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BEFORE THE BOMB HITS: Ethereum’s “difficulty bomb” was designed to stimulate the future migration to proof-of-stake, making the proof-of-work blockchain incrementally less time-efficient to operate.
But that revolution is still a long way off, so now the community is once again working on neutralizing the mechanism, as well as changing the ether issuance model that goes with it. And both the bomb and issuance questions have proved to be controversial. Full Story
DIVISION OVER DIVISION: Neo's co-founder Erik Zhang proposed a new economic model for the upcoming 3.0 version of the project's software. The proposal is designed to address the problem of tokens being sent to "black hole addresses," or wallets to which owners have lost their private keys.
In the new model, neo's GAS tokens would be sent to a pool and then distributed over time exclusively to token holders who partake in voting for consensus nodes (via another type of tokens, NEO). But this method would remove the technical barrier that requires NEO to be indivisible, and some investors don't think it's a good idea. Full Story
JOLLY GOOD: Coinbase has started offering deposits and withdrawals denominated in the British pound (GBP). Now U.K. customers won't have to convert cryptocurrencies into euros before converting a second time into pounds. Full story |
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With the launch of bitcoin futures in 2017 by Cboe and CME, two of the largest futures exchanges in the world, a federally regulated means of betting on the price of bitcoin was created.
Data from the CFTC shows that large institutions, specifically those with open positions in excess of the CFTC's large trader reporting levels, continue to bet on the price of bitcoin falling. Conversely, small traders remain bullish by a large margin.
Overall volumes soared as bitcoin futures gained traction since the launch, but even the combined volumes of Cboe and CME futures lagged far behind those of offshore derivative markets such as Bitmex, which recently processed over $8 billion of trades within a 24 hour period.
Learn more research insights here. |
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| | ON THE DEFENSIVE: Bitcoin was trading at $7,560 on Bitfinex today, but technical charts show a risk of falling below the crucial support level of $7,455 in the next 24 hours. Full story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
FORTUNE: The magazine interviewed the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, who made some bold predictions.
Namely, CZ believes the future belongs to a decentralized web: by 2020, we'll see a broad use of blockchain-based messaging, games, social networks and rating systems, he expects.
Also, Binance is going to keep its priorities focused on developing markets instead of challenging Coinbase and Gemini in the U.S., because "the strategy there requires lots of lawyers and lobbying," CZ said.
THE REST
BLOOMBERG: Despite the bitcoin price turbulence, ICOs this year attracted a record $12 billion in the first half, almost double the figure raised for all of 2017 ($7 billion), according to Autonomous Research LLP.
FORBES: The magazine profiles the Chinese crypto hedge fund FBG Capital. Its founder Shuoji Zhou, 36, has been an eager ICO investor himself, having supported dozens of projects like Tron, Decentraland and MakerDAO together with his friends.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: One of the first U.S. charities to accept donations of cryptocurrency, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation held nearly one-third of its investment portfolio in digital assets at year-end, according to accounting experts who have reviewed the charity's financial statement for 2017.
The newspaper suggests that this might have helped the foundation's assets swell to $13.5 billion — up 65 percent from the end of 2016. |
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WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER |
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