I thought it would be really cool to have an ultimate guide for those new to crypto currencies and the terms used. I made this mostly for beginner’s and veterans alike. I’m not sure how much use you will get out of this. Stuff gets lost on Reddit quite easily so I hope this finds its way to you. Included in this list, I have included most of the terms used in crypto-communities. I have compiled this list from a multitude of sources. The list is in alphabetical order and may include some words/terms not exclusive to the crypto world but may be helpful regardless.
2FA
Two factor authentication. I highly advise that you use it.
51% Attack:
A situation where a single malicious individual or group gains control of more than half of a cryptocurrency network’s computing power. Theoretically, it could allow perpetrators to manipulate the system and spend the same coin multiple times, stop other users from completing blocks and make conflicting transactions to a chain that could harm the network.
Address (or Addy):
A unique string of numbers and letters (both upper and lower case) used to send, receive or store cryptocurrency on the network. It is also the public key in a pair of keys needed to sign a digital transaction. Addresses can be shared publicly as a text or in the form of a scannable QR code. They differ between cryptocurrencies. You can’t send Bitcoin to an Ethereum address, for example.
Altcoin (alternative coin): Any digital currency other than Bitcoin. These other currencies are alternatives to Bitcoin regarding features and functionalities (e.g. faster confirmation time, lower price, improved mining algorithm, higher total coin supply). There are hundreds of altcoins, including Ether, Ripple, Litecoin and many many others.
AIRDROP:
An event where the investors/participants are able to receive free tokens or coins into their digital wallet.
AML: Defines Anti-Money Laundering laws**.**
ARBITRAGE:
Getting risk-free profits by trading (simultaneous buying and selling of the cryptocurrency) on two different exchanges which have different prices for the same asset.
Ashdraked:
Being Ashdraked is essentially a more detailed version of being Zhoutonged. It is when you lose all of your invested capital, but you do so specifically by shorting Bitcoin. The expression “Ashdraked” comes from a story of a Romanian cryptocurrency investor who insisted upon shorting BTC, as he had done so successfully in the past. When the price of BTC rose from USD 300 to USD 500, the Romanian investor lost all of his money.
ATH (All Time High):
The highest price ever achieved by a cryptocurrency in its entire history. Alternatively, ATL is all time low
Bearish:
A tendency of prices to fall; a pessimistic expectation that the value of a coin is going to drop.
Bear trap:
A manipulation of a stock or commodity by investors.
Bitcoin:
The very first, and the highest ever valued, mass-market open source and decentralized cryptocurrency and digital payment system that runs on a worldwide peer to peer network. It operates independently of any centralized authorities
Bitconnect:
One of the biggest scams in the crypto world. it was made popular in the meme world by screaming idiot Carlos Matos, who infamously proclaimed," hey hey heeeey” and “what's a what's a what's up wasssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuup, BitConneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect!”. He is now in the mentally ill meme hall of fame.
Block:
A package of permanently recorded data about transactions occurring every time period (typically about 10 minutes) on the blockchain network. Once a record has been completed and verified, it goes into a blockchain and gives way to the next block. Each block also contains a complex mathematical puzzle with a unique answer, without which new blocks can’t be added to the chain.
Blockchain:
An unchangeable digital record of all transactions ever made in a particular cryptocurrency and shared across thousands of computers worldwide. It has no central authority governing it. Records, or blocks, are chained to each other using a cryptographic signature. They are stored publicly and chronologically, from the genesis block to the latest block, hence the term blockchain. Anyone can have access to the database and yet it remains incredibly difficult to hack.
Bullish:
A tendency of prices to rise; an optimistic expectation that a specific cryptocurrency will do well and its value is going to increase.
BTFD:
Buy the fucking dip. This advise was bestowed upon us by the gods themselves. It is the iron code to crypto enthusiasts.
Bull market:
A market that Cryptos are going up.
Consensus:
An agreement among blockchain participants on the validity of data. Consensus is reached when the majority of nodes on the network verify that the transaction is 100% valid.
Crypto bubble:
The instability of cryptocurrencies in terms of price value
Cryptocurrency:
A type of digital currency, secured by strong computer code (cryptography), that operates independently of any middlemen or central authoritie
Cryptography:
The art of converting sensitive data into a format unreadable for unauthorized users, which when decoded would result in a meaningful statement.
Cryptojacking:
The use of someone else’s device and profiting from its computational power to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge and consent.
Crypto-Valhalla:
When HODLers(holders) eventually cash out they go to a place called crypto-Valhalla. The strong will be separated from the weak and the strong will then be given lambos.
DAO:
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It defines A blockchain technology inspired organization or corporation that exists and operates without human intervention.
Dapp (decentralized application):
An open-source application that runs and stores its data on a blockchain network (instead of a central server) to prevent a single failure point. This software is not controlled by the single body – information comes from people providing other people with data or computing power.
Decentralized:
A system with no fundamental control authority that governs the network. Instead, it is jointly managed by all users to the system.
Desktop wallet:
A wallet that stores the private keys on your computer, which allow the spending and management of your bitcoins.
DILDO:
Long red or green candles. This is a crypto signal that tells you that it is not favorable to trade at the moment. Found on candlestick charts.
Digital Signature:
An encrypted digital code attached to an electronic document to prove that the sender is who they say they are and confirm that a transaction is valid and should be accepted by the network.
Double Spending:
An attack on the blockchain where a malicious user manipulates the network by sending digital money to two different recipients at exactly the same time.
DYOR:
Means do your own research.
Encryption:
Converting data into code to protect it from unauthorized access, so that only the intended recipient(s) can decode it.
Eskrow:
the practice of having a third party act as an intermediary in a transaction. This third party holds the funds on and sends them off when the transaction is completed.
Ethereum:
Ethereum is an open source, public, blockchain-based platform that runs smart contracts and allows you to build dapps on it. Ethereum is fueled by the cryptocurrency Ether.
Exchange:
A platform (centralized or decentralized) for exchanging (trading) different forms of cryptocurrencies. These exchanges allow you to exchange cryptos for local currency. Some popular exchanges are Coinbase, Bittrex, Kraken and more.
Faucet:
A website which gives away free cryptocurrencies.
Fiat money:
Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it, such as the US dollar or UK pound.
Fork:
A split in the blockchain, resulting in two separate branches, an original and a new alternate version of the cryptocurrency. As a single blockchain forks into two, they will both run simultaneously on different parts of the network. For example, Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork.
FOMO:
Fear of missing out.
Frictionless:
A system is frictionless when there are zero transaction costs or trading retraints.
FUD:
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt regarding the crypto market.
Gas:
A fee paid to run transactions, dapps and smart contracts on Ethereum.
Halving:
A 50% decrease in block reward after the mining of a pre-specified number of blocks. Every 4 years, the “reward” for successfully mining a block of bitcoin is reduced by half. This is referred to as “Halving”.
Hardware wallet:
Physical wallet devices that can securely store cryptocurrency maximally. Some examples are Ledger Nano S**,** Digital Bitbox and more**.**
Hash:
The process that takes input data of varying sizes, performs an operation on it and converts it into a fixed size output. It cannot be reversed.
Hashing:
The process by which you mine bitcoin or similar cryptocurrency, by trying to solve the mathematical problem within it, using cryptographic hash functions.
HODL:
A Bitcoin enthusiast once accidentally misspelled the word HOLD and it is now part of the bitcoin legend. It can also mean hold on for dear life.
ICO (Initial Coin Offering):
A blockchain-based fundraising mechanism, or a public crowd sale of a new digital coin, used to raise capital from supporters for an early stage crypto venture. Beware of these as there have been quite a few scams in the past.
John mcAfee:
A man who will one day eat his balls on live television for falsely predicting bitcoin going to 100k. He has also become a small meme within the crypto community for his outlandish claims.
JOMO:
Joy of missing out. For those who are so depressed about missing out their sadness becomes joy.
KYC:
Know your customer(alternatively consumer).
Lambo:
This stands for Lamborghini. A small meme within the investing community where the moment someone gets rich they spend their earnings on a lambo. One day we will all have lambos in crypto-valhalla.
Ledger:
Away from Blockchain, it is a book of financial transactions and balances. In the world of crypto, the blockchain functions as a ledger. A digital currency’s ledger records all transactions which took place on a certain block chain network.
Leverage:
Trading with borrowed capital (margin) in order to increase the potential return of an investment.
Liquidity:
The availability of an asset to be bought and sold easily, without affecting its market price.
of the coins.
Margin trading:
The trading of assets or securities bought with borrowed money.
Market cap/MCAP:
A short-term for Market Capitalization. Market Capitalization refers to the market value of a particular cryptocurrency. It is computed by multiplying the Price of an individual unit of coins by the total circulating supply.
Miner:
A computer participating in any cryptocurrency network performing proof of work. This is usually done to receive block rewards.
Mining:
The act of solving a complex math equation to validate a blockchain transaction using computer processing power and specialized hardware.
Mining contract:
A method of investing in bitcoin mining hardware, allowing anyone to rent out a pre-specified amount of hashing power, for an agreed amount of time. The mining service takes care of hardware maintenance, hosting and electricity costs, making it simpler for investors.
Mining rig:
A computer specially designed for mining cryptocurrencies.
Mooning:
A situation the price of a coin rapidly increases in value. Can also be used as: “I hope bitcoin goes to the moon”
Node:
Any computing device that connects to the blockchain network.
Open source:
The practice of sharing the source code for a piece of computer software, allowing it to be distributed and altered by anyone.
OTC:
Over the counter. Trading is done directly between parties.
P2P (Peer to Peer):
A type of network connection where participants interact directly with each other rather than through a centralized third party. The system allows the exchange of resources from A to B, without having to go through a separate server.
Paper wallet:
A form of “cold storage” where the private keys are printed onto a piece of paper and stored offline. Considered as one of the safest crypto wallets, the truth is that it majors in sweeping coins from your wallets.
Pre mining:
The mining of a cryptocurrency by its developers before it is released to the public.
Proof of stake (POS):
A consensus distribution algorithm which essentially rewards you based upon the amount of the coin that you own. In other words, more investment in the coin will leads to more gain when you mine with this protocol In Proof of Stake, the resource held by the “miner” is their stake in the currency.
PROOF OF WORK (POW) :
The competition of computers competing to solve a tough crypto math problem. The first computer that does this is allowed to create new blocks and record information.” The miner is then usually rewarded via transaction fees.
Protocol:
A standardized set of rules for formatting and processing data.
Public key / private key:
A cryptographic code that allows a user to receive cryptocurrencies into an account. The public key is made available to everyone via a publicly accessible directory, and the private key remains confidential to its respective owner. Because the key pair is mathematically related, whatever is encrypted with a public key may only be decrypted by its corresponding private key.
Pump and dump:
Massive buying and selling activity of cryptocurrencies (sometimes organized and to one’s benefit) which essentially result in a phenomenon where the significant surge in the value of coin followed by a huge crash take place in a short time frame.
Recovery phrase:
A set of phrases you are given whereby you can regain or access your wallet should you lose the private key to your wallets — paper, mobile, desktop, and hardware wallet. These phrases are some random 12–24 words. A recovery Phrase can also be called as Recovery seed, Seed Key, Recovery Key, or Seed Phrase.
REKT:
Referring to the word “wrecked”. It defines a situation whereby an investor or trader who has been ruined utterly following the massive losses suffered in crypto industry.
Ripple:
An alternative payment network to Bitcoin based on similar cryptography. The ripple network uses XRP as currency and is capable of sending any asset type.
ROI:
Return on investment.
Safu:
A crypto term for safe popularized by the Bizonnaci YouTube channel after the CEO of Binance tweeted
“Funds are safe."
“the exchage I use got hacked!”“Oh no, are your funds safu?”
“My coins better be safu!”
​
​
Sats/Satoshi:
The smallest fraction of a bitcoin is called a “satoshi” or “sat”. It represents one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin and is named after Satoshi Nakamoto.
Satoshi Nakamoto:
This was the pseudonym for the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.
Scalability:
The ability of a cryptocurrency to contain the massive use of its Blockchain.
Sharding:
A scaling solution for the Blockchain. It is generally a method that allows nodes to have partial copies of the complete blockchain in order to increase overall network performance and consensus speeds.
Shitcoin:
Coin with little potential or future prospects.
Shill:
Spreading buzz by heavily promoting a particular coin in the community to create awareness.
Short position:
Selling of a specific cryptocurrency with an expectation that it will drop in value.
Silk road:
The online marketplace where drugs and other illicit items were traded for Bitcoin. This marketplace is using accessed through “TOR”, and VPNs. In October 2013, a Silk Road was shut down in by the FBI.
Smart Contract:
Certain computational benchmarks or barriers that have to be met in turn for money or data to be deposited or even be used to verify things such as land rights.
Software Wallet:
A crypto wallet that exists purely as software files on a computer. Usually, software wallets can be generated for free from a variety of sources.
Solidity:
A contract-oriented coding language for implementing smart contracts on Ethereum. Its syntax is similar to that of JavaScript.
Stable coin:
A cryptocoin with an extremely low volatility that can be used to trade against the overall market.
Staking:
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On these blockchains, anyone with a minimum-required balance of a specific cryptocurrency can validate transactions and earn Staking rewards.
Surge:
When a crypto currency appreciates or goes up in price.
Tank:
The opposite of mooning. When a coin tanks it can also be described as crashing.
Tendies
For traders , the chief prize is “tendies” (chicken tenders, the treat an overgrown man-child receives for being a “Good Boy”) .
Token:
A unit of value that represents a digital asset built on a blockchain system. A token is usually considered as a “coin” of a cryptocurrency, but it really has a wider functionality.
TOR: “The Onion Router” is a free web browser designed to protect users’ anonymity and resist censorship. Tor is usually used surfing the web anonymously and access sites on the “Darkweb”.
Transaction fee:
An amount of money users are charged from their transaction when sending cryptocurrencies.
Volatility:
A measure of fluctuations in the price of a financial instrument over time. High volatility in bitcoin is seen as risky since its shifting value discourages people from spending or accepting it.
Wallet:
A file that stores all your private keys and communicates with the blockchain to perform transactions. It allows you to send and receive bitcoins securely as well as view your balance and transaction history.
Whale:
An investor that holds a tremendous amount of cryptocurrency. Their extraordinary large holdings allow them to control prices and manipulate the market.
Whitepaper:
​
A comprehensive report or guide made to understand an issue or help decision making. It is also seen as a technical write up that most cryptocurrencies provide to take a deep look into the structure and plan of the cryptocurrency/Blockchain project. Satoshi Nakamoto was the first to release a whitepaper on Bitcoin, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in late 2008.
And with that I finally complete my odyssey. I sincerely hope that this helped you and if you are new, I welcome you to crypto. If you read all of that I hope it increased, you in knowledge.
my final definition:
Crypto-Family:
A collection of all the HODLers and crypto fanatics. A place where all people alike unite over a love for crypto.
We are all in this together as we pioneer the new world that is crypto currency. I wish you a great day and Happy HODLing.
-u/flacciduck
feel free to comment words or terms that you feel should be included or about any errors I made.
Edit1:some fixes were made and added words.

ATTN: These AMA questions are from Autumn 2019 - before the official launch of the Kava Mainnet, and it's fungible Kava Token.
These questions may no longer be relevant to the current Kava landscape, however, they do provide important historical background on the early origins of Kava Labs.
Please note, that there are several repeat questions/answers.

Q1:

Kava is a decentralized DEFI project, why did you implement the countries restrictions to run the node? Will there be such restrictions by the time of the mainnet?

• Answer: There are not country restrictions for nodes. But there are country restrictions for who Kava the company can sell tokens to and remain compliant based on laws and regulations. Anyone can hold Kava, anyone can run a Node. We just can't sell directly to some people which is unfortunate. While we have issues selling directly to Russia, partners like Binance do not. In addition, we have partners like P2P.org that run validators for the Russian communities. (I highly recommend them btw!)

Q2:

According to the project description it has been indicated that staking reward (in KAVA tokens) varies from 3 to 20% per annum. But how will you fight with inflation?

We all know how altcoins prices are falling, and their bottom is not visible. And in fact, we can get an increase in the number of tokens for staking, but not an increase in the price of the token itself and become a long-term investor.

• Answer: Kava is both inflationary with block rewards, but deflationary when we burn CDP fees. Only stakers who bond their Kava receive inflationary rewards - users and traders on exchanges do not get this. In this way, rewards are inflated, but given to stakers and removed value from the traders who are speculating like a tax. The Deflationary structure of fees should help counterbalance the price drops from inflation if any. In the long-term as more CDPs are used, Kava should be a deflationary asset by design if all things go well

Q3:

In your allocation it is indicated that 28.48% of the tokens are in the "Token treasury" - where will these tokens be directed?

• Answer: Investors in financing rounds prior to the IEO have entered into long-term lock-up agreements in-line with their belief in Kava’s exciting long-term growth potential and to allow the projects token price to find stability. Following the IEO, the only tokens in circulation will be those sold through the IEO on Binance and the initial Treasury tokens released.
  
• No private sale investor tokens are in circulation until the initial release at the end of Q1 2020 and then gradually over the [36] months The initial Treasury tokens in circulation will be used for a mixture of ecosystem grants, the expenses associated with the IEO as well as initial market making requirements as is typical with a listing of this size. Kava remains well financed to execute our roadmap following the IEO and do not envisage any need for any material financings or token sales for the foreseeable future.
  

Q4:

Such a platform (with loans and stable coins) is just the beginning since these aspects are a small part of many Defi components. Will your team have a plan to implement other functions, such as derivatives, the dex platform once the platform is successfully launched?

• Answer: We believe Kava is the foundation for many future defi products. We need stable coins, oracles, and other infrastructure first that Kava provides. Once we have that, we can apply these to derivatives and other synthetics more easily. For example, we can use the price feeds and USDX to enable users to place 100x leverage bets with each other. If they both lock funds into payment channels, then they can use a smart contract based on the price feed to do the 100x trade/bet automatically without counter party risk. In this way, Kava can expand its financial product offerings far beyond loans and stable coins in the future.

Q5:

There are several options for using USDX on the KAVA platform, one of which is Margin Trading / Leverage. Is this a selection function or a compulsory function? Wondering since there are some investors who don`t like margin. What is the level of leverage and how does a CDP auction work?

• Answer: This is a good #Q . Kava simply provides loans to users in USDX stable coins. What the users do is completely up to them. They can use the loans for everyday payments if they like. Leverage and hedging are just the main use cases we foresee - there are many ways people can use the CDP platform and USDX.

Q6:

Most credit platforms do not work well in the current market. What will you do to attract more people to use your platform and the services you provide? Thank you

• Answer: Most credit platforms do not work well in the current market? I think that isn't correct at least for DeFi. Even in the bear market, MakerDao and Compound saw good user growth. Regardless, our efforts at Kava to build the market are fairly product and BD focused. 1) we build more integrations of assets and expand financial services to attract new communities and users. 2) we focus on building partnerships with high quality teams to promote and build Kava's core user base. Kava is just the developer. Our great partners like Ripple, Stakewith.Us, P2P, Binance - they have the real users that demand Kava. They are like our system integrators that package Kava up nicely and present it to their users. In order to grow, we need to deepen our partnerships and bring in new ones around the world.

Q7:

KAVA functions as a reserve currency in situations where the system is undercollateralized. In such cases new KAVA is minted and used to buy USDX off the market until USDX becomes safely overcollateralized.

Meaning, there will be no max supply of KAVA?

• Answer: Yes, there is no max supply of Kava.

Q8:

Why Kava?

• Answer: ...because people are long BTC and the best way to go long BTC without giving up custody is Kava's platform. Because it is MakerDao for bitcoin. Bitcoin has a 10x market cap of ETH and Maker is 10x the size of Kava. I think we're pretty undervalued right now.

Q9:

How do you plan to make liquidity in Kava?

• Answer: Working with Binance for the IEO and as the first exchange for KAVA to trade on will be a huge boost in increasing the liquidity of trading KAVA.

Q10:

Most crypto investors or crypto users prefer easy transaction and low fees, what can we expect from KAVA about this?

• Answer: Transaction fees are very low and confirm if seconds. The user experience is quite good on Tendermint-based blockchains.

Q11:

How do I become a note validator on KavA?

• Answer: The basic requirement for a node is nothing really. But in order to earn block rewards you must be a node with the top 100 KAVA by weighted stake at a given time. If you are looking for technical specs, I suggest you check out the Cosmos FAQ for a guide. https://cosmos.network/docs/cosmos-hub/validators/validator-faq.html

Q12:

It is great to know that KAVA is the first DEFI-supported project sponsored by Binance Launchpad, do you think this is the meaning that CZ brings: Opening the DEFI era, as a leader, you feel like how ?

• Answer: We are the first DeFi platform that Launchpad has supported. We are a very strategic blockchain for major crypto like BNB. Kava's platform will bring more utility to the users of BNB and the Binance DEX. It feels good of course to have validation from the biggest players in the space like Cosmos, Ripple, CZ/Binance, etc.

Q13:

Since decentralized finance applications is already dominating, how do you intend to surpass those leading in the market?

• Answer: The leaders are only addressing ethereum. BTC, XRP, BNB, ATOM is a much larger set to go after that current players cannot.

Q14:

What does Ripple play in the Kava's ecosystem, since Ripple is like a top tier company and it’s impressive that you are partnered with them?

• Answer: Ripple is an equity investor in Kava and a big supporter of our work in cross-chain settlement research and implementations. Ripple's XRP is a great asset in terms of users and liquidity that the Kava platform can use. In addition, Ripple's money service business customers are asking for a stable coin for remittances to avoid the currency heading risk that XRP presents. Ripple will not use USDC or other stable coins, but they are open to using USDX as it can be XRP-backed.

Q15:

Considering the connectivity, Libra could be the biggest competitor if KAVA leverages interchain for efficiency.

• Answer: With regard to USDX, it is important to understand the users interacting with the Kava blockchain have no counterparty that people could go after for legal actions. A user getting a USDX loan has no counterparty. The software holds the collateral and creates the loan. The only laws that would apply are to the very users that are using the system.

Q16:

Wonder how KAVA will compete with the tech giants

• Answer: Libra is running into extreme issues with the US Senate and regulators. Even the G7-G20 groups are worried. Its important to understand that Libra is effectively a permissioned system. Only big companies that law makers can go after are able to run nodes. In Kava, nodes can be run by anyway and our nodes are based all over the world. It's incredibly hard for a law maker to take down Kava because they would need to find and legally enforce hundreds of business in different jurisdictions to comply. We have an advantage in this way over the larger projects like Libra or Clayton.

Q17:

In long-term, what's the strategy that KAVA has for covering the traditional finance users as well? Especially regarding the "stability"

• Answer: Technical risk is unavoidable for DeFi. Only time will tell if a system is trustworthy and its never 100% that it will not fail or be hacked. This is true with banks and other financial systems as well. I think for DeFi, the technical risk needs to be priced in to the expected returns to compensate the market. DeFi does have a better user experience - requiring no credit score, identity, or KYC over centralized solutions.
  
• With our multi-collateral CDP system, even with it overcollateralized, people can get up to 3x leverage on assets. Take 100 USD in BTC, get a USDX loan for 66 USDX, then buy $66 BTC and do another loan - you can do this with a program to get 3x leverage with the same risk profile. This is enough for most people.
  
• However, it will be possible once we have Kava's CDP platform to extend it into products that offer undercollateralized financial products. For example, if USER 1 + USER 2 use payment channels to lock up their USDX, they can use Kava's price feeds to place bets between each other using their locked assets. They can bet that for every $1 BTC/USD moves, the other party owes 3x. In this way we can even do 100x leverage or 1000x leverage and create very fun products for people to trade with. Importantly, even in places where margin trading is regulated and forbidden, Kava's platform will remain open access and available.
  

Q18:

In long-term, what's the strategy that KAVA has for covering the traditional finance users as well? Especially regarding the "stability"

• Answer: Kava believes that stable coins should be backed not just by crypto or fiat, but any widely used, highly liquid asset. We think in the future the best stablecoin would be backed by a basket of very stable currencies that include crypto and fiat or whatever the market demands.

Q19:

Compound, maker they're trying to increase their size via the competitive interests rates. THough it shows good return in terms of growth rate, still it's for short-term. Wonder other than financial advantage, KAVA has more for the users' needs?

• Answer: Robert, the CEO of Compound is an investor and advisor to Kava. We think what Compound does with money markets is amazing and hope to integrate when they support more than just Ethereum assets. Kava's advantage vs others is to provide basic DeFi services like returns on crypto and stable coins today when no other platform offers that. Many platforms support ETH, but no platform can support BTC, XRP, BNB, and ATOM in a decentralized way without requiring centralized custody of these assets.

Q20:

The vast majority of the cryptocurrency community's priorities is symbolic pricing. When prices rise, the community rejoices and grows. When they fall, many people begin to cast in a negative way. How will KAVA solve the negative problem when the price goes down? What is your plan to strengthen and develop the community to persuade more people to look at the product than the price?

• Answer: We believe price is an important factor for faith in the market. One of Kava's key initiatives was selecting only long-term partners that are willing to work with kava for 2 years. That is why even after 6 months, 0 private investor or kava team tokens will be liquid on the market.
  
• We believe not in fast pumps and then dumps that destroy faith, but rather we try and operate the best we can for long-term sustainable growth over time. It's always hard to control factors in the market, and some factors are out of our control such as BTC price correlations, etc - however, we treat this like a public company stock - we want long-term growth of Kava and try to make sure our whole community of Kava holders is aligned with that the best we can.
  

Q21:

Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to Kava and how? What are the measures to increase awareness of kava in non-crypto space?

• Answer: We are 100% focused on crypto, not the general market. We solve the problems of crypto traders and investors - not the average grandma who needs a payment solution. Kava is geared for decentralized leverage and hedging.

Q22:

Adoption is crucial for all projects and crypto companies, what strategy are you gonna use/follow or u are now following to get Kava adopted and used by many people all over the world?

Revenue is an important aspect for all projects in order to survive and keep the project/company up and running for long term, what are the ways that Kava generates profits/revenue and what is its revenue model?

• Answer: We have already partnered with several large exchanges, long-term VCs, and large projects like Ripple and Cosmos. These are key ways for us to grow our community. As we build support for more assets, we plan to promote Kava's services to those new communities of traders.
  
• Kava generates revenue as more people use the platform. As the platform is used, KAVA tokens are burned when users pay stability fees. This deflates the total supply of Kava and should in most cases give rise to the value of KAVA like a stock-buyback in the public markets.
  

Q23:

In order to be success in Loan project of Cryptocurrency, I think marketing is very important to make people using this service without any registration. What is main strategy for marketing?

• Answer: Our main strategy is to build a great experience and offer products that are not available to communities with demand. Currently no DeFi products can serve BTC users for example. Centralized exchanges can, but nothing truly trustless. Kava's platform can finally give the vast audiences of BTC, BNB, and ATOM holders access to core DeFi services they cannot get on their own due to the smart contract limitations of those platforms.

Q24:

Currently, some project have policies for their ambassadors to create a contribution and attract recognition for the project! So the KAVA team plans to implement policies and incentives for KAVA ambassadors?

• Answer: Yes, we will be creating a KAVA ambassador program and releasing that soon. Please follow our social media channels to learn about it in the coming weeks.

Q25:

Currently there are so many KAVA tokens sold on exchanges, why is this happening while KAVA is going to IEO on Binance? Are those KAVA codes fake or not?

• Answer: For everyone's safety, please understand Kava tokens do not exist yet and they will only exist starting with the Binance IEO. Any other token listings or offerings of Kava are not supported by Kava Labs and I highly discourage you all from trying to get them there. It is most likely a big scam. Please only trust Binance for this.

Q26:

KAVA have two tokens, the first is called Kava - a governance and staking token; the second is called USDX - an algorithmically managed crypto-backed stable coin. What are the advantages of USDX compared to other stablecoins such as: USDT, USDC, TUSD, GUSD, ...?

• Answer: USDX is one of the few stablecoins to be fully backed by crypto-assets. This means that we do not deal with fiat to back the value, and thus we don't have some of the issues when it comes to storing fiat funds with banks and custodians. This also makes our product fully digital and built for the future of crypto growth.

Q27:

As a CEO, does your background in Esports and Gaming industry help anything to your management and development of KAVA Labs?

• Answer: Esports no. But having been a multi-time venture-backed foundeCEO and have gone through the start-up phase before has made creating and running a 2nd company easier. Right now Kava is still small, Fnatic had over 80 employees. It was at a larger scale. I would say developing software is much more than doing the hardware at fnaticgear.com

Q28:

Why did Kava choose to launch IEO on Binance and not other exchanges like: Kucoin, Houbi, Gate, ....?

• Answer: Kava had a lot of interest from exchanges to partner with for IEO. We decided based on a lot of factors such as userbase, diverse exposure across multiple regions and countries, and an amazing team that provides so much insight into so many communities such as this one. Binance has been a tremendous partner and we also look forward to continuing our partnership far into the future.

Q29:

Currently if Search on coinmarketcap has 3 types of stablecoins bearing the USDX symbol (but these 3 stablecoins are no information). So, what will KAVA do to let users know that Kava's USDX is another stablecoin?

• Answer: All these USDX have no volume or listings. We will be on Binance. I am not worried.

Q30:

In addition to the Token Allocation for Binance Launchpad, what is the Token Treasury in the Initial Circulating Supply?

• Answer: This is controlled by Kava Labs, but with the big cash we have saved from fundraising, we see no reason why these tokens would be sold on the market. The treasury tokens are for use in grants, ecosystem growth initiatives, development, and other incentive programs to drive adoption of the platform.

Q31:

How you will compete with your competitors? Currently i don't see much but for future how you will maintain this consistency ? No doubt it is Great and Unique project, what is the main problem that #KAVA is currently facing?

• Answer: Because our industry is just starting out, I don't like to think of them as our direct competitors. We are all working to grow the size of the pie rather than get a larger slice from a small pie. The one thing that we believe will allow us to stand apart is the community we are building. Being able to utilize our own community along with Cosmos and our other partners like Binance for the IEO, we have a strong footing to get a lot of early users onto our platform. Also, we are also focusing on growing Kava internationally particularly Asia. We hope to build our platform for an even larger userbase than just the west.

Q32:

How do you explain your project to a random person who has never heard of your project?

• Answer: non-crypto = Kava is a lending platform for users of cryptocurrencies.
  
• crypto = Kava is a cross-chain DeFi platform for loans and stablecoins backed by BTC, BNB, XRP, ATOM and other major cryptocurrencies.
  

Q33:

Will KAVA team have a plan on implementing DAO module on your platform since its efficiency on autonomy, decentralization and transparency?

• Answer: All voting is already transparent on the Kava blockchain. We approved a number of proposals on our test net.

Q34:

how to use usdx token :only for your platform or you have plan to use usdx for payment ?

• Answer: Payments is a nice use case, but demand for crypto payments is still small. We may choose to focus here later if demand for crypto payments increases. Currently it is quite small with the bulk of use remaining in trading and speculative use cases.

Q35:

Do you have plans to spread KAVA ecosystem across other continents. if yes, what are the strategies and how can I as a community member contribute to making it possible?

• Answer: We are already across many continents - I don't think we are in antarctica yet. Africa might be light on nodes as well. I think as we grow on major exchanges like Binance, new node operators will get interested and help decentralize Kava further.

Q36:

Maker's CDP lending system is on top in this market and its Dominance is currently sitting on 64.90 % , how kava will compete will maker and compound?

• Answer: adding assets like bitcoin which have more value and more users than ETH. It's a bigger market that Maker cannot compete with Kava in.

Q37:

Currently, the community is too concerned about the price. As prices rise, the community rejoice and grow, when falling, many people start throwing negatively. So what is KAVA's solution to getting people to focus on the project rather than the price of the token?

What is your plan to strengthen and grow the community to persuade more individuals to look at the product than the price?

• Answer: We also share similar concerns as price and price direction is always a huge factor in the crypto industry. A lot of people of course are very short-term focused on flipping for bigger profits. One of the solutions, and what Kava has done, is to make sure that everything structured is for the long-term. So that makes sure that our investors and employees are all focused on long-term gains and growth. Locking vesting periods are part of that alignment. Another thing is that we at Kava are very transparent in our progress and development. We will be regularly posting updates within our own communities to allow our users and followers to keep up with everything we're up to. Please follow us or look at our github if you're interested!

Q38:

How did Kava get on Piexgo?

• Answer: We did not work with Piexgo. We have not distributed tokens to any exchange other than Binance. I cannot speak to what is going on there, but I would be very wary of what is happening there.

Q39:

Why was the 1st round price so much lower than the current price

• Answer: It is natural to worry that early investors got better pricing and could dump on the market. I can assure you that our investors are in this for the long-term. All private sale rounds signed 2 year contracts to run validators - and if they don't they forfeit their tokens. You can compare our release schedule to any other project. We have one of the most restricted circulating supply schedules of any project EVER and its because all our investors are commiting to the long-term success of the project and believe in Kava.
  
• About the pricing itself - it is always a function of traction like for any start-up. When we made our public announcement about the project in June, we were only a 4 man team with just some github code. We could basically run a network with a single node, our own. Which is relatively worthless. I think our pricing of Kava at this time was justified. We were effectively a seed-stage company without a product or working network.
  
• By July we made severe progress on the development side and the business side. We successful launched our first test net with the help of over 70 validator business partners around the world. We had a world-wide network of hundreds of people supporting us with people and resources at this point and the risk we would fail in launching a working product was much lower. At this point, the Kava project was valued at $25M. At this point, we had many VCs and investors asking for Kava tokens that we turned away. We only accepted validators that would help us launch the network. It was our one and only goal.
  
• Fast forward to today, the IEO price simply reflects the traction and market demand for Kava. Our ecosystem is much larger than it was even a month ago. We have support from Ripple, Cosmos, and Binance amongst other large crypto projects. We have 100+ validators securing our network with very sophisticated high-availability set-ups. In addition, our ecosystem partners have built products for Kava - such as block explorers and others are working on native integrations to wallets and exchanges. Launchpad will be very big for us. Kava is a system designed to cater to crypto traders and investors and in a matter of days we distributed via Binance Launchpad and put in the hands of 130+ countries and tens of thousands of users overnight. It doesn't get more DeFi than that.
  

Q40:

What is the treasury used for?

• Answer: Kava's treasury is for ecosystem growth activities.
  
• Investors in financing rounds prior to the IEO have entered into long-term lock-up agreements in-line with their belief in Kava’s exciting long-term growth potential and to allow the projects token price to find stability. Following the IEO, the only tokens in circulation will be those sold through the IEO on Binance and the initial Treasury tokens released. No private sale investor tokens are in circulation until the initial release at the end of Q1 2020 and then gradually over the [36] months The initial Treasury tokens in circulation will be used for a mixture of ecosystem grants, the expenses associated with the IEO as well as initial market making requirements as is typical with a listing of this size. Kava remains well financed to execute our roadmap following the IEO and do not envisage any need for any material financings or token sales for the foreseeable future.
  

Q41:

Everyone have heard about the KAVA token, and read about it. But it would be great to hear your explanation about it. What is the Kava token, what is it's utility? :)

• Answer: The Kava token plays many roles. KAVA is the native staking token of the Kava blockchain and is used for securing the network. KAVA is delegated to validators, basically professional node operators that run highly-available servers to secure the Kava blockchain. The top 100 validators by weight of staked KAVA earn block rewards that range from 3-20% APR based on the total amount staked in the network. These rewards are split between the validators and the KAVA holders.
  
• When users of the platform repay their loans, they must a stability fee (a percentage of the loan) in KAVA tokens. These tokens are burned by the system, effectively deflating the total supply overtime as more users use the CDP system.
  
• KAVA is also the primary token used in governance of the platform. KAVA token holders can vote on key system parameter changes and upgrades such as what assets to support, how much USDX in total can be loaned by the system, what the debt-to-collateral ratio needs to be, the stability fees, etc. KAVA holders have a very important responsibility to govern the system well.
  
• Lastly, Kava functions as a "Lender of Last Resort" meaning if USDX ever gets undercollateralized because the underlying asset prices drop suddenly and the system manages it poorly, KAVA is inflated in these emergency situations and used to purchase USDX off the market until USDX reaches a state of being over collateralized again. KAVA holders have incentive to only support the good high quality assets so risk of the system is managed responsibly.
  

Q42:

No matter how perfect and technically thought-out a DeFi protocol is, it cannot be completely protected from any unplanned situations (such as extreme market fluctuations, some legal issues, etc.)

Ecosystem members, in particular the validators on whom KAVA relies on fundamental decision-making rights, should be prepared in advance for any "critical" scenario. Considering that, unlike the same single-collateral MakerDAO, KAVA will be a multi-collateral CDP system, this point is probably even more relevant here.

In this regard, please answer the following question: Does KAVA have a clear risk management model or strategy and how decentralized is / will it be?

• Answer: Simialar to other CDP systems and MakerDAO we do have a system freeze function where in cases of extreme issues, we can stop the auction mechanisms and return all collateral.

Q43:

Did you know that "Kava" is translated into Ukrainian like "Coffee"? I personally do love drinking coffee. I plunge into the fantasy world. Why did you name your project "Kava" What is the story behind it? What idea / fantasy did your project originate from, which inspired you to create it?

• Answer: Kava is coffee to you.
  
• Kava is Hippopotamus to Japanese.
  
• Cava is a region in Spain
  
• Kava is also a root that is used in tea which makes your mouth numb.
  
• Kava is also crow in Hindi.
  
• Kava last but not least is a DeFi platform launching on Binance :)
  
• We liked the sound of Kava it was as simple as that. It doesn't have much meaning in the USA where I am from. But it's short sweet and when we were just starting, Kava.io was available for a reasonable price
  

Q44:

What incentives does a lender get if a person chooses to pay with KAVA? Is there a discount on interest rates on the loan amount if you pay with KAVA? Do I have to pass the KYC procedure to apply for a small loan?

• Answer: There is no KYC for Kava. Its an open blockchain software platform where anyone with a computer can connect to it and use it.

Q45:

Let's say, I decided to bond my cryptocurrency and got USDX stable coins. For now, it`s an unknown stable coin (let's be honest). Do you plan to add USDX to other famous exchanges? Also, you have spoken about the USDX staking and that the percentage would be higher than for other stable coins. Please be so kind to tell us what is the average annual interest rate and what are the conditions of staking?

• Answer: Yes we have several large exchanges willing to support USDX from the start. Binance/Binance-DEX is one you should all know ;)
  
• The average annual rates for USDX will depend on market conditions. The rate is actually provided by the CDP fees users pay. The system reallocates a portion of those fees to USDX users. In times when USDX use needs to grow, the rates will be higher to incentivize use. When demand is strong, we can reduce the rates.
  

Q46:

Why should i use and choose Kava's loan if i can use the similar margin trade on Binance?

• Answer: If margin is available to you and you trust the exchange then you should do whatever is cheaper. For a US citizen and others, margin is often not available and if it is, only for a few asset types as collateral. Kava aims to address this and offer this to everyone.

Q47:

The IEO price is $ 0.46 while the price of the first private sale is $ 0.075. Don't you think that such price gap can negatively affect the liquidity of the token and take away the desire to buy a token on the exchange?

• Answer: It is natural to worry that early investors got better pricing and could dump on the market. I can assure you that our investors are in this for the long-term. All private sale rounds signed 2 year contracts to run validators - and if they don't they forfeit their tokens. You can compare our release schedule to any other project. We have one of the most restricted circulating supply schedules of any project EVER and its because all our investors are commiting to the long-term success of the project and believe in Kava.
  
• About the pricing itself - it is always a function of traction like for any start-up. When we made our public announcement about the project in June, we were only a 4 man team with just some github code. We could basically run a network with a single node, our own. Which is relatively worthless. I think our pricing of Kava at this time was justified. We were effectively a seed-stage company without a product or working network.
  
• By July we made severe progress on the development side and the business side. We successful launched our first test net with the help of over 70 validator business partners around the world. We had a world-wide network of hundreds of people supporting us with people and resources at this point and the risk we would fail in launching a working product was much lower. At this point, the Kava project was valued at $25M. At this point, we had many VCs and investors asking for Kava tokens that we turned away. We only accepted validators that would help us launch the network. It was our one and only goal.
  
• Fast forward to today, the IEO price simply reflects the traction and market demand for Kava. Our ecosystem is much larger than it was even a month ago. We have support from Ripple, Cosmos, and Binance amongst other large crypto projects. We have 100+ validators securing our network with very sophisticated high-availability set-ups. In addition, our ecosystem partners have built products for Kava - such as block explorers and others are working on native integrations to wallets and exchanges. Launchpad will be very big for us. Kava is a system designed to cater to crypto traders and investors and in a matter of days we distributed via Binance Launchpad and put in the hands of 130+ countries and tens of thousands of users overnight. It doesn't get more DeFi than that.
  
• TLDR - I think KAVA is undervalued and the liquid supply of tokens is primarily from the IEO so its a safer bet than other IEOs. If the price drops, it will be from the overall market conditions or fellow IEO users not due private sale investors or team sell-offs.
  

Q48:

Can you introduce some information abouts KAVA Deflationary Fee Structure? With the burning mechanism, does it mean KAVA will never reach its max supply?

• Answer: When loans are repaid, users pay a fee in Kava. This is burned. However, Kava does not have a max supply. It has a starting supply of 100M. It inflates for block rewards 3-20% APR AND it inflates when the system is at risk of under collateralization. At this time, more Kava is minted and used to purchase USDX off the market until it reaches full collateralization again.
  
• TLDR: If things go well, and governance is good, Kava deflates and hopefully appreciates in value. If things go wrong, Kava holders get inflated.
  

Q49:

In your opinion what are advantage of decentralized finance over centralized?

• Answer: One of the main advantages is not needing to pay the costs of regulation and compliance. Open financial software that is usable by anyone removes middle men fees and reduces the barrier for new entrants to enter and make new products. Also DeFI has an edge in terms of onboarding - to get a bank account or an exchange account you need to do lots of KYC and give private info. That takes time and is troublesome. With DeFi you just load up your funds and transact. Very fast user flows.

Q50:

Plan, KAVA how to raise capital? Kava is being supported by more than 100 business entities around the world, including major cryptocurrency investment funds like Ripple and Cosmos, so what did kava do to convince investors to join the project?

• Answer: We have been doing crypto research and development for years. Ripple and Cosmos were partners before we even started this blockchain with Kava Labs. When we announced Kava the DeFi platform they knew us already to do good work and they liked the idea so they support us.

Hi Bitcoiners!
I’m back with the 30th monthly Bitcoin news recap.
For those unfamiliar, each day I pick out the most popularelevant/interesting stories in Bitcoin and save them. At the end of the month I release them in one batch, to give you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month.
You can see recaps of the previous months on Bitcoinsnippets.com
A recap of Bitcoin in May 2019
Adoption

• A local convenience store accepting bitcoin (1 Jun)
  
• The ₿ symbol is now available on iOS, Android and Microsoft services (4 Jun)
  
• Wasabi Wallet does its first ever 100 person CoinJoin (6 Jun)
  
• Asking shops to accept bitcoins when buying online (10 Jun)
  
• South Korea gets its first bitcoin ATM (13 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin passes 1 million daily active addresses again, like in November 2017 (15 Jun)
  
• A bitcoin update from Venezuela (17 Jun)
  
• A gas station that accepts bitcoin (21 Jun)
  
• Someone receives a letter from their 88 year old father who started investing a few years earlier (25 Jun)
  
• Buying coffee through the Lightning Network at a Bitcoin conference (29 Jun)
  

Development

• Watchtowers are coming with the next big release for the Lightning Network (11 Jun)
  
• Someone who managed a bounty wallet dedicated to a scalability concept from 2012 is offering the 5.725 btc to a new scalability project (12 Jun)
  
• Lightning Labs’ non-custodial Lightning mobile app is now on mainnet (19 Jun)
  
• An overview of potential upcoming updates to Bitcoin’s consensus rules (21 Jun)
  
• Lightning Labs announces Loop In, a service that helps manage Lightning Channels (26 Jun)
  
• A list of technical improvements coming to the Lightning Network (28 Jun)
  

Security

• An overview of 9 easy ways to lose your cryptocurrency with a bonus 10th in the comments (5 Jun)
  
• A storage socket as an idea to store a physical bitcoin wallet (8 Jun)
  
• A discussion on what someone who lost access to their 9.5 bitcoins from years ago can do (11 Jun)
  
• A reminder to not store your bitcoins on any exchange (14 Jun)
  
• A warning against a support number scam for Ledger hardware wallets (14 Jun)
  
• Irish cryptocurrency exchange Bitsane exit scams its self-proclaimed 246k users (28 Jun)
  

Mining

• A reminder of a report on how 74$ of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewable energy (9 Jun)
  
• The block reward is halving again in under a year (12 Jun)
  
• A reminder that cloud mining ventures are scams (16 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin’s hashrate hits another all-time high (20 Jun)
  

Business

• Samourai Wallet receives $100k in funding (3 Jun)
  
• HodlHodl exchange enables users to buy and sell bitcoin directly from their Lightning Network wallets (5 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin Suisse ads on Zurch’s airport (11 Jun)
  
• Bitrefill raises $2M in funding to grow its team and advance its Lightning Network services (13 Jun)
  
• Bakkt will initiate user acceptance testing for its bitcoin futures in July (13 Jun)
  
• People are concerned about the ethics, censorship resistance, centralization and privacy of Facebook’s Libra project (14 Jun)
  
• Coinbase becomes one of the participants in Facebook’s Libra project (22 Jun)
  
• CashApp by Square enables bitcoin deposits (25 Jun)
  

Research

• goTenna releases a whitepaper for mobile mesh network bitcoin payments (11 Jun)
  
• Ruben Somsen explains his research on Statechains, a novel layer two protocol (16 Jun)
  

Education

• A livestream of day 1 from the Bitcoin lightning network hack day in Munich (1 Jun)
  
• A livestream of day 2 from the Bitcoin lightning network hack day in Munich (2 Jun)
  
• Setting up Lightning network channels could be an investment for the future (3 Jun)
  
• Alternatives to LocalBitcoins to buy Bitcoin privately (5 Jun)
  
• Andreas Antonopoulos on Bitcoin as the “email” of the Internet of Money (11 Jun)
  
• Carl Dong explains the Bitcoin build system security (12 Jun)
  
• A simple explainer of Erlay, a performance improvement to the Bitcoin network that reduces node traffic (16 Jun)
  
• This week’s Donald Duck children magazine in the Netherlands is about Bitcoin (21 Jun)
  
• People discuss capital gains tax on bitcoin investments and trading (21 Jun)
  
• A discussion on how many people don’t invest in Bitcoin, but use it to store their savings (24 Jun)
  
• An overview of useful information for newcomers to Bitcoin (25 Jun)
  
• A reminder of Andreas Antonopoulos testimony for the Canadian Senate in 2014 (26 Jun)
  
• Edward Snowden speaks about privacy at a Bitcoin conference (27 Jun)
  
• A reminder that a Bitcoin equals 100M satoshis and you can own less than a full bitcoin (30 Jun)
  

Regulation & Politics

• LocalBitcoins is forced to remove its cash trade option (1 Jun)
  
• The Reserve Bank of India denies involvement in a draft bill to ban cryptocurrencies (8 Jun)
  
• Binance to block users from the US (15 Jun)
  

Archeology (Financial Incumbents)

• Someone’s bank account is frozen for 4 weeks because they sold bitcoin (4 Jun)
  
• 86 years ago the US moved off of the gold standard for the people (5 Jun)
  
• Warren Buffet claimed that Bitcoin is a ‘gambling device’ with ‘a lot of frauds’ loses $340M in a Ponzi scheme (6 Jun)
  
• The European Central Bank announces its new plans to print more euros and cut interest rates (10 Jun)
  
• Warren Buffet has 40% of his stock portfolio invested in banks and credit card companies (15 Jun)
  
• Federal Chairman Jerome Powell speaks on cryptocurrency (19 Jun)
  

Price & Trading

• People discuss marketing manipulation vs a free market in bitcoin trading (4 Jun)
  
• An overview of annual minimum bitcoin prices (8 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin reaches an all-time price high in Argentine Pesos due to hyperinflation (9 Jun)
  
• Relative to this day, there were only 70 days that Bitcoin was unprofitable to buy (23 Jun)
  
• An article in the Wall Street Journal Business section on the bitcoin price (24 Jun)
  
• An animation of bitcoin’s price graph from 2009 to the present showing many hype cycles (26 Jun)
  
• A reminder of how most traders lose money (26 Jun)
  
• The $1 of free bitcoin Coinbase handed out in 2015 to new users is worth about $50 now (27 Jun)
  
• A TV interview in the Philippines on the bitcoin price (27 Jun)
  
• People talk a lot about the bitcoin price but not so much about the increase in volume (28 Jun)
  

Fun & Other

• Another Bitcoin street art painting (2 Jun)
  
• If you invested $10 per day into bitcoin starting at its peak in December 2017, you would be up 46% (3 Jun)
  
• A recommendation on the book Sapiens due to its chapter 10 on money, which reinforces the vision for Bitcoin (5 Jun)
  
• Bitpay is overcharging its users for bitcoin transactions (5 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin art on hyperinflated Venezuelan Bolivares bills (10 Jun)
  
• Forbes accurately reports that nobody knows what Bitcoin will do next (13 Jun)
  
• The launch of the FiatMarketCap website (16 Jun)
  
• A Satoshi Nakamoto impersonator has been ordered by a judge to prove his claims of being the creator of Bitcoin (17 Jun)
  
• A reminder that there will never be enough bitcoin for all of today’s existing millionaires to own one (17 Jun)
  
• A discussion on bitcoin as a store of value (23 Jun)
  
• A CNBC news anchor on Facebook’s Libra project compared to Bitcoin (25 Jun)
  
• Google’s search algorithm is unaware that Bitcoin has no CEO (29 Jun)
  
• Former Vice President of the US, Al Gore, on Bitcoin (29 Jun)
  

Hi Bitcoiners!
I’m back with the 29th monthly Bitcoin news recap. (sorry a bit late this month)
For those unfamiliar, each day I pick out the most popularelevant/interesting stories in Bitcoin and save them. At the end of the month I release them in one batch, to give you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month.
You can see recaps of the previous months on Bitcoinsnippets.com
A recap of Bitcoin in May 2019
Adoption

• 471k transactions on the blockchain in 24 hours (2 May)
  
• An Uber driver in New York accepting bitcoin (2 May)
  
• The Wall Street Journal includes Bitcoin in its financial asset class overview (5 May)
  
• Bitcoin added 150k daily active addresses since the start of April (10 May)
  
• The mempool compared to the number of confirmed transactions between the all-time price high and now (11 May)
  
• A custodial payment processor now allows you to transact with major US retailers (13 May)
  
• Someone gets excited about buying a pen on Amazon using bitcoin (15 May)
  
• A Bitcoin ATM at Tbilisi airport in Georgia (18 May)
  
• An update on Bitcoin in Venezuela (19 May)
  
• Over 100 merchants accept Lightning payments in Arnhem, the Netherlands (21 May)
  
• 80% of college students chose $1 when given the option between that and 1 BTC (21 May)
  

Development

• Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 is released (2 May)
  
• An overview of what is new in Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 (3 May)
  
• A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal draft for Taproot on the Bitcoin developer mailing list (6 May)
  
• A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal draft for Schnorr Signatures on the Bitcoin developer mailing list (7 May)
  
• Bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille unveils two Bitcoin Improvement Proposals to improve privacy (7 May)
  
• lnd v.0.6.1-beta has been released (10 May)
  
• Bandwidth-efficient transaction relay for Bitcoin (28 May)
  
• The next major release of lnd will integrate Watchtowers (29 May)
  
• The first 1 btc Lightning channel is live as developers test removal of the channel limit (29 May)
  
• Ledger finally adds support for native-Segwit, Bech32 addresses, which lowers fees (29 May)
  

Security

• 7000 btc is hacked from Binance (8 May)
  
• Binance’s CEO realises he can’t roll back the blockchain to reclaim stolen funds (8 May)
  
• A reminder to keep your cryptocurrency off exchanges (11 May)
  
• A warning for a Trezor phishing site (15 May)
  
• The details of a SIM port hack that cost someone his bitcoin (20 May)
  
• Another Proof-of-Work-based Blockchain suffers from a 51% attack (25 May)
  

Mining

• Bitcoin miners clarify that they use clean energy at a Fidelity event (7 May)
  
• Bitcoin miners are earning 8x the fees of all other cryptocurrencies combined (13 May)
  
• It is 1 year until another halvening of the Bitcoin block reward (20 May)
  
• A discussion on using the heat from Bitcoin mining for water desalinisation (29 May)
  

Business

• Fidelity is slowly rolling out cryptocurrency trading within a few weeks (6 May)
  
• GoTenna partners with Blockstream to make using Bitcoin without an Internet connection easier (11 May)
  
• eBay hints at bitcoin acceptance through ads (13 May)
  
• Microsoft is building a second-layer decentralised identity solution on top of Bitcoin (14 May)
  
• Blockchain the company is still making their wallet users overpay on fees (16 May)
  
• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on implementing the Lightning Network (20 May)
  

Research

• 10.5M bitcoins have not moved in a year (18 May)
  
• Over 732k Bitcoin addresses now own more than 1 BTC (19 May)
  
• Improving the scalability of routing algorithms while preserving decentralisation (28 May)
  

Education

• A simple explainer of Taproot, a technical upgrade coming to Bitcoin (7 May)
  
• Concerns over getting your bank account closed over buying bitcoin in India (12 May)
  
• Someone requests popular YouTube channel Kurzgesagt to make an educational video about Bitcoin (13 May)
  
• An overview of links for people who are new to bitcoin (14 May)
  
• Veriblock cannot afford blockspace in Bitcoin to secure its own blockchain, since fees have risen (16 May)
  
• A Bitcoin developer addresses criticism on Bitcoin by YouTuber kurzgesagt (20 May)
  
• The full 60 Minutes Video on Bitcoin’s Wild Ride for ~12M viewers (20 May)
  
• A simple explainer of Submarine Swaps on the Lightning Network (23 May)
  
• A guide on how to build a cheap Bitcoin node (25 May)
  

Regulation & Politics

• The US Justice department seizes part of Bitfinex’ “missing” $850M and makes arrests (2 May)
  
• A US congressman partially sponsored by an illegal gambling facilitator calls for a bill to ban all cryptocurrencies (9 May)
  
• 2020 US Presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Cryptocurrency and the White House (17 May)
  
• Macedonia is the only country in Europe which has made Bitcoin illegal as a payment method (20 May)
  

Archeology (Financial Incumbents)

• BAKKT will start accepting users for testing in July (13 May)
  
• 1 Satoshi is now worth more than 1 Iranian Rial, 1 Vietnamese Dong or 1 Indonesian Rupiah (16 May)
  
• A Wells Fargo banker helped launder millions for the Sinaloa Cartel (17 May)
  
• If you bought bitcoin at its peak in 2017 in Argentina, you would have retained more value than holding pesos (21 May)
  

Price & Trading

• The Bitcoin market cap goes back over $100B (3 May)
  
• The Bitcoin price rises $1000 in under 48 hours, to over $7k (11 May)
  
• Gemini exchange removes some trading functionality and increases fees (12 May)
  
• Bitcoin trade volume reaches an all-time-high (13 May)
  

Fun & Other

• Grayscale releases its new “Drop Gold” Bitcoin investment advertising campaign (1 May)
  
• The New York Stock Exchange chairman on Bitcoin (3 May)
  
• Someone suggests to mass search “what is Bitcoin” to trigger trading bots (3 May)
  
• A reminder of a prediction of something like Bitcoin in 1984 (6 May)
  
• An article by Jameson Lopp explaining why Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto (9 May)
  
• People appreciate that Satoshi disappeared from Bitcoin early on (10 May)
  
• Bitcoin has been declared dead 355 times (12 May)
  
• Shark Tank member challenges the case for Bitcoin (14 May)
  
• Asking Warren Buffet about cryptocurrency is like asking for a taxi driver’s view on Uber (14 May)
  
• TD Ameritrade says tens of thousands of their clients are interested in cryptocurrency (15 May)
  
• SpaceX launches ~12k satellites to low earth orbit to provide global high-speed WiFi, which could help node infrastructure and accessibility to bitcoin (16 May)
  
• A reminder to take care of yourself when diving down the Bitcoin rabbit hole (17 May)
  
• A sportsman in the US gets his request to be paid in btc denied (17 May)
  
• Someone creates a 1-pager financial elevator pitch for Bitcoin (17 May)
  
• Laszlo “Bitcoin Pizza Guy” Hanyecz is brought back up in the 60 Minutes episode on Bitcoin (17 May)
  
• A Magic Internet Money Crossstitch (21 May)
  
• Someone donates 14 btc to Bitcoin.org (28 May)
  

Hi /CryptoCurrency
EDIT: Alright my friends I'm off to sleep now. But if someone decides to download NavPay and post the wallet I might still send him some NAVs tomorrow evening :P
I am a fan of NAV and I would like anyone of you to take a look at NAV Coin and what better way is there to do this with a giveaway so everyone can see for themselves how fast and easy NAV Coin is.
Additionally to the giveaway I want to give the interested ones of you some more infos & teasers about NAV and what I think makes it unique and valuable.

• Of course like always: This is no financial advice and DYOR.

1. Giveaway

First the info about the giveaway so that the people who are only here for the free money don't have to scroll down a wall of text... I won't judge you - you do you! :-P But maybe some of you guys will come back later to read more about NAV after you see how nice the mobile wallet of NAV is.
To get some free NAVs, all you have to do is the following:

1. Download the app NavPay from the Android Play Store
2. Follow the steps to set up your mobile wallet
3. Backup your private key (the random words) so you could restore your wallet if you phone breaks or sth. like that!
4. Post your public address as a comment in this thread, so I can send you some NAVs

If you liked the experience, I'd be happy to hear back from you :) In the next 2 hours, I'll be giving away NAVs worth about $200 in total (but split up of course, so that everyone will get some to try out the mobile wallet NavPay etc.).
Some additional links:

• Web Wallet of NavPay (use this web wallet on any iOS device until the app is approved by Apple)
• Android Wallet NavPay

Thats all for the giveaway, now follows the additional infos.

2. Additional Infos about NAV

Nav Coin has been publicly traded since mid 2014. It's a decentralized cryptocurrency which is built on the latest version of Bitcoin Core with many additional features and functionalities which differentiate Nav from other cryptocurrencies. I'm going to dive into the details of these features later on in this post.
The aim of Nav Coin is to simplify cryptocurrencies. In my opinion, this (the mainstream-adoption) is one of the most important topics for all cryptocurrencies in general. Nav is directly adressing this issue by providing very easy to use tools (wallet, mobile wallet, etc.).

2.2 Facts & Figures

• Funding: Compared to other cryptocurrencies, Nav Coin did not have an ICO or a premine. It is self-funded but soon a Community Fund will help with additional resources
• Market cap: ~72.4kk
• Circulating supply: ~62.7kk
• Consensus Algorithm: Proof of Stake (5%, soon reduced to 4% due to community fund)
• Max supply: max. 5% (soon 4%) (realistically about 2-3% since not all coins are staking)
• Currently trading for: 1.15 USD | 14'230 sats
• Exchanges:
  • Binance [ETH | BTC | BNB]
  • Bittrex [BTC]
  • Poloniex [BTC]
  • Upbit [BTC]
  • LiteBit.eu [EUR]
  • Cryptopia [USDT | BTC]

2.3 Team

The team was recently expanded and consists now of the following people.
More infos and links to linked in about the core team is found on the first page of the official NAV website (just scroll down a bit).

2.3.1 Core developer contributors

• Craig MacGregor: The main developer and sponsor of the NAV Core team
• Alex V: Core developer
• Paul Sanderson: Core developer
• Matt Paul: Core developer
• Mike Delucchi: Core developer
• Rowan Savage: Core developer

2.3.2 Core content contributors

• Kieren Hyland: Digital content creator
• Laura Harris: Digital content creator
• Josh Drummond: Digital content creator
• Mark Sloane: Digital content creator
• Guy Sinclair: Digital content creator
• John Darby: Digital content creator
• Carter Xiao: Designer

2.3.3 Community developers

Since NAV is open source and the core team is encouraging the community to contribute to NAV, there are many more people working on NAV like sakdeniz who is creating a second desktop wallet, slothmike who is working on a reddit tipbot or Prodpeak who is developing an alternative block explorer.

2.3.4 Weekly updates

The core team is releasing weekly updates about the ongoing projects on their website so that anyone interested can see the current status of the roadmap items.

2.4 Main Features

2.4.1 Optional Private Payments

With Nav Coin you have the ability to send private payments. The privacy is optional so you can choose to send non-private or private payments. Nav Coin uses a different approach to achieving privacy than other coins. Nav uses the so called NavTech. NavTech is a dual blockchain system. Essentially, the transaction information is encrypted, split in smaller transactions and sent through a second blockchain, which completely breaks any links between the sending and the receiving address. If you're interested in this technology, you can find the whitepaper on the official NAV website.
At the moment, private payments are processed by trusted servers. Everyone can operate a server themselves or can use the existing ones. The team is working on NavTech 2.0 'Rimu' which will make these servers obsolete, since every wallet will act as a private payment processor which will further push the decentralization.

2.4.2 Proof of Stake

Nav Coin uses the consensus model Proof of Stake which lets holders of Nav Coins earn a reward of 5% in interest of the coin they stake. Staking coins is very simple, you just have to have the wallet open and running.
5% rewards also mean, that there is an inflation of maximum 5% per year. But it is actually lower (at around 2-3%) since not all coins are staking. So if you are staking, you will earn more than the yearly inflation.
Here is a very detailed article about how Nav Coins Proof of Stake works.

2.4.3 Fast transaction times

Nav Coin has a really fast block speed. Transactions are confirmed as spendable withing only 30 seconds which makes it ideal for retail and e-commerce which in my opinion is one of the main points in real-life adoption. There was a video posted recently on the official twitter account which shows how NAV was used to purchase groceries in a store in Rome... That's real-life adoption!

2.4.4 NavPi

Like mentioned above, Nav Coin uses a Proof of Stake consensus model. Most of us have read about the immense energy consumption of Bitcoins Proof of Work model. In my opinion, this is not feasible for the future. With the PoS model of Nav Coin, you can stake your coins on a Raspberry Pi which uses only about 18kWh of power annually if run 24/7! This is much more environment friendly!
Nav Coin even sells their own preconfigured and ready to use NavPi Stakeboxes. Since they're out of stock very fast every time, you can create your own NavPi by following the step-by-step tutorial of the community member navtechservers

2.4.5 Community Fund

Since Nav Coin did not have an ICO or premine, they're fully self financed at the moment. The community has voted for a community fund which will propel the development and marketing of NAV greatly.
When the community fund is implemented, the PoS reward will be reduced from 5% to 4% per year. Each block will generate 0.25 Nav which will be allocated for the community fund (about 21'600 Nav per month).
Both the Nav Coin Core team and the community will be able to propose projects and budgets which the community (the stakers) will vote for. The payouts happen when everyone votes that the work is completed. The aim of this is to fund the development and ongoing success of NAV. You can read more about it here.

2.4.6 NavPay

NavPay is NAVs mobile wallet. It's one of the first mobile wallets that allows private payments. There are already real world merchants accepting Nav thanks to the NavPay app like Pasticceria Piemontese in rome and you can even pay for a cardiologic examination using Nav.
NavPay has a very simple and beautiful user interface. Download it for this giveaway and take a look yourself!

2.4.7 NavChange

Using a combination of lightning network transactions and exchange integrations, NavChange will be a Valence-powered application which facilitates instant exchange between NAV and other currencies
NavChange is a feature which is planned to be launched in 2018.
Here is an example of how it is possible to send Bitcoin anonymously with Nav Coins NavChange.
For the traders: NavChange will greatly increase the volume for Nav.

2.4.8 Valence Plattform (Anonymous Distributed Apps)

At the moment, Nav Coin is "just" a currency. But this is going to change in 2018. The team is in the latest phase of finishing the whitepaper of the Valence Platform which will enable the development of Anonymous Distributed Apps Platform (aDapps) (think of Ethereum's smart contracts, but with privacy!). Valence is a platform that gives developers and businesses a new set of tools to help them realize their ideas on the blockchain. The whitepaper is probably coming in the next 1-2 weeks!

Final thoughts

There are some people who will say that NAV tries to do too many things. I don't agree with these guys. I think this is the main point that speaks for NAV. NANO might be faster (even tho NAV is almost instant as well), XMR might have better privacy (used by Monero fans but never really proven), ETH might have a more accepted dApps platform (we'll see what the whitepaper brings)... but who combines all of these features in one project?
NAV is a jack of all trades.
Thanks for reading this far and now post your NAV public address so I can send you some NAVs! :-D

Hi /CryptoCurrency
I want to start off with saying that I don't try to shill this coin. This should be viewed as a summary of points why I personally think, Nav Coin will blow up in 2018.
This is no financial advise. Like always, do your own research!
Disclaimer: I own a fair amount of Nav Coins myself.

1. What is Nav Coin

Nav Coin has been publicly traded since mid 2014. It's a decentralized cryptocurrency which is built on the latest version of Bitcoin Core with many additional features and functionalities which differentiate Nav from other cryptocurrencies. I'm going to dive into the details of these features later on in this post.
The aim of Nav Coin is to simplify cryptocurrencies. In my opinion, this (the mainstream-adoption) is one of the most important topics for all cryptocurrencies in general. Nav is directly adressing this issue by providing very easy to use tools (wallet, mobile wallet, etc.).

1.1 Facts & Figures

• Funding: Compared to other cryptocurrencies, Nav Coin did not have an ICO or a premine.
• Market cap: ~72kk
• Circulating supply: ~62.1kk
• Max supply: annual increase of max. 5% (realistically about 2-3%)
• Currently trading for: 1.17 USD | 9983 sats
• Exchanges: Bittrex | Poloniex | Upbit | LiteBit.eu | Cryptopia | Novaexchange

Additionally, Craig talked about adding Nav Coin to Binance in an interview with The Crypto Lark (I've linked the interview below).

2. Meet the team

The Nav team is known to always deliver what they promise. Lately in the crypto-scene we've seen a trend to shill features/news on websites with counters like "We will do X in Y days" etc. which hardly ever get delivered.
The Nav team is different. They don't set themselves hard timelines (at least not publicly) but rather take the time needed to finish a feature, test it (also in public beta tests) and only when it really is done, release it into the public.
Like I said before, this team has a history of delivering things they promise. You can see for yourself in the project roadmap. They are working hard every day (as you can see on their GitHub page) to push forward the project.

2.1 Engineers

Nav Coin has a team with many different knowledge backgrounds. The chief engineer is Craig MacGregor. He recently did an extensive interview about the current state and future of Nav Coin with the youtuber The Crypto Lark which you can find here: Interview.
Craig MacGregor is supported by five more engineers, that are actively developing Nav Coin.

2.2 Marketing Director

Just recently, Nav Coin hired Kieren Hyland and Laura Harris as full-time employees.
In my opinion, marketing was something that could have been done more / better by Nav Coin. Since Kieren and Laura joined full-time, they are actively developing a marketing plan and give updates on the current state of it (like recently on reddit: Update from the marketing team. I think the lack of awareness is one of the main reasons, why Nav Coin is still very undervalued at the moment.

2.3 Operations Manager

Guy Sinclair is in charge of the operations (like distribution of NavPis etc. which I will talk about later).

2.4 Weekly updates

The team writes a weekly update for the community every wednesday and publishes it on the website so that everyone interested can always see the latest status of the projects.

3. Features and functionalities

3.1 Basis features of Nav Coin

3.1.1 Optional Private Payments

With Nav Coin you have the ability to send private payments. Like the title says, this is optional so you can choose to send non-private or private payments. Nav Coin uses a different approach to achieving privacy than other coins. Nav uses the so called NavTech. NavTech is a dual blockchain system. Essentially, the transaction information is encrypted, split in smaller transactions and sent through a second blockchain, which completely breaks any links between the sending and the receiving address. If you're interested in this technology, you can read the whitepapers here: NavTech whitepaper - NavTech Decentralization whitepaper.
At the moment, private payments are processed by servers. Everyone can operate a server themselves or can use the existing ones. The team is working on NavTech 2.0 which will make these servers obsolete, since every wallet will act as a private payment processor which will further push the decentralization.

3.1.2 Proof of Stake

Nav Coin uses the consensus model Proof of Stake which lets holders of Nav Coins earn a reward of 5% in interest of the coin they stake. Staking coins is very simple, you just have to have the wallet open and running.
5% rewards also mean, that there is an inflation of maximum 5% per year. But it is actually lower (at around 2-3%) since not all coins are staking. So if you are staking, you will earn more than the yearly inflation.
Here is a very detailed article about how Nav Coins Proof of Stake works.

3.1.3 Fast transaction times

Nav Coin has a really fast block speed. Transactions are confirmed as spendable withing only 30 seconds which makes it ideal for retail and e-commerce which in my opinion is one of the main points in real-life adoption.

3.2 NavPi

Like mentioned above, Nav Coin uses a Proof of Stake consensus model. Most of us have read about the immense energy consumption of Bitcoins Proof of Work model. In my opinion, this is not feasible for the future. With the PoS model of Nav Coin, you can stake your coins on a Raspberry Pi which uses only about 18kWh of power annually if run 24/7! This is much more environment friendly!
Nav Coin even sells their own preconfigured and ready to use NavPi Stakeboxes. Since they're out of stock very fast every time, you can create your own NavPi by following the step-by-step tutorial of the community member navtechservers

3.3 Community Fund

Since Nav Coin did not have an ICO or premine, they're fully self financed at the moment. Currently, the community is voting about a community fund which will propel the development of Nav greatly.
If the community fund is implemented, the PoS reward will be reduced from 5% to 4% per year. Each block will generate 0.25 Nav which will be allocated for the community fund (about 21'600 Nav per month).
Both the Nav Coin team and the community will be able to propose projects and budgets which the community (the stakers) will vote for. The payouts happen when everyone votes that the work is completed. The aim of this is to fund the development and ongoing success of Nav. You can read more about it here.

3.4 NavPay

NavPay is Navs mobile wallet. It's currently in a final open public beta. It's one of the first mobile wallets that allow private payments. There are already real world merchants accepting Nav thanks to the NavPay app like Pasticceria Piemontese in rome and you can even pay for a cardiologic examination using Nav.
NavPay has a very simple and beautiful user interface. The final version is planned to be released before christmas 2017!

3.5 Polymorph

Polymorph is a feature which is planned to be launched in early 2018. It is a fusion of NavTech's anonymous transactions and Changelly's instant exchange which will enable users to send any one of 80+ cryptocurrencies anonymously through the dual blockchain powered NavTech anonymous transaction system!
Here is an example of how it is possible to send Bitcoin anonymously with Nav Coins Polymorph.
For the traders: Polymorph will greatly increase the volume for Nav.

3.6 Anonymous Distributed Apps (NavChain)

At this moment, Nav Coin is "just" a currency. But this is going to change in 2018. The team has recently finished with the planning of a Anonymous Distributed Apps Platform (aDapps) (think of Ethereum's smart contracts, but with privacy!). They are currently polishing and finishing the whitepaper which will be ready to be launched in early 2018. Craig will be developing a technical prototype with Alex in Berlin before christmas!
This project will change Nav Coin from a currency to a platform.

4. Community Channels

Channel	Link
Website	navcoin.org
Reddit	/navcoin
Twitter	@NAVCoin
Facebook	NAVCoin
Medium	Nav-Coin
Discord	NAVCoin
Telegram	NAVCoin

5. Why I am heavily invested in Nav (TL;DR)

To summarize this post I've listed the main points why I think, Nav will be huge in 2018:

• Very active team that delivers what they promise since many years
• Friendly, active, helpful community
• Many big projects planned for 2018 (release of NavPay (12.2017), Polymorph (2018), aDapps(2018)
• Listing in Binance
• Community fund which will probably make many freelance developers and/or marketing guys interested in contributing to Nav Coin

If you've made it down here, thanks for reading and please tell me your opinion about Nav Coin.

The SEC just posted a new batch of 286 comments on the SolidX ETF, bringing the total to 1147. I am skimming through them and posted some of the best already to this sub.
The vast majority are short comments, obviously submitted in response to some mail-in campaign. The names sound very much like the invented ones of spam emails that I have been receiving for years. A telling detail is the lack of a middle initial.
They also mostly repeat the same arguments, and many are obviously written by people who don't understand what is the ETF, only that if that SEC thing approves it then the bitcoin price will go to the moon. I have just seen a dozen that start with the same phrase "I hearby[sic] state my acceptance and full support..."
Some are so sloppy that they submit with one name but sign with a different name.
Here are some honorable mentions:

• Can't be any simpler than this: "Bitcoin forever!!!"
  
• Wait, yes it can: "I support"
  
• Capitalizing Every Word May Do It
  
• Secured by math: "Please allow Bitcoin ETF as Bitcoin is an implementation of the perfect math and therefore based on the truth. Math has brought prosperity for mankind"
  
• The New Age approach: [In Spanish] "Cordial salute. The new age of aquarius, which is the age of conscience and light, brings with it bread under the arm, in the second world war when the enigma code was deciphered to end the devastating war, we were at the door of the new age, and cryptography was making its first redeeming steps. Why resist what is good and favorable, when thanks to cryptography the second world war ended, and now it gives us again the hand, to an anti-corrupted technology, which wants to end a war disguised as crime, drug traffic, and political corruption, war that is carried out in silence and keeps obstaclizing the good development of mankind. Blockchain the technology of the new age of aquarius. Approved."
  
• The cryptozoology approach to cryptocurrency trading, aka "it does not exist if I try hard enough to convince myself that it doesn't": "Price manipulation in Bitcoin Markets, to me feels the same of the Lock Ness Monster, everybody is certain it exists but nobody has evidence of it, or knows the real figures of the phenomenon. Whilst we do observe in many markets recurring behaviours that signal practices like Wash Trading and Spoofing, we are always able to reconcile impacting news and events with the sentiment of traders and make sense of price patterns of an asset such as Bitcoin, living up on both high expectations and dramatic fears."
  

A few negative comments:

• Johnny I: "an asset as it sits on the highly volatile market where distribution of coins are unevenly formed by small number of holders across the world (1% of addresses own 80-90% mined coins) who could manipulate prices effortlessly over the fake news. Also, sky-rocketing mining cost and inevitable hike of transfer fee (soon it will be only source of revenue for miners) will cast doubt to sustainability for a public investment tool. Bitcoin ETF would only serve as investing fads."
  
• Mark Szyszkowski, CCRCP.org: "[...] Where is the intrinsic value derived from? What is the backing of Bitcoin? What is the definition of purely cyber infrastructure? Who runs it? How is expansion allocated and its technology upgraded? What inherent technological security risks does it have? [...]"
  
• D. B.: "The Proposed Rule Change does not appear to detail the policy and procedure in event of a bitcoin blockchain fork. "
  
• William Morrison: "The abundance of comments submitted on subject of this ETF speaks clearly: there is a mass of unsophisticated retail investors---most with no previous investing experience---looking to get rich quick or make back losses from the Bitcoin market plunge over the last half year. And of course the many savvy retail and institutional investors more than happy to take advantage of them. [...] For all the comments urging the importance of the United States being at forefront of blockchain or distributed ledger technology and innovation by allowing a Bitcoin ETF, few if any are able to explain why it is hinged on expansion on the wholly speculative nature of this asset class. [...] it is telling that the mention-able examples of companies succeeding in this sector are mining equipment manufacturers (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/secretive-chinese-bitcoin-mining-company-may-have-made-as-much-money-as-nvidia-last-year.html) and online cryptocurrency exchanges (https://www.businessinsider.com/binance-cryptocurrency-exchange-profit-prediction-2018-7). In other words, casinos are the biggest profit-makers in the market of gamblers."
  
• Ken I Maher: "[...] There is improvement from 2 years ago when 96% of volume occurred unregulated in China but this leaves 86% of market activity still under no official established regulation against fraudulent trading activity or manipulation. US bitcoin exchanges still blindly and automatedly follow the dominant unregulated markets due to their own thinness of volume and liquidity. [...] More incredible is the emergence of USDT (Tether) a cryptocurrency token issued by a single exchange that claims to be 'pegged' to USD value and unprovenly to be backed by USD reserve. It now commands over 130% of global trading volume compared to all fiat pairs. [...]"
  
• Kash Ranks: "In a world where making a daily living is hard enough, how can you in good conscience, allow a speculative/scam instrument like Bitcoin to exist let alone approve an ETF. Blockchain has its merits but Coins are nothing more than a digital scam which is robbing people of their hard earned money and enabling speculative fervor."
  
• Ran Lagil: "[...] can one claim that the price action of the bitcoin spot market in the unregulated exchanges, which holds the vast majority of volume, as acknowledged by the SEC, doesn’t affect the XBT future market? Of course not. In any financial market where arbitrage is available, the price change in one source will affect the rest of the market. [...] Please find the bellow image which demonstrate the volume manipulation in the ETCBTC market in the world largest Crypto Exchange - Binance. [...]"
  
• Peter Quinn: "Bitcoin is a pure speculation vehicle with no traditional value or commercial/industrial use. It has no fundamentals, is exceptionally volatile and is easily manipulated due to poor market liquidity and no market regulation. A CBOE listed ETF that is proposing to be a passive Bitcoin holding vehicle is nothing more than trying to get a broader pool of investors involved in something that would never be allowed for listing on a regulated stock exchange if it was a company. [...] Additionally, much of the purported size of Bitcoin is an illusion, with "market cap" as reported on private websites such as Coinmarketcap.com taking all coins ever in existence multiplied by an average of the last traded price in dollars. Volume is commonly reported as all Bitcoins traded in dollar value even if, as is the case, most of them did not trade against hard currency at all, instead trading against other cryptocurrencies or Tether, a purported 1:1: USD backed cryptocurrency that has been used to artificially pump the price and is more comparable to counterfeit money. [...]"
  
• Sam Ahn: "I am opposed to the whole idea of bitcoin, because bitcoin does not have intrinsic value and SEC was created to prevent sale of pieces of the blue sky. [...] Bitcoin is a commodity money, which cannot be a store of value without having its own value established before becoming money. "
  

Developments in Financial Services

• A cryptocurrency exchange-traded product (ETP) that trades on Switzerland’s Six Exchange saw record trading volumes on Thursday and Friday last week, suggesting that institutional investors may be buying the dip in cryptocurrencies. Four major cryptocurrencies underlie the HODL ETP, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). While HODL ETP’s one-month average daily trading is 20,000 shares, on Thursday, December 6th, and Friday, December 7th, 53,233 shares and 62.986 shares were traded, respectively.
• A report published last week by global anti-money laundering policymaker, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), indicates that cryptocurrency exchanges in the United Kingdom pose a, “low risk,” for money laundering and terrorist financing activities. The report, however, does highlight that such activities on UK cryptocurrency exchanges are an, “emerging risk,” although there is not yet enough evidence to suggest that these activities are occurring through cryptocurrency exchanges. In its report, the FATF urged UK regulators to, “Continue to develop an understanding of emerging risks (such as virtual currencies) and intelligence gaps, and take appropriate action.”
• Andreas Utermann, CEO and CIO of Allianz Global Investors, called on global financial regulators to ban cryptocurrencies while speaking at a panel discussion in London. According to a report by Reuters, Utermann said, “You should outlaw it,” while participating in a panel alongside Andrew Bailey, the head of Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority. Bailey responded by saying that Utermann’s comments were, “quite strong,” before adding that cryptocurrencies have, “no intrinsic value.”
• Basis, a major US-based stablecoin project, is shutting down its operations and returning most of its funds to investors, according to a report by crypto news outlet The Block. The report by The Block cited, “multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation,” in claiming that the algorithmic stablecoin project, which generated UDS$133mm of funding through private investments in April, will return funds to investors. According to the Co-Founder and CEO of competing stablecoin project Nevin Freeman, Basis’ shutdown is due to regulatory concerns around one of its token types. Freeman explained, highlighting that algorithmic stablecoins implement a “secondary token”, known as a “bond token”, to help maintain the primary token’s peg. In many cases, regulators like the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) consider these secondary tokens to be securities.
• Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, announced that it has added Circle’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), to its combined Stablecoin Market. Circle, a company backed by Goldman Sachs, first released its stablecoin in September of this year. Binance’s combined Stablecoin Market features other notable stablecoins, like Tether (USDT), that trade against cryptocurrencies as interchangeable base pairs.
• Coinone, a South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange, has officially launched Cross, a cross-border payments application that leverages Ripple’s xCurrent product to increase efficiencies. The application, released by Coinone’s payments subsidiary, Coinone Transfer, targets unbanked or underbanked South Koreans by enabling the transfer of funds to Thailand or the Philippines at a low cost.
• Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange heralded by the Winklevoss twins, released an official company blog post this weekend announcing that the firm will support Bitcoin Cash (BCH) custody and trading. The exchange will support only the Bitcoin Cash ABC network at this time, adding that they, “are continuing to evaluate Bitcoin SV over the coming weeks or months, and we may or may not choose to support withdrawals and/or trading of Bitcoin SV in the future.” Additionally, the company detailed that its listing of BCH is pending regulatory approval by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
• Gemini, the cryptocurrency trading platform founded by the Winklevoss twins, announced the launch of a mobile crypto trading application in an official blog post today. Accompanying the launch of the crypto trading app is a new investment vehicle, dubbed, “The Cryptoverse,” that is comprised of a basket of cryptocurrencies weighted by market capitalization. While speaking to Bloomberg today, Cameron Winklevoss said that, “A lot of our decisions have perhaps given off a perception that we’re more institutional-based. The reality of the situation is that we have a diverse customer base. And the retail story is just beginning.” The Winklevoss twins went on to detail of a goal to expand reach to Asian markets by 2019’s end.
• Good Money, a US neo-banking platform, has closed its Series A investment round that generated USD$30mm led by cryptocurrency-focused merchant bank Galaxy Digital and the founder of EOS (EOS) Block.one. Good Money aims to provide a variety of banking service and certain financial instruments to US account holders while exploring innovative changes to traditional banking practices. “Modern banking is a primary driver of so many issues we as a society face – from economic inequality, institutional racism, environmental destruction to political corruption,” said Good Money founder Gunnar Lovelace. Specifically, Good Money eliminates ATM fees while offering each bank user equity in the company.
• Kraken, a notable cryptocurrency exchange, is seeking to raise funding with a USD$4bn valuation for the company and a USD$100,000 investment minimum, according to CoinDesk. In an email to investors, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell wrote, “There is presently a limited time opportunity available to a very small select number of clients to purchase shares.” The email goes on to detail that the exchange will close its offer on December 16th.
• OKEx, the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, will begin listing Bitcoin Cash ABC under the original Bitcoin Cash ticker (BCH), as per an official announcement Tuesday. Additionally, OKEx will change the Bitcoin Cash SV ticker from BCHSV to BSV. The announcement by OKEx comes after other notable cryptocurrency exchanges have made the same switch, including Coinbase and Gemini.
• PayPal, an online payments portal, has launched its own internal private blockchain platform that will allow staff to trade and exchange tokens while generating ideas and participating in programs to foster innovation, as per a report by news outlet Cheddar. The private blockchain network, which was built by 25 PayPal employees in just 6 months, will allow employees to earn more for enrolling in learning and development programs. The PayPal tokens are not tradeable, or worth anything for that matter, outside PayPal’s blockchain.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a big four consulting firm, is partnering with Bitfury Group, a large blockchain software and mining firm, to develop a blockchain accelerator specific to Russian businesses. As per an official press release by PwC, the partnership will leverage Exonum, Bitfury’s open source framework to build blockchain applications, for educational courses and seminars. The partnership aims to meet the, “current needs,” of PwC’s enterprise clients in Russia.
• Revolut, a digital banking alternative with an in-application cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it has been awarded a European banking license. Seeking to become the, “Amazon of banking,” the license will allow Revolut to offer traditional banking services alongside its current cryptocurrency offerings to European customers. Nikolay Storonsky, Founder and CEO of Revolut, said in regards to the newly acquired license that, “With the banking license now secured, commission-free stock trading progressing well, and five new international markets at final stages of launch, we are living up to our reputation as the ‘Amazon of Banking’. Our vision is simple: one ap with tens of millions of users, where you can manage every aspect of your financial life with the best value and technology.”
• Shinhan Bank, the second-largest commercial bank in South Korea, is launching a new project to implement blockchain technology in its internal processes with a goal of eliminating human error. According to a report by news outlet The Korea Times, Shinhan also recently completed a training program for its staff to increase their knowledge of blockchain technology across various applications. After Shinhan implemented blockchain technology for interest rate swap transactions on November 30th, South Korea’s second-largest bank is now aiming to apply the technology in its record-keeping process to enhance overall efficiencies.
• SolarisBank, Germany’s second-largest and Europe’s ninth-largest stock exchange, is partnering with Stuttgart Exchange Group, a German fintech company, to jointly develop a cryptocurrency exchange. As per a report by Cointelegraph Germany, the joint cryptocurrency exchange venture, “is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2019.” This news comes after SolarisBank announced plans to launch a zero-fee cryptocurrency trading application this past May.
• The Canadian city of Calgary is becoming the first city in Canada to launch a digital version of its local currency, according to a report by the Global News. Dubbed as the Calgary Digital Dollar, the digital currency will be exclusive to Calgary and operate alongside the country’s Canadian Dollar. Calgary-based businesses will now be required by law to accept at least 10% of a payment in digital currency, although they are allowed to accept up to 100%.
• The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is launching a pilot of its Global Payment Initiative (GPI) to combat growing blockchain and fintech solutions, according to an official announcement last week. Currently, the SWIFT Network is used by global financial institutions to conduct global financial payments and cross-border transfers of fiat currency. Although the project is still in its early stages, the GPI pilot hopes to, “build the foundation of a new integrated and interactive service that will significantly improve efficiencies in the payments process and which will ultimately be made available to all 10,000 banks across the SWIFT network.”
• The United Arab Emirates’(UAE) central bank is partnering with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) to develop a cryptocurrency to facilitate cross border transactions between the two countries, according to a report by news outlet GulfNews. In a meeting pertaining to global banking standards and regulation in the Arab region, Mubarak Rashed Al Mansouri, the governor of the UAE’s central bank, said, “This is probably the first time ever that witnesses the cooperation of monetary authorities from different countries on this topic and we hope that this achievement will foster similar collaboration in our region.” The prospective digital currency will be used by both central banks and financial institutions in the countries.
• TokenSoft, a security token offering (STO) startup, has acquired a 20% stake in regulated broker-dealer Marpine Securities LLC in order to launch its own regulated broker-dealer. After acquiring the 20% stake, TokenSoft will launch its new regulated broker-dealer entity, called TokenSoft Global Markets, that will be registered through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). The new regulated broker-dealer entity will allow TokenSoft to advise token issuers through every step of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) process. Additionally, TokenSoft will now be able to legally operate in services related to insurance and management.
• Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors and a notable cryptocurrency pundit, believes that the current fair value of Bitcoin (BTC) is between USD$13,800 and USD$14,800, according to a note published on Thursday. Lee arrived at this valuation by taking into account the number of active wallet addresses, usage per account, and other supply and demand metrics. Additionally, Lee forecasted that the fair value of BTC will reach USD$150,000/coin once BTC wallets account for 7% of Visa’s 4.5bn account holders.
• UAE Exchange, an exchange based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is partnering with Ripple to launch a blockchain-based cross-border remittances platform by 1Q2019, as per a Reuters report on Thursday. The report details further that Finablr, a payments and foreign exchange company that owns UAE Exchange, observes a high level of remittance inflows from expatriate workers in the Middle East region. “We expect to go live with Rippel by Q1, 2019 with two other Asian banks,” said Finablr CEO Promoth Manghat, adding, “This is for remittances to start with, from across the globe into Asia.”

Regulatory Environment

• De Nederlandsche Bank, the Netherlands’ central bank, will soon require domestic cryptocurrency providers to obtain a license from the regulator to operate, as per a report by Dutch news outlet DeTelegraaf. The Netherlands' central bank is taking these measures in the hope that it will, “prevent such cryptocurrencies from being used to launder money obtained through crime or to fund terrorism.” In order to receive a license, cryptocurrency firms must maintain Know-Your-Customer procedures and report any suspicious activity to the Dutch central bank.
• Eddie Hughes, a conservative member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament, suggested that Bitcoin (BTC) should be accepted as legal tender for tax and utility payments, according to news outlet Express.co.uk. The article discusses that Hughes, who is a self-described, “crypto enthusiast with amateur knowledge,” recently met with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which accepts cryptocurrency donations. This news comes after the US state of Ohio announced that it would begin accepting BTC as legal tender for tax payments.
• Following a case in Canadian courts that resulted in a ruling ordering mistakenly sent crypto funds to be returned to their owner, a blog post from the University of Oxford Faculty of Law is noting that there could be repercussions with the case potentially setting a precedent for lost or stolen cryptocurrency claims. The Canadian court case’s ruling will require defendant Brian Wall to return USD$370,482 worth of Ethereum (ETH) tokens to the plaintiff, Copytrack. The blog post from the University of Oxford Faculty of Law reads, ‘This precedent may have major repercussions for the enforcement of claims regarding lost or stolen cryptocurrencies,” adding that the ruling allows the plaintiff to recover tokens, “in whatsoever hands those Ether Tokens may currently be held.”
• Japan’s government is considering plans to ease cryptocurrency taxes in an effort to revitalize the domestic cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. This week, Japanese Congressman Takeshi Fujimaki proposed four significant changes to taxation requirements pertaining to digital assets, which include: a reduction on the cryptocurrency gains tax from 55% to 20%; elimination of taxes on crypto-to-crypto payments; elimination of taxes on miniscule cryptocurrency payments; and an adjustment that would allow cryptocurrency investors to carry forward losses across quarters and years, effectively until cryptocurrencies are ‘cashed’ out.
• Jay Clayton, Chairman for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC), said during a speech that Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), “can be effective,” for fundraising, but that, “securities laws must be followed.” Clayton went on in his speech to comment on the US SEC’s work regarding distributed ledger technology (DLT), digital assets, and ICOs, saying that it is an, “area where the Commission and staff have spent a significant amount of time,” and, “that this trend will continue in 2019.”
• Jay Clayton, the Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), expressed his optimism for distributed ledger technology’s potential impact on traditional financial markets in a testimony before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs yesterday. According to a transcript published on the SEC’s website, Clayton said, “I am optimistic that developments in distributed ledger technology can help facilitate capital formation, providing promising investment opportunities for both institutional and Main Street Investors.” Additionally, Clayton highlighted that the SEC is, “Focusing a significant amount of attention and resources on digital assets and initial coin offerings (ICOs).”
• Maxim Akimov, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, announced that no significant changes will be made to the draft of a bill concerning cryptocurrency regulation in the country, as per news outlet Finmarket. The bill was already approved by Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, in May 2018, although the bill has generated substantial discussion since. Since approval of the bill, all cryptocurrency and token-related terminology have been removed and replaced with the term “digital rights”. At the beginning of December, Pavel Krasheninnikov, Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, said that the bill needed to be, “significantly,” changed.
• Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, highlighted that Security Token Offerings (STOs) in China are illegal while speaking at a summit in Beijing. As per a report by news outlet the South China Morning Post, Gongsheng told the summit that, “illegal financing activities through STOs and ICOs were still rampant in the mainland despite a nationwide clean-up of the cryptocurrency market last year.” In citing reasoning for the continued ban on STOs, Gongsheng explained that, “Virtual money has become an accomplice to all kinds of illegal and criminal activities.”
• Pantera Capital, a blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused investment firm and hedge fund, is warning investors that as much as a quarter of their ICO project could potentially be violating US securities laws, according to a Bloomberg report. In a newsletter to clients, Pantera Capital warned, “While we believe the vast majority of the projects in our portfolio should not be affected, approximately 25% of our fund’s capital is invested in other projects with liquid tokens that sold to US investors without using Regulation D or Regulation S”
• Russia has no intention of implementing Venezuela’s state-backed digital currency, the Petro, into commercial operations, according to a report by news outlet RIA Novosti. While speaking to reporters this week, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak said, “Representatives from our tax service and central bank... got acquainted with the cryptocurrency Venezuela is introducing,” adding, “But no more than that. As for payments, they’re not happening yet.”
• South Korea’s representative body, the National Assembly, held its first official meeting with seven of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges on Monday. The purpose of the meeting was to debate cryptocurrency regulation between stakeholders of South Korea’s cryptocurrency industry. Cryptocurrency exchanges Bithumb, CobitCoin, Coinone, Upbit, Gopax, Coinplug, and Hanbitco were among the attendees of the debate, which reportedly focused on Anti-Money Laundering (AML) customer protections and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures.
• The United Kingdom’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental financial security body, is calling on the country’s government to increase monitoring of cryptocurrency markets. According to an official report last week, the UK must overhaul its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and combat terrorist financing (CFT) efforts in order to prevent illicit activities with cryptocurrencies. “Virtual currency exchange providers are not yet covered by AML/CFT requirements,” the report details, adding, “this is an emerging risk and there is not yet evidence to suggest that broad scale ML/TF is occurring in the UK through this relatively small sector.”
• The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is interested in learning more about the Ethereum (ETH) network, its technology, and the markets build around it. On Tuesday, the CFTC published a Request for Input (RFI) that requests the public’s feedback on different questions concerning Ethereum. The RFI explains that its goal is to inform the CFTC about Ethereum and similar emerging technology, saying, “The input from this request will advance the CFTC’s mission of ensuring the integrity of the derivatives market as well as monitoring and reducing the systematic risk by enhancing legal certainty in the markets. The RFI seeks to understand the similarities and distinctions between certain virtual currencies, including here ether and bitcoin, as well as ether-specific opportunities, challenges, and risks.”
• The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC) is ordering that cryptocurrency asset manager CoinAlpha Advisors LLC pay a USD$50,000 fine, alleging that the firm conducted an unregistered securities sale. After forming in October 2017, CoinAlpha raised more than USD$600,000 from investors to invest in digital assets. In an official release, the US SEC said that CoinAlpha did not file a Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities, meaning that the firm breached securities laws by soliciting securities investors. Additionally, the firm allegedly did not adhere to proper know-your-customer procedures to verify that investors were accredited.
• Venezuela is reportedly beginning to convert its citizens’ monthly pension payments into Petros, Venezuela’s controversial state and oil-backed cryptocurrency, according to a report by local economics blog the Caracas Chronicles. The conversion of Venezuelan pensioners’ payments into Petros came after the country already sent pensioners their monthly payment in the form of a check for Venezuelan Bolivars -- normally, upon receiving their check, pensioners would deposit their funds into a bank account where they could then withdraw fiat from local branches. The Venezuelan government, however, converted pensioners’ fiat payments into the Petro upon their deposit into a bank. In the first few weeks of the Petro’s existence, its value has risen from 9,000 to more than 15,000.
• Warren Davidson, an Ohio Congressman and notable advocate of blockchain and digital assets, is floating blockchain technology as a solution to fund US President Donald Trump’s prospective US-Mexico border wall. While interviewing with NPR, Congressman Davidson suggested, “the American people, or whomever should choose to donate,” could pay for the border wall, adding, “you could do it with sort of like a crowdfunding site or you could do a blockchain and you could have WallCoins.”

General News

• “The long-term value of Bitcoin (BTC) is more likely to be USD$100 than USD$100,000,” says Kenneth Rogoff, a former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the current Harvard University Professor of Economics and Public Policy. While writing an article for major UK news outlet The Guardian, Rogoff highlighted that, because BTC’s use is limited to transactions, it makes the digital asset more vulnerable to a bubble-like collapse. Rogoff also cited that BTC’s energy-intensive verification processes is, “vastly less efficient,” than systems that leverage, “a trusted central authority like a central bank.”
• A new report by PeckShield, a blockchain security company that monitors various cryptocurrency ecosystems, details that decentralized applications (DApps) on the EOS (EOS) blockchain have lost as much as USD$1mm in hacks since July 2018. The report details further that DApps on the EOS network have sustained 27 breaches since July, which are responsible for the up to 400,000 EOS that have been compromised from hacks. Guo Yonggang, a blockchain security expert cited in a report on the matter by crypto media firm Blockchain Truth, believes that the hacks can be attributed to security problems with the DApps themselves, rather than with the EOS network.
• A new study published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance on Wednesday finds that the number of unique ID-verified cryptocurrency users nearly doubled in in the first 3 quarters of 2018. The study details that total ID-verified users increased to 35mm in the first three quarters of 2018 from 18mm at the end of 2017, representing an increase of 94%. As per an analysis of the study by Bloomberg, the growth of crypto’s userbase despite the market decline, “could signal that an eventual recovery could be coming.”
• Amid the continued cryptocurrency sell-off, only two cryptocurrency mining machines remain profitable, according to real-time data from ASICMinerValue.com. ASICMInerValue.com, which calculates the profitability of Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners, indicates that only indicates that only the Ebank Ebit E11++ and ASICminer 8 Nano 44Th mining models are profitable for mining cryptocurrencies based on the SHA-256 hash function -- notable cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) use this has function.
• Bitmain, a large Chinese cryptocurrency mining firm, announced that it is closing its development center in Israel, citing current cryptocurrency market conditions. In closing Bitmaintech Israel, the crypto mining giant was forced to fire all 23 employees. Among the employees let go is Gadi Glikberg, head of Bitmain’s Israeli branch and Vice President of International Sales, who said on the recent market turmoil, “The crypto market has undergone a shake-up in the past few months, which has forced Bitmain to examine its various activities around the globe and to refocus its business in accordance with the current situation.”
• Busan, a major South Korean city, will be the beneficiary of the South Korean government’s plan to spend 4bn Korean won (USD$3.5mm) to establish a blockchain-enabled virtual power plant (VPP). As per a report by South Korean news outlet Yonhap News Agency, the project will be angled as a national competition in 2019, hosted by South Korea’s largest electric utility, Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO). The VPP will integrate the idle capacities of multiple energy resources through a cloud-based distributed ledger in order to optimize power generation and decrease costs.
• Church’s Chicken, a large international fast food franchise, is partnering with Dash Venezuela to accept cryptocurrencies in its Venezuelan locations. According to an official press release, 13 Church’s Chicken establishments will begin accepting Dash (DASH) as payment following, “extensive and rigorous days of training,” staff to understand cryptocurrencies. With the addition of Church’s Chicken, more than 2,200 establishments in Venezuela accept DASH as payment.
• Crypto.com, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency payments platform, announced the appointment of former PayPal executive Tyson Hackwood to serve as the firm’s Vice President and Head of Global Merchant Acquisition in an official press release today. Crypto.com aims to increase cryptocurrency adoption by both merchants and consumers through their point-of-sale (PoS) transaction terminals. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek believes that Hackwood will be integral in furthering this goal, saying, “As we develop the Crypto.com Chain to fulfill the current industry need to pay and be paid in crypto, Tyson will play an important role in expanding the number and quality of merchants that are part of our network.”
• Hyperledger, a notable blockchain consortium, is continuing its robust expansion after announcing the addition of 16 new members at the Hyperledger Global Forum in Basel, Switzerland. Among the notables to join the consortium are, Alibaba Cloud, Citigroup’s Citi Ventures arm, and Deutsche Telekom. The latest addition of 16 members brings the total membership of Hyperledger to more than 260 different companies. In a public statement, Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf said that, “The growing Hyperledger community reflects the increasing importance of open source efforts to build enterprise blockchain technologies across industries and markets. The latest members showcase the widening interest in and impact of DLT and Hyperledger."
• Jeremy Henrickson, the former Chief Product Officer at Coinbase, has departed the US-based cryptocurrency exchange after serving since July 2016. “Jeremy’s contributions to Coinbase over the past two years were invaluable,” said a Coinbase spokesperson, adding that, “he helped to build our scrappy startup team into a high-functioning product and engineering organization -- overseeing a 5x+ growth of the team.” Henrickson’s departure comes after long-term Coinbase executives Adam White and Hunter Merghart left the US-based cryptocurrency exchange in recent months.
• LinkedIn’s, “2018 U.S. Emerging Jobs,” report released on Thursday ranks the role of blockchain developer as the fastest growing job in the United States. The report by LinkedIn indicates that blockchain developer jobs have increased 33-fold in the past 12 months alone. San Francisco, New York City, and Atlanta are among the cities with the highest demand for blockchain developer jobs.
• Orbs, a unique hybrid blockchain platform, raised more than USD$15mm in cryptocurrencies to fund its development of a public blockchain, according to a company blog post. South Korean application provider Kakao lead the fundraising efforts with a representative telling CoinDesk that the company, “always seeks to invest and support innovative startups, and Orbs is a good example.” In total, Orbs raised 139,000 Ether (ETH) and 892 Bitcoin (BTC), amounting to roughly USD$15.4mm. Orbs aims to build a public blockchain with this funding that is, “universal,” and, “scalable,” for decentralized applications (DApps) with the, “liquidity of a base layer.”
• Samsung has reportedly filed patent applications for three different blockchain-related trademark requests that all pertain directly to smartphones, according to news outlet Galaxy Club. Specifically, the patents named “Blockchain KeyStore”, “Blockchain Key Box”, and “Blockchain Core” all pertain to cryptocurrency custody capabilities on smartphones. This news comes amid the release of HTC’s Exodus 1 and Sirin Labs’ FINNEY, both of which are being marketed as blockchain smartphones with cryptocurrency custody capabilities.

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