Weekly Roundup: November 19, 2018 to November 24, 2018

By Swati Kishore

All the important crypto news from everywhere in the world- our news roundup is your weekly digest of all the latest happenings in the industry.

Let’s dive straight in with the week’s latest announcements made by some of the most well-known personalities in the Blockchain world.

The CEO of Binance, Changpen Zhao, said in a cryptic tweet that the famous crypto exchange just might include XRP as the base currency. CZ also spoke in support of the financial institution investors entering the crypto market at an event.

In another news, Chinese billionaire, Jihan Wu, who is also the CEO and Co-Founder of the mining hardware company, Bitmain, showed his support for Bitcoin Cash post the Hard Fork which took place on November 15, 2018. Wu said that he has faith in the cryptocurrency.

In the light of the recent slump in the crypto markets, analyst Tom Lee cut down his Bitcoin price prediction for the year-end of 2018 from $25,000 to $15,000. CryptoOracle Executive Lou Kerner tried to shut down the crypto bubble debate by comparing Bitcoin with retail and tech giant, Amazon. During an interview with CNBC Luke said that people should view these cryptocurrencies like big brands which came into the picture during the dot-com wave.

A lot has happened on the world map in the crypto industry.

As per a report, Estonia, which is hailed as one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world, reportedly issued over 900 licenses to cryptocurrency and blockchain-related firms in the past year alone. The Northern European country continues to show its support for the crypto industry.

A recent market analysis carried out by Dappros, a London-based blockchain consulting firm, has revealed that India is home to the second most number of blockchain developers in the world. According to the report India has nearly 19,627 developers and is second to only the United States with 44,979 blockchain developers as of October 24th 2018.

Portuguese news outlet Dinheiro Vivo has revealed that the popular Portuguese football club, Sporting Clube de Portugal, is reportedly considering launching its ICO as an alternative way to raise funds.

Another interesting revelation comes from the report titled ‘The Holiday 2018’ published by Piper Jaffray. The report states that American teenagers now prefer getting cryptocurrency and V-bucks (virtual currency in the video game Fortnite) for Christmas as compared to gift cards, cash, or even money for gas. In another news from the United States, the US Federal Election Commission has drafted a new proposal which aims to regulate political donations through Crypto Mining.

The Venezuelan government organised a crypto consultancy seminar in Caracas to garner expert viewpoints on its legal tender, the Petro. Venezuela’s cryptocurrency got international approval with the head of Spanish Blockchain Institute & technology, Mr  Lluís Mas Luque, mentioning that the Venezuelan Petro “represents a triumph over” conventional financial systems in the state.

Another country pondering over issuing its own cryptocurrency is Saudi Arabia. The desert nation is considering launching its digital currency, which will be backed by the central bank, by the mid of 2019.

In Asia, Singapore is reported to have brought Cryptocurrency Exchanges under its payment regulations as per a new bill which was new bill was put forward by Mr. Ong Ye Kung, on behalf of Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister-in-charge of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

The University of Tokyo has begun to offer a blockchain course at its graduate engineering school, thanks to $800,000 donation from a consortium that includes the Ethereum Foundation as well as Japanese banking juggernaut Sumitomo Mitsui.

As per a report from China, amid free-fall of crypto markets in the last two weeks, Chinese miners have reportedly been selling off their mining rigs in kilos, instead of selling at a slashed price as generally observed! It is being said that miners don’t see the crypto mining market as a profitable domain as the falling prices exceed the cost incurred by miners regarding electricity and other maintenance charges.

Thailand has been under a military dictatorship led by the Royal Thai Armed Forces since 2014, but despite its authoritarian regime, surprisingly, the military junta has acted upon quite a few plans to employ cryptocurrencies and Blockchain systems across the country. In November, the Bank of Thailand’s governor, Veerathai Santiprabhob revealed the possibility of the Central Bank issuing its own cryptocurrency to improve interbank transaction speeds.

In the country of Gibraltar, GSX has become the first stock exchange in the world to own a fully regulated blockchain exchange.

Italian security regulator CONSOB has issued warning to three cryptocurrency companies operating in the country as none of them was authorized by regulators to promote or execute any of the schemes that they promised.

Let’s see what the world of partnerships, collaborations and launches has in store!

It’s been reported that BitGo, one of the world’s top security firms, is on track to grow to 100 tokens and assets by the end of 2018. As per reports, the the wallet and blockchain security firm has its eyes set on taking more stablecoins under its wings in order to stay on the top.

The Columbia University has collaborated with IBM to set up two Blockchain Accelerator Programmes.

Israel’s first cryptocurrency investment firm, Silver Castle Ltd., has launched two new crypto funds in the month of November.

The world will have to wait till January 2019 for the Bitcoin Futures launch on Bakkt as the intercontinental exchange has pushed back the launch to January 2019.

Georgia-based Bitcoin payment service provider, BitPay has listed the new Paxos Standard to expand its merchant settlement services by adding the heavily traded stablecoin to its offerings.

SWIFT India, a joint venture of many Indian and overseas banks including the HDFC and Bank of India, has announced in a press release its partnership with Fintech firm MonetaGO for a Blockchain pilot in the financial realm.

Coinstats, an app-based cryptocurrency research, and portfolio tracker, and Coinscribble, an anonymous social journalism platform focusing on the cryptocurrency industry recently announced that they had mutually agreed, to enter into a strategic partnership. This will eventually widen CoinScribble’s user base by a significant amount and also facilitate CoinStat users with a more comprehensive overview of the crypto market.

According to a press release, which was published on Wednesday, November 21st, in an effort to promote and encourage the use of decentralised technologies, two energy divisions of Seimens, one of the largest industrial manufacturing conglomerate company, have joined a blockchain driven energy platform

As for the markets, most of the cryptocurrencies have witnessed bloodbath. The cryptocurrency trade market which had lost close to 22% of its total market capitalization in the week previous to this was not able to gain momentum this week yet again. On November 19, Bitcoin broke broke the lower threshold of $5000. At the time of writing this news post, Bitcoin was trading at USD 4,344.97.

Bitcoin Cash experienced a lot of volatility owing to its controversial hard fork on November 15, 2018. It led to most of the crypto exchanges halting the trading of the cryptocurrency. However later in the week, eventually most of the exchanges, like Coinbase, began the trading once again.

According to an announcement made by the company representatives, the cryptocurrency hardware wallet Ledger also resumed its Bitcoin Cash (BCH) services on November 23, 2018. Ledger had too suspended its BCH services on 14th November to prepare for the cryptocurrency’s radical change in algorithms to prevent security breaches and attacks.

In the world of controversy, there was plenty of buzz. The popular charity NGO, Make-A-Wish Foundation, fell prey to a crypto jacking incident when crypto-jackers planted cryptocurrency mining malware on the charity’s website.

The photography appliances producer Kodak’s new cryptocurrency project seems to have gotten into trouble even before making any significant progress! As per a news report, the contractors for the project have now decided to file a lawsuit against KodakOne (the parent company for the project) for non-payment of dues amounting more than $1,25,000.

Another news report states that the bitcoin rally that caused its prices to reach $20,000 has come under a microscope as the US Justice Department is currently investigating the event for possible evidence of market manipulation. The Bloomberg News report federal prosecutors are taking a closer look at Bitcoin, Tether, and its exchange Bitfinex for possibilities of a potential criminal conspiracy.