📰 Weekly Crypto Meta: CBOE Re-applies for VanEck/SolidX Bitcoin ETF, QuadrigaCX Exchange Lost $190 Million, NEM Foundation Has a Month Left Before Bankruptcy
CBOE Re-applies for VanEck and SolidX Bitcoin ETF
Cboe has re-submitted a request to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to change the existing rules, which will allow the launch of VanEck/SolidX Bitcoin-ETF. On January 22, the Chicago Board Options Exchange recalled its bid to open Bitcoin ETF, formally justifying this action by the US government shutdown. The application was filed back in June 2018, but it is now pending again.
XBT Bitcoin Futures continue to trend downward, $LTC up 5% amid dismal monthly crypto returns. Feb $XBT Bitcoin Futures trading 3385; outpaced by $SPX & #gold. #Cboe, Van Eck, & SolidX re-file #Bitcoin #ETF proposal. Host @jermalchandler. 01/31/19 https://t.co/LOi3tfWDfE
Cboe (@CBOE) February 1, 2019
Now the regulator has 240 days to consider the proposal formed by companies. Given the current conditions of the cryptocurrency market, it is difficult to say how the situation will change in a few months. It is likely that the re-submission of the application will be the only significant event before 240 days have passed; and it is possible that the Bitcoin ETF case may be shelved.
Fidelity Completes Final Tests Of Its Crypto Platform
Investment company Fidelity Investments has announced that its platform for trading and storing cryptocurrency assets Fidelity Digital Asset Services (FDAS) is going through the final stages of testing. Reportedly, Fidelity developers and invited participants (customers) take part in the test.
Recently it became known that Fidelity's Bitcoin Custody Service will be launched this march. Previously, the company announced the launch of the platform in the first half of this year. However, so far large crypto products do not report exact release dates, like, so far nothing is known about the exact launch of Bakkt, another product oriented to the wide market of investors.
SEC Intends To Get Data Of The Most Popular Blockchains
On January 31, the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued an official announcement confirming that the regulator is analyzing blockchain transactions. The Commission is currently looking for a provider who would help them not only to receive, but also to analyze information about blockchain transactions, including the identification of the user.
"The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is issuing these sources sought notice as a means of conducting market research"
Earlier, the SEC has already expressed distrust of cryptocurrency and blockchain as an independent tool. Given lingering history of Bitcoin ETF and other products, it is also impossible to say how the most popular blockchains will help, and how this information will be used.
QuadrigaCX Lost $190 Million, Scam or Incompetence?
The longest bearish Bitcoin market, which began after the bull run "hype" 2017, is marked by the gradual disintegration of infrastructure and cryptocurrency exchanges hacks. However, everything is not so simple in the case of the Quadriga, crypto platform based in Canada.
At the moment it is one of the largest Canadian cryptocurrency platforms. The exchange holds roughly 26,500 bitcoin ($92.3 million USD), 11,000 bitcoin cash ($1.3 million), 11,000 bitcoin cash SV ($707,000), 35,000 bitcoin gold ($352,000), nearly 200,000 litecoin ($6.5 million) and about 430,000 ether ($46 million), totaling $147 million, according to the affidavit (source).
Earlier, the exchange was managed by Gerald Cotten, CEO of QuadrigaCX. According to the exchange's procedure, Cotten moved most of the coins to the cold wallet, so only a small amount of active funds on a hot wallet was accesible. However, in connection with the Cotten's death, access to the cold storage has been lost. On January 31st, the widow of QuadrigaCX founder confirmed this to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.
Cotten was the one who had access to Quadriga's cold wallet, respectively, users lost about 250 million Canadian dollars ($190 million U.S. dollars) due to this. Robertson (widow) also added that after Cotten's death, “Quadriga’s inventory of cryptocurrency has become unavailable and some of it may be lost.”
IOTA Foundation: 10 million Euros Stolen Will Be Returned To Users
As a result of a hacker attack in early 2018, IOTA users lost a significant amount of cryptocurrency through the seed-generator. The case of one of the largest attacks of 1Q 2018 has been taken under special services control, and now, a year later, it is became known that 99% of the funds will be returned to IOTA users. At the moment, funds are being held by law enforcement as evidence against a hacker from Oxford, England, who is accused of stealing around 10 million euros.
Europol announced that it helped UK and German law enforcement agencies arrest a 36-year old man from Oxford, England, accused of stealing around 10 million euros (about $11.4 million) in IOTA coins from more than 85 victims around the world since January 2018.
The thief has been arrested last week and charged; the police managed to catch the hacker when he tried to withdraw money.
South Korean FSC Refused to Lift The Ban on ICOs
According to statements by the local regulator Financial Services Commission (FSC), the ban on domestic initial coin offerings will not be lifted. This decision was informed by the results of a survey conducted by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).
"To run a business, collecting money from others, the business must be transparent and consistent with the plan. There should also be a mechanism that allows someone to manage their money and return it".
The reasons why the ICO is still outlawed in Korea are the same. First, it is a high risk for investors in terms of financial reporting, legality and company registration, and most importantly, whether the token issuer can guarantee the protection of such risks or not. The agency noted that the cost of projects' tokens since launch has decreased by an average of 67.7 percent.
NEM Foundation Has a Month Left Before Bankruptcy
The NEM blockchain platform, which includes the use of native cryptocurrency NEM (18th rank by market cap), is likely to have funding difficulties and is on the verge of bankruptcy. The president of the NEM Foundation, Alex Tinsman said that the organization intends to submit a funding request to the NEM community fund for 160 million tokens.
"Basically we realized we had a month to operate, due to the mismanagement of the previous governance council (Alex Tinsman is new elected president).
Like many other blockchain/crypto projects today, NEM use staff reduction as an anti-crisis measure. According to media reports, about 150 employees may be dismissed. However, the final decision on staff reduction will be received after the investors vote.
What kind of inefficient management method is Tinsman talking about? Between December 2017 and January 2019, the foundation spent about 80 million euros on marketing, and promised to present the finished product of the NEM platform at the end of this year. Probably, such a strategy was not the most viable on the market, and Tinsman will try to fix it.
BitTorrent Token Hype: $ 7.2 Million At The Crowdsale Stage, And 4x After Entering The Market
The crowdsale of the recently announced BitTorrent Token (BTT) by TRON has ended. Crowdsale took place on the Binance Launchpad platform, and caused a lot of excitement due to its marketing campaign started by Tron and Binance. Recall that TRON promised to link BTT with the previously acquired BitTorrent platform and pay with these tokens for file distribution. A total of 1,000 people took part in the purchase of a new token, and they used the maximum available allocation of $20,000.
Both sessions concluded. Took about 18 minutes, due to a system issue, would have taken 18 seconds otherwise. Demand was astronomical.
CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 28, 2019
The demand for the purchase of a token, which price increased after crowdsale, was significant. Most of the users who probably wanted to buy a well-promoted cryptocurrency could not access this feature. According to Binance CEO, all tokens were sold out in 18 seconds, although the total sales time estimated at 18 minutes - considering the communication problems due to the heavy load.
Will BTT be fully integrated into BitTorrent? Will it be useful for TRON's ecosystem? Will be known later.
VanEck CEO: Bitcoin Investors Switch To Gold. What Would It Mean?
As CNBC noticed, "Bitcoin's hot streak is well and truly dead. <..." The cryptocurrency has not been able to crack above $4,000 in three weeks". The sad beginning - but we already have a "solution". According to an Van Eck, CEO of Van Eck Associates, Bitcoin investors are now looking toward gold.
"Interestingly, we just polled 4,000 bitcoin investors and their number one investment for 2019 is actually gold. So gold lost to bitcoin and now it's going the other way"
VanEck Associates created GDX and GDXJ, the most popular gold exchange-traded funds on the market. But we also know about the participation of VanEck on the cryptocurrency market. Of course, VanEck probably did not mean cryptocurrency enthusiasts or people close to the field. Most likely, indeed, the interest to cryptocurrency of investors from the traditional sector to has declined, and gold again has "been acting tremendously well over the last two or three months" (quote).
The news has received wide publicity in the crypto community. Some analysts and just interested persons stated the relative stability of such an asset as gold, others expressed a lack of confidence in Van Eck's words, suspecting him of promoting his product and even market manipulation.
SWIFT Announces Integration With R3 Blockchain Company
The SWIFT international interbank system will use the technology provided by the blockchain-consortium R3. The company should begin testing the R3's platform, which will allow to provide gpi-payments.
“Following the recent launch of our Corda Settler, allowing for the payment of obligations raised on the Corda platform, it was a logical extension to plug into SWIFT GPI. SWIFT GPI has rapidly become the new standard to settle payments right across the world. All the blockchain applications running on Corda will thus benefit from the fast, secure and transparent settlement provided through the SWIFT gpi banks.”
GPI is one of the standards of international payments, increasing the speed and transparency of payments, integrated into the SWIFT system.
Litecoin Adds Confidential Transactions
This week, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee promised to provide new properties of the cryptocurrency he created. These two new properties - fungiblity and confidentiality - will be implemented in the cryptocurrency, although, as the author notes, previously neither Bitcoin nor Litecoin had them.
According to the developer, the update will take place in 2019. At the same time, the ecosystem is likely to avoid global shocks, since Litecoin's soft fork should present an updated version of cryptocurrency to users.
👉 Anti-ASIC ProgPoW won't be included in the next Ethereum fork
🏁 Börse Stuttgart officially confirmed the launch of crypto trading platform | Now R3 is going through a stage of internal reorganization
💱 Italian bankrupt exchange BitGrail will return money to users | B2C2 received a FCA license to work with cryptocurrency derivatives | Binance DEX will support hardware wallets | Indian Zebpay opens offices in Spain and 4 other EU countries | Binance now supports Visa/Mastercard deposits
🏛 Cryptocurrency is equated to money in Wyoming
👁 2 groups of hackers are responsible for 60% of the total number of hacker attacks on crypto | Interference in US elections: Bellingcat discovered Bitcoin suspicious transactions | Research: Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies contain vulnerabilities
