It is no doubt Grayscale’s booming popularity as a mainstream investment has caused a lot of community hullabaloo lately. As such, I felt it was worth making a FAQ regarding the topic. I’m looking to update this as needed and of course am open to suggestions / adding any questions.
The goal is simply to have a thread we can link to anyone with questions on Grayscale and its products. Instead of explaining the same thing 3 times a day, shoot those posters over to this thread. My hope is that these questions are answered in a fairly simple and easy to understand manner. I think as the sub grows it will be a nice reference point for newcomers.
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for Grayscale and as such am basing all these answers on information that can be found on their website / reports. (Grayscale’s official FAQ can be found here). I also do NOT have a finance degree, I do NOT have a Series 6 / 7 / 140-whatever, and I do NOT work with investment products for my day job. I have an accounting background and work within the finance world so I have the general ‘business’ knowledge to put it all together, but this is all info determined in my best faith effort as a layman. The point being is this --- it is possible I may explain something wrong or missed the technical terms, and if that occurs I am more than happy to update anything that can be proven incorrect
Everything below will be in reference to ETHE but will apply to GBTC as well. If those two segregate in any way, I will note that accordingly.

What is Grayscale? 

Grayscale is the company that created the ETHE product. Their website is https://grayscale.co/

What is ETHE? 

ETHE is essentially a stock that intends to loosely track the price of ETH. It does so by having each ETHE be backed by a specific amount of ETH that is held on chain. Initially, the newly minted ETHE can only be purchased by institutions and accredited investors directly from Grayscale. Once a year has passed (6 months for GBTC) it can then be listed on the OTCQX Best Market exchange for secondary trading. Once listed on OTCQX, anyone investor can purchase at this point. Additional information on ETHE can be found here.

So ETHE is an ETF? 

No. For technical reasons beyond my personal understandings it is not labeled an ETF. I know it all flows back to the “Securities Act Rule 144”, but due to my limited knowledge on SEC regulations I don’t want to misspeak past that. If anyone is more knowledgeable on the subject I am happy to input their answer here.

How long has ETHE existed? 

ETHE was formed 12/14/2017. GBTC was formed 9/25/2013.

How is ETHE created? 

The trust will issue shares to “Authorized Participants” in groups of 100 shares (called baskets). Authorized Participants are the only persons that may place orders to create these baskets and they do it on behalf of the investor.
Source: Creation and Redemption of Shares section on page 39 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here
Note – The way their reports word this makes it sound like there is an army of authorizers doing the dirty work, but in reality there is only one Authorized Participant. At this moment the “Genesis” company is the sole Authorized Participant. Genesis is owned by the “Digital Currency Group, Inc.” which is the parent company of Grayscale as well. (And to really go down the rabbit hole it looks like DCG is the parent company of CoinDesk and is “backing 150+ companies across 30 countries, including Coinbase, Ripple, and Chainalysis.”)
Source: Digital Currency Group, Inc. informational section on page 77 of the “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (BTC) Form 10-K (2019)” – Located Here
Source: Barry E. Silbert informational section on page 75 of the “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (BTC) Form 10-K (2019)” – Located Here

How does Grayscale acquire the ETH to collateralize the ETHE product? 

An Investor may acquire ETHE by paying in cash or exchanging ETH already owned.

• Cash: The investor pays the subscription amount in cash and the Authorized Participant will use that cash to purchase ETH.
• ETH: The investor transfers the ETH to the Authorized Participant, which will contribute the ETH in-kind to the Trust.

Source: Creation and Redemption of Shares section on page 40 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Where does Grayscale store their ETH? Does it have a specific wallet address we can follow? 

ETH is stored with Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC. I am unaware of any specific address or set of addresses that can be used to verify the ETH is actually there.
As an aside - I would actually love to see if anyone knows more about this as it’s something that’s sort of peaked my interest after being asked about it… I find it doubtful we can find that however.
Source: Part C. Business Information, Item 8, subsection A. on page 16 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Can ETHE be redeemed for ETH? 

No, currently there is no way to give your shares of ETHE back to Grayscale to receive ETH back. The only method of getting back into ETH would be to sell your ETHE to someone else and then use those proceeds to buy ETH yourself.
Source: Redemption Procedures on page 41 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Why are they not redeeming shares? 

I think the report summarizes it best:

Redemptions of Shares are currently not permitted and the Trust is unable to redeem Shares. Subject to receipt of regulatory approval from the SEC and approval by the Sponsor in its sole discretion, the Trust may in the future operate a redemption program. Because the Trust does not believe that the SEC would, at this time, entertain an application for the waiver of rules needed in order to operate an ongoing redemption program, the Trust currently has no intention of seeking regulatory approval from the SEC to operate an ongoing redemption program.

Source: Redemption Procedures on page 41 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

What is the fee structure? 

ETHE has an annual fee of 2.5%. GBTC has an annual fee of 2.0%. Fees are paid by selling the underlying ETH / BTC collateralizing the asset.
Source: ETHE’s informational page on Grayscale’s website - Located Here
Source: Description of Trust on page 31 & 32 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

What is the ratio of ETH to ETHE? 

At the time of posting (6/19/2020) each ETHE share is backed by .09391605 ETH. Each share of GBTC is backed by .00096038 BTC.
ETHE & GBTC’s specific information page on Grayscale’s website updates the ratio daily – Located Here
For a full historical look at this ratio, it can be found on the Grayscale home page on the upper right side if you go to Tax Documents > 2019 Tax Documents > Grayscale Ethereum Trust 2019 Tax Letter.

Why is the ratio not 1:1? Why is it always decreasing? 

While I cannot say for certain why the initial distribution was not a 1:1 backing, it is more than likely to keep the price down and allow more investors a chance to purchase ETHE / GBTC.
As noted above, fees are paid by selling off the ETH collateralizing ETHE. So this number will always be trending downward as time goes on.
Source: Description of Trust on page 32 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

I keep hearing about how this is locked supply… explain? 

As noted above, there is currently no redemption program for converting your ETHE back into ETH. This means that once an ETHE is issued, it will remain in circulation until a redemption program is formed --- something that doesn’t seem to be too urgent for the SEC or Grayscale at the moment. Tiny amounts will naturally be removed due to fees, but the bulk of the asset is in there for good.
Knowing that ETHE cannot be taken back and destroyed at this time, the ETH collateralizing it will not be removed from the wallet for the foreseeable future. While it is not fully locked in the sense of say a totally lost key, it is not coming out any time soon.
Per their annual statement:

The Trust’s ETH will be transferred out of the ETH Account only in the following circumstances: (i) transferred to pay the Sponsor’s Fee or any Additional Trust Expenses, (ii) distributed in connection with the redemption of Baskets (subject to the Trust’s obtaining regulatory approval from the SEC to operate an ongoing redemption program and the consent of the Sponsor), (iii) sold on an as-needed basis to pay Additional Trust Expenses or (iv) sold on behalf of the Trust in the event the Trust terminates and liquidates its assets or as otherwise required by law or regulation.

Source: Description of Trust on page 31 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Grayscale now owns a huge chunk of both ETH and BTC’s supply… should we be worried about manipulation, a sell off to crash the market crash, a staking cartel? 

First, it’s important to remember Grayscale is a lot more akin to an exchange then say an investment firm. Grayscale is working on behalf of its investors to create this product for investor control. Grayscale doesn’t ‘control’ the ETH it holds any more then Coinbase ‘controls’ the ETH in its hot wallet. (Note: There are likely some varying levels of control, but specific to this topic Grayscale cannot simply sell [legally, at least] the ETH by their own decision in the same manner Coinbase wouldn't be able to either.)
That said, there shouldn’t be any worry in the short to medium time-frame. As noted above, Grayscale can’t really remove ETH other than for fees or termination of the product. At 2.5% a year, fees are noise in terms of volume. Grayscale seems to be the fastest growing product in the crypto space at the moment and termination of the product seems unlikely.
IF redemptions were to happen tomorrow, it’s extremely unlikely we would see a mass exodus out of the product to redeem for ETH. And even if there was incentive to get back to ETH, the premium makes it so that it would be much more cost effective to just sell your ETHE on the secondary market and buy ETH yourself. Remember, any redemption is up to the investors and NOT something Grayscale has direct control over.

Yes, but what about [insert criminal act here]… 

Alright, yes. Technically nothing is stopping Grayscale from selling all the ETH / BTC and running off to the Bahamas (Hawaii?). BUT there is no real reason for them to do so. Barry is an extremely public figure and it won’t be easy for him to get away with that. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust creates SEC reports weekly / bi-weekly and I’m sure given the sentiment towards crypto is being watched carefully. Plus, Grayscale is making tons of consistent revenue and thus has little to no incentive to give that up for a quick buck.

That’s a lot of ‘happy little feels’ Bob, is there even an independent audit or is this Tether 2.0? 

Actually yes, an independent auditor report can be found in their annual reports. It is clearly aimed more towards the financial side and I doubt the auditors are crypto savants, but it is at least one extra set of eyes. Auditors are Friedman LLP – Auditor since 2015.
Source: Independent Auditor Report starting on page 116 (of the PDF itself) of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here
As mentioned by user TheCrpytosAndBloods (In Comments Below), a fun fact:

The company’s auditors Friedman LLP were also coincidentally TetheBitfinex’s auditors until They controversially parted ways in 2018 when the Tether controversy was at its height. I am not suggesting for one moment that there is anything shady about DCG - I just find it interesting it’s the same auditor.

“Grayscale sounds kind of lame” / “Not your keys not your crypto!” / “Why is anyone buying this, it sounds like a scam?” 

Welp, for starters this honestly is not really a product aimed at the people likely to be reading this post. To each their own, but do remember just because something provides no value to you doesn’t mean it can’t provide value to someone else. That said some of the advertised benefits are as follows:

• Access to trading within a tax advantaged retirement account
• Institutions can easily and safely get exposure to crypto in a more legal-friendly manner
• Ease of use for those who are not very technologically savvy
• Ease of access for someone who doesn’t want to set up a Coinbase account
• Perceived trust in institutional platforms over something like Coinbase or Kraken
• Degen traders who just want access to the volatility ETHE provides that have no interest in crypto beyond that

So for example, I can set up an IRA at a brokerage account that has $0 trading fees. Then I can trade GBTC and ETHE all day without having to worry about tracking my taxes. All with the relative safety something like E-Trade provides over Binance.
As for how it benefits the everyday ETH holder? I think the supply lock is a positive. I also think this product exposes the Ethereum ecosystem to people who otherwise wouldn’t know about it.

Why is there a premium? Why is ETHE’s premium so insanely high compared to GBTC’s premium? 

There are a handful of theories of why a premium exists at all, some even mentioned in the annual report. The short list is as follows:

• ETHE is NOT redeeming shares and as such doesn’t have an effective arbitrage mechanism
• ETHE has a 1 year wait to be sold on the secondary market, again negating the ability to effectively arbitrage the premium
• People may simply be willing to pay a premium for the benefits stated above.

Why is ETHE’s so much higher the GBTC’s? Again, a few thoughts:

• ETHE hasn’t been around as long, so there is less secondary market supply to go around
• ETHE was listed at an insanely high premium to begin with
• ETHE might simply be more popular at the moment
• Could just be sheer stupidity (investors think ETHE is a 1:1 ratio not 1:11)

​

Are there any other differences between ETHE and GBTC? 

I touched on a few of the smaller differences, but one of the more interesting changes is GBTC is now a “SEC reporting company” as of January 2020. Which again goes beyond my scope of knowledge so I won’t comment on it too much… but the net result is GBTC is now putting out weekly / bi-weekly 8-K’s and annual 10-K’s. This means you can track GBTC that much easier at the moment as well as there is an extra layer of validity to the product IMO.

I’m looking for some statistics on ETHE… such as who is buying, how much is bought, etc? 

There is a great Q1 2020 report I recommend you give a read that has a lot of cool graphs and data on the product. It’s a little GBTC centric, but there is some ETHE data as well. It can be found here hidden within the 8-K filings.Q1 2020 is the 4/16/2020 8-K filing.
For those more into a GAAP style report see the 2019 annual 10-K of the same location.

Is Grayscale only just for BTC and ETH? 

No, there are other products as well. In terms of a secondary market product, ETCG is the Ethereum Classic version of ETHE. Fun Fact – ETCG was actually put out to the secondary market first. It also has a 3% fee tied to it where 1% of it goes to some type of ETC development fund.
In terms of institutional and accredited investors, there are a few ‘fan favorites’ such as Bitcoin Cash, Litcoin, Stellar, XRP, and Zcash. Something called Horizion (Backed by ZEN I guess? Idk to be honest what that is…). And a diversified Mutual Fund type fund that has a little bit of all of those. None of these products are available on the secondary market.

Are there alternatives to Grayscale? 

I know they exist, but I don’t follow them. I’ll leave this as a “to be edited” section and will add as others comment on what they know.
Per user Over-analyser (in comments below):

Coinshares (Formerly XBT provider) are the only similar product I know of. BTC, ETH, XRP and LTC as Exchange Traded Notes (ETN).
It looks like they are fully backed with the underlying crypto (no premium).
https://coinshares.com/etps/xbt-provideinvestor-resources/daily-hedging-position
Denominated in SEK and EUR. Certainly available in some UK pensions (SIPP).

As asked by pegcity - Okay so I was under the impression you can just give them your own ETH and get ETHE, but do you get 11 ETHE per ETH or do you get the market value of ETH in USD worth of ETHE? 

I have always understood that the ETHE issued directly through Grayscale is issued without the premium. As in, if I were to trade 1 ETH for ETHE I would get 11, not say only 2 or 3 because the secondary market premium is so high. And if I were paying cash only I would be paying the price to buy 1 ETH to get my 11 ETHE. Per page 39 of their annual statement, it reads as follows:

The Trust will issue Shares to Authorized Participants from time to time, but only in one or more Baskets (with a Basket being a block of 100 Shares). The Trust will not issue fractions of a Basket. The creation (and, should the Trust commence a redemption program, redemption) of Baskets will be made only in exchange for the delivery to the Trust, or the distribution by the Trust, of the number of whole and fractional ETH represented by each Basket being created (or, should the Trust commence a redemption program, redeemed), which is determined by dividing (x) the number of ETH owned by the Trust at 4:00 p.m., New York time, on the trade date of a creation or redemption order, after deducting the number of ETH representing the U.S. dollar value of accrued but unpaid fees and expenses of the Trust (converted using the ETH Index Price at such time, and carried to the eighth decimal place), by (y) the number of Shares outstanding at such time (with the quotient so obtained calculated to one one-hundred-millionth of one ETH (i.e., carried to the eighth decimal place)), and multiplying such quotient by 100 (the “Basket ETH Amount”). All questions as to the calculation of the Basket ETH Amount will be conclusively determined by the Sponsor and will be final and binding on all persons interested in the Trust. The Basket ETH Amount multiplied by the number of Baskets being created or redeemed is the “Total Basket ETH Amount.” The number of ETH represented by a Share will gradually decrease over time as the Trust’s ETH are used to pay the Trust’s expenses. Each Share represented approximately 0.0950 ETH and 0.0974 ETH as of December 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

​

Following is a list of P2P exchanges for trading Bitcoin. Common payment methods include bank transfer, cash deposited in the seller's bank account, in-person cash (face-to-face) trades as well as payment networks such as Zelle, Alipay, even Cash App and PayPal, for example.
Any that I am missing?

• Bisq (💵) client [NO KYC] <-- Fully decentralized and non-custodial. Uses Tor, automatically. Guide
• HodlHodl [NO KYC] <-- Non-custodial. Not available in the U.S.
• LocalCoinSwap (💵) [NO KYC] <-- Non-custodial
• LocalCryptos (💵) [NO KYC] <-- Non custodial
• AgoraDesk (💵) [NO KYC] <-- "No Javascript" mode for use with Tor
• Bitcoin.Global [NO KYC]
• Wall Of Coins (💵) [NO KYC]
• BuyCrypto.Today [NO KYC]
• Bitzlato [NO KYC]
• BitValve [NO KYC]
• BitQuick [NO KYC (when trx amount is under $400)]
• Remitano [NO KYC for Seller (only Buyer must KYC)]
• Totalcoin mobile app [NO KYC (other than phone number verification)]
• Mycelium Local Trader mobile app [Map] (💵) [NO KYC]
• Paxful.com (💵) [KYC] <-- Reddit does not permit any link to Paxful
• LocalBitcoins [KYC] <-- No more in-person, cash trading
• Binance P2P (💵) [KYC]
• Huobi OTC
• OTCBTC
• Vertex
• CGem/CryptoGem
• CoinCola
• WazirX [KYC]
• Shiftal [KYC]
• Giottus [KYC]
• BuyCoins [KYC]
• BitBargain.co.uk <-- U.K.
• VEX - Venezuela Exchange <-- Venezuela
• P2P Trading <-- Brazil
• SwapN>Go
• Cash4Cash <-- Take seriously the risks and recommendations in the General Information PSA
• GiftCardExchange <-- Take seriously the risks and recommendations in the GSX Safe Trading Guide
• GCTrading <-- Take seriously the risks and recommendations in the GSX Safe Trading Guide
• BitMarket <-- Take seriously the risks and recommendations in the GSX Safe Trading Guide
• BitHalo software [NO KYC]
• OpenBazaar (💵) [NO KYC] <-- Non-custodial

Altcoin-only P2P Trading exchanges

• CryptoLocally (💵) [NO KYC] <-- BTC(BEP-2) is a coin traded here
• LocalMonero (💵) [NO KYC] <-- "No Javascript" mode for use with Tor
• DAIHard (💵) [NO KYC]
• Dether (💵) [NO KYC]
• Local BCash (💵) [NO KYC]
• Ethfinex Trustless OTC
• Hubi
• KuCoin OTC
• LocalKSM [Coming soon]

AggregatoSearch and Helper Sites

• ExchangeRates.Pro Real-time price comparison

Note: If you use one of the above P2P OTC trade "matchmaking" services, please trade with caution and do your own due diligence.
This list does not include exchanges not in English (e.g., 58Coin), deserted or defunct marketplaces (e.g., Cancoin, and Rahakott), not-yet launched (e.g., OTCBoss), ones that operate only through dark markets, or online-only DEX/decentralized exchanges (another list of DEXes).
Also, there are a number of variants that I didn't list:

• Physical Stores where you can Buy or Sell bitcoin
• Online stores (e.g., Bitsell X [💳] [NO-KYC, requires browser extension], CoinCorner [💳] [NO-KYC when £900 or less, not available in U.S.], CEX.io, Coinify, Jubiter, Bittylicious, BitIreland, Kuna.io Money, LiteBit.eu, Switchere, Conio.com App, CryptoVoucher.io, GetSatoshi.org (⚡), BitQuick QuickBuy [NO KYC (when trx amount is under $400)], Cash App and CoinMama)
• Instant exchanges (i.e., for converting from one digial currency to another)
• Precious metals brokers which buy your gold and/or silver in exchange for bitcoin (e.g., Veldt Gold [NO KYC]).
• Gift card exchanges (e.g., there is CardCoins for paying with a non-reloadable, prepaid GIFT card (VISA/Mastercard/AMEX/Discover), Redeem, CryptoVoucher.io for paying with gift cards for numerous brands, GiftCardExchange, and GCTrading).
• Vouchers (retail) (e.g., Azte.co (💵), FastBitcoins (💵), LibertyX (💵), Rise Wallet (💵), FlexEPin (💵), Neosurf (💵), BlueShyft (💵), Yellow Card (💵), Tikebit (💵), BitIns (💵), and BitNovo (💵))
• Vending (e.g., Bitcoin ATMs (💵), Coinstar (💵) (with 2,100+ locations in the U.S.) and SBB/Swiss Railway ticketing)
• Bill/Invoice swap services (e.g., Lamium, and PiixPay)
• OTC Trading Desks (e.g., Cumberland, SigOne Capital, and several dozen others)

Otherwise, there are a number of other exchanges — with varying attributes. We recommended trying to stick with No-KYC exchanges, including most of the ones listed on:

• KYCNot.me

Additions, corrections, and other feedback welcome and can be submitted as an issue or pull request on GitHub, or via e-mail.
[Note: There is also a corresponding post on Medium with this information as well.]

In today's world of heavily nascent and volatile cryptocurrency, one point or factor stands out. That is exchanges. Cryptocurrency exchanges are sites(whether physical or virtual) where cryptocurrencies are traded for each other or traditional fiat currencies like Euro, Pound Sterling or US Dollar. They may be divided by many criteria, chief of which may be Modus Operandi or Central Control. The Degree of Control suggests a central control of exchange management and resources. There are Centralized, Decentralized and Hybrid exchanges. Now we can narrow down to Centralized Exchanges. These are where transactions are monitored and controlled by the owners of the exchange. Transactions can be made only through mechanisms provided and approved by the central body. Also there is no access to private keys by traders. Examples include Koinpro, Binance, Kucoin, Bittrex etc.
About Koinpro This is a Smart Bitcoin Futures Exchange. KoinPro, your new fangled crypto exchange, that goes beyond crypto and boasts of multiple futures contracts, with its own unique features and benefits. Bitcoin Futures, Contracts for Difference are complex instruments. Trading these financial products carries a high level of risk since leverage can work both to your advantage and disadvantage. There are a lot of exchanges, both crypto and fiat(mainstream and otherwise) trading tools like CFD, oil, futures etc; but not one of them Integrates CFDs like Koinpro. Its a no-brainer choice, since going for KoinPro’s unique double-UP contract, customers can simply enter into a predefined order position that will automatically terminate when the position either gains or loses 100% of its value, or when the contract expires — whichever comes first. insurance coverage is provided as a courtesy to BitGo Prime, which is a sole counterparty Prices derived from a wide range of Tier 1 institutions such as exchanges and professional market makers Trading on a fully non-disclosed basis Fully integrated with BitGo Portfolio & Tax. At KoinPro, we take the safety and security of our clients extremely seriously. To help make KoinPro one of the safest places to trade, we store our customer funds in cold storage wallets provided by BitGo—the world leader in secure digital asset storage. BitGo custody includes a $100 million insurance plan underwritten by Lloyd’s of London—one of the UK’s largest insurance markets.
This insurance coverage is provided as a courtesy to KoinPro users and hence comes at no additional cost. This insurance coverage protects digital assets held by BitGo, Inc. or BitGo Trust Company in the event of;
Third-party hacks or theft of private keys Insider theft by employees of private keys Physical loss or damage of private keys
BitGo has delivered institution-grade security for digital assets since 2013, and features state-of-the-art cold storage technology, which includes a bank-grade Class III vault and stringent controls designed to practically eliminate the risk of loss. Full details about the BitGo custody and insurance protection can be found here.
https://koinpro.com/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219842

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GBP - British Pound
Cryptomate
 
BRL - Brazilian Real
Braziliex
 
SGD - Singapore Dollar
Quoine
 
AED - United Arab Emirates Dirham
BitOasis
 
PHP - Philippine peso
CX | Exchange
 
USDT - Tether
Poloniex | Bittrex | Huobi | OKEx | CoinBene | Upbit | HitBTC |
ZB.com | Gate.io | Sistemkoin
 
ETH - Ethereum
Binance | Bittrex | Gatehub | OKEx | OTCBTC | Upbit | HitBTC |
Bitsane | Mr. Exchange | CoinFalcon
 
LTC - Litecoin
Bitsane | Mr. Exchange
 
BTC - Bitcoin
Kraken | Bitstamp | Bitfinex | CEX.IO | Gatehub | Binance | Poloniex | Bittrex |
HitBTC | OKEx | Upbit | Huobi | BTCTurk | BTC Markets | CoinEgg | Exmo |
ZB.com | OTCBTC | Coinrail | Bits Blockchain | Triple Dice Exchange | Indodax |
Exrates | Qryptos | Gate.io | Bitsane | Bitso | Ovis | BCEX | BitBay |
Mr. Exchange | Orionx | CoinFalcon | Abucoins | BitFlip | LakeBTC | Coinbe

Welcome everyone! The future of Stellar Lumens is bright! Today we will look at the accomplishments of Stellar.org in 2017.
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2017 Round Up
• IBM / Stellar Partnership
• Kik Messenger’s KIN coin to move from Ethereum to Stellar in 2018
• Stellar ATM introduced in Singapore
• Jed McCaleb confirms IBM/Stellar has 30 banks on board (Youtube Video)
• Lightyear.io enables forward thinking financial entities to easily join the Stellar ecosystem.
• IBM adds 8 new validators from 8 different countries onto the Stellar network (article)
• Forbes calls Stellar “venmo, but on a global scale - and for larger bodies like banks and corporations.”
• Stellar Lumens Is Up 6,300% Since March and Is Aiming for Big Blockchain Partners (article)
• Many new partnerships (listed below) that will be using the Stellar network in 2018.
• Binance and GoPax Exchanges Adds Stellar
• Ledger Nano S support is now available for Lumens (XLM)
• The next coin to break into the top 10 cryptos (article)
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2017 Partnerships & Financial Institutions
• IBM - is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM partnered with Stellar to help financial institutions address the processes of universal cross-border payments, designed to reduce the settlement time and lower the cost of completing global payments for businesses and consumers.
• SatoshiPay - a web payment system that helps online publishers monetize digital assets like news articles, videos, or PDFs in tiny increments without friction.
• EXCH.ONE - is a FinTech software company based in Switzerland currently working to integrate its platform and its first technology adopter Euro Exchange Securities UK Ltd. into the Stellar network. This addition to the Stellar network will bring access to currency markets of South and Central America,UK and a number of EU countries.
• Novati (ASX:NOV) - is an Australian-based software technology and payment services provider. Novatti is currently working to integrate it’s platform into the Stellar network with the ultimate aim to build a global money transfer solution to provide cross border, cross currency and cross asset payments.
• Pundi X - is an Indonesia based fintech company that provides POS device, debit card, multi-currency wallet that empowers individuals to buy and sell cryptocurrency at any physical store in the world. They say "buying cryptocurrency should be as easy as buying a bottled water."
• MoneyMatch - is a Malaysia based fintech startup that provides a fully-digital peer-to-peer currency exchange platform for customers to transfer and exchange foreign currencies with complete ease and at great value. The company plans to integrate with the Stellar network and enable pay in and pay out from Malaysia.
• Streami - is a Korea based fintech company that offers blockchain enabled cross-border remittance service and recently launched a cryptocurrency exchange. The partnership extends both on the exchange side and remittance operations.
• Neoframe - is developing and marketing trading solutions for big brokerage firms in Korea and extends its business to blockchain based applications. Neoframe developed high performance centralized cryptocurrency exchange as well as secure wallet solutions and is working with big financial players. The company is planning to launch a remittance business for ASEAN countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, Laos, Brunei) using Stellar.
• SureRemit($RMT) - is a Nigeria based global non-cash remittances company. SureRemit leverages the Stellar blockchain platform to connect immigrants abroad directly with merchants that provide the services needed by their loved ones back home. With Remit tokens, immigrants all over the world can access digital shopping vouchers that can be spent on goods and services at accepting merchants wherever they are.
• Cowrie Integrated Systems - is a Nigerian based Value Added Service Provider. Cowrie provides services at the intersection between telecoms and finance. Cowrie recently joined the Stellar network to bring novel fintech services to the African market.
• Smartlands - is a Stellar-based platform designed to create a new class of low-risk tokens, secured by real, profitable assets in the real-world economy. Smartlands is designed to promote investments in the agricultural sector by allowing investment in individual projects, agricultural companies or indexes of groups of projects. These investments will be fully collateralized by agricultural real estate, other productive assets such as fruit or nut trees or, in some cases, the actual crop.
• Klick-Ex - is an award winning regional cross-border payments system delivering financial infrastructure for emerging markets. It has been responsible for dramatic uptake in digital financial services in unbanked regions of the world, and lowering costs for banks, central banks and consumers in low liquidity currencies. Its key presence is in the Pacific and Europe, and it is a founding member of www.APFII.org processing more than 775,000 transactions per second, per billion of population (source).
• Mobius - Mobius connects any app, device, and data stream to the blockchain ecosystem. Our simple and easy to use bidirectional API allows non-blockchain developers to easily connect resources to smart contracts and more. The Mobius MVP acts like Stripe for Blockchain by introducing innovative standards for cross-blockchain login, payment, smart contract management, and oracles. The Mobius Team includes David Gobaud, Jed McCaleb (Stellar.org founder), Jackson Palmer (creator of Dogecoin), and Chandler Guo (notorious Bitcoin & blockchain investor).
• Chaineum - Chaineum, the first French ICO Boutique, will use the Stellar network for upcoming ICOs. “Chaineum is positioned as the first “ICO Boutique” in France, providing a range of end-to-end services to companies and international start-ups wishing to develop with this new funding mechanism. Chaineum is preparing 8 ICOs by the end of 2017, for European, North American and Asian companies, of which cumulative amount could reach € 200 million." (source)
• Poseidon Foundation - Poseidon will simplify the carbon credit market with the creation of an ecosystem built on Stellar.org’s blockchain technology. This technology will prevent double counting of carbon and will be consistent across jurisdictions, making it easier for companies to deliver and measure progress towards their climate targets or other goals such as deforestation-free commitments.
• Remitr - Remitr is a global platform for cross border payments, licensed in Canada. Remitr uses the Stellar network for international settlements for businesses as well as other payment partners. Remitr’s own payout network of 63 countries, comprising several currencies, is extended onto the Stellar network.
• MSewa Software Solution (MSS) - MSewa Software Solution (MSS) Payments provides a one-stop digital payment service available across the Globe. MSS Payments aims at serving the consumers (Banked, Unbanked and Underbanked) with mobile banking facilities on the move from anywhere by transferring funds in their mobile phone.
• PesaChoice - PesaChoice is a leader in international bill payment services for the African diaspora. PesaChoice aims at making international bill payment process easy, seamless, secure, with reasonable and competitive service fees, and up to date technological advances.
• SendX - Singapore based SendX, in partnership with Stellar, is the better way to move money worldwide. The SendX team believes that the future of transactions is decentralized and distributed, bringing true equity to everyone across the value chain.
• VoguePay - VoguePay, with offices in the United Kingdom and Nigeria, is partnering with Stellar to become the cheapest and most efficient way to send money between the United Kingdom and Nigeria. In the coming months, they expect to expand this service to other selected African countries.
• HashCash - Hashcash consultants build financial solutions for banks and financial institutions over blockchain. We leverage the Stellar platform to build products that vastly improve the remittance and payments experience for banks and their customers. Transfers happen lightning fast at a fraction of current rates and operational cost is significantly reduced. HashCash is headquartered in India, with operations across South Asia and the Gulf.
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Stellar Lumens vs Other Cryptocurrencies
• Lumens vs. Bitcoin: Jed McCaleb spoke at Distributed Markets in 2017 about the advantages, but more importantly, the disadvantages of Bitcoin. Listen to the talk here. Jed said, “Bitcoin is this awesome innovation. The first thing it does is converts a real world resource, electricity, into a digital asset. So it takes something from the real world and puts it into the digital realm. The second thing it does is provides immutable public record. It’s basically a database that everyone can see but no one change arbitrarily… That’s great, Bitcoin solves the double spin problem [ of proving possession and transmitting volume]… [However, to fix the problems of bitcoin] you might think well maybe we’ll just kind of keep adding [software] to Bitcoin until we get there, but that’s not really the way software works. You want to have the design from the beginning and solve these simple issues. Bitcoin was designed to be a new currency, it wasn’t really designed to be this unifying universal payment network. So that’s what Stellar does. It solves these three remaining issues.”
• Lumens vs. Bitcoin #2: According to wired.com, "Bitcoin mining guzzles energy - and it's carbon footprint just keeps growing." Wired says "Today, each bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy used to power nine homes in the US for one day... The total energy use of this web of hardware is huge—an estimated 31 terawatt-hours per year. More than 150 individual countries in the world consume less energy annually. And that power-hungry network is currently increasing its energy use every day by about 450 gigawatt-hours, roughly the same amount of electricity the entire country of Haiti uses in a year." Because Stellar is based on a consensus algorithm rather than mining, it takes much less energy to run the Stellar network. The Poseidon Foundation decided to build their platform on Stellar rather than Ethereum or Bitcoin because of this (twitter source).
• Lumens ICO tokens vs. Ethereum ICO tokens: According to Stellar.org, "traditionally, ICO tokens have been issued on the Ethereum network in the form of ERC20 tokens. ERC20 tokens are easy to issue and are infinitely customizable using Ethereum’s smart contracting language. However, recent events have highlighted and exacerbated some weaknesses of the network, including slow transaction processing times for the network during ICOs and increasingly expensive gas prices (by fiat standards) for transactions and smart contract execution. Moreover, many organizations require only basic tokens; they adopt the risk of Ethereum’s Turing complete programming language without taking advantage of many of its benefits."
"While Ethereum has the most expressive programming capabilities, we believe Stellar is the best choice for ICOs that do not require complex smart contracts. Stellar’s primary goal is to facilitate issuing and trading tokens, especially those tied to legal commitments by known organizations, such as claims on real-world assets or fiat currency."
• Stellar vs. Ethereum #2: The median transaction time on Stellar is 5 seconds, compared to approximately 3.5 minutes on Ethereum (source). Stellar has a negligible transaction fee (.00001 XLM ~= $0.0000002) with no gas fee for computation, while depending on the complexity of the computation, the median cost for a transfer on the Ethereum network is $0.094. Security: While both Stellar and Ethereum run on a decentralized network, the Stellar network has fewer security pitfalls. Stellar uses atomic transactions comprised of simple, declarative operations while Ethereum uses turing complete programming capabilities which produces less auditable code and greater risk of exploitable vulnerabilities (source). Recently, a security flaw in the Ethereum network froze millions of dollars. According to Mobius ariticle written by David Gobaud, "On November 6, 2017, Github user deveps199 'accidentally' triggered a bug in Parity, a popular Ethereum mult-sig wallet, that froze more than $152 million in Ether across 151 addresses. The bug impacted several token sales including Polkadot, which has had ~$98 million out of its recent $145 million sale frozen."
"Mobius had none of its ongoing pre-sale Ether frozen because we do not trust Ethereum’s Smart Contract based multi-sig wallets given the vast Turing complete attack surface and did not use one. Security broadly is one of the main reasons the MOBI token that powers the DApp Store is a Stellar Protocol token and not an Ethereum token."
• Lumens vs. Ripple: According to Wall Street Bitcoin Exchange, "Many investors like to compare the company [Stellar] to Ripple, and there are a lot of similarities, being that some of the founders worked on the Ripple team. In what can now be looked at as another blockchain development drama that plays out on chat boards and in interviews all across the globe. Stellar declared they fixed Ripple’s problems with their hard fork, however, Ripple has failed to admit to any of the flaws in its design that the Stellar team has pointed out." The article concludes by saying, "We Choose XLM Over XRP For 2018. That is why we are going with Stellar Lumens over Ripple in our portfolio for the rest of 2017 and 2018. After holding Ripple for a long time this year, it just never seems to make the big break like other names with bigger market caps like Bitcoin Cash, Dash, and Litecoin have. While we are holding on most all our larger market caps, we feel that Stellar Lumens will be one of the break out coins for 2018."
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Conclusion
The stellar.org team is doing an amazing job making partnerships and pioneering the use of blockchain technology for various types of transactions. What we are seeing is a new technology that can actually be used to solve real-world problems. As a community, we need to continue supporting Stellar and we will quickly see it power transactions across the world. What are your thoughts about Stellar? What do you see in the future of Stellar? Any important news you want to share? Comment below.

Note: you can read this on GitHub (link), Medium (link) or old Reddit (link) to see all the links.

Development

dcrd: Version 1.3.0 RC1 (Release Candidate 1) is out! The main features of this release are significant performance improvements, including some that benefit SPV clients. Full release notes and downloads are on GitHub.
The default minimum transaction fee rate was reduced from 0.001 to 0.0001 DCkB. Do not try to send such small fee transactions just yet, until the majority of the network upgrades.
Release process was changed to use release branches and bump version on the master branch at the beginning of a release cycle. Discussed in this chat.
The codebase is ready for the new Go 1.11 version. Migration to vgo module system is complete and the 1.4.0 release will be built using modules. The list of versioned modules and a hierarchy diagram are available here.
The testnet was reset and bumped to version 3.
Comments are welcome for the proposal to implement smart fee estimation, which is important for Lightning Network.
@matheusd recorded a code review video for new Decred developers that explains how tickets are selected for voting.
dcrwallet: Version 1.3.0 RC1 features new SPV sync mode, new ticket buyer, new APIs for Decrediton and a host of bug fixes. On the dev side, dcrwallet also migrated to the new module system.
Decrediton: Version 1.3.0 RC1 adds the new SPV sync mode that syncs roughly 5x faster. The feature is off by default while it receives more testing from experienced users. Other notable changes include a design polish and experimental Politeia integration.
Politeia: Proposal editing is being developed and has a short demo. This will allow proposal owners to edit their proposal in response to community feedback before voting begins. The challenges associated with this feature relate to updating censorship tokens and maintaining a clear history of which version comments were made on. @fernandoabolafio produced this architecture diagram which may be of interest to developers.
@degeri joined to perform security testing of Politeia and found several issues.
dcrdata: mainnet explorer upgraded to v2.1 with several new features. For users: credit/debit tx filter on address page, showing miner fees on coinbase transaction page, estimate yearly ticket rewards on main page, cool new hamburger menu and keyboard navigation. For developers: new chain parameters page, experimental Insight API support, endpoints for coin supply and block rewards, testnet3 support. Lots of minor API changes and frontend tweaks, many bug fixes and robustness improvements.
The upcoming v3.0 entered beta and is deployed on beta.dcrdata.org. Check out the new charts page. Feedback and bug reports are appreciated. Finally, the development version v3.1.0-pre is on alpha.dcrdata.org.
Android: updated to be compatible with the latest SPV code and is syncing, several performance issues are worked on. Details were posted in chat. Alpha testing has started, to participate please join #dev and ask for the APK.
iOS: backend is mostly complete, as well as the front end. Support for devices with smaller screens was improved. What works now: creating and recovering wallets, listing of transactions, receiving DCR, displaying and scanning QR codes, browsing account information, SPV connection to peers, downloading headers. Some bugs need fixing before making testable builds.
Ticket splitting: v0.6.0 beta released with improved fee calculation and multiple bug fixes.
docs: introduced new Governance section that grouped some old articles as well as the new Politeia page.
@Richard-Red created a concept repository sandbox with policy documents, to illustrate the kind of policies that could be approved and amended by Politeia proposals.
decred.org: 8 contributors added and 4 removed, including 2 advisors (discussion here).
decredmarketcap.com is a brand new website that shows the most accurate DCR market data. Clean design, mobile friendly, no javascript required.
Dev activity stats for August: 239 active PRs, 219 commits, 25k added and 11k deleted lines spread across 8 repositories. Contributions came from 2-10 developers per repository. (chart)

Network

Hashrate: went from 54 to 76 PH/s, the low was 50 and the new all-time high is 100 PH/s. BeePool share rose to ~50% while F2Pool shrank to 30%, followed by coinmine.pl at 5% and Luxor at 3%.
Staking: 30-day average ticket price is 95.6 DCR (+3.0) as of Sep 3. During the month, ticket price fluctuated between a low of 92.2 and high of 100.5 DCR. Locked DCR represented between 3.8 and 3.9 million or 46.3-46.9% of the supply.
Nodes: there are 217 public listening and 281 normal nodes per dcred.eu. Version distribution: 2% at v1.4.0(pre) (dev builds), 5% on v1.3.0 (RC1), 62% on v1.2.0 (-5%), 22% on v1.1.2 (-2%), 6% on v1.1.0 (-1%). Almost 69% of nodes are v.1.2.0 and higher and support client filters. Data snapshot of Aug 31.

ASICs

Obelisk posted 3 email updates in August. DCR1 units are reportedly shipping with 1 TH/s hashrate and will be upgraded with firmware to 1.5 TH/s. Batch 1 customers will receive compensation for missed shipment dates, but only after Batch 5 ships. Batch 2-5 customers will be receiving the updated slim design.
Innosilicon announced the new D9+ DecredMaster: 2.8 TH/s at 1,230 W priced $1,499. Specified shipping date was Aug 10-15.
FFMiner DS19 claims 3.1 TH/s for Blake256R14 at 680 W and simultaneously 1.55 TH/s for Blake2B at 410 W, the price is $1,299. Shipping Aug 20-25.
Another newly noticed miner offer is this unit that does 46 TH/s at 2,150 W at the price of $4,720. It is shipping Nov 2018 and the stats look very close to Pangolin Whatsminer DCR (which has now a page on asicminervalue).

Integrations

www.d1pool.com joined the list of stakepools for a total of 16.
Australian CoinTree added DCR trading. The platform supports fiat, there are some limitations during the upgrade to a new system but also no fees in the "Early access mode". On a related note, CoinTree is working on a feature to pay household bills with cryptocurrencies it supports.
Three new OTC desks were added to exchanges page at decred.org.
Two mobile wallets integrated Decred:

• Coinomi added Decred to their Android and iOS wallets. In addition to the Apple App Store and Google Play you can download the APK directly. Coinomi features an integrated cryptocurrency exchange and is the first company to offer a mobile Decred wallet.
• BitBill Android and iOS wallet also added Decred.

Reminder: do your best to understand the security and privacy model before using any wallet software. Points to consider: who controls the seed, does the wallet talk to the nodes directly or via middlemen, is it open source or not?

Adoption

Merchants:

• Bit Dials announced DCR support via GloBee at their bitdials.eu luxury boutique. Their separate supercar and classic car shop bitcars.eu also accepts DCR, either via GloBee or with manual invoicing in case of privacy concerns.
• Sheldon Store re-enabled DCR payments. The shop sells gift cards for Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and many more.

Marketing

Targeted advertising report for August was posted by @timhebel. Facebook appeal is pending, some Google and Twitter campaigns were paused and some updated. Read more here.
Contribution to the @decredproject Twitter account has evolved over the past few months. A #twitter_ops channel is being used on Matrix to collaboratively draft and execute project account tweets (including retweets). Anyone with an interest in contributing to the Twitter account can ask for an invitation to the channel and can start contributing content and ideas there for evaluation by the Twitter group. As a result, no minority or unilateral veto over tweets is possible. (from GitHub)

Events

Attended:

• Meetup in Puebla City, Mexico, organized by @elian. (photo, slides, missed in July issue)
• @joshuam discussed Decred and decentralized organizations with Craig Laundy, Federal Minister for Small Business, the Workplace, and Deregulation with the Australian Government, at @YBFVentures. (photos)
• Meetup at @TheBlockCafe in Lisbon, Portugal. @mm presented "Decred 101 - Governance with Skin in the Game" and @moo31337 talked about Decred's 2018 roadmap. (photos: 1 2 3)
• Meetup in Taipei, Taiwan. @morphymore made a short intro of Decred and noted: "After the talk, many have approached to tell me that they literally don’t hear of Decred until today, and are interested in finding out more about the merit of a hybrid consensus system.". Longer report here, some photos and a video are here.
• @eSizeDave introduced Decred to the SILC Undergraduate Program students at @YBFVentures. (photo)
• OKEx Global Meetup Tour in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. @joshuam gave a brief presentation covering the history of Decred, how the project functions, and the importance of governance. Afterwards he joined a panel discussion and spoke about Decred's incentives for long term viability. (video, video, photo)
• Blockchain & Decentralised Governance Panel at @YBFVentures in Melbourne, Australia. @eSizeDave presented Decred, mini-report here. (photos: 1 2)
• Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto, Canada. @zubairzia0 noted: "Devs and the community were held in high regard for the people who knew about decred ... one positive thing I remember was someone defending us saying 'Decred does not need a booth', I believe that comment was reflective of the quality of projects being showcased at the conference.". (photo)
• Meetup at @YBFVentures in Melbourne, Australia. @joshuam discussed Decred with Graham Stuart, U.K. Minister for International Trade. (news, photos)
• Small meetup with Jackson Palmer in Melbourne, Australia. (photo)
• Voice of Blockchain in Chicago, USA. @moo31337 talked on Protocol Governance panel, Solving Scalability panel (video) and gave an interview, while @ay-p spoke on Decentralized Exchanges panel. Stakey made an appearance on the slides. (photos: 1 2 3 4 5)
• Hawthorne Street Fair in Portland, USA. Raedah Group was out answering questions about crypto and Decred. (photos)
• Blockchain APAC in Melbourne, Australia. @joshuam joined a panel discussion with reps from banking, university and ISO/TC 307. @eSizeDave reports: "This enterprise conference was indeed a whole lot better than I expected. The presentations were actually full of very worthwhile information from credible people, articulated aptly to a very government, academic, and corporate crowd, who genuinely took on board valuable insights. Good to know some of these key people are Decred holders and stakers as well. I got to use the entire day to speak directly with some of the most pivotal personalities in this particular populace. Ongoing relationships have been built and strengthened.". (photos: 1 2 3)

For those willing to help with the events:

BAB: Hey all, we are gearing up for conference season. I have a list of places we hope to attend but need to know who besides @joshuam and @Haon are willing to do public speaking, willing to work booths, or help out at them? You will need to be well versed on not just what is Decred, but the history of Decred etc... DM me if you are interested. (#event_planning)
The Decred project is looking for ambassadors. If you are looking for a fun cryptocurrency to get involved in send me a DM or come talk to me on Decred slack. (@marco_peereboom, longer version here)

Media

Decred Assembly episode 21 is available. @jy-p and lead dcrwallet developer @jrick discussed SPV from Satoshi's whitepaper, how it can be improved upon and what's coming in Decred.
Decred Assembly episodes 1-21 are available in audio only format here.
New instructional articles on stakey.club: Decrediton setup, Deleting the wallet, Installing Go, Installing dcrd, dcrd as a Linux service. Available in both English and Portuguese.
Decred scored #32 in the August issue of Chinese CCID ratings. The evaluation model was explained in this interview.
Satis Group rated Decred highly in their cryptoasset valuation research report (PDF). This was featured by several large media outlets, but some did not link to or omitted Decred entirely, citing low market cap.
Featured articles:

• Decred Investor Interviews: Ciarán O’Leary, General Partner, BlueYard Capital (medium)
• Decred Update Research Report by Node Blockchain (medium), and the corresponding full 11-page report (Google Drive)
• Is Decred worth my time and money? by Fabien Pelissier (medium), and the full 13-page Decred Analysis (PDF)
• Decred for Custody Providers by @bee (medium)

Articles:

• The 3 Best-Performing Cryptocurrencies in 2018 (nulltx.com, missed in July issue)
• Decred Review (vivecrypto.com, missed in July issue)
• What is Decred? Everything about Decred, the wallet and the hybrid consensus (Dutch, currentcrypto.nl)
• Decred overview (Japanese, cryptocoinportal.jp, note: Decred's Coco is Amazing, according to Google Translate)
• What is Dark Red (Decred)? (Japanese, billion-coin.jp)
• Decred is the neglected gem among altcoins (captainaltcoin.com)
• What are the characteristics of Decred and where to buy? (Japanese, motto-money.com)
• What is hybrid virtual currency Decred? Explanation of features and future potential (Japanese, investor-a.com)
• What is DCR? Introduction to Decred (cryptobriefing.com)
• Cryptocurrencies in the Top 100 With Working Products That Are In-Use (investinblockchain)

Videos:

• Top 3 Coins Crushing it in 2018 so Far! - Decred, VeChain, Binance Coin! by Decentralized TV (youtube)
• Decred review by Ultimate Money (youtube, missed in July issue)
• Interview with Marco Peereboom by BitBoy Crypto (youtube)

Community Discussions

Community stats:

• Twitter followers 39,592 (+174)
• Reddit subscribers 8,631 (+119)
• Matrix users 163
• Slack users 6,067 (+103)
• YouTube subscribers 3,667
• Facebook 3,048 followers and 2,814 likes
• GitHub 417 (+14) stars and 1,021 (+44) forks of dcrd repository

Comm systems news:

• Interruptions in the chat bridge led to some Slack messages not reaching other platforms, and consequently not being archived in Matrix.
• Several impersonators were detected and banned.
• Inactive Slack channels were archived. If you miss them, let it be known.
• Mastodon was mentioned by several people as a possible alternative for Twitter.
• Two new Reddit rules were added to prevent CAPS flood and duplicate submissions.

After another debate about chat systems more people began testing and using Matrix, leading to some gardening on that platform:

• Decred Matrix community was created: +decred:decred.org, it helps to see all Decred-related rooms and people.
• #privacy and #design are now bridged.
• One private work channel was successfully migrated to Matrix.
• Stylish room avatars were set.
• @Haon has prepared a short guide to help new Matrix users get started and join the Decred rooms.

Highlights:

• A thread was started to discuss changes to Decred jargon with the intent to make it more consistent and accessible to newcomers. The question whether changing "official" terminology requires stakeholder approval was touched in this thread and in #documentation.
• Project fund transparency and constitution were extensively discussed on Reddit and in #general.
• Pre-proposal to use Politeia to approve Politeia as a legitimate decision-making tool for Decred.

Reddit: substantive discussion about Decred cons; ecosystem fund; a thread about voter engagement, Politeia UX and trolling; idea of a social media system for Decred by @michae2xl; how profitable is the Obelisk DCR1.
Chats: cross-chain trading via LN; plans for contractor management system, lower-level decision making and contractor privacy vs transparency for stakeholders; measuring dev activity; what if the network stalls, multiple implementations of Decred for more resilience, long term vision behind those extensive tests and accurate comments in the codebase; ideas for process for policy documents, hosting them in Pi and approving with ticket voting; about SPV wallet disk size, how compact filters work; odds of a wallet fetching a wrong block in SPV; new module system in Go; security of allowing Android app backups; why PoW algo change proposal must be specified in great detail; thoughts about NIPoPoWs and SPV; prerequisites for shipping SPV by default (continued); Decred vs Dash treasury and marketing expenses, spending other people's money; why Decred should not invade a country, DAO and nation states, entangling with nation state is poor resource allocation; how winning tickets are determined and attack vectors; Politeia proposal moderation, contractor clearance, the scale of proposals and decision delegation, initial Politeia vote to approve Politeia itself; chat systems, Matrix/Slack/Discord/RocketChat/Keybase (continued); overview of Korean exchanges; no breaking changes in vgo; why project fund burn rate must keep low; asymptotic behavior of Decred and other ccs, tail emission; count of full nodes and incentives to run them; Politeia proposal translations and multilingual environment.
An unusual event was the chat about double negatives and other oddities in languages in #trading.

Markets

DCR started the month at USD 56 / BTC 0.0073 and had a two week decline. On Aug 14 the whole market took a huge drop and briefly went below USD 200 billion. Bitcoin went below USD 6,000 and top 100 cryptos lost 5-30%. The lowest point coincided with Bitcoin dominance peak at 54.5%. On that day Decred dived -17% and reached the bottom of USD 32 / BTC 0.00537. Since then it went sideways in the USD 35-45 / BTC 0.0054-0.0064 range. Around Aug 24, Huobi showed DCR trading volume above USD 5M and this coincided with a minor recovery.
@ImacallyouJawdy posted some creative analysis based on ticket data.

Relevant External

StopAndDecrypt published an extensive article "ASIC Resistance is Nothing but a Blockchain Buzzword" that is much in line with Decred's stance on ASICs.
The ongoing debates about the possible Sia fork yet again demonstrate the importance of a robust dispute resolution mechanism. Also, we are lucky to have the treasury.
Mark B Lundeberg, who found a vulnerability in atomicswap earlier, published a concept of more private peer-to-peer atomic swaps. (missed in July issue)
Medium took a cautious stance on cryptocurrencies and triggered at least one project to migrate to Ghost (that same project previously migrated away from Slack).
Regulation: Vietnam bans mining equipment imports, China halts crypto events and tightens control of crypto chat groups.
Reddit was hacked by intercepting 2FA codes sent via SMS. The announcement explains the impact. Yet another data breach suggests to think twice before sharing any data with any company and shift to more secure authentication systems.
Intel and x86 dumpsterfire keeps burning brighter. Seek more secure hardware and operating systems for your coins.
Finally, unrelated to Decred but good for a laugh: yetanotherico.com.

About This Issue

This is the 5th issue of Decred Journal. It is mirrored on GitHub, Medium and Reddit. Past issues are available here.
Most information from third parties is relayed directly from source after a minimal sanity check. The authors of Decred Journal have no ability to verify all claims. Please beware of scams and do your own research.
Feedback is appreciated: please comment on Reddit, GitHub or #writers_room on Matrix or Slack.
Contributions are welcome too. Some areas are collecting content, pre-release review or translations to other languages. Check out @Richard-Red's guide how to contribute to Decred using GitHub without writing code.
Credits (Slack names, alphabetical order): bee, Haon, jazzah, Richard-Red and thedecreddigest.

Note: You can read this on GitHub, Medium or old Reddit to see the 207 links.

Development

The biggest announcement of the month was the new kind of decentralized exchange proposed by @jy-p of Company 0. The Community Discussions section considers the stakeholders' response.
dcrd: Peer management and connectivity improvements. Some work for improved sighash algo. A new optimization that gives 3-4x faster serving of headers, which is great for SPV. This was another step towards multipeer parallel downloads – check this issue for a clear overview of progress and planned work for next months (and some engineering delight). As usual, codebase cleanup, improvements to error handling, test infrastructure and test coverage.
Decrediton: work towards watching only wallets, lots of bugfixes and visual design improvements. Preliminary work to integrate SPV has begun.
Politeia is live on testnet! Useful links: announcement, introduction, command line voting example, example proposal with some votes, mini-guide how to compose a proposal.
Trezor: Decred appeared in the firmware update and on Trezor website, currently for testnet only. Next steps are mainnet support and integration in wallets. For the progress of Decrediton support you can track this meta issue.
dcrdata: Continued work on Insight API support, see this meta issue for progress overview. It is important for integrations due to its popularity. Ongoing work to add charts. A big database change to improve sorting on the Address page was merged and bumped version to 3.0. Work to visualize agenda voting continues.
Ticket splitting: 11-way ticket split from last month has voted (transaction).
Ethereum support in atomicswap is progressing and welcomes more eyeballs.
decred.org: revamped Press page with dozens of added articles, and a shiny new Roadmap page.
decredinfo.com: a new Decred dashboard by lte13. Reddit announcement here.
Dev activity stats for June: 245 active PRs, 184 master commits, 25,973 added and 13,575 deleted lines spread across 8 repositories. Contributions came from 2 to 10 developers per repository. (chart)

Network

Hashrate: growth continues, the month started at 15 and ended at 44 PH/s with some wild 30% swings on the way. The peak was 53.9 PH/s.
F2Pool was the leader varying between 36% and 59% hashrate, followed by coinmine.pl holding between 18% and 29%. In response to concerns about its hashrate share, F2Pool made a statement that they will consider measures like rising the fees to prevent growing to 51%.
Staking: 30-day average ticket price is 94.7 DCR (+3.4). The price was steadily rising from 90.7 to 95.8 peaking at 98.1. Locked DCR grew from 3.68 to 3.81 million DCR, the highest value was 3.83 million corresponding to 47.87% of supply (+0.7% from previous peak).
Nodes: there are 240 public listening and 115 normal nodes per dcred.eu. Version distribution: 57% on v1.2.0 (+12%), 25% on v1.1.2 (-13%), 14% on v1.1.0 (-1%). Note: the reported count of non-listening nodes has dropped significantly due to data reset at decred.eu. It will take some time before the crawler collects more data. On top of that, there is no way to exactly count non-listening nodes. To illustrate, an alternative data source, charts.dcr.farm showed 690 reachable nodes on Jul 1.
Extraordinary event: 247361 and 247362 were two nearly full blocks. Normally blocks are 10-20 KiB, but these blocks were 374 KiB (max is 384 KiB).

ASICs

Update from Obelisk: shipping is expected in first half of July and there is non-zero chance to meet hashrate target.
Another Chinese ASIC spotted on the web: Flying Fish D18 with 340 GH/s at 180 W costing 2,200 CNY (~340 USD). (asicok.com – translated, also on asicminervalue)
dcrASIC team posted a farewell letter. Despite having an awesome 16 nm chip design, they decided to stop the project citing the saturated mining ecosystem and low profitability for their potential customers.

Integrations

bepool.org is a new mining pool spotted on dcred.eu.
Exchange integrations:

• Huobi Pro added DCBTC and DCETH pairs.
• OKEx gradually rolled out trading DCR to BTC, ETH, USDT and OKB and added a page for Decred (note a bunch of N/As for ICO-related stats).
• Singapore-based DragonEx announced a DCETH pair.
• Netherlands-based Bitvavo recently added EUR to DCR conversion
• OOOBTC announced DCUSDT pair.
• Changenow announced the option to buy DCR with fiat.

Two OTC trading desks are now shown on decred.org exchanges page.
BitPro payment gateway added Decred and posted on Reddit. Notably, it is fully functional without javascript or cookies and does not ask for name or email, among other features.
Guarda Wallet integrated Decred. Currently only in their web wallet, but more may come in future. Notable feature is "DCR purchase with a bank card". See more details in their post or ask their representative on Reddit. Important: do your best to understand the security model before using any wallet software.

Adoption

Merchants:

• NeverFiat marketplace now accepts Decred. Notably it utilizes GloBee and recently announced Lightning support for Bitcoin.
• Crypto and Tech Gear integrated Decred and has a branded mouse pad for sale, as well as other merch.
• TokenPride: "We are seeking feedback on the general setup of our payment processor. We have tried to make it simple and user friendly. 10% of all purchases made in Decred will be donated to the Decred Development fund - and we will be releasing original Decred designs in the future".

BlueYard Capital announced investment in Decred and the intent to be long term supporters and to actively participate in the network's governance. In an overview post they stressed core values of the project:

There are a few other remarkable characteristics that are a testament to the DNA of the team behind Decred: there was no sale of DCR to investors, no venture funding, and no payment to exchanges to be listed – underscoring that the Decred team and contributors are all about doing the right thing for long term (as manifested in their constitution for the project).
The most encouraging thing we can see is both the quality and quantity of high calibre developers flocking to the project, in addition to a vibrant community attaching their identity to the project.

The company will be hosting an event in Berlin, see Events below.
Arbitrade is now mining Decred.

Events

Attended:

• Meetup in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
• Meetup in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (photo)
• Campus Party in Brasilia, Brazil. @girino, @Rhama and @matheusd talked about Decred. Matheus was interviewed by a TV channel. Check this quick report about the event, click "Show newer" to continue reading. (photos: 1 2 3)
• Blockchain Connect Conference in Silicon Valley, USA. (photo)
• Zcon0 in Montreal, Canada. @jz represented Decred.
• Blockchain Summit in London, UK. This was not a full blown presence with stand but rather investigation of opportunities by @kyle and @Ani. The resulting detailed report is a good example of a document advising to stakeholders whether it is worth spending project funds.

Upcoming:

• Meetup in Berlin, Germany on July 18. @jz will give a talk and Q&A about Decred and chat with Ele from @oscoin about incentivizing developers. Hosted by BlueYard Capital.
• O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, USA on July 18-19. People wishing to attend this developer focused event can use Decred25 discount code when registering to save 25%. For any questions join #event_planning and contact @Jesiki, she can also invite you to any gatherings in the area.

Media

stakey.club: a new website by @mm:

Hey guys! I'd like to share with you my latest adventure: Stakey Club, hosted at stakey.club, is a website dedicated to Decred. I posted a few articles in Brazilian Portuguese and in English. I also translated to Portuguese some posts from the Decred Blog. I hope you like it! (slack)

@morphymore translated Placeholder's Decred Investment Thesis and Richard Red's write-up on Politeia to Chinese, while @DZ translated Decred Roadmap 2018 to Italian and Russian, and A New Kind of DEX to Italian and Russian.
Second iteration of Chinese ratings released. Compared to the first issue, Decred dropped from 26 to 29 while Bitcoin fell from 13 to 17. We (the authors) restrain ourselves commenting on this one.
Videos:

• Can Decred Crack the Top 10? on Cheddar with @lukebp_ (cheddar.com, twitter)
• Decred Assembly - Ep20 - Governance: Driving the Future (youtube)
  @cburniske and @traceagain discuss the importance of governance protocols being foundational and problems with delegated proof of stake
  
• @phenrikand from @ApolloCapitalAU chats with @joshuam_ at @YBFVentures (youtube, tweet)
  

  This is an in depth exploration of one of the most interesting projects in the space. (@ApolloCapitalAU)
  

• Decred Review (Russian, youtube)
  

Audio:

• Unchained Podcast with Fat Protocols author @jmonegro of @placeholdervc, hosted by @laurashin (audio and links at unchainedpodcast.co, audio on itunes, twitter threads: @laurashin @ljxie)
  

  "I think that developers in the future are going to base their decision on where to build on the basis of governance and community. And so I look for good governance mechanisms and strong communities in blockchains." (@decredproject)
  

Featured articles:

• What is on-chain cryptocurrency governance? Is it plutocratic? by Richard Red (medium)
• Apples to apples, Decred is 20x more expensive to attack than Bitcoin by Zubair Zia (medium)
• Decred cryptocurrency guide (wikicryptocoins.com)
• Introduction to Decred by Smith + Crown (smithandcrown.com)
• Investment Reseach on Decred by @ResearchPaper (medium)
• Decred Proposes a DEX Without a Blockchain (coinjournal.net)
• Why You Should Keep an Eye on Decred by Daniel Frumkin (investinblockchain.com)
• Understanding Decred: Decentralized Governance and Decision Making on the Blockchain (blockgeeks.com)
• Decred short and to-the-point review by Timur Badretdinov (longcaller.com)
• Continued presence in the Proof of Work newsletter

Articles:

• What is Decred? (Turkish, coin-turk.com)
• EOS, Cardano, Decred Receive Top Ratings by Weiss Ratings (cryptoslate.com)
• Is it really interesting to invest in Decred? (Spanish, okdiario.com)
• Decred Seeking to Create Binance and EtherDelta Hybrid as New Exchange Model (icoexaminer.com)
• Decred Makes Bold Move with Upcoming Decentralized Exchange (cryptovest.com)
• Crypto Review: Decred Is On Fire to Smash All-Time High $120, While the Entire Market Bleeds (cryptorecorder.com)
• Decred Receives Top Score From Weiss Ratings (cryptodaily.co.uk)
• Decred Announces Upcoming Decentralized Exchange (coins.online)
• Decred’s Vision for a New Type of Decentralized Exchange (DEX) (btcmanager.com)
• Decred Flies Up With New Announcement (cryptodaily.co.uk)
• Decred Proposes a New Kind of Exchange (cryptodisrupt.com)
• Asian Cryptocurrency Trading Update: Decred Creeps Up in Sideways Market (newsbtc.com)
• Decred – The sleeper hit of 2018 and a long-term hold for the patient investors (captainaltcoin.com)
• Decred – CoinPayments Blog (coinpayments.net)
• Decred: Pay Attention to What’s Happening With This Coin (cryptovest.com)
• What is Decred? Why is it Going up During a Bear Market? (satoshi.blog)
• Decred Once Again in the Spotlight with OKEx, HuobiPro Listings (cryptovest.com)
• New Kind Of Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Concept By Decred (bitcoinexchangeguide.com)
• State of Cryptocurrencies: Summer 2018 (hackernoon.com)
• Price Analysis: Decred Plunges by 17% Over The Past 7 Days (investinblockchain.com)
• Decred Coin Review & Guide 2018 (abitgreedy.com)
• What makes Decred different and better from other cryptocurrencies? (cxihub.com)

Community Discussions

Community stats: Twitter followers 40,209 (+1,091), Reddit subscribers 8,410 (+243), Slack users 5,830 (+172), GitHub 392 stars and 918 forks of dcrd repository.
An update on our communication systems:

• Matrix chat logs are now viewable on the web with the exception of some channels that are not bridged. The new web logs means our chats are now fully public and indexed by search engines.
• Slack had an outage on Jun 27 that disturbed communications for a few hours, discussions continued on Decred's bridged platforms.

Jake Yocom-Piatt did an AMA on CryptoTechnology, a forum for serious crypto tech discussion. Some topics covered were Decred attack cost and resistance, voting policies, smart contracts, SPV security, DAO and DPoS.
A new kind of DEX was the subject of an extensive discussion in #general, #random, #trading channels as well as Reddit. New channel #thedex was created and attracted more than 100 people.
A frequent and fair question is how the DEX would benefit Decred. @lukebp has put it well:

Projects like these help Decred attract talent. Typically, the people that are the best at what they do aren’t driven solely by money. They want to work on interesting projects that they believe in with other talented individuals. Launching a DEX that has no trading fees, no requirement to buy a 3rd party token (including Decred), and that cuts out all middlemen is a clear demonstration of the ethos that Decred was founded on. It helps us get our name out there and attract the type of people that believe in the same mission that we do. (slack)

Another concern that it will slow down other projects was addressed by @davecgh:

The intent is for an external team to take up the mantle and build it, so it won't have any bearing on the current c0 roadmap. The important thing to keep in mind is that the goal of Decred is to have a bunch of independent teams on working on different things. (slack)

A chat about Decred fork resistance started on Twitter and continued in #trading. Community members continue to discuss the finer points of Decred's hybrid system, bringing new users up to speed and answering their questions. The key takeaway from this chat is that the Decred chain is impossible to advance without votes, and to get around that the forker needs to change the protocol in a way that would make it clearly not Decred.
"Against community governance" article was discussed on Reddit and #governance.
"The Downside of Democracy (and What it Means for Blockchain Governance)" was another article arguing against on-chain governance, discussed here.
Reddit recap: mining rig shops discussion; how centralized is Politeia; controversial debate on photos of models that yielded useful discussion on our marketing approach; analysis of a drop in number of transactions; concerns regarding project bus factor, removing central authorities, advertising and full node count – received detailed responses; an argument by insette for maximizing aggregate tx fees; coordinating network upgrades; a new "Why Decred?" thread; a question about quantum resistance with a detailed answer and a recap of current status of quantum resistant algorithms.
Chats recap: Programmatic Proof-of-Work (ProgPoW) discussion; possible hashrate of Blake-256 miners is at least ~30% higher than SHA-256d; how Decred is not vulnerable to SPV leaf/node attack.

Markets

DCR opened the month at ~$93, reached monthly high of $110, gradually dropped to the low of $58 and closed at $67. In BTC terms it was 0.0125 -> 0.0150 -> 0.0098 -> 0.0105. The downturn coincided with a global decline across the whole crypto market.
In the middle of the month Decred was noticed to be #1 in onchainfx "% down from ATH" chart and on this chart by @CoinzTrader. Towards the end of the month it dropped to #3.

Relevant External

Obelisk announced Launchpad service. The idea is to work with coin developers to design a custom, ASIC-friendly PoW algorithm together with a first batch of ASICs and distribute them among the community.
Equihash-based ZenCash was hit by a double spend attack that led to a loss of $450,000 by the exchange which was targeted.
Almost one year after collecting funds, Tezos announced a surprise identification procedure to claim tokens (non-javascript version).
A hacker broke into Syscoin's GitHub account and implanted malware stealing passwords and private keys into Windows binaries. This is a painful reminder for everybody to verify binaries after download.
Circle announced new asset listing framework for Poloniex. Relevant to recent discussions of exchange listing bribery:

Please note: we will not accept any kind of payment to list an asset.

Bithumb got hacked with a $30 m loss.
Zcash organized Zcon0, an event in Canada that focused on privacy tech and governance. An interesting insight from Keynote Panel on governance: "There is no such thing as on-chain governance".
Microsoft acquired GitHub. There was some debate about whether it is a reason to look into alternative solutions like GitLab right now. It is always a good idea to have a local copy of Decred source code, just in case.
Status update from @sumiflow on correcting DCR supply on various sites:

To begin with, none of the below sites were showing the correct supply or market cap for Decred but we've made some progress. coingecko.com, coinlib.io, cryptocompare.com, livecoinwatch.com, worldcoinindex.com - corrected! cryptoindex.co, onchainfx.com - awaiting fix coinmarketcap.com - refused to fix because devs have coins too? (slack)

About This Issue

This is the third issue of Decred Journal after April and May.
Most information from third parties is relayed directly from source after a minimal sanity check. The authors of Decred Journal have no ability to verify all claims. Please beware of scams and do your own research.
The new public Matrix logs look promising and we hope to transition from Slack links to Matrix links. In the meantime, the way to read Slack links is explained in the previous issue.
As usual, any feedback is appreciated: please comment on Reddit, GitHub or #writers_room. Contributions are welcome too, anything from initial collection to final review to translations.
Credits (Slack names, alphabetical order): bee and Richard-Red. Special thanks to @Haon for bringing May 2018 issue to medium.

You must read our rules before participating in XRP
Helpful links and answers to common questions will be updated frequently so check back often
 

• Please report any post or comment that violates our rules.
  
• Beginner questions that have already been answered will be removed. Use search on the right side.
  
• Number of meme, reaction, and prediction posts will be kept to a minimum.
  
• Speculation posts are not allowed. Promoting false information or perpetuating rumors will result in a ban.
  
• Referral/affiliate links or websites containing them will be banned.
  
• Last but not least, if you have tips and advice for newcomers, please share them here.
  

 
Ripple Subreddit Rules
https://www.reddit.com/XRP/wiki/rules
 
Helpful Links
Ripple Insights - Top 9 Frequently Asked Questions About Ripple and XRP (Jan 18, 2018)
Ripple’s Ultimate Strategy; why XRP will increase in value
Removing inefficiency of international payments with XRP
Reasons to expect XRP to be the most popular bridge asset
"XRP is competitive now in the USD/MXN corridor"
Ripple's Decentralization Strategy Update
XRP Market Performance
List of Ripple Partnerships and RippleNet Implementations
 
People to Follow
Ripple on Twitter
Brad Garlinghouse, Chief Executive Officer at Ripple
Yoshitaka Kitao, executive chairman, CEO and president of SBI Holdings, Inc.
David Schwartz, Chief Cryptographer at Ripple | aka u/sjoelkatz
Stefan Thomas, Former CTO at Ripple, Co-creator of Interledger. Founder at Coil
Patrick Griffin, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Ripple
Miguel Vias, Head of XRP Markets at Ripple
Warren Paul Anderson, Product Manager, xRapid/XRP at Ripple
 
Hodor's XRP Blog
TplusZero - research & analysis on #XRP
 
Most Discussed Topics and Answers
● The Case Against BankCoin - Banks need an independent digital asset to enable truly efficient settlement
● Ripple Technology → Fast Payments → XRP → Fast Settlement
● Solving the chicken and egg problem - FI's bridging payments with XRP & companies saving money by holding XRP
● Banks hold XRP under a contractual agreement | Build liquidity to bridge payments to raise the demand for XRP
● How the global adoption of xRapid (XRP liquidity tool) would affect the value of XRP
● Besides instant cross-border payment settlement, XRP can capture other use cases, value that doesn't yet exist
● XRP Ledger has numerous technological advantages over blockchain systems that use proof of work
● Ripple is committed to making the XRP Ledger as decentralized as they possibly can
● Quantum-resistant signature schemes - Adding a new scheme is easy and fast
 
XRP Wallets
You need 20 XRP to activate an XRP wallet. Fees can be changed by the validators through the voting process.
The reserve requirement protects the XRP Ledger from spam or malicious usage.
 
When you are sending XRP to an exchange, destination tag is very important.
Destination tag is not needed when you transfer XRP to your own wallet address.
 
● XUMM by XRPL Labs | Developers
XUMM is a free app (iOS and Android) that makes sending, receiving and interacting with the XRP ledger easy & secure.
 
● Ledger Nano S | Tutorial | FAQ | Buy Online | Ripple Recovery Tool
Cryptocurrency Hardware Wallet
When you get your Ledger wallet, you must reset it and get a new set of 24 words seed before using it.
 
● The World Exchange | How to Create a Cold Wallet for Ripple
A free user-friendly and purely client-side wallet
 
● GateHub | Support | Network Statistics
GateHub XRP Web Wallet
 
Tools
Check XRP wallet balance - Bithomp | Graph | Transactions
Print raw information about an account, a transaction or a ledger - RPC Tool
 
Exchanges
The best way to support XRP is to buy/sell XRP directly with your local currency, not with USDT, ETH, LTC, or BTC.
Available XRP pairs - AUD, BRL, CAD, CNY, EUR, GBP, IDR, INR, JPY, KRW, MXN, PHP, RUB, THB, TRY, UAH, USD, ZAR.
You can find the complete list of XRP exchanges and supported XRP/fiat pairs Here.
 
USD - US Dollar
Kraken | Bitstamp | Bitfinex | CEX.IO | Gatehub |
Exrates | Exmo | Mr. Exchange | Bitsane | Sistemkoin | BitBay | Quoine
 
EUR - Euro
Kraken | Bitstamp | Gatehub | CEX.IO | LiteBit.eu | Anycoin Direct
The Rock Trading | Bitsane | BitBay | BitFlip | Bitlish | Quoine
 
KRW - South Korean Won
Bithumb | Upbit | Coinone | Korbit | GOPAX | Coinrail
 
JPY - Japanese Yen
Kraken | Bitbank | Quoine | Mr. Exchange
 
CNY - Chinese Yuan
RippleFox | Ripple China | Fatbtc
 
TRY - Turkish Lira
Vebitcoin | BTCTurk | Koineks | Sistemkoin | Ovis
 
INR - Indian Rupee
Zebpay | Koinex | Unocoin | Bitbns | BuyBitcoin | BuyUcoin
 
AUD - Australian Dollar
BTC Markets
 
THB - Thai Baht
BX Thailand
 
MXN - Mexican Peso
Bitso
 
IDR - Indonesian Rupiah
Indodax | Quoine
 
RUB - Russian Ruble
Exmo | BitFlip
 
ZAR - South African Rend
Altcoin Trader
 
CAD - Canadian Dollar
Kraken
 
UAH - Ukrainian Hryvnia
Kuna | BTC Trade UA | BitFlip
 
GBP - British Pound
Cryptomate
 
BRL - Brazilian Real
Braziliex
 
SGD - Singapore Dollar
Quoine
 
AED - United Arab Emirates Dirham
BitOasis
 
PHP - Philippine peso
CX | Exchange
 
USDT - Tether
Poloniex | Bittrex | Huobi | OKEx | CoinBene | Upbit | HitBTC |
ZB.com | Gate.io | Sistemkoin
 
ETH - Ethereum
Binance | Bittrex | Gatehub | OKEx | OTCBTC | Upbit | HitBTC |
Bitsane | Mr. Exchange | CoinFalcon
 
LTC - Litecoin
Bitsane | Mr. Exchange
 
BTC - Bitcoin
Kraken | Bitstamp | Bitfinex | CEX.IO | Gatehub | Binance | Poloniex | Bittrex |
HitBTC | OKEx | Upbit | Huobi | BTCTurk | BTC Markets | CoinEgg | Exmo |
ZB.com | OTCBTC | Coinrail | Bits Blockchain | Triple Dice Exchange | Indodax |
Exrates | Qryptos | Gate.io | Bitsane | Bitso | Ovis | BCEX | BitBay |
Mr. Exchange | Orionx | CoinFalcon | Abucoins | BitFlip | LakeBTC | Coinbe

The Dow fell 724.42, or 2.94%, to 23,957.89, the Nasdaq lost 178.61, or 2.43%, to 7,166.68, and the S&P 500 declined 68.24, or 2.52%, to 2,643.69.
Stocks tumbled on Thursday as a slew of leery headlines left buyers on the sidelines. The S&P 500 lost 2.5%, dropping into negative territory for the year (-1.1%) and extending its week-to-date decline to 3.9%, while the Nasdaq and the Dow tumbled 2.4% and 2.9%, respectively.
There was little doubt as to where the market was headed at Thursday's opening bell, as equity futures were down big in overnight trading. There wasn't a particular catalyst for the negative disposition, but disappointing PMI readings in the eurozone and Japan, an unsatisfying apology from FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding the Cambridge Analytica data breach, and Wednesday's rate hike from the Fed didn't exactly bode well for investor sentiment.
The biggest headline catalyst, however, was President Trump's decision to impose tariffs of up to $60 billion on Chinese imports; Mr. Trump officially signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday afternoon. However, the decision wasn't a surprise -- Reuters first reported the president's desire to punish China for intellectual property theft via tariffs last week -- and actually had a silver lining considering the tariffs will only be implemented after a consultation period. Still, the duties do give new energy to the trade war debate.
Selling picked up notably in the final hour of the session, with the S&P 500 nearly doubling its earlier loss. The financial sector led the retreat, dropping 3.7%, as Treasury yields tumbled across the curve; the benchmark 10-yr yield declined eight basis points to 2.83%, while the 2-yr yield slid three basis points to 2.28%. The industrial sector (-3.3%) also showed notable weakness, while most of the remaining groups finished with losses of more than 2.0%.
The most influential sector, information technology, declined 2.7% -- a discouraging sign for investors who have looked to the sector for leadership; the tech group led last year's rally and is still the top-performing sector of 2018 despite Thursday's slide, up 4.3% year to date.
Among the noteworthy gainers was P, which rose 7.8% after Raymond James analyst upgraded the stock two notches to Strong Buy from Market Perform, saying he is positive on Pandora's acquisition of AdsWizz. Among the notable losers was ACN, tumbling 7.3%, despite beating earnings and revenue estimates for its fiscal second quarter and raising its guidance for the fiscal year.
Elsewhere, the major stock indices in Europe ended on a lower note, closing at their worst marks of the day; Germany's DAX dropeed 1.790 while UK's FTSE dropped 1.23%. European financials had a woeful showing today, but most notably, DB —the owner of the world's largest derivatives book—slumped to its lowest level since late 2016. In the Asia-Pacific region, equity indices had a mixed outing with Japan's Nikkei (+0.99%) showing relative strength.

Currency

The U.S. Dollar Index is up 0.1% at 89.87, clawing back above its 50-day moving average (89.86), which has been an area of congestion over the past few weeks. The yen rose on Thursday, reaching a three-week peak against the dollar, as traders piled into the Japanese currency in a safe-haven move spurred by global trade tension and losses in stocks.

• EUUSD: -0.28% to 1.2304
• GBP/USD: -0.21% to 1.4108
• USD/CAD: -0.03% to 1.2899

Treasury

U.S. Treasuries ended Thursday on a higher note with 10s showing relative strength while 2s underperformed. Recall that Treasuries climbed into yesterday's close while 2-yr and 5-yr note futures continued rising after the cash session ended. The 10-year Treasury yield fell more than 8 basis points to 2.82 percent, its biggest one-day decline since September of last year. It dropped as low as 2.79 percent at one point.

• 2-yr: -3 bps to 2.28%
• 5-yr: -7 bps to 2.63%
• 10-yr: -8 bps to 2.83%
• 30-yr: -6 bps to 3.07%

Commodity

Oil prices fell on Thursday as investors booked profits after this week's rally, but losses were limited by the continuing efforts of OPEC and its allies to curb supplies.

• On Energy:
  • Mar WTI crude oil futures settled -$0.86 at $64.30/barrel on the day
  • In other energy, Mar natural gas settled -$0.02 at $2.62/MMBtu
• On Metals:
  • Apr gold settled +$6.00 at $1327.60/oz, while Mar silver settled -$0.02 to $16.40/oz
  • Mar copper settled -$0.04 at $3.02/lb
• On Commodities
  • Hogs: -2.27% to 75.475s
  • Beans: unchanged to 1029-6s

Crypto

Bitcoin sank 4.4 percent to $8,506 on Thursday after Japan’s Financial Services Agency was said to be planning to tell Binance, the trading venue founded by Zhao Changpeng, to stop operating in the country without a license.

• Bitcoin: $8,633.44 (24hr: -3.50%)
• Ethereum: $530.24 (24hr: -5.94%)
• Ripple: $0.65 (24hr: -6.14%)

YTD

• Nasdaq +3.8% YTD
• Dow -3.1% YTD
• S&P 500 -1.1% YTD
• Russell +0.6% YTD

AH news

MU shares slip after reporting earnings.

• Q2 EPS: 2.82 vs 2.74, Q2 Revenue: 7.35B vs 7.28B
• Q3 guidance EPS 2.83, consensus 2.63

NK shares up following earnings report.

• Q3 EPS: 68c vs 53c
• Q3 Revenue: 9B vs 8.85B

Crypto Market Recap

• Cryptocurrencies are broadly mixed this afternoon with the price of Bitcoin (BTC) slightly lower by 0.12% in the last 24 hours to USD$3,465.05. Binance Coin (BNB) is continuing to rally and leads major coins in gains today, up 6.35% in the last 24 hours to USD$7.15. TRON (TRX) and IOTA (MIOTA) are also posting notable gains this afternoon, up 5.59% and 3.29% in the last 24 hours to USD$0.027016 and USD$0.258900, respectively. Stellar (XLM) lags major coins in the day’s trading, down 1.80% in the last 24 hours to USD$0.080706.

Crypto Developments in Financial Services

• Kraken, a large cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, announced the acquisition of Crypto Facilities, a cryptocurrency exchange and futures provider based in the United Kingdom, for at least USD$100mm. Although neither party revealed the exact value of the acquisition, they did say it was a, “nine-figure deal.” “We are excited to introduce eligible clients to these industry leading futures and index products,” commented Kraken CEO Jesse Powell in a press release on Monday, adding, “Over the coming months, our teams will continue to enhance and expand these offerings.”

Crypto Regulatory Environment

• Venezuela’s cryptocurrency industry members must follow the new regulatory framework outlined in a crypto bill that took effect on January 31st, 2019. Initially approved by the country’s Constituent National Assembly in November 2017, the document called, “Constituent Decree on the Integral System of Crypto Assets,” contains 63 unique articles that outline rules and definitions concerning crypto assets, blockchain mining, cryptography, and more. Most prominently, the new regulation requires domestic mining entities and cryptocurrency exchanges to obtain mandatory licenses from the country’s regulators.
• The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is requesting help from blockchain analytics companies to develop a compressive system that analyzes blockchain data and implements risk monitoring and compliance enforcement procedures. As per an official statement by the SEC on January 31st, 2019, the regulatory agency is seeking a blockchain data company with a, “capability to derive insights from the available data,” including the ability to identify the owners of cryptocurrency addresses.
• Daniel Haudenschild, the newly elected President of the Swiss Crypto Valley Association (CVA), declared in an interview with major Swiss news outlet Swissinfo that the recent cryptocurrency bear market is damaging Switzerland’s position as a global blockchain hub. Haudenschild, who officially took office as President of the CVA on January 31st, 2019, said in the interview that his priority will be to, “heal divisions to prevent Switzerland losing any more ground to other countries,” in attracting global blockchain projects. Haudenschild went on in the interview to urge the country’s regulators to keep Switzerland an open and easily accessible option for blockchain investors.
• A new report published by Quartz discusses that an Indian government committee tasked with assessing the impact of cryptocurrencies on the county is concerned of the impact digital assets could have on the stability of the rupee. The article cites an anonymous source active in the cryptocurrency industry who said, “If Bitcoin and other digital currencies are going to be allowed to be used for payments then whether it will end up destabilizing the fiat currency is a major concern for the committee.”

General Crypto News

• “Amazon will have to issue a currency sooner or later,” said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on Twitter this weekend. Zhao is of the belief that the global online retail giant cannot avoid issuing its own altcoin in the future. Zhao also discussed crypto payment acceptance on Twitter this weekend, writing, “For any internet (non-physical) based business, I don’t understand why anyone would not accept crypto for payments. It is easier, faster, and cheaper to integration than traditional payment gateways. Less paperwork. And reaches more diverse demographic and geography.”
• Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, discussed in an interview with popular podcast host Joe Rogan that he believes Bitcoin (BTC) will still be the Internet’s native currency. During the interview, Dorsey declared, “Bitcoin was something that was born on the Internet, that was developed on the Internet, that was tested on the Internet, it is of the Internet.” Dorsey also discussed his belief that the Internet is moving towards a system where data is created and is online permanently, which is, “what blockchain helps enable.”

Sources:
http://www.minci.gob.ve/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Gaceta-Oficial-Decreto-Constituyente-sobre-el-Sistema-Integral-de-Criptoactivos.pdf https://coin360.io/ https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://cointelegraph.com/news/amazon-will-have-to-create-its-own-crypto-in-future-binance-ceo-says https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-valley-assoc-pres-switzerland-must-be-open-and-easy-for-blockchain-investors https://cointelegraph.com/news/indian-govt-committee-is-worried-about-cryptos-impact-on-rupees-stability-report https://cointelegraph.com/news/kraken-buys-uk-exchange-crypto-facilities-for-at-least-100-million https://cointelegraph.com/news/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-still-believes-bitcoin-will-be-internets-currency https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-securities-regulator-solicits-blockchain-analytics-companies-for-data-review https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuela-new-crypto-legal-framework-comes-into-force https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuela-parliament-approves-crypto-bill-to-combat-financial-blockade https://twitter.com/cz\_binance/status/1091696602308259840 https://www.apnews.com/7997739035034979a615ec35d8008866 https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-kraken-acquires-crypto-facilities https://www.coindesk.com/venezuelas-crypto-exchanges-miners-must-register-under-new-rules https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c18a03f93cf06df47dab8a1c1a7f87a9&tab=core&\_cview=0 https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/02/04/kraken-completes-biggest-crypto-deal-in-2019-massive-100m-acquisition-that-may-boost-european-market/ https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/daniel-haudenschild-\_crypto-bickering-has-set-switzerland-back--says-cva-president/44731108 https://youtu.be/\_mP9OmOFxc4

20180821

• Bitcoin – up 6.18% at $6725.97 (GMT-4 23:30)
• Ethereum – up 5.39% at $292.29(GMT-4 23:30)
• Ripple – up 7.24% at $0.3457 (GMT-4 23:30)
• Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index – down 3.62% at $460.20 (GMT-4 23:30)
• Total market cap rose by 6.23% to $219,747,908,783 ((GMT-4 23:30)

Overview: * Bitcoin Price Spiked Near $6,900 as BitMEX went offline
Crypto Funds: * Vancouver-based Hex Capital, which invests in early-stage crypto assets and blockchain companies, has launched with a $10 million fund.
Investments: * Online investment platform eToro has inked a deal that will see it pay with bitcoin to sponsor teams within the UK's top soccer league. * Chinese bitcoin mining equipment manufacturer Bitmain has invested an undisclosed amount in blockchain data storage startup Lambda, the latter announced last Friday. * Japan’s leading financial giant SBI Holdings announced on Monday that it had made an investment in LastRoots cryptocurrency exchange.
Regulatory Updates: * Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources asked about the cost of cryptocurrency mining and the opportunities for blockchain in the public sector on Wednesday.
Notables: * Research: Global Automotive Blockchain Market Set to Reach $1.6 Billion by 2026 * Binance Sees Volume Growth While Many Exchanges, Including Coinbase Sees Huge Drops in Volume * China's Social Media Giant WeChat Blocks a Number of Crypto Media Accounts, Sources Say

Developments in Financial Services

• Binance is launching a JV with Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange (LCX) to launch a fiat to cryptocurrency exchange, Binnace LCX. The exchange/platforming will be based in Liechtenstein and offer trading between Swiss Francs (CHF) and euros (EUR) against major digital currencies pairs with the potential for new trading pairs in the future.
• bloXroute Labs, along with a partnership with a team of student at Northwestern University, are experimenting with a trustless scheme to address the scalability limitations of Bitcoin’s P2P platform. At the moment, with the Lightning Network, Bitcoin transactions capacity is capped at 82 BTC. According to Sarit Markovich, professor of strategy at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the bloXroute solution is scaling at 100x better and are targeting 1,000x.
• BOLT, a privacy overlay for the lighting network that will be applied to zcash, was formally launched on Github today. BOLT will obscure transaction, balances and sendereceiver identities. The BOLT upgrade to the zcash protocol is considered a soft fork.
• Coinbase, according to CEO and co-Founder Brian Armstrong in an interview with Bloomberg, is adding 50k new users a day. Assuming this run-rate, it implies Coinbase will add 350k new users a year.
• DGE, a South Korean blockchain developer, who launched its native cryptocurrency TMTG a few weeks ago that is linked to value of gold is attempting to partner with global gold exchanges (after agreements with the Korea Gold Exchange and Vau Diamond Exchange) to create a stable ecosystem for TMTG. In the opinion of DGE, many cryptocurrency developers do not consider the stability of their coins and its impact to the ecosystem these cryptocurrencies support.
• Ethereum Classic is +18% this morning after crypto’s inclusion into the Coinbase index fund after being added to the Coinbase Pro trading platform. At the moment, Ethereum Classic has a 0.91% allocation in the fund.
• Huobi, the Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange (and third largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world), has announced partnerships with Yatai International Holding Group, Vnesheconombank, Chi Fu Group, Asia International Finance Holdings, and Dbank Group to create cryptocurrency trading exchanges/platforms in the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Canada. The five companies will use Huobi’s Cloud service which will provide the different platforms with the tools they need to open their exchanges on a proven framework.
• LINE, a Japanese social messaging app, announced that is forming a USD$10mm blockchain venture capital fund. The company believes the decision to create a blockchain venture fund will make LINE one of the first publicly traded companies to formalize token investments through a corporate fund structure.
• Pantera Capital announces it has raised USD$71mm for a third cryptocurrency fund. Calling it Venture Fund III, Pantera has already begun to make investments following an allocation to cryptocurrency trading platform Bakkt (that has a JV with ICE).
• Ripple Labs continues to focus on expansion plans, even in the face of recent lawsuits from the District Court of California. The lawsuits content that Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, XRP, should be considered a security which the company flatly rejects. In spite of these issues, Ripple Labs remains focused on its overseas expansions plans in Asia and the Middle East.
• Ripple Labs has endorsed three cryptocurrency exchanges, Bittrex, Bitso, and Coins.ph as its preferred partners for transactions with Ripple’s xRapid payments system. Management at Ripple Labs is encouraging users in the US, Mexico and the Philippines to use these exchanges while transacting with xRapid. XRapid is a solution for Ripple’s blockchain-based real-time gross settlement system and is meant to facilitate international fiat transfers between financial institutions.
• Square announces that customers will be able to buy/sell Bitcoin via its Cash App across all 50 states in the United States.
• The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) is publicly expressing concerns about the acquisition of Beat Holdings, listed on the TSE, by Noah Ark Technologies, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency frim. The TSE concerns are related to management’s bias to stay away from the cryptocurrency sector.

Regulatory

• The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is exploring using a distributed ledger technology (DLT) in place of its current clearing house electronic sub-register system. According to Dominic Steves, Managing Director and CEO of the ASX, shifting to a DLT system would save the exchange as much as USD$23bn. A DLT would permit customers to use nodes instead of sending messages and connect to the whole database instead of having to communicate with several different databases and should help eliminate errors.
• Bitmain’s upcoming IPO is coming under scrutiny as investors continue to worry about its long-term viability. Specifically, there seem to be concerns about Bitmain’s reserve of Bitcoin Cash which is considered an illiquid position given the daily turnover in current Bitcoin Cash markets. Bitmain’s IPO is currently being valued at USD$18bn.
• Bloomberg is reporting that a Bitcoin-based ETN that is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm will begin targeting US investors. The ETN, Bitcoin Tracker One, is listed and traded in Sweden but is now being quoted in USD$. Traders will buy the ETN in a similar way that they buy ADRs where transactions are in USD$ but settlement, clearing and custody will be done in SEK.

General News

• Alexander Petersons, product director of cloud mining service Hashtoro.com and self-proclaimed crypto-enthusiast, believes the cryptocoin industry will begin shifting to cleaner and smart mining by taking advantage of local climates to help reduce electricity consumption. While cryptocurrency critics cite costs of crypto mining as an impediment that will limit widescale adoption of digital currencies, Petersons and the team at Hashtoro.com believe the use of clean energy will help address the challenges of scalability.
• Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver has hinted the online cryptocurrency news publisher may consider an ICO in the future. The topic was brought up during a conversation with one of Bitcoin.com’s lead developers about developing tokens on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain - - Bitcoin.com published a new tool helping aspiring developers to build tokens on the Bitcoin Cash protocol.
• A group of researchers/hackers have claimed to have hacked John Mcafee-backed hardware wallet Bitfi. According to its advertising, Bitfi claims to be unhackable. The researchers/hackers claim to have had complete access to a Bitfi wallet for the past two weeks, tracking data being sent out of the wallet while still being connected to the Bitfi servers.
• According to a research report by Citrix, 59% of UK companies have been affected by cryptojacking malware. Cryptojacking malware employs its victim’s computational resources without their permission in order to mine cryptocurrencies for the attacker and leads to a wasteful increase in electric power consumption and the slowing down of affected devices. According to Citrix’s research, 80% of the cryptojacking cases took place in the last six months.
• Deviant coin releases its whitepaper ahead of the launch of its hybrid decentralized exchange and its open-source hardware wallet. The novelty of Deviant is that it proposed to create rewards within its ecosystems without the typical centralized control of node operators. The Deviant network offers improved speed with stealth addresses for complete anonymity, encrypted messaging for secure communication, low transaction fees, lower confirmation time, and a limited total supply.
• The Ethereum community continues to struggle with DApps topping the number of downloads on the blockchain network that are promising investments with high returns that turn out to be fraudulent. As an example, Team JUST, the anonymous development team behind the gambling DApp FOMO 3D is warning that an indentical version of its game is eating up 1/3 of the Ethereum network’s total computational power and raising USD$7mm over the past week.
• Genesis Mining, an Iceland-basd hashpower hosting service, is forcing customers to upgrade their Bitcoin mining contracts following this year’s drop in cryptocurrency valuations. The company is discounting the upgrade price of its Radiant service per 1 TH/s to USD$180 from USD$285. In 60 days, Genesis announced it will terminate open-ended contracts that mine less than the daily maintenance fee.
• Hash House, a crypto-themed café and workshare space in the city of Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province in China, has recently launched. Among its many features, Hash House will provide visitors with learnings materials on cryptocurrencies and will hose seminars and meetups on different crypto topics.
• China News reports that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Business School has received a USD$20mm research grant to investigate the security capabilities of electronic payment systems. Partnering with University of Hong Kong (HKU), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), the HKUST-led research initiative will focus on artificial intelligence, network security and blockchain technologies.
• During an unofficial discussion with Quartz India, unnamed state official in the Indian government, which is examining the impact of the virtual currency ecosystem.
• IBM files updates to a pending patent for managing a databases management system (DBMS) using a blockchain database. The patent was initially filed in December 2017 and covers the idea of connecting a blockchain databases with a traditional central database.
• Joe Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum and ConsenSys, does not see the recent sell-off in cryptocurrencies constraining growth of the crypto ecosystem. In an interview with Bloomberg, Lubin suggested the recent run-up in cryptocurrency valuations is similar the previous six bubbles with each bubble more pronounced than the previous.
• Joe Lubin, the co-founder of the Ethereum Foundation, during an interview with Bloomberg, claims Ripple is not a blockchain technology and is not a competitor for Ethereum. In Lubin’s mind, Ripple is a payment system, not a blockchain technology. In the case of EOS, Lubin cautions against its decision-making framework and doesn’t believe it is should be treated as layer-one technology yet.
• Users can now be paid to participate on the lightning network nodes. The average fee on the lightning network currently is about 1 satoshi. In comparison, the montly income of using the lightning network has been estimated to be closer to USD$2 for a prominent application developer.
• Microsoft recent patent applications suggests the company is looking to use trusted execution environments (TEEs) within its blockchain technology. TEEs are pre-determined types of blockchain or other security protocols in validation nodes. TEEs will help assist in the implementation of consortium blockchain networks and will also assist in verifying blockchain transactions on networks where multiple pre-authorized entities must interact.
• Saudi Arabia officials warn citizens in a formal joint statement from the Ministry of Trade & Investment, Ministry of Information and Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency that trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are illegal in The Kingdom. This press release is in contrast to The Kingdom’s positive disposition to blockchain technology.
• Taproot, a protocol overlay for Bitcoin pushed by one of Bitcoin’s most well-known developers Greg Maxwell, will offer a privacy layer which will address Bitcoin critics who believe the benchmark cryptocurrency’s privacy is awful. Taproot, supported by other popular Bitcoin developers, will require the Schnorr upgrade which is still not ready to be implemented. The power of Taproot will be the ability to make smart contract transactions look like any regular Bitcoin transaction, offering anonymity for senders and receivers.
• The national government of Vietnam has decided to ban imports of cryptocurrency mining equipment. According to the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, 3,664 ASIC devices were imported into the city in C1H2018. The ban of cryptocurrency mining equipment is related to a government investigation into a ICO-fraud that scammed USD$660mm from 32,000 domestic investors. At the moment, cryptocurrencies are outlawed as payments in Vietnam after the Vietnamese Central Bank refused to accept cryptocurrencies as a recognizable form of non-cash payments.
• During an interview with Crypto Congressman Jason Hsu, Vitalik Buterin, the co-Founder of the Ethereum Foundation, highlighted his worries about the lack of sustainable applications on the Ethereum blockchain. Buterin is working on a proof-of-stake and charting protocols to help address the current bottlenecks that are preventing widescale adoption of Ethereum. In his opion, privacy concerns remain the biggest hurdle for widespread adoption of Ethereum in the financial sector.

Sources:
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