Forks 1.1: Russia Goes Crypto, Zuck Climbs Aboard, Ripple Isn't Dead (12/31-1/7)

rachelburger (52)in #forks • 7 years ago (edited)

Essential blockchain news hand selected by @RachelBurger

Mark Zuckerberg "likes" crypto

It looks like Facebook might be entertaining cryptocurrency projects this year.

Aptly posted as a Facebook status, the young CEO writes,

With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.

There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.

++ Why Facebook and cryptocurrency makes a lot of sense - Mashable
++ Too bad the Zuck is really late to the game--unlike his billionaire nemeses - Quartz

Bitcoin goes too mainstream for criminals

If you're using Bitcoin to buy drugs and hookers, you might want to look into an alternative. On Tuesday, Europol executive director Rob Wainwright tweeted, "We’ll see a progressive shift in 2018 towards criminal use of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin, making it generally more challenging for law enforcement to counter."

++ Law enforcement suspects criminals are using Monero instead - Bloomberg
++ Read about this week's Exmo employee kidnapping - Zycrypto

Don't forget to follow @RachelBurger to subscribe!

Russia will avoid sanctions with their own cryptocurrency

Speaking of criminals, the Financial Times (PAYWALL) reports President Putin’s economic adviser, Sergei Glazev, said in a meeting that a crytptocurrency could be useful to carry out “sensitive activity on behalf of the state.” He adds, “We can settle accounts with our counterparties all over the world with no regard for sanctions.”

In October, the Russian President said he would "all but ban" websites using crypto.

++ A high-ranking Russian Orthodox bishop condemns all cryptocurrency - RT
++ Russian colleges are now offering cryptocurrency courses - Bitcoin

Ripple's watered down hype

Ripple had a crazy week. First, it rallied behind a rumor that Coinbase would add Ripple to their limited number of available currencies, then nosedived after that rumor was squashed.

That all said, Ripple looks like it's already made a healthy recovery--and it's made its CEO more wealthy than Google's founders.

++Ripple has surged 1135% just in the past month - Wall Street Journal
++There are approximately 35-200 Bitcoin billionaires - Crypto Currency News

Dogecoin fetches a high price

According to the Zodiac, the upcoming Chinese New Year will mark the beginning of the Year of the Dog, but this pup's success has come early.

Dogecoin, once an ill-fated currency, now boasts a market cap of $2B. Dogecoin's creator, Jackson Palmer, tweeted a disappointing response to investors. He wrote,

The fact that most conversations happening in the media and between peers focus on the investment potential is worrying, as it draws attention away from the underlying technology and goals this movement was based [on]...

I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap."

++ There's now a petition to add Dogecoin to Binance - CryptoCompare

Much wow.