises in value faster than other cryptocurrencies and making a huge return out of it. But finding the next Bitcoin takes time. Reading into the fundamentals, using technical analysis on the price and much more.

There are almost an infinite amount of ways to approach investing, but my favorite is index investing and it turns out to be amazing for cryptocurrency investing. In this article, we are going to explore index investing for cryptocurrencies with a data-driven approach.

Which has been attempted by actively managed funds and about92% of them failed to do that over a course of 15 years.

International

The Blockchain Jobs Report, 2019 (ConsenSys), Rated: AAA

The blockchain industry continues to see vast expansion all over the world, and this phenomenon has resulted in concurrent growth in the blockchain job market. Vocations ranging from coding to business development, UX to project management, capital allocation and creative roles continue on an upwards trajectory as the industry shows its resilience and moves into the next phase of development.

To accommodate the developing interest, ConsenSys has introduced the Blockchain and Dapp Developer Job Kit.

Advertised blockchain developer salaries — using aggregated data from CNBC, Janco Associates, and Burning Glass — range from $125,000 — $175,000.

The Hard Fork report in March stated that the United States leads globally for blockchain jobs: “Glassdoor is currently advertising a total of 5,711 blockchain jobs globally. Currently, US employers account for around half of those, with 2,616 vacancies on offer. The UK is the runner-up with 1,015 blockchain-related job ads, followed by India with 257 vacancies.”

European Union

Binance Launches Margin Trading (Coingape), Rated: AAA

Cryptos is maturing and its exchanges are getting closer to modern day exchanges. Yet another step towards this week, as Binance, confirmed it will be launching a margin trading service.

Istanbul Upgrade: 28 Ethereum Improvement Proposals Under Consideration (CryptoGlobe), Rated: AAA

Ethereum’s developers have submitted 28 ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs), which include recommended codebase modifications that may be integrated into the upcoming Ethereum (ETH) network hard fork, called Istanbul.

The EIPs  are expected to change the smart contract platform’s mining algorithm, code execution and pricing mechanism, and data storage process.

Ethereum (ETH) Price Rally Alongside Bitcoin: More Upsides Likely (NewsBTC), Rated: AAA

After testing the $230 support, Ethereum price started a steady rise against the US Dollar. The ETH/USD pair broke many hurdles on the way up, including $245 and $250. There was a close above the $250 resistance and the 100 hourly simple moving average. Recently, bitcoin pricestarted a strong upward move, pushing ETH above the key $265 resistance. It opened the doors for more gains above the $265 and $270 levels.

Beacon Chain Contracts: A New Way to Deploy Dapps on Ethereum 2.0 (Yahoo! Finance), Rated: A

The core infrastructure behind ethereum 2.0 might be in for a major redesign.

Dubbed the beacon chain, a new proposal by ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin suggests radically modifying the blockchain’s role in a new iteration of the ethereum network based on proof-of-stake consensus.

“The idea here is that basically on the beacon chain, you’re going to be able to deploy these little worlds that summarize how a blockchain works, how a state transition works, [and] how a smart contract works,” Raul Jordan, co-lead at non-profit Prysmatic Labs, told CoinDesk.

Ethereum Might See a Privacy Solution for Transactions in the Future (Altcoin Buzz), Rated: B

In a recent blog post published on Wednesday, Vitalik Buterin described the current state of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Furthermore, Buterin proposed a new structure that would improve user anonymity for Ethereum.

Major Dutch Bank Will No Longer Launch Crypto Wallet (Coindoo), Rated: A

Rabobank, a leading bank from The Netherlands, has announced that it will not be continuing with its plan to release their “Rabobit” cryptocurrency wallet.

France Pacte Act Now Allows Cryptocurrency-Pegged Life Insurance Contracts (Be in Crypto), Rated: A

The new Pacte Act in France gives for the first time insurers the option to offer life insurance products which are linked to cryptocurrency funds. LREM member of Parliament, Joel Giraud, has confirmed this in a recent statement.

United Kingdom

London Metal Exchange Builds Blockchain-based Platform to Track Trade of Physical Metal (IHODL), Rated: A

The world’s largest metal-focused futures exchange, the London Metal Exchange (LME), has backed a consortium of metals traders and financial institutions to create a blockchain-based platform in order to track the trade of physical metal, Financial Times reports citing people familiar with the matter.

China

BitMEX’s Hayes: Bitfinex’s LEO Sale Sign Of Returning Bitcoin Bull Market (NewsBTC), Rated: AAA

Weeks ago, Bitcoin exchange giant Bitfinex raised $1 billion worth of capital, purportedly denoted in Tether’s USDT, in an in-house initial exchange offering (IEO). The token being sold was Bitfinex’s own, LEO, and became a popular investment opportunity for whales and other industry insiders.

Ontology Developers Outline Smart Contract Programming Best Practices (CryptoGlobe), Rated: A

The developers of Ontology (ONT), a leading “distributed trust” network for building and deploying decentralized applications (dApps), have claimed that smart contract security is among the “hottest topics” in the evolving blockchain ecosystem.

Australia

World Bank and CBA enable secondary market bond trading on the blockchain (CIO), Rated: AAA

The World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development has enabled secondary market trading of bonds on the blockchain, in partnership with Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

DigitalX issues 1.57m shares as second tranche following settlement of ICO legal proceedings (Finance Feeds), Rated: A

Blockchain-based solutions provider and ICO adviser DigitalX Ltd (ASX:DCC) today announces that it has today issued a total of 1,576,568 shares at a deemed issue price of $0.074 per share. This marks the second tranche pursuant to the so-called “settlement deed” – an agreement between the parties in initial coin offering advisory case.

Asia

Samsung Could Soon Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Samsung Pay App (Altcoin Buzz), Rated: AAA

Tech giant Samsung is reportedly looking into ways to add cryptocurrencies to its Samsung Pay App. The company previously already announced the focus to expand blockchain and cryptocurrency services. 

Why Asia Is Driving Cryptocurrency Adoption in 2019 (Asia Crypto Today), Rated: A

2019 looks like a promising year for the adoption of cryptocurrency around the globe. However, Asia has been at the forefront of driving the crypto adoption phase in 2019. For instance, following Turkey’s high inflation rate, Turks are looking for alternatives. Lira crisis, during summer, saw Turk’s investments, life savings, and pensions significantly devalued. Combined with the increased number of a technology-savvy youthful population, Turks are already into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The Turkish Lira is the fifth mostly used fiat currency in crypto trades.

Latin America

Ripple partners with Brazil’s Front Exchange to launch Simple to ease cross-border remittance (AMBCrypto), Rated: AAA

Last week, Ripple-backed remittance providers such as InstaReM and MoneyNetint made the news by partnering with banks in order to simplify cross-border transactions. After the partnership between BeeTech with Ripple-backed MoneyNetint, another Brazil-based exchange broker, Frente Corretora de Câmbio or The Front Exchange has partnered with Ripple to launch ‘Simple’, a platform created to cater international remittance and tourism exchange.

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