Topic: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain – Industry News – (08.09.19 – 08.16.19) (Read 119 times)

Total Market Cap, as of 08.16.19 at 12:00pm (PST): U.S. $270,098,635,992 (-10.76%)

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STORY OF THE WEEK   
• BAKKT has received regulatory approval from the CFTC (U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and NYDFS (New York Department of Financial Services) to launch its derivatives product paying out in physically delivered Bitcoin. The first contracts are scheduled to launch on September 23rd, 2019.

CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING SERVICES
• Coinbase Pro lists Algorand (ALGO) on August 14th, 2019. ALGO will be available for deposits and transfers to customers within Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, except for New York State.

• Bitfinex’s partner exchange Ethfinex rebrands to DeversiFi. Launched in mid-2018, the platform is a decentralized, peer-to-peer exchange for ERC20 tokens.

• Coinbase acquires institutional based cryptocurrency and custody service provider Xapo for U.S. $55 million.

• Poloniex deslists 23 trading pairs due to low volume (the full list of pairs can be found on the announcement tweet).

• A sell-off of Ripple (XRP) on cryptocurrency exchange Beaxy resulted in tokens to trade at an  approximate 62% discount relative to other exchanges. The platform shortly after halted all trading activities on the platform as it investigated the situation.

REGULATION
• Coinbase UK drops support for privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash. Some UK customers claimed to receive letters warning users to convert their Zcash (ZEC) holdings or move them to an external wallet by August 26th, 2019.

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seeking to freeze the assets of Reggie Middleton, the organizer of a U.S. $14.8 million Veritaseum (VERI) initial coin offering (ICO).

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed decisions on three bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposals. The ETF’s were filed by Bitwise Asset Management, VanEck/SolidX and Wilshire Phoenix Funds.

• The United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) alleges BitMEX has misled the public in a newspaper ad from January of this year. The watchdog has received complaints on the firm exaggerating the return on an investment in Bitcoin or failing to illustrate the risks of an investment against the asset.

TECHNOLOGY
• Cybersecurity firm Varonis has discovered a cryptojacking virus dubbed “Norman” that mines cryptocurrency Monero (XMR)

INSTITUTIONALIZATION
• According to sources familiar with the matter, Barclays is no longer providing banking services to Coinbase. Barclays and Coinbase representatives have since declined to comment on the matter.

PEOPLE
• Former CTO of Coinbase has joined decentralized finance blockchain project Findora. Srinivasan will help guide the firm as a strategic advisor.

• The CEO of Switzerland’s SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), Martin Halblaub, departs the company following disagreements on how the trading platform should be run.

TWITTER
• @Timcast: “I bought bitcoin a couple of years ago and have ignored it ever since I am very happy with that decision.”

• @kimDOTcom: “Get out of stocks NOW. Buy bitcoin and gold. Trust me.”