CRYPTO UPDATES: October 2019

Friday, October 11, 2019

Bitcoin to Return to 5,200 French Tobacco Stores + 15 More Crypto News

Crypto Briefs is your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Adoption news

5,200 French tobacco stores will begin selling Bitcoin again after a false start. The project is the brainchild of Keplerk, who initially announced its Bitcoin sales plan in November last year. However, after launching the project at tobacconists across the country in January, the company abruptly pulled the plug on February 27. Per BFM TV, Keplerk now intends to try again, and has begun to sell 50, 100 and 250 euro Bitcoin coupons. The company says that it has resolved the issues that blighted the initial launch, whereby customers had to wait up to eight hours for BTC to arrive in their wallets.
MouseBelt, an ecosystem that promotes blockchain innovation, announced their newest initiative to drive blockchain innovation through education, called the Blockchain Education Alliance, which will work to provide university students with the connections and knowledge necessary to enter the workforce with practicable blockchain skills. Per the announcement, the alliance's first members are StellarDevelopment Foundation, Tron, Hedera, Ontology and others.
Hancom, South Korea’s answer to Microsoft, says it has incorporated blockchain technology in its latest office suite Hancom Office 2020. The company says, perChosun, that the software will let users check the authenticity and revision history of a range of documents using blockchain technology, and expects the function to be of particular use to real estate and financial services companies.
The seller of USD 100,000 virtual car, Animoca Brands and F1 Delta Time announcedthat the “Japan Edition 2019” official Formula 1 (F1) non-fungible token (NFT) will go on auction starting 14 October 2019 at 9 am (GMT) and ending 17 October 2019 at 9 am (GMT). (Learn more: Animoca Brands Bets Big on Blockchain)
In an opinion piece authored by Venezuela-based cryptocurrency journalist Juan Ibarra for Criptomonadas, the author claims that every extra international sanction imposed on the country is pushing citizens “closer to cryptocurrencies.” Ibarra claims that freelancers in Venezuela are facing “multiple barriers,” which Bitcoin and other tokens can help overcome – meaning that more and more people are turning their backs on PayPal, Tansferwise and other similar platforms.
MyCrypto, company that provides a tool for generating Ethereum wallets and managing ERC-20 tokens, announced the launch of the beta version of their new website, which comes, among other updates, with a redesigned dashboard and multi-account management functionality, which enables users to access multiple wallets from their home dashboard.

Exchanges news

The government of Venezuela is claiming a breakthrough for its oil-backed Petrocryptocurrency. Per pro-crypto NGO Asonacrip, the state-run cryptocurrency regulator Sunacrip has OKed the country’s first Petro-to-fiat pairing at the Amberes Coinexchange – allowing citizens to trade Petro for bolivars for the first time. Amberes has previously received an operating permit from Sunacrip. Asonacrip posted screenshots to back up its claims in a Twitter post.

A judge has ruled in Bitfinex’s favor in the matter of preparing documents for its appeal against the New York Attorney General’s office’s case. As previously reported, the exchange, its operator iFinex and its stablecoin Tether have all been embroiled in a bitter and long-running dispute with the Attorney General, which has accused it of foul play in the matter of a USD 850 million inter-company loan. The Attorney General had demanded the release of key Tether documents – but per court documents uploaded by CoinDesk, the New York Supreme Court Justice turned down the request. The same court, however, upheld a ruling that prevents Tether from lending any more money to Bitfinex.
OKex Korea has announced that it will launch a review into its proposed delisting of ZCash and Dash. The exchange says that the delisting has been put on ice pending a review, saying it will re-examine the two token’s compliance with the FATF’s Travel Rule.
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer says it has introduced a new fraud alert system, as well as a fraudulent login detection service. Per App Times, the solution will help individuals and corporate users to avoid spoofing attacks. It will also help catch criminals trying to create accounts using fake names, and detect money laundering accounts.
Coinbase announced the Coinbase Pro mobile app - a "mobile-first trading platform that was built with a focus on speed, ease of use, and a clean, streamlined trading experience," the announcement says.

Investing news

Founder of the payment app Metal Pay Marshall Hayner and the young crypto millionaire Erik Finman, who together started the Metal Foundation, have launched a USD 1 million venture fund, called Metal VC, to invest in blockchain startups. CoinDesk reports that the fund will focus on micro and angel investments in early-stage companies involved in banking and decentralized finance.
Neo bank Juno has raised USD 3 million seed round to build a platform on Ethereum, which will leverage cryptocurrencies and Ethereum protocols to provide services like high-yield savings and debit cards. It is expected to launch next year in selected markets. Per the Economic Times, investors include Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital and Sequoia Capital’s Surge.
The Swedish Enforcement Agency is auctioning off the digital currency, in total 4.59 bitcoins (USD 38,200). In their last such auction in 2017, the highest bid was SEK 43,000 (USD 4,373), which was above the estimated market value of SEK 27,600 (USD 2,800).
SE Digital Co., a subsidiary of Thai financial services firm Seamico Securities Plc, has got an approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to fully operate in Thailand as an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Portal, the Bangkok Post reports, which will be the beginning of the regulated digital capital market in Thailand. SE Digital plans to launch the country’s first investment token with a target transaction size between THB 2 billion (USD 66 million) and THB 3 billion (USD 99 million).
Blockchain company Iconloop has raised KRW 10 billion (more that USD 8 million) from seven investment companies participating in a Series A funding round, including Korea Technology Finance Corporation and T.S. Investment, the announcement says.

Russian Legislators in Crypto ‘Compromise’ as Law Is Delayed Again

In a move that will surprise nobody, Russia’s parliament will again postpone its long-awaited cryptocurrency regulations.

As previously reported, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had set the Duma a deadline of November 1 for the finalization of the “On Digital Assets” bill, which passed its first reading back in May 2018.

However, the head of the parliamentary finance committee charged with drafting blockchain legislation, Anatoly Aksakov, told news agency Tass that the bill would not be ready in time.

The committee chief did offer some good news for the country’s long-suffering crypto-community, however, suggesting that there may be a way to get around the current impasse that is blocking the bill’s progress.

Aksakov has found himself between a rock and a hard place, with powerful industries and pro-crypto voices hoping to legalize cryptocurrencies, and skeptical bodies, such as the country’s Central Bank, pushing for an outright, China-style ban.

Aksakov has previously spoken about being at a “crossroads” on cryptocurrency policy, with the country facing a binary choice.

However, per Tass, he suggested that a “compromise” was possible, and spoke of “giving people the opportunity to use cryptocurrencies in Russia.” But he added a caveat: The Central Bank, which Aksakov admitted “categorically opposes” cryptocurrencies, would need to provide “permission” and would want to retain some element of control.

The committee head also described “unsecured cryptocurrencies” as a “real danger.” But he did have positive news for stablecoin issuers, remarking, “Stablecoins are a very real thing.”

Meanwhile, Interfax reports that Herman Gref, the head of Sberbank, one of Russia’s biggest and most crypto-keen banks, has also called for a laissez-faire approach to stablecoin regulation.

He stated,

“There is no need to rush with [stablecoin] regulations. I believe that conditions must be created so that decentralized systems of this kind appear. We need to see how they develop [before legislating].”

Gref also opined that Facebook's Libra token would likely not see the light of day in Russia because “many Russian players had already attempted to launch their own digital tokens.”

Presumably these “players” have not been successful in their efforts.

Meanwhile the Central Bank and its arch-crypto skeptic governor Elvira Nabiullina have given no sign that they are prepared to tone down their hardline rhetoric.

Per Wek, Nabiullina also spoke out yesterday, and reiterated that she was “categorically against the legalization of private currencies in Russia, both in kind and in virtual form.”

The governor also poured cold water on the so-called crypto-ruble proposal that could see the country issue a digital fiat.

She stated,

“There are many risks involved [with a digital fiat], and the advantages do not seem obvious enough.”

Bitcoin Price, Altcoins Trimming Gains, Signaling Fresh Decrease

Bitcoin price surged to USD 8,800 and recently declined below USD 8,500.
Ethereum and ripple are down more than 3% below USD 190 and USD 0.270 respectively.
ZIL, SEELE and NEX are down more than 10% today.

Recently, there were swing moves in bitcoin price. BTC/USD surged above the USD 8,600 and USD 8,700 levels. However, BTC/USD struggled to surpass USD 8,800 and recently started a decline. The price is down more than USD 400 and it broke the USD 8,500 support area. Similarly, there was a decent upward move followed by a strong decline in many major altcoins, including ethereum, EOS, bitcoin cash, ripple, litecoin, binance coin, ADA and XLM. ETH/USD is topped near the USD 196 level and it is currently (08:00 UTC) trading below USD 190. XRP/USD is facing renewed selling pressure and it is now trading below the USD 0.270 support area.

Total market capitalization

Bitcoin price

In the past few hours, bitcoin price saw a lot of volatility above the USD 8,500 level. First, BTC/USD climbed above the USD 8,700 resistance area. However, BTC/USD faced a major resistance near USD 8,800 and it failed to continue higher. As a result, there was a sharp decline below the USD 8,600 and USD 8,500 support levels.
The price is down more than 3% and it is trading below the USD 8,400 level. If there are more downsides, the price may perhaps test the USD 8,200 support. On the upside, the USD 8,500 level could once again act as a resistance, followed by USD 8,600.

Ethereum price

Ethereum price failed to gain strength above the USD 195 and USD 196 levels. ETH/USDreacted to the downside and broke a couple of important supports near USD 190 and USD 188. The price is now testing the USD 184 support, below which it could test the USD 180 level.
On the upside, the USD 190 level may perhaps act as a decent resistance. The main hurdle is near the USD 195 and USD 196 levels.

Bitcoin cash, eos and XRP price

Bitcoin cash price is down more than 5% from the USD 240 swing high. BCH/USD is trading near the USD 220 support. If there are more downsides, the next stop for the bears might be near the USD 205 level. On the upside, an initial resistance is USD 230. The key resistance is near the USD 235 level.
EOS failed to climb above the USD 3.300 resistance and recently started a fresh decline. The price is down 3.5% and it is currently testing the USD 3.050 support area. If there are more downsides, the price might even trade below the USD 3.000 support.
XRP price was the first to start a fresh decline and it broke the key USD 0.272 support area. XRP/USD even traded below the USD 0.270 support and it is currently testing the USD 0.265 support. The next key supports are near the USD 0.262 and USD 0.260 levels.

Other altcoins market today

Recently, a few small capitalization altcoins trimmed gains and declined more than 6%, including ZIL, SEELE, NEX, HOT, BCD, CRPT, MCO, WAVES, NEXO and XEM. Out of these, ZIL is down around 17% and SEELE declined nearly 12%.

Overall, bitcoin is trimming gains and is showing bearish signs below the USD 8,500 support. If BTC/USD slides below the USD 8,200 support, it could move into a negative zone and start a fresh downtrend.
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Ethereum is Not a Security - New CFTC Chief Heath Tarbert

Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, is a commodity, believes the new Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Heath Tarbert.

"We've been very clear on bitcoin: bitcoin is a commodity. We haven't said anything about ether—until now. It is my view as chairman of the CFTC that ether is a commodity,” Tarbert said on stage at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit in New York City on Thursday. Moreover, he also anticipates the CFTC allowing ether futures trading on U.S. markets in the near future, according to the report by Yahoo Finance.

Also, Tarbert acknowledges “ambiguity in the market” on the status of many coins, but says that ultimately “similar digital assets should be treated similarly,” the report added.

The Chairman also said that “forked” coins should be treated by regulators the same as the original asset.

“Unless the fork itself raises some securities law issues under that classic Howey Test [a test created for determining whether certain transactions qualify as investment contracts],” Tarbert was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, as reported, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), America’s top tax authority, in its new set of guidelines on cryptocurrency taxation said that hard forks will all be taxable.

At pixel time (14:02 UTC), ether trades at c. USD 191 and is up by 3% in the past 24 hours and by 8% in the past week.

Blockchain 'Following Internet’s Steps' to the Mainstream

In the light of the recent report by research and advisory company Gartner, which claims it’ll take another five to ten years to see the transformational impact of blockchains, the company’s Senior Director Analyst, Fabio Chesini, said that the pattern we are now witnessing with blockchain is similar to that of the Internet’s development.

In a recent interview with TechRepublic, Chesini said that there is an ongoing power shift happening, prompted by the utilization of blockchain, and to understand it, one should look into the way these changes are occurring in the financial service industry. “As a consequence of that,” says the analyst, “I used to say that a similar pattern that we saw with the internet, that democratize information exchange, the same kind of pattern is happening with public blockchains by democratizing liquidity and value exchange.”

The internet, Chesini says, brought with it “a huge unbundling and re-intermediation on several services like, for instance, marketing,” with the time creating “a new central” that encompasses today’s largest companies, all of which “took advantage” of the information exchange its exponential growth enabled.

"So when we put in context, public blockchains, and cryptocurrencies, they are enabling exponential growth on how people and organizations can do value exchange. So what we are saying is that a similar pattern on this unbundling and re-intermediation that happened with the internet, a similar pattern will happen with value exchange, which is at the end further and unbundling reintermediation," the analyst said.

Meanwhile, in their latest report on blockchains, Gartner claims that we’ll have to wait another five years to a decade to see a transformational impact that will have been made by these technologies.

The possible timeline goes like this:

2019: Blockchain is sliding into the Trough of Disillusionment, as experiments and implementations fail to deliver, leading to less interest in the technologies and markets. “Blockchain technologies have not yet lived up to the hype and most enterprise blockchain projects are stuck in experimentation mode,” Avivah Litan, analyst and research vice president at Gartner, says.
2021: The technology advances and practical use cases supported by blockchain keep coming out, pushing the market to start its climb out of the Through.
2023: Blockchain platforms become scalable, interoperable, and support smart contract portability, cross chain functionality, and trusted private transactions, while permissioned blockchains gradually integrate with public blockchains. “All together, these technology advances will take us much closer to mainstream blockchain and the decentralized web, also known as Web 3.0,” says Litan.
2028: This is the year by which blockchain is expected to enable “a digital business revolution across business ecosystems” by becoming “fully scalable technically and operationally,” as Litan explained.

Hype Cycle for Blockchain Technologies, 2019

Blockchain 'Following Internet’s Steps' to the Mainstream 102 — Source: Gartner

However, for blockchain to become mainstream, Gartner says they can’t rely on users having enough technical knowledge to choose the best aspects of a blockchain for themselves, and they must have the issue of interoperability between different blockchain platforms resolved. In September, Gartner already warned that interoperability issues and other factors may hinder financial companies hoping to deploy blockchain solutions over the next three to five years.

Adding to this, Chesini discussed the four key interconnected impediments for financial service industries, as presented in the report – the first two concerning governance, and the latter two interoperability and integration:

The above-mentioned need to understand the shifting power.
Immaturity of governance: both in the public blockchains, “which are very obscure at this point in time,” and when these types of new governance models are contextualized in the financial service sector.
Fragmented standards: every blockchain is trying to impose its own de facto standard, thus forcing the community to join and having the ability to advantage of the network effect created by that standard, whereas the future will bring a massive consolidation around standards.
Marketing options: there are very specific de facto channels now, whereas the future will see a subset of the standards consolidated.

Fiat Money May Break in a Decade, Says Author of 'Black Swan' By Sead Fadilpašić

Fiat money is likely to break within the decade, predicts Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an essayist, scholar, and former risk analyst, famous for his book on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable events, The Black Swan.

Upon being asked to make a prediction on “what would happen by the end of the decade” Taleb shared a list of 12 things that are likely to break – presumably “in a decade” since this one’s ending in three months – as they are all “modernistic, highly fragile, and exposed to challenges.” He added that this is probabilistic, “so the idea is that 3-7 out of 10 items will be gone.” Between statins and Saudia Arabia regime, we find fiat money on that list:

Seed oils
Statins, most psychiatric drugs
Fiat money
The Saudi Arabian regime
The desktop computer
National airline companies
The neo-atheism movement
Behavioral economics
CNN

The fragile group was accompanied with a text in which Taleb discusses a way in which one can ensure the future and lasting relevance of technologies, institutions, ideas, theories, “and other nonperishable things,” instead of creating a short-term curiosity.

To ensure the continual importance, he finds, one should stay away from the futuristic, and rather think of the contemporary in combination with the past. That which is relevant for people of today as it was to those of the past will likely be relevant to those of the future as well. The old technologies survive “because the new will be replaced by the newer,” and for something to fail, “make sure it would have been of no interest to someone in the past,” says Taleb.

Here, he emphasizes the importance of time itself, given that it can produce and detect fragility, as well as break that which is fragile, while that which survived “has some resistance to random events.” The scholar finds that this enables negative forecasting, as it’s easier to predict collapses than emergences, given that the former will likely not affect the old, but will affect the “shaky” new, with some modernistic items being replaced. (Learn more: Imagine Separation of Money and State: 6 Crypto Experts Weigh In)

And though there are people who praise the post, as well as those who disagree with it or don’t trust its author’s judgement on the issue, interestingly, many of the comments to his list were about the other items on it, rather than fiat. Even those who disagreed with the possibility of it disappearing, seem to agree that it’s fragile.

Meanwhile, back in January 2018, in his foreword to the book by Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard, Taleb wrote that Bitcoin is an excellent idea that fulfills the needs of the complex system, not because it’s a cryptocurrency, but because there’s no owner, thus, no authority that can decide its fate. He was also the person who popularized the term “the black swan risk,” which can take a number of shapes, can’t be predicted, has severe consequences, and is comprised of three attributes: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective predictability, as Taleb explained.

Connected to Taleb’s prediction that the world may not be seeing fiat for much longer, Oswald Grübel, a German banker who was CEO at Credit Suisse and then CEO at Swiss bank UBS, said that "Negative interest rates are crazy. That means money is not worth anything any more. [...] As long as we have negative interest rates, the financial industry will continue to shrink," quotes The Sidney Morning Herald.

Here are some of the numerous opinions on Taleb’s list shared in the Cryptoverse:

Emmαنuεل C‽aiя@BzhClair

· Oct 8, 2019

Replying to @nntaleb

Fiat money seems the outlier there, has been around for a rather long while (a few centuries depending on definition).

But if you imply just coins and banknotes, why not (even though it fails the young age test) ?

Miguel Prados@MiguelPradosR

I think it means fiat as "non scarce means of exchange", that's relatively new (Bretton Woods)

2

11:17 AM - Oct 8, 2019

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