📰 Oct. 14, 2018: Ethereum Developer: "No Constantinople In 2018", Jimmy Song (Bitcoin Developer): "EOS is a Scam", BTC Giveaway on the Major Exchange and more news
The latest:
→ Vitalik Buterin prepares for a battle with economist Nouriel Roubini.
→ Companies operating in the crypto/ICO sector will face more stringent measures from Visa and Mastercard side.
📌 IOHK and Emurgo Cease to Be Partners with Cardano Foundation
Charles Hoskinson (IOHK) and Ken Kodama (Emurgo) require the Cardano Foundation for cooperation with the authorities to provide the public information on their financial and management activities. «The last 2 years have been great frustration, they say
Charles Hoskinson (CEO at IOHK, main Cardano's blockchain developer) and Ken Kodama (Cardano's division focused on third-party projects) officially announced that they have stopped working with the Cardano Foundation. In fact, the main parts of the project exit, noting that the last two years have been "great frustration".
«This has been caused by a lack of activity and progress on the assigned responsibilities of the Cardano Foundation and its council. Furthermore, there has been no clear indication of improvement, despite many fruitless attempts and approaches to the Foundation’s chairman and council to change this.»
Next, Hoskinson and Kodama list the factors that influenced this decision, including lack of strategy, non-transparent budget allocation, "unpredictable behavior of the council" from the Foundation's side (in fact, CF is a team with great powers, managed by the board of directors, i.e. council). Finally, Emurgo and IOHK require Cardano Foundation start to cooperate with Swiss regulators, to audit their finances and decisions made during all this time, also disclosing these data to the public.
📌 Bitfinex Representative has Officially Confirmed Reports that the Exchange has Suspended Fiat Deposits for a Week
Communications Director Kasper Rasmussen shared with Coindesk that Bitfinex will restart fiat deposits a week later; Tether can probably lose the correlation with USD
The information that Bitfinex stopped accepting deposits in the US dollar and other fiat currencies appeared on October 11; users faced the same problems even earlier. It was also the time when market underwent another round of decline.
Exchange's twitter hasn't been updated for a long time, and we do not see any official statement about this situation. Although, quite recently, when rumors of problems with Noble Bank become widespread, Bitfinex started to defence themselves from users («A Response To Recent Online Rumours»).
According to Coindesk:
1/ @bitfinex Communications Director Kasper Rasmussen has confirmed reports that the exchange has suspended deposits of fiat currencies to customer accounts for a week: "Bitfinex has temporarily paused the depositing of FIAT to customer accounts."
CoinDesk (@coindesk) 12 Oct. 2018 г.
As the result, the representative stated that the withdrawal of funds will be resumed within a week. The same information was received earlier from supports. However, not all sure that user funds are safe. The exchange has a potential to become Gox 2.0, as many claimed, and this may only destabilize the market.
Note that the issued USDT tokens (Tether) appear on Bitfinex firstly:
Regulated stable coin, lol pic.twitter.com/5SRMhhh32Y
CZ Binance (@cz_binance) 13 Oct. 2018 г.
📌 Ethereum Developer: “No Constantinople In 2018”
The testnet "Constantinople" implementation failed; developers are confident that the next fork may not be possible this year
The activation of this update in Ropsten (ETH test network) took place at block 4,230,000. Then the upgrade stopped at block number 4,299,999 - it’s not quite clear why, but it seems that someone is definitely against this idea.Earlier it became known that Ethereum`s hard fork «Constantinople» may probably appear in November, but with troubles in the test network, it may take much longer.
no constantinople in 2018, we have to investigate
𝙰𝚏𝚛𝚒 𝚂𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚎𝚍𝚘𝚗 (@5chdn) 13 Oct. 2018 г.
The first ETH's update Byzantium was activated during last October. Now the developers are working on Constantinople, designed to make the network more efficient and cheaper.
📌 Nasdaq is Exploring a Possibility of Launching the Security Token Platform
Rumors: Nasdaq is preparing the platform for security token offerings (STOs), following the giants of the industries which are aimed at crypto- products and services
According to unofficial information, the US stock exchange operator Nasdaq is considering the possibility of launching a platform for security tokens. For the first time, this idea was announced back in 2015, when the exchange investigated the cryptocurrency market; but, given the unfinished regulatory processes, and the rather cautious approach of companies regarding digital assets, it is not clear what could have caused Nasdaq to make such a decision.
Currently, many big players, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, ICE are all reportedly aimed to launch Bitcoin products and services for institutional investors. Many different announces were spoken out, for example, derivative services or trading desks (as in Goldman Sachs' example). This time the market may be able to receive the regulated security token offerings (STOs), which remind of ICOs, but more suitable for U.S. securities law.
📌 Unconfirmed: TRON Seeks Partnership with Baidu, the «Chinese Google»
Justin Sun made an intriguing announcement, promising a stunning partnership with an unnamed company. Many think that Chinese Baidu is an "option"
The news media spread rumors about the new TRON's possible partnership with “Chinese Google” Baidu, the local IT-giant which may be interested in decentralizing the Baidu Cloud services. (It should be said immediately that Baidu declined to comment this). If this information is correct, then TRON will work on the partner's cloud service to implement the blockchain technology.
It all started with a pretty intriguing tweet from Justin Sun:
Finally, First time to partner with tens of billions USD valuation industry giant. Guess the name 😊#TRON #TRX $TRX
Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) 12 Oct. 2018 г.
Yes, it was not the most transparent marketing trick, but at the same time, this tweet was enough to wake up the community. All we know about Baidu’s activities in the blockchain area right now is work on Xuper Chain, BaaS solution by Baidu Blockchain Lab. Will the platforms be connected together, or something completely new is being prepared — neither the company or Justin Sun did not specify.
📌 Jimmy Song (Bitcoin Developer): «EOS is a scam»
The last discussion with developer touches on many aspects of the industry, but EOS suddenly got a bit of critic - largely due to the interviewer
Crypto Insider’s Vlad Costea has interviewed Bitcoin developer and educator Jimmy Song, During this conversation, several different issues (including Liquid Network and its special role in BTC tx speed improvement) have been discussed, including the learning process of blockchain developers. The interviewer decided to ask whether it would be a good idea for a novice developer to participate in a project like EOS, to which Song replied quite expectedly:
Q: « So speaking about teenage people, the ones that you teach […] Do you think it’s more attractive to work on different projects like EOS, or whatever?»
A: «Well, I think EOS is a scam and I don’t think you should work on it. Towards the end of the seminar, I have a lecture about the next steps that you can take after the seminar, and ways to figure out where to take your career, or journey, or path in Bitcoin. Generally, I recommend that people start working on open-source projects […].»
EOS is now leading among the blockchains' anti-ratings. Earlier, blockchain investor and researcher James Spediacci described 13 reasons "Why EOS Is Disaster" and received a response to it from Black.One CEO Brendan Blumer.
📌 Microsoft Releases «Decentralized Identity» Whitepaper
The new DID solutions can affect how Internet companies and services define their users - the chance on safety exists
Microsoft builds new blockchain solutions for decentralized identities (DID). These digital "identities" created to protect the personal data of consumers, probably not only in the form of encryption but also of how the Internet and services as a whole determine our presence and our connections.
The released Whitepaper says:
«Our digital and physical lives are increasingly linked to the apps, services, and devices we use to access a rich set of experiences. This digital transformation allows us to interact with hundreds of companies and thousands of other users in ways that were previously unimaginable».
Which is certainly true. The company is considering many applications that could help in this case, for example, blockchain and ledgers, W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) - personal IDs, public keys and so on. However, Microsoft with its products, including Windows, probably has the largest access to user data.
📌 Bithumb Starts Massive Airdrop
After the acquisition of the exchange's big share stake, Bithumb starts the new promo
S.K. famous exchange Bithumb launched the massive airdrop event called "Super Airdrop Festival". According to the announcement, Bithumb's giveaway will make traders able to receive 100 million won ($88,500) per day, but, in order to participate, users will need to pay and start active trade on the platform.
Participation method:
- Purchase official event coupon at KRW 10,000;
- Make transactions at Bithumb for 1 hr at a super low price;
- To be in top 300 traders in transaction amount to receive gain.
The first place winner may receive 3 BTC, the 2nd can count on 50 ETH, 3rd - 4,000 XRP, 4-6 - up to 500,000 - 100,000 KRW in random crypto. But it seems that the action did not cause much enthusiasm among the users. Among the main complaints are: low confidence in the security of the exchange, the need for a fee and the "lottery" structure.
📌 57% Companies Found It's "Harder Than Expected" to Integrate Blockchain
More than half of the respondents clarified the most typical difficulties encountered in the blockchain and DLT integration processes
Greenwich Associates released the new research which is built on responses obtained from 213 global market participants who is actually working on the blockchain integration in existing systems.
It worth noting that 49% of interviewed representatives work in companies belonging to the banking sector, and the other represents blockchain startups, consultancy firms, CPP, exchanges and others. This is the areas where the motivation for finding new technological solutions can be quite high. Let us see why things are not so simple.
«Respondents include representatives from a broad array of organization types, 93% of whom are either key decision-makers or actively involved in blockchain initiatives.»
According to the results, the blockchain and DLT scalability turned out to be the main problem for 42% of companies, and other difficulties include security, speed, and hardware issues related to technology. Moreover, more than half of the respondents agreed that the integration of the blockchain was not as simple as it seemed at the beginning of the journey (probably at the peak of enthusiasm).
