Top shelf

Ripple invests over $900 Million in its community, $50 Million in MoneyGram. Stellar is now stakeable. EOS holders find solace in Block.One case.

At Stake

Staking is the name of the game right now in the crypto world. Stellar is the latest currency that announced the launch of a staking program, designed to share 6.20 Billion XLM across the community. The project is called the Staking Marathon, and there aren't any special requirements. Every XLM wallet owner can apply, and the rewards could reach up to 35% of your balance, depending on the number of people that are approved. The following article shares more details on how to get your share.

Regaining ground

Ripple has been losing ground to some of the smaller cryptocurrencies on the market because of their proactive approach that awards their users via various staking programs for passive income. They have no intention of simply sitting and waiting on the sidelines... Kiersten Hollars announced a new fund of 4.75 Billion XRP that will be distributed among loyal users, over time. Every XRP owner can claim a share that could go as high as 30% of his available balance. Check out the following article for more information.

Crypto Morals

Block.One has become infamous recently after accusations of illegal practices during the initial EOS allocation period. The SEC has determined that the company has broken the rules, and the initial decision was to tax Block.One. In an attempt to dodge any more legal action, the company has decided that 95.41 Million EOS Tokens will be reallocated to users instead - there's surely some thing that we are not aware of in this trial... Every holder can apply for his share, and the expected return is quite intriguing.

Quick bites

“That most people still hate bitcoin isn’t a bad thing,” writes Dylan Grice of Calderwood Capital. The Economist gives an introduction to bitcoin by comparing it to a posh London club known primarily for turning away Mick Jagger at the door.

Citing high gas fees and slow blocktimes, Audius said it will migrate part of its system to Solana’s blockchain from an Ethereum sidechain. Staking and governance functionality will remain on Ethereum. (CoinDesk)

OKEx, still paralyzed by founder’s arrest, details plans for bitcoin cash hard fork. (CoinDesk)

On Purpose podcast host and Onramp Invest CEO Tyrone Ross invites the public to CoinDesk’s first podcast live taping party on Wednesday, Nov. 13.

Attendees will be part of the experience and get to ask frank questions to Ross and his guests Adam Pokornicky, COO of Digital Asset Investment Management; Andy Edstrom, financial adviser and investor at WESCAP Group; and Sunayna Tuteja, head of digital assets at TD Ameritrade; as they raise the big questions for financial advisors in a jargon-free, transparent discussion.

Pokornicky, Edstrom and Tuteja, who are also speaking at CoinDesk’s Bitcoin For Advisors event for registered investment advisers Nov. 11-13, are experts in the digital asset class in the context of how it fits in the realm of portfolio management, including understanding bitcoin’s macro implications, preparing against bitcoin’s volatility and how to fold it into retirement accounts.

Podcast taping attendees will also be fast-tracked for approval to attend Bitcoin For Advisors after applying separately here.

Hashrates & fees

The average price of a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain is now 0.00086764 BTC (~$11.66), the highest since June 2018. This represents a 573% increase over the past 12 days. The spike in fees comes amid a rally to yearly highs to $13,800, and as the networks number of unconfirmed transactions ticked up 1,800% reaching highs not seen since December 2018. “In other words, the mining power dedicated to approving transactions and mining blocks has gone down amid the price rally, boosting waiting times and network congestion,” CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole reports.

At stake

Happy birthday, Bitcoin

Tomorrow marks the 12th anniversary of Bitcoin’s white paper.

Published by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto to a small cadre of cryptographers, the eight-page conceptual proof for a fully decentralized, peer-to-peer electronic cash system has since sparked a monetary revolution.

In the intervening years, Bitcoin has been called many things: a scam, a ponzi, dead on arrival, a joke, a tool for criminals, rat poisoned squared, a currency for geeks, and did we mention dead?

While pundits are wont to predict Bitcoin’s death, the simple ledger has remained, and has even breathed new life into how societies think about money, financial access and the nebulous concept of “trust.”

Heads are turning. Yesterday, The Economist, published an ode to Bitcoin saying, “Even people who are hostile to bitcoin will concede that its technology is fiendishly clever. It is essentially a way of accounting for who has spent what. Instead of a central exchange to keep score, and to verify payments and receipts, it uses an electronic ledger that is distributed across the entire system of bitcoin users.”

Wishing Bitcoin a happy birthday, cybersecurity firm Halborn produced a video with a number of celebrities wishing it well. (It's a bit bizarro, but well-meaning.)

In a cameo appearance, Wu-Tang Clan's RZA said, “Ya know Bitcoin was created by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto doin his thang. I wanna say one thing about this— If you don’t know about it, you better know about it, because yo… at the end of the day scientists can create something, son, but the value on everything is what we put on it. The Bitcoin revolution has started.”

With the U.S. Election Day next week, much is at stake - including crypto policy over the next four years.

Like it or not, this election will matter for the crypto industry. Our latest limited-run newsletter, The State of Crypto: Election 2020 by regulatory reporter Nikhilesh De, aims to walk you through why.

At stake: Will new crypto products be approved or allowed to operate in the U.S.? Will regulators target more overseas exchanges and platforms like BitMEX? Will the U.S. launch a “digital dollar” or some other form of central bank digital currency?

These questions will come down to who takes the reins at the various financial regulators and government departments. Over the next several days, we map out the possible outcomes and introduce analysis of the candidates.

Our limited-run newsletter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at least until Election Day. Subscribe to The State of Crypto: Election 2020.