DEATH KNELL? An option premium of 0.0202 bitcoin ($217 at the time) paid via a smart contract is being viewed as a warning for Wall Street. The trade, carried out by London-based firm Skew in partnership with Digital Garage, indicates how blockchain could save both time and money by doing away with traditional financial intermediaries. Full story
SCALING ADMISSION: For ethereum critics, last month brought a “gotcha” moment. Joseph Lubin, co-founder of ethereum, acknowledged onstage at Ethereal Tel Aviv that the network, in its original form, wasn’t built for mass adoption. “We knew it wasn’t going to be scalable for sure,” the ConsenSys CEO said. Now, at DevCon, it's become clear a planned reboot meant to address some of those issues, known as Eth 2, is at least two years away. Ethereum devotees at the event, though, took the comments in stride, seeing iteration as inherent to development. Full story
CRYPTO CHARITY: UNICEF launched a cryptocurrency fund to receive, hold and distribute donations of bitcoin and ether as part of a promise to back open-source technology for kids around the world. The body says it's the first UN body to receive contributions in cryptocurrency and grants in kind. The Ethereum Foundation provided the first contribution to the project. Full story
LIBRA-PEGGED LIBRA: Thirty different blockchain companies and nonprofit organizations plan to fork the Facebook-led Libra crypto project to build their own permissionless alternative, dubbed OpenLibra. Announced at the ethereum developer conference Devcon by Lucas Geiger, co-founder of blockchain infrastructure startup Wireline, OpenLibra will function as a stablecoin pegged to the actual Libra cryptocurrency. “We’re going to fork the code, fork the community and create a new cryptocurrency called OpenLibra,” said Geiger during a presentation. “There is no token sale, no equity and no company behind this initiative.” Full story
BREAKING SILENCE: After raising $1.7 billion last year and maintaining almost complete radio silence since, messaging app Telegram is finally going public with its involvement in the Telegram Open Network (TON). The first mention of TON and its native “gram” tokens appeared on Telegram’s official website Tuesday morning in the form of a terms of service for the token’s wallet app. According to the post, Telegram will integrate the wallet into the company’s flagship messaging app and offer it as a standalone product. Full story
VOTE NOW: CoinDesk launched its "Most Influential" poll asking readers to nominate their heroes (and villains) of crypto this year. The winners, also selected by reporters and editors, will be revealed in early December. Vote here. |
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| NO FED BUMP: Bitcoin (BTC) is lacking a clear directional bias on Wednesday, despite the Federal Reserve’s plan to restart its inflation-boosting balance sheet expansion. The cryptocurrency is still consolidating between $8,200 and $8,300 at press time, although the short-term technical charts are calling a bullish move to the 200-day moving average, currently located above $8,600. The case for a corrective rally to $8,600 would weaken if prices drop below $7,763, invalidating Monday’s bullish candlestick pattern. Full story |
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| | BLOCKCHAIN BLUES: The open-source, blockchain-based SoundCloud competitor, Audius, may be running headfirst into legal and capital retention problems, The Verge reports. Audius is a means of accessing content (mostly indie bands) uploaded by users, and hosted by a distribution of node operators, which the company says makes it a censorship-resistant platform. But since going live, the website has been flooded with copyright-infringing material, which Audius has little power to remove. It's an open question whether Audius can be held liable for copyright infringement. But, whatever the answer, legal costs may be enough to bury the service. |
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