Topic: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain – Industry News – (08.23.19 – 08.30.19) (Read 118 times)

Total Market Cap, as of 08.30.19 at 12:00pm (PST): U.S. $247,228,974,45 (-9.3%)

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STORY OF THE WEEK   
• In a high-profile court case between Craig Wright and the Kleiman estate, the U.S. district court has awarded the Kleinman estate with 50% of the alleged 1.1 million BTC David Kleiman mined with Wright as well as intellectual property associated with the software.
• Back in 2018, David Kleinman’s estate began the lawsuit against Wright for half of the fair market value of the mined bitcoins as well as intellectual property associated with a trust called the “Tulip Trust”.

CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING SERVICES
• Gemini integrates the “Silvergate Exchange Network”, allowing institutional customers on its exchange platform to deposit and withdraw USD to and from their accounts in real time.

• Coincheck will reduce the maximum leverage for margin traders on its platform from 5x down to 4x. This is scheduled to take into effect on October 31st, 2019.

• Binance to launch a new service dubbed “Binance Lending”. Holders of Binance Coin (BNB), Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Tether (USDT) will be able to lend their assets to others to earn interest.

REGULATION
• In a document released by The Portugues Tax and Customs Authority (PTA), the regulator has outlined trading and payments associated with cryptocurrencies in the country will be exempt from Value Added Tax (VAT) and capital gain taxes.

• 25-year-old Los Angeles resident Kunal Kalra is facing federal charges for exchanging up to U.S. $25 million in cash and crypto without a licence or a KYC/AML protocol in place.

TECHNOLOGY
• CoinMarketCap, a major data source provider of traded cryptocurrencies and exchanges, will be releasing a new liquidity ranking system in November.

• French cybersecurity officials, known as “cyber gendarmes” have announced the detection and disabling of a malicious botnet with over 850,000 servers primarily situated in Latin America. The botnet was infecting computers with Monero crypto-jacking software, dubbed “Retadup” as well as stole personal data from Israeli hospitals.

• A security vulnerability was found on the Lighting Network. A core developer of Lightning has recommended to upgrade existing software against three affected Lighting node versions.

• Hashgraph, a decentralized network to build blockchain based applications is set to release its main-net beta to the public on September 16th. Dubbed “Open Access”, developers can begin to create accounts and build dApps on the platform alongside hundreds of existing third-party developers utilizing the service.

• Telegram to release code for its TON blockchain on September 1st. TON is a platform to host fast, secure and scalable decentralized applications capable of handling millions of transactions per second.

• A vulnerability was found in Ethereum’s second most popular client, Parity. The vulnerability presented no possibility to steal funds but had the capacity to shut down a portion of existing Ethereum nodes.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION
• BAKKT will enable deposits for Bitcoin on September 6th to prepare for its daily and monthly futures contracts trading on September 23rd.
PEOPLE

• Former Head of Finance at PayPal Europe, Joe Podulka, has joined cryptocurrency lending and borrowing start-up Cred serving as CFO.

TWITTER
• @AngeloBTC – “Got a message from a friend that trades with serious size - he said long capitulation once we break $8k. I tend to believe him.”

• @MrMichaelNye – “I have traveled around the world for $crypto events for the last 1.5 years and one thing has stood out: No one actually uses crypto. I have met maybe 5-10 people in this time that actively use Bitcoin/crypto beyond trading. We have a long way to go before adoption.”

• @cryptoSqueeze – “Summary of altcoins in Year 2019 1. BTC pump, Alts dump 2. BTC dump, Alts dump 3. BTC consolidates, Alts flat 4. BTC recovers, Alts dump 5. BTC finally dumps, Alts dump”