📰 Crypto Week In Review: Nov. 5 — 11, 2018. Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Made Craig Wright Charge Exchange With a Criminal Offence, SWIFT Explained Rumors of Partnership With Ripple And More

icotelegraph (60)in #bitcoin • 5 years ago

Market: Weekly Update

Starting from November 7, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market fell by $6 billion from $220 to $214 billion. Now, the total marketcap is estimated at $212 billion, and this tendency indicates the possibility of a subsequent decline.

On November 7, the price of the first cryptocurrency climbed a bit above $6550, on November 8, the maximum of Bitcoin exchange rate was at nearly $6500, but by the end of the week, the digital gold went to the corridor $6300-$6400, being at this upper limit at the current moment. The amplitude of the change in the price of an asset also maintains a tendency to minimal historical volatility.

Looking at the BVOL Annualized Historical Volatility Index for Bitcoin, we note that taking into account the data by November 11, this index is rather low compared to previous values and amounts to 16.75%. What also, no any significant news or announces have been given. In some way, the rules for working with exchanges and cryptocurrency platforms as a whole are becoming tougher - here, the requirement of KYC/AML is obligatory. A number of companies and exchanges are also subject to or may be subject to charges in accordance with the requirements of regulators.

Monday, November 5

📌 Cryptocurrency Legislation Changes

People’s Bank of China (PBoC) intends to limit the distribution of free tokens (airdrops). It is connected with the fact that the prohibited ICOs, as stated in the document, now exist in China in the form of giveaways. The distributed coins and tokens rise in price during sales after airdrop, which in fact is ICO, assets enter circulation, etc. The ban on the initial coin offerings was approved by the Chinese government in September 2017. Nothing has changed in the attitude of the country's regulators to digital currencies since that.

By the way, this is not the first time in the last week, when regulators were so active in relation to the digital assets market. Taiwan introduced a special control over anonymous cryptocurrency transactions. The deputies of the region are confident that the real problem of digital money is the possibility of anonymous transfers. Country's SFC, as a result of changes in legislation, received unhindered access to order exchanges' databases.

Due to the rather ambiguous practice regarding token issuers (including judicial), the American regulator decided to act as an advisory body. The guide for token developers will be released in writing and approved by SEC USA. The document can also help determine if the asset belongs to the category of securities.

November 6, Tuesday

📌 Stellar and Blockchain Launched $125 Million Airdrop

Blockchain company, together with Stellar, are now offering the "largest crypto giveaway in history". During the new massive airdrop, organizers will distribute $125,000,000 in XLM (Stellar native currency). Users can get free tokens by following the instructions and registering on the site.

The biggest #crypto airdrop—we are distributing $125M of Stellar XLM to our users to build on the crypto revolution. Sign up for the waitlist! https://t.co/XyETX72QBk https://t.co/zo18yzzlzS
Blockchain (@blockchain) November 6, 2018

Reminding: we do not recommend or advertise any coins, projects, bonus programs, and so on. Even the well-known campaigns should be taken seriously.

📌 The First Loan on Blockchain Has Been Registered By Spanish Bank BBVA

Madrid._Alcalá_street._BBVA_bank_building._Spain_(4083873809).jpg

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), one of the fairly large banks in Spain, issued a $150 million syndicated loan, registering the transaction data in the Ethereum blockchain. Other organizations such as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and BNP Pariba also acted as parties to the contract and tested the use of technology.

“BBVA is simplifying the processes related to corporate financing and is betting on the use of new technologies, like blockchain, to digitise loan negotiations and contracting. We work with our corporate clients to be able to provide them with the most innovative financing solutions.”

Ricardo Laiseca, head of global finance at BBVA

The use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in banking services and financial area overall aims to reduce time and transaction costs. In that case, the bank was able to issue a syndicated loan in a couple of days, which is much faster than it is processed in the industry.

📌 Researchers Answered What Cryptocurrency Exchange Is The Safest

Sounds like a clickbait, however, ratings of this type allow us to take another look at the security of cryptocurrency services. Group-IB researchers started a study of various platforms in order to select applicants with low insurance risk under the insurance program led by CryptoIns. According to the results, Kraken, one of the oldest existing crypto exchanges, is the most secure for users. However, such large providers as OKEx, Huobi Pro and Coincheck did not show good results and took the low positions in this ranking.

Researchers identified 4 groups, which include all exchanges. Being in the 1st group means the minimum insured risk, and further, the last group is distinguished by the absence of risk protection. The criteria for ranking included not only technical issues but also compliance with anti-money laundering policies. Such exchanges as Bittrex and Coinbase Pro were presented in the second group, i.e. strong middle.

November 7, Wednesday

📌 Twitter Started Cleaning Focused on Fake Airdrop Accounts

Apparently, Twitter, one of the largest media sites, started to delete fake accounts, created specifically to participate in the bounty and airdrop campaigns. This is evidenced by a study from the source. Binance's account on Twitter has lost more than 3000 followers, Stratis lost over 850 accounts in 3 days, Ontology lost only 240 accounts, WePower lost more than 800 fake accounts during the same time. Changes in the accounts of many projects and platforms can be seen with the naked eye.

November 8, Thursday

📌 SWIFT Denies Rumours Of RippleNet Integration Process

The rumors of Ripple's partnership with the largest international interbank system SWIFT were intriguing, and the event itself could be a big boost for the project. But it seems that the time for using RippleNet together with/instead of Swift has not yet come. The representative of SWIFT really confirmed that the company is changing protocols, including technical ones. But, it has nothing to do with the product by Ripple.

“I’m not sure where those rumours are coming from but the upcoming standards release … is entirely unrelated to RippleNet. Its primary purpose is to ensure all payments include a tracking reference (UETR, Unique End-to-end Transaction Reference) which will allow banks to track their gpi payments end-to-end in real time.”

Now XRP traded at $0,49. still being the 3rd currency by the market capitalization.

📌 Canadian Bank VersaVault Is Soon To Offer Deposit Box For Cryptocurrency Exchanges

VersaVault (the subsidiary of VersaBank, ex Pacific & Western Bank of Canada) completes its beta test and will soon offer its services in the form of virtual storage for cryptocurrency exchanges and funds. The project is maintained at a sufficient level and has already attracted 200 applications for the use of storage.

"While many are considering ideas and plans for a digital safety deposit box, we have designed and built it, and are now commercializing a first of its kind service that provides our clients with the most sophisticated security and authentication technology available globally, in which our clients enjoy absolute privacy."

Earlier, several large banks announced the possibility of creating storages and providing security for digital assets.

November 9, Friday

📌 Developers: Ethereum's Constantinople Will Be Launched On 16th Of January 2019

It seems that the community received an answer when Ethereum Constantinople hard fork will go live (Last week we wrote about the main stages of launching new solutions in the Ethereum network). According to developer Afri Schoedon, the block number on which the hard fork starts will be known on November 23, and the update itself is likely to take effect on January 16, 2019.

all-core-devs call: constantinople upgrade for ethereum mainnet activation suggested for 16th of january 2019, block number to be confirmed on black friday in a fortnight
𝙰𝚏𝚛𝚒 𝚂𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚎𝚍𝚘𝚗 (@5chdn) November 9, 2018

As we can see, earlier Ethereum developers told much closer dates for the integration of new protocols. Now the birthday of Constantinople has moved already in the middle of January, while critical changes were planned for November.

Opinions & Other

📌 Craig Wright Accuses Poloniex Of Illegal Activities Because Of BCHABC/BCHSV Trading

Craig Wright (nChain) tweeted that Poloniex had violated the law by opening trades with Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHABC) and Bitcoin Cash SV (BCHSV). That's exactly what he wrote:

@Poloniex
You do understand that allowing naked shorts and trades is a criminal offence in the US....

When you lose, we will be there with the lawyers and pick the carcass dry.
Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) November 10, 2018

The main charge is that these two assets do not actually exist. A fairly important event in the Bitcoin Cash network, hard fork, will take place only on November 15th, so Poloniex really offers «naked shorts and trades», as it stated. Now trading of this kind is prohibited by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), what the exchange is probably aware of and does not consider such actions illegal.

It also became known that BitPay refuses to support a possible Bitcoin Cash fork. Representatives of the processing service stated that they prefer a more traditional Bitcoin ABC and wouldn`t work with new coins, which may appear as a result of a hard fork.

How does the November 15th #BitcoinCash hard fork affect BitPay users? For BitPay merchants: https://t.co/2UtEV62pU0 For BitPay and Copay wallet users: https://t.co/jAZeZIllaG @BitPaySupport
BitPay (@BitPay) November 9, 2018

At the moment, Bitcoin ABC is supported by such exchanges as Coinbase, OKEx and Binance, and Polonex will add both versions BCHSV and BCHABC.

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