Weekly Roundup: November 12, 2018 to November 17, 2018

By Swati Kishore

Welcome to our weekly roundup crypto enthusiasts! Let’s take you through some of the headlines that made waves this week.

During a panel discussion at the Web Summit Conference, the Silicon Valley Billionaire and Venture Capitalist, Tim Draper gave a blow to fiat money by stating that the government-issued currency is akin to political currency. What are your thoughts on this, do you trust fiat currencies?

Another famous statement was made by the CEO of Russia-based Sberbank. While speaking to journalists, Herman Gref, the CEO of Sberbank, said that he expects Blockchain Technology to be ready for industrial use in 2 years. He elaborated, “The hype around the technology [blockchain] is now over, and the technology is entering the stage of industrial development. It needs a year or two to be implemented at the industrial scale.”

Adding to the positive sentiment was Blockchain Investment Fund, Pantera Capital’s CEO, Dan Morehead. In an interview with Bloomberg, Morehead suggested that Bitcoin is here to stay. Adding, he said about the world’s first cryptocurrency, “It’s great at cross-border money movement… it’s great at storing your wealth especially if you live in a country with depreciating currency or capital controls…”.

Millenials are definitely winning the crypto race with a study by the New York Post revealing that millenials are more inclined towards crypto. The report stated that, ‘over 25% of millennials already own digital assets while another 30% plans to invest in the same, in the very near future’. The millennials’ role in the crypto world is well represented in this year’s Forbes 30-Under-30 list, where as much as four CEOs and founders, namely Hunter Horsley (28), JB Rubinovitz (26), Nader AL-Naji (26) and Olaoluwa Osuntokun (25), are featured for their work on blockchain scaling, crypto finance, and crypto asset management.

The crypto markets were highlighted by volatility this week with Bitcoin dropping below the 6000 USD mark as the crypto world witnessed red day on November 14, 2018. Most top cryptocurrencies took a hit for the worse, with some even falling by 20% in the last day. Not long after that did Bitcoin ABC win the hard fork race as the trading began for Bitcoin Cash SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC on November 15, 2018 on some of the major cryptocurrency exchanges. While the early trends showed a lot of volatility; however, later in the day, Bitcoin ABC showed much more consistency both regarding Hash power and blocks mined. At the time of writing this news, Bitcoin Cash ABC was trading at USD 240.89, while Bitcoin Cash SV was trading at USD 138.00.

As per a news, TRON surpassed the total number of transactions for BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH combined, with the highest observed transaction day being November 9 with over 1.3 Million transactions. In another news, the OneGramCoin (OGC), which is the first Sharia finance law compliant digital currency backed by at least one gram of gold, began trading on an Altcoin platform known as Trade Satoshi.

Zeneix, the South Korean crypto exchange which was opened s a result of a mutual dialogue between China and South Korea in May 2018, has been instructed to take actions to terminate its services as per the government’s directive against unauthorised platforms. In another news from Asia, the top financial regulator of Japan, the Financial Service Agency (FSA) has recently unveiled its plans to regulate crypto wallet services. In a meeting, the agency discussed the risks associated with crypto wallet services such as wallet failure, cyber attack, money laundering, and planned on taking proactive regulatory measures.

Germany’s only regulated crypto exchange Bitcoin.de in a significant step has acquired a 100% stake in Frankfurt-based Tremmel bank for an undisclosed amount. The recent acquisition will help the Bitcoin Group SE, owner of Bitcoin.de to explore and extend its services for digital currencies. Jack Dorsey’s Square Inc has revealed a 68 percent increase in its revenue post the adoption of Bitcoin on its Square Cash App.

Through a verbal agreement, Ethereum has made it clear that it is positive on releasing the Constantinople upgrade by mid-January 2019, however, developers have made it clear that the Hard Fork can even see a possible further extension provided that any additional problems arise.

When it comes to the world of patents, a lot has happened this month! Let’s recap quickly. Internet retail behemoth, Amazon has won two Blockchain-related patents. The first patent is Signature Delegation, that tells about cryptographic signatures in a Merkle-tree based data scheme. The second patent is Extending Grids in Data Storage Systems that demonstrates a method for creating an extendable shard in a database. American digital document solutions company, Xerox has won patent for Blockchain auditing system to track electronic files. Bank of America adds another patent to its kitty after being awarded patent for enterprise level crypto storage system. IBM has filed a patent application titled ‘Blockchain for Open Scientific Research’. The patent claims that the scientific research process can benefit hugely from the use of the Blockchain technology.

On the world map, Iran Blockchain Labs (IBL) and Russian Association of Crypto Industry & Blockchain (RACIB) have signed an agreement  for the development of crypto-economy in the Islamic Republic. Vietnam is on path to developing appropriate regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, as per a report submitted by the Vietnam’s Ministry of Justice to the government in Hanoi.

Venezuela’s PDVSA, the state company in charge of the country’s oil production, has announced through a tweet that the country plans to take Petro to OPEC in 2019, as the leading oil-backed digital currency. In another news, Iran has finalized the development of Rial-backed national cryptocurrency.

The world of hacking and illegal mining has seen much revelation as the South Korean police cracked down on Mining Malware which hacked as much as 6000 personal computers! China-based crypto mining giant, Bitmain has sued an ‘Unknown Hacker’ over a heist of as much as USD 5.5 million.

The latest in the lineup of Bitcoin related frauds was Google’s G Suite Twitter handle. On November 13th, the Twitter handle of G Suite was hacked to promote a fraudulent giveaway for 10,000 BTC.