Crypto News, June 15 2018: Red Day

*Highlights: Ethereum update merges, BANKEX decentralizes water donation supply chains, and we find out exactly how many shitcoins we're holding (and so can you!)*

Ethereum Considers Merging Updates

Source: CoinDesk

Vitalik proposed merging the rollout of the Casper and sharding updates. Casper, the transition to a Proof-of-Stake algorithm, was originally scheduled to launch as a smart contract; the proposal is to launch it on a single shard when sharding is enabled. This potentially reduces costs and increases network capacity, but also reduces rewards for nodes.

SEC: Ether is Not A Security

Source: Forbes

The U.S. SEC clarified yesterday that it does not consider Ether to be a security. The statement was made by the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance director. The price of Ether rose nearly 10% following the announcement and sparked conversation about potential Ether futures.

ZenCash Proposes Satoshi Consensus Adjustment

Source: ZenCash

ZenCash has proposed an adjustment to the Satoshi Consensus rules which it says can further mitigate the possibility of a 51% attack. Essentially, they propose a “delayed block system” which enforces an acceptance delay on a forked chain, correlated to the amount of time that the parallel chain was hidden from the network. This significantly increases the cost of a double-spend attack and gives the network time to spot the attack in progress.

DENT Users Purchase 94 TB of Mobile Data

Source: Twitter

An impressive 94 TB of mobile data has been purchased from DENT blockchain apps following the launch of their Android application, according to their Twitter page. It’s a nearly 1700% increase in just over two weeks.

BANKEX Launches Water Donation Services on the Blockchain

Source: Details | Pilot Performance

BANKEX has created WaterCoin, a tokenized solution for water donation services. According to the release, current supply chains are cost- and time-inefficient due to bureaucratic requirements and poor operational transparency to potential donors. The WaterCoin pilot launched in Kenya at the beginning of June, with expansions planned if the program shows success.

Coinbase Sends Cease & Desist to Swarm

Source: CCN

A few days ago, we reported on SwarmFund, a blockchain project tokenizing shares in its startup. According to Coinbase, this is in violation of their terms of service. Swarm maintains that their operations do not violate purchase agreements, and that it has not received any such communication from the other companies.

Walmart Patents Crypto-Backed Energy Grid

Source: Chepicap

Walmart has been granted a patent for a cryptocurrency-powered electrical grid in which units of energy are represented as units of cryptocurrency and then exchanged to energy providers for the corresponding usage amounts. Individual devices can share energy allotment to get around fixed caps.

BitGrail Funds Seized by Italian Government

Source: BitGrail

BitGrail, the embattled Italian cryptocurrency exchange involved in a $200 million Nano hack, has had its assets seized by the Court of Florence, causing a further loss of user funds. Exchange owner Francesco Firano may face jail time if found to be at fault in the hacking,

Xapo Wallet Licensed by State of New York

Source: NY DFS | Xapo

Yesterday, we reported that the New York Department of Financial Services had approved itBit to offer trading services for Stellar Lumens and other coins. In addition, the Department has granted Xapo, Inc. a digital currency license allowing them to offer a wallet and a secure “vault” service, both subject to DFS authority.

Venezeula Monitoring Bank Accounts For Crypto Dealings

Source: Bitcoin.com

The Venezuelan government is now monitoring its citizens’ bank accounts for evidence of crytpocurrency activity which may possibly be related to fraud. Specifically, “Operation Metal Hands” is looking to target users who may be engaging in price manipulations which affect the value of official legal tender.

Swiss Gambling Act Blocks Foreign Entities

Source: The Local

The Gambling Act, a piece of Swiss legislation blocking foreign entities from operating gambling services in the country, has been approved, with nearly three-quarters of voters in favor. Interestingly, it does allow Switzerland-certified gambling services to operate. The law will go into effect in 2019.

EOS: Live

Source: EOS

As we reported yesterday, EOS is live! Check out their current usage statistics above - they have nearly 200,000 recorded transactions as of the time of this writing.

Ripple Rebrand

Source: Ripple

XRP has a new logo. Check it out on their website or on Coinmarketcap.

Free NAS

Source: Medium | Referral Link

Nebulas is offering an unspecified amount of free NAS mainnet coins to new users who sign up and verify their email addresses, courtesy of the Atlas Protocol airdrop technology. Oh, hey, did you happen to see that referral link we included there? nudge nudge

Do You Own A Shitcoin?

Source: Do I Own A Shitcoin?

Spoiler alert: We do.

Like what you're reading? Stop by Twitch to contribute to the daily news curation. Or, check us out on Twitter and YouTube to keep up-to-date.