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Topics - Pegasus

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1

XRP, the cryptocurrency of Ripple, is going through a stagnant phase even the cryptocurrency market is experiencing a high at present. XRP has reported an increase of only 16%, reaching its present price of USD 0.36, after experiencing a monthly drop of USD 0.30. On the other hand, other cryptocurrencies with a large market capitalization as well as numerous altcoins have registered gains that have gone over 20% which has left XRP behind in the market number game.

However, it seems things are going to change for XRP soon as the stage for its increased adoption is believed to be set, thanks to Ripple’s ILP implementation.

During the recent 2019 InterLedger Summit, there was an announcement that revealed Stronghold Inc. would be implementing the 1st InterLedger Protocol or ILP. The move will prove to be a massive step towards the adoption of XRP. The company Stronghold Inc. offers a platform for financial services that facilitates global payments as well as networks of foreign exchange.

To share this update with the world, XRP Research Center took to the micro-blogging site:

https://twitter.com/XrpCenter/status/1114679821290934272

ILP will offer a means to bridge the cryptocurrency and fiat to enable efficient, interoperable, and fast exchange. In fact, it is considered a link that would eventually accelerate the adoption of all the digital currencies, not just XRP, thanks to its interoperability feature.

There was also a demonstration of streamlined payments by Kava Labs’ Kevin Davis who went on to swap XRP, Bitcoin (BTC), and Ethereum (ETH), in mere seconds utilizing the SDK Switch of InterLedger.

This demo captured all the attention from crypto enthusiasts across the world, especially XRP fans, who were delighted witnessing such ease and speed offered by InterLedger for swapping ETH and XRP.

https://twitter.com/warpaul/status/1114553142132105216

With the introduction of such fintech products by Ripple, it would become possible to easily onboard financial corporations with XRP for performing both the international and local transactions that are cheaper, faster as well as more seamless in nature.

In fact, the IL protocol could possibly become a critical factor to the whole digital currency market attaining mass adoption in the future.
On this exciting latest development, Evan Schwartz who is active at Ripple as an engineer and who has coinvented InterLedger shared his thoughts on Twitter stating:

https://twitter.com/_emschwartz/status/958391694520717312

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2

BCH/USDT and LTC/USDT perpetual contracts will be opened to the public on April 12, 2019.

Bibox, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, announced that the Bitcoin Cash [BCH] and Litecoin [LTC] perpetual contracts will be available to trade at 3:00 P.M. on April 12, 2019 [GMT+8], per its official blog. BCH and LTC perpetual contracts will also be priced in Tether [USDT], and do not charge the funding rate from users, according to the statement.

Aries, Bibox Co-founder of Bibox, stated,

“As we are always putting users needs at the forefront. The addition of BCH and LTC perpetual contracts is a natural move for us to meet the high demand.”

Highlights of Bibox perpetual contracts:

February 18: Launch of BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT

March 8: The accumulative daily trading volume reached 100 million USD

March 14: Perpetual contracts trading is available on Bibox App which supports the IOS & Andriod system in English, Chinese and Korean.

March 20: Launch of EOS/USDT

March 25: The accumulative total trading volume reached 5 billion USDT

Currently, Bibox perpetual contracts have opened BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT, EOS/USDT trading pairs, allowing users to long or short with flexible leverage of 1-50x according to their risk preferences. Before then, Bibox has held a perpetual contract team competition to celebrate the launch of EOS/USDT, setting up

Combat Power Rank and Hall of Fame with rewards as follows:

1st rank: 1BTC

2nd rank: 2000USDT

3rd rank: 1000USDT

The event concluded on April 8, 2019, and rewards will be given out to users’ accounts before April 20. In the last 24 hours, the accumulative trading volume of Bibox perpetual contracts has reached 645 million USDT.

About Bibox

Bibox, one of the largest crypto exchanges registered in Estonia, has offices in the US, Switzerland, Canada, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam, with plans to expand to more countries. Bibox traders enjoy secure, stable, and user-friendly digital assets management services, with access to over 100 high-quality coins and over 200 trading pairs. In the last 24 hours, the daily trading volume amounted to $789 million.

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3
On April 10, 2019, the cryptocurrency exchange OKEx announced that its IEO was sold out in just one second. While this seems like an astonishing performance at first, we’ve found that there some controversy around this token sale.

The Blockcloud IEO

The controversial Blockcloud token sale was launched at April 10, 13:00 (CET) on the cryptocurrency exchange’s IEO launch platform, OK Jumpstart.

Users had to hold at least 500 OKB daily (with 2,500 OKB for maximum contribution) for seven days before they could subscribe for the Blockcloud IEO.

The subscription period was planned to last a maximum of 30 minutes. However, OKEx tweeted that the over-subscription limit has been reached “within only a short time,” so the subscription period ended in less than 30 minutes.

Blockcloud IEO ended in just 1 second

Yesterday OKEx tweeted that the Blockcloud IEO completed in only one second:

“All $BLOC sold out in 1 second. The BLOC/OKB spot trading market will open at 15:00 today (CET),” the cryptocurrency exchange stated.

If we assume that this statement is true, OKEx would have set a record among all token sales, including ICOs and IEOs, beating Bittrex’s VeriBlock (10 seconds) and Binance’s Fetch.AI (22 seconds).

However, is one second enough for humans to reach the hard cap of a token sale? It seems like the community are very angry about it, blaming OKEx:

“How can you win in one second lol… Botland. Gladly will stay away from all these IEO’s,” one disappointed user replied. Another stated that “it took him three seconds just to read OKEx’s tweet, possibly referring to that it would take him much longer to contribute to a token sale.” And claims that the contribution button was never turned active.

It seems like OKEx had set a goal to maintain BLOC’s launch price. The following screenshot was taken shortly after the price launch. Clearly see the large blocks of demand around 0.04 OKB per BLOC.

OKB / BLOC orderbook following the launch

OKEx publicly proud of the 1600% IEO results

While the token’s sales one second sold-out raises the question of whether or somehow the token sale was manipulated, the cryptocurrency exchange seems to be very proud of the results. So proud, that OKEx did even include the 1,600% surge of Blockcloud’s token (BLOC) in an email to the community, something odd for a crypto exchange. We had never seen Binance formal announcement including BNB’s price change.

The email that was sent by OKEx shortly after the IEO

BLOC surges, OKB crashes

We’ve found one additional dubious fact about the OKEx token sale, which is the fluctuations in OKB’s price, the native token of OKEx exchange. Like other exchanges running IEOs, OKEx has set rules around the Blockcloud IEO that required participants to hold at least 500 OKB before subscribing.

OKEx’s native token had dropped from $2.41 on April 4 to $1.87 by the time of the token sale on April 11, which is roughly a decrease of 22.5% in those seven days. As of writing this, the price of OKB is $1.52, approximately a 37% decrease from the price recorded on April 4.

On the contrary, Binance’s BNB has surged 60% over 30 days before a Binance Launchpad announcement with no slowdown for the price increase.

Huobi that had its first IEO on March 26 experienced an increase of over 88% in its native HT token from March 1 until the date of the token sale.

Needless to say, since started trading, BLOC had lost around 40% of it’s value aginst USDT.

BLOC / USDT 5m chart

Past scandals around OKEx

A recent volume research had found out evidence that OKEx is one of the most-known exchanges with a significant difference between their reported trading volume to their actual volume.

In September 2018, it was reported that OKEx founder Star Xu was released from his arrest in Shanghai. According to the reports, Xu was aiding the police in an investigation into investors’ accusations that the cryptocurrency exchange had manipulated Bitcoin futures on its platform.

Shortly after, in October, CryptoPotato interviewed Tim Byun, OKEX’s Chief Risk Officer who stated that the alleged arrest of Xu is “fake news.”:

“Lastly, regarding the recent allegations that our Founder, Star Xu was arrested, that is fake news. What is impressive these days is that there is minute-to-minute coverage about events in the crypto space,” Byun said.

“So when I saw the pictures that were released, I could immediately and see that Star was on the other side of the counter filing a police report due to some overzealous customers harassing him. Unfortunately, the stories misrepresented the events to make it look as though he was being arrested, which is false.”

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4

The biggest crypto broker and exchange has launched a credit card that allows you to instantly spend or cash withdraw the cryptos you hold on Coinbase.

The newly launched website says you can choose through an app which crypto to pay with. “It takes just a few seconds to switch between bitcoin, ethereum and more,” they say.

By more presumably they mean all cryptos on offer at Coinbase, which would include BCH, ETC and others.

For now however this is limited to just UK with plans to expand to the European Union with the card issued by Paysafe Financial Services Limited.

It costs about £5 to get the card, with most services then free, including cash withdrawals. Brits can now withdraw up to £200 pounds worth of their Coinbase crypto for free per month, with a 1% fee then applying.

Contactless payments can be made for free within UK, but there is a 2.49% conversion or liquidation fee which isn’t that much different from the buying or selling fee on Coinbase itself.

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5

Upon the Bittrex’s BitLicese rejection reasons, outlined by New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), the exchange hit detail press and denies regulator’s allegation and claim towards Bittrex’s AML and compliance practices.

Bittrex Disagree with NYDFS’ Claims

In a recent report, Coingape had explained how and why NYDFS rejected BitLicese applied by Bittrex in 2018. However, the report also mentioned NYDFS’s order 60 days time for the exchange to wind up its operation within New York. While regulators released refusal to report on Wednesday, the April 10, addressing Bittrex CEO Bill Shihara – the exchange responded on Thursday, the April 11 via a press release and addressing its customers on social media.

Source: Twitter

In its response letter, Bittrex expressed its disappointment and argued that the regulator’s decision actually harms than protecting NY customers. Contradictory to regulator’s finding, Bittrex notes that the exchange worked ‘diligently with NYDFS’ and addressed their questions since they first applied for BitLicense.

The blog further reads that;

First, and foremost, we adamantly disagree with NYDFS’ claims and allegations in regard to our anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance practices. Corporate responsibility is in our DNA and our commitment to regulatory and compliance guidelines is second to none. More specifically, today’s letter contains several factual inaccuracies that we feel must be addressed.

Concerning the Bittrex’s capital status addressed by NYDFS, the exchange says that the regulator had imposed ‘capitalization requirements far in excess as compared to other states’. It mentioned that the exchange had provided ‘bond’ to cover the entire capitalizations of all Bittrex’s customers based in New York but ‘still it was rejected’. The exchange also outlined to regulator’s point of Bittrex’s vague account name (In NYDFS’s language – ‘obscene terms and phrases’) – nevertheless, as per the exchange, the mentioned names did not match. It says;

The letter mentions accounts with names that did not match. There were less than a dozen of these names in total and none of these accounts were ever active and none of these accounts ever made a trade. The fact that these accounts were unable to trade demonstrates the effectiveness of our diligence process, rather than a deficiency as NYDFS alleges

Established in the year 2014, Bittrex is currently holding around $63.5 million trading volume and sits at 54th rank on a graph of Coinmarketcap. All in all, the exchange is restricted to operate a business in New York since the regulator rejected BitLicese – nevertheless, it can resubmit the application in future if it intends to do so.

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6

Many Chinese bitcoin miners migrated to Iran in 2018 for its cheap electricity amid China’s crackdown on crypto mining. However, they’re finding the harsh environment in the authoritarian regime unwelcoming.

Feng Liu operates a bitcoin mine holding over 20,000 units of Antminer T9. He told Chinese crypto website 8BTC News that many Chinese crypto miners flocked to Iran last year because electricity is cheap (as low as $0.006 per kilowatt-hour) in the oil-rich nation.

“If you want to invest in power plants in Iran, the government there will supply free natural gas for the first five years, which further lowers electricity costs.

“Gasoline costs only 0.6 yuan ($0.09) per liter and diesel 0.4 yuan ($0.06) per liter. Labor cost is also quite cheap.”

https://youtu.be/Mc_uBd19i8A

BITCOIN MINING RIGS GET CONFISCATED AT BORDER

However, because of Iran’s generous electricity subsidy, the government has banned energy-devouring crypto mining rigs at border checks. As a result, mining equipment get confiscated at the border.

Liu says he was able to import 3,000 T9 miners into Iran last year with the help of several friendly border agents, who declared the rigs as computer processors. However, he has had trouble importing additional mining gear.

“The risk of miners being detained and confiscated at the border is quite high. It’s said that Iranian customs have so far confiscated at least 40,000 crypto mining rigs of various models.”

Bitcoin mining equipment is noisy and use a lot of electricity. | Source: Youtube screenshot

GREEDY POWER PLANTS WANT 50% OF MINING PROFITS

Another problem Liu has encountered is that while electricity is cheap in Iran, greedy intermediaries want huge cuts of bitcoin mining profits.

“I found a power plant that could offer electricity at 0.06 yuan ($0.009) per kilowatt-hour. After deducting operation costs, we agreed on a 70/30 profit split.

But two months later, the power plant claimed a 50/50 split and doubled the electricity price offer.”

However, the establishment of a state-approved cloud computing industrial park is offering a glimmer of hope. There are currently over 10,000 crypto mining rigs operating in the park.

“Mining investors need to pay a certain amount of refundable electricity deposit to the Iran’s state grid. Small and medium-sized miners could apply to enter the industrial park in groups.

With nearly 900 megawatts of power, the cloud computing industrial park can hold 500,000 to 600,000 mining machines.”

ELECTRICITY THEFT IS A RECURRING PROBLEM IN CHINA

As CCN reported, China has cracked down on bitcoin mining amid recurring problems with scams and electricity theft. Bitcoin mining remains quite popular there, despite the government’s repeated suppression efforts.

In April 2018, police in the Chinese port city of Tianjin confiscated 600 bitcoin mining computers in the largest case of power theft in recent years.

The alleged theft was discovered after the local power grid operator observed an abnormal surge in electricity consumption. An investigation later revealed that bitcoin miners had tampered with a junction box to short-circuit the meters in order to avoid being charged for their power usage.

Similarly, in December 2018, a bitcoin miner in Taiwan was arrested for mining 100 million yuan (roughly $14.5 million) in crypto using $3.2 million in stolen electricity. The perpetrator allegedly operated 17 illegal crypto mining centers using fake storefronts across Taiwan.

https://youtu.be/7yCqWO3gZvQ

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7

Binance announced a partnership with CipherTrace, a blockchain security company, with the aim of enhancing the exchange’s anti-money laundering (AML) compliance program.

World’s Largest Crypto Exchange Aims to Improve Its AML Compliance
CipherTrace, a blockchain security company, is teaming up with Binance in order to help the exchange enhance its regulatory compliance. The companies will work together on improving its anti-money laundering (AML) compliance program.


According to Binance’s press release shared with CryptoSlate, the partnership with CipherTrace will raise the exchange’s standards in line with cryptocurrency regulations across the world. Samuel Lim, the chief compliance officer of Binance, said that choosing CipherTrace as its on-chain security solution will help build greater trust among its users.

“This partnership will bolster our existing world-class AML compliance program and help us expand into new markets in the most compliant fashion,” he added.

CipherTrace Expands Its Reach

Dave Jevans, the CEO of Silicon Valley-based CipherTrace, said that the company expects that the level of transparency and trust in the overall market will rise due to its partnership with Binance. Jones said in the company’s press release:

“As one of the most trusted cryptocurrency exchanges on the globe, Binance is leading the way in AML compliance programs for the industry.”

Founded in 2015, CipherTrace, which was initially funded by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science and Technology (S&T), and DARPA, already has several high-profile partnerships in place.

Just last month, the company partnered with the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), the country’s sole financial regulatory agency. CipherTrace was enlisted to help audit crypto asset services that operate within Malta’s jurisdiction and ensure all crypto transactions within the country are free of money laundering.

While it’s still too early to tell if CipherTrace’s partnership with the MFSA had resulted in a decrease in financial crime in Malta, the company’s agreement with Binance could help establish the exchange as a leader in regulatory compliance.

Fostering a trustworthy image of the exchange could bring more institutional investment into the space as well as help Binance secure better treatment from both local and global regulators.

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8

The venture capital arm of Pennsylvania’s economic development office is tokenizing one of its funds.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, one of four regional outposts formed by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development in 1982, launched the Global Opportunity Philadelphia Fund, or GO Philly Fund, in February with $15 million committed.

Unlike Ben Franklin, which receives funds from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and is restricted to investing in the companies based in the Greater Philadelphia area, GO Philly is planning to raise funds and invest globally, Scott Nissenbaum, Ben Franklin’s chief investment officer and a managing partner of GO Philly, told CoinDesk.

Working with the California-based token platform Securitize, GO Philly is looking to raise another $35 million by selling GO Philly Fund tokens to accredited investors.

“GO Philly Fund has been a trailblazer, not only in the blockchain space, but also as an impact fund,” Securitize CEO and co-founder Carlos Domingo told CoinDesk via a spokesperson. “We are proud to be partnering with them as their technology provider.”

Built on top of the ethereum blockchain, the GO Philly Token will be available for purchase by accredited investors at $0.50 apiece, in dollars, bitcoin or ether – but the minimum buy-in is $250,000.

Big investors first

The $50 million fund was created in partnership with a publicly traded IT company, EPAM. GO Philly raised more than $15 million pre-launch: with $5 million from Ben Franklin, $5 million from EPAM and the rest from investment firms including Fulton Financial Corporation, SRI Capital and Provco Group.

These investors have already secured their bags of GO Philly tokens, with the first batch being sold on Feb. 7. Nissenbaum sees that early action as an assurance to new investors:

“There are so many question in this market about what’s real and what’s not. So we decided that we are going to bring big companies first, and then the rest of the entire globe can also buy in.”

GO Philly is expecting to sell 100 million tokens in total, including the portion already sold. The tokens will be “a digital representation of a limited partnership contract” and comply with the SEC’s Rule 506(c), Nissenbaum explained.

When payout?

The token holders’ money will fund GO Philly’s efforts and earn them a profit if the supported startups flourish.

“All the value we will create in those companies will flow back to the token holders,” Nissenbaum said.

The advantage of the token model, he said, is that, if an investor wants to get out, it’s easier to sell a token than a limited partnership in a venture fund, given that GO Philly is going to create a secondary market for such tokens in the future – though the legal structure of that future entity is not yet disclosed.

However, the tokens won’t have the profit distribution functionality: instead of smart contracts, traditional bank transfers will deliver money to the owners of the digital securities. GO Philly also won’t hold crypto, even though it’s allowing investors to buy tokens with bitcoin and ether. The BTC and ETH will be immediately sold for cash, Nissenbaum said.

The Philly-area Ben Franklin invested $8.1 million into 51 startups in 2018, according to its annual report. Its total portfolio includes 227 companies with $354 million in assets.

Securitize, a Coinbase-backed digital asset platform, recently announced the launch of a “one-stop shop” for various token-related services, with Coinbase Custody, OpenFinance, Rialto Trading and CBlock Capital as the first participants. Earlier the firm partnered with over-the-counter trading platform OTCXN.

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9

Albertsons Companies, the world’s second-largest supermarket company by sales, has joined IBM’s Food Trust blockchain, a digital system for tracking and tracing food between retailers and suppliers.

Announced Thursday, Albertsons will begin with a pilot involving suppliers of romaine lettuce – a product which was last year linked to a widespread outbreak of E-coli resulting in recalls on a grand scale, 96 people being hospitalized and, tragically, five deaths.

Based in Boise, Idaho, Albertsons operates nearly 2,300 stores across the U.S., including the Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, and Acme chains. With $57 billion in sales in 2017, it was second only to Kroger among supermarket companies, according to The Balance Small Business. Albertsons’ addition brings the total number of brands involved in Food Trust to over 80.

Arguably the jewel in the IBM Blockchain Platform crown, Food Trust, which went into live production in October of last year, tackles a critical problem in the commercial food chain: the ability to rapidly pinpoint a dodgy batch of produce and surgically remove those tainted goods from circulation so that retailers don’t have to empty their shelves of every item in the affected category, be that lettuce, spinach, beef, etc.

It appears to be a compelling proposition. Most recently Food Trust signed up European supermarket giant Carrefour, to join other food business giants such as Walmart, Nestle, Dole Food, Tyson Foods, Kroger and Unilever. According to Big Blue, more than 500,000 traces have been conducted on the platform to date (each trace represents a single lot, although the number of items per lot varies from company to company).

Rucha Nanavati, group vice president for IT at Albertsons, told CoinDesk:

“I truly believe there’s power in numbers. Now all those big companies can come together and ask suppliers to come on the platform. We always had technology in supply chain but now with all the data you can gather the potential is there to take it a step further.”

She explained that the food industry has always had a firm focus on safety but said doing recalls efficiently is difficult, first involving the internal supply chain and then looking into the external supply chain. “What we had before wasn’t this efficient, that’s for sure,” she said.

As early as 2016, IBM and Walmart began testing blockchain to reduce the time to track goods. A proof of concept done with the Tsinghua University of Beijing focused on China’s massive pork market, reduced the time taken from days to minutes.

This can now be done in seconds flat, said Suzanne Livingston, offering director for IBM Food Trust. Whereas typically “these investigations can take months in some cases to get to a root source, some investigations don’t get to a root source so the companies are left to get all products off the shelf,” she said.

Nanavati said Albertsons is already thinking about the next categories of products to add, but that for now, the focus is on ensuring the romaine pilot succeeds, which will take “weeks” rather than the typical “months and months.”

The Walmart mandate

Having been a key platform partner to IBM Food Trust, Walmart last year issued a mandate to all its suppliers of leafy greens stating that they had to get on to the blockchain by a deadline of the end of September 2019.

Asked whether Albertsons will follow Walmart in mandating that its suppliers use Food Trust, Nanavati said:

“I think we are in a position to do so. It is going to benefit the customers in general. Are we there yet? I don’t believe so. I think mandate or not, we would recommend it.”

It’s not uncommon for large retailers to demand quite exacting quality assurances from suppliers down the line. Nanavati said that Albertsons has seen some of its suppliers coming forward and asking to be involved in Food Trust.

As far as Walmart’s mandate goes, IBM’s Livingston said that while “it does work hands down if you make it a requirement,” she acknowledged some retailers are against this approach and don’t want to send a message entailing further requirements to their suppliers. 

“I see it being good and also having some drawbacks. I think it’s beneficial [to participate] for all parties whether you are mandated to do it or not because it’s in your best interests,” said Livingston.

Nanavati added that Albertsons has been working with IBM to make sure getting data on the blockchain is easy for suppliers large and small.

“I have this vision that I want some farmer who only has these two fields but we care deeply about them, that they be able to just use their smartphone and do something quick for tracing,” she said.

Looking beyond food safety, Albertsons is also exploring how blockchain can assure consumers of the provenance of its extensive “Own Brands” portfolio, worth about $11bn per annum. Carrefour also mentioned this use of the tech, in conjunction with an app which easily lets customers trace the life cycle of its organic chickens.

“The joke is consumers now want to know where their chicken’s parents were from,” said Nanavati.

Trusting competitors

It’s notable that IBM seems to have had a relatively smooth ride getting competing firms to join the Food Trust blockchain.

Livingston attributed this to careful consideration on the technical side of things regarding data privacy.

“We knew we would have competitors on this so we asked what they wanted,” she said. “They told us they wanted it to be permissioned and they wanted fine-grain access control on the data, to be able to stipulate who has access for every transaction and for everyone who comes into the system. If they want, they can make it completely private.”

She also said the establishment of a Food Trust Governance Committee has helped reassure players of a level playing field.

Looking at blockchain consortia in other industries, banks, for example, remain skittish about sharing data, even when encrypted. Meanwhile, ocean carriers don’t appear to trust each other enough to get on a distributed ledger together.

So is the food production and supply chain industry more convivial? 

Nanavati said a better word would be “responsible” since disasters in food supply chain can really impact people’s lives, concluding:

“This is not the place to compete in my opinion. This is one place where it’s about serving the interests of our customers. Food safety is paramount. It’s table stakes.”

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10

Global messaging app Telegram has reportedly launched a private beta testing of its blockchain, Telegram Open Network (TON), Russian media outlet Vedomosti reports on April 11.

According to Vedomosti, Telegram has opened access to a testing version of TON Blockchain to a limited number of global developers, including Russian dev teams.

Citing two anonymous persons who acquired the early access, the news agency reported that the dev teams were enabled to set up TON Blockchain nodes.

While testing has not provided any specific outcomes, the unnamed testers revealed that the TON Blockchain has demonstrated an “extremely high transaction speed.” However, the specific indicators could not be delivered, since the blockchain’s code — including smart contracts — were in the process of testing, one of the persons has said.

Privacy-focused encrypted messenger Telegram was founded by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov in 2013, and as of March 2018, the service amassed 200 million active users. Recently, three million new users signed up for the app over a 24 hours period when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were all experiencing significant outages worldwide, as Durov reported on its official Telegram channel on March 14.

Telegram raised around $1.7 billion in two private initial coin offering (ICO) rounds for both Telegram and its TON platform in 2018.

While Vedomosti reported that Telegram would release a test version of TON in the fall of 2018, there has been no official data on the expected date of TON Blockchain launch, with Durov having declined to confirm a concrete date for TON's release in March 2019.

Recently, Cointelegraph reported that purchase agreements for messenger service Telegram tokens will be terminated if TON does not launch by Oct. 31, 2019.

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11

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has recently stated that financial technologies like cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks are “shaking” the banking system, and have to be regulated.

Lagarde’s comments came during an interview with CNBC, following a panel devoted to “Money and Payments in the Digital Age,” which saw Circle’s Jeremy Allaire and JPMorgan Chase’s Sarah Youngwood debate.

The head of the IMF pointed out the changing business models of commercial banks are evidence innovations like cryptocurrencies are impacting the financial sector. She stated:

I think the role of the disruptors and anything that is using distributed ledger technology, whether you call it crypto, assets, currencies, or whatever ... that is clearly shaking the system.

She noted that these changes to the financial industry have to be accompanied by regulation, as innovation shaking the system “so much that we would lose the stability that is needed” isn’t an optimal outcome, she noted.

Notably, various startups and leading tech giants have been starting to enter the banking sector, as the multitrillion-dollar market is reportedly ripe for innovation. Recently, it has been reported social media giant Facebook is working on its own cryptocurrency, with some suggesting it’s seeking $1 billion to fund its development.

Traditional banks are also changing up their business models. JPMorgan Chase has launched its own cryptocurrency, dubbed ‘JPM Coin’, which aims to help it instantly settle payments between clients. The bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, has hinted the coin may eventually see consumer use.

Lagarde added that tech companies entering the banking space must be subject to regulation, and that they “will have to be held accountable so that they can be fully trusted.” The head of the IMF has in the past urged central banks to “consider launching digital currencies” so they can keep up with the changing financial landscape.

She has in the past noted she believes cryptocurrency regulations are inevitable, but has argued these have a positive role in the financial system, as they increase financial inclusion and offer people an alternative to national currencies.

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12

Dapps are considered to the future of the decentralized world and the project that stays ahead in this battle would be at the top. Hence nearly all project are trying to enter this race but its EOS that is currently leading the Dapp battle in categories of total users, volume and transactions

Ethereum struggles to keep up the pace with EOS and Tron
Dapps and its underlying smart contracts were introduced by Ethereum and it was the undisputed champion of the Dapp world. But past one year has been really tough for Ethereum as its blockchain has remained congested and has taken away performance from the Dapps. Ethereum has lost a lot of Dapps to its rivals, EOS, and Tron, making it very difficult for Ethereum to make a comeback.

The recent Dapp numbers collated by the website Dapp Review shows a very dismal performance by Ethereum indicating things are still far for being normal for the second largest coin by market cap. The ecosystem data shows EOS at the top while Tron has been making giant strides moving ahead of Ethereum. The total users for EOS have been 1 million while for Tron the number stands 484860 while Ethereum users were just 78740. The same was in terms of volumes where EOS saw a little under USD 100 million in volume, whereas figures for Tron were over 84 million and for Ethereum it was over 28 million.

Source: Dapp Review

The only place where Ethereum stands out is the number of Dapp it holds which as on April 3 stands 1698, compared to 472 of EOS and 372 on Tron. But the way this dynamics is changing and if Ethereum doesn’t find a solution for itself it may soon go down here as well.

The ecosystem also has grown fantastically with total Dapps now standing at 2499 with 24h volume in USD at 35,039,578 and total smart contracts executed at 6550.

source: dapp review

According to categories Casino and Gambling Dapps still, occupy the larger share with over 58%. This is followed by gaming at 15%, Others at 14.14% Market place at 5.7%, High-risk apps at 5.7% and social Dapps at 1.48%


Source: Dapp.review

With Dapp ecosystem growing at this pace, Ethereum and Vitalik will have to really move quickly if they do not want Ethereum to be thrown off this race

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13

Coinsquare is Canada’s digital currency exchange giant. It has announced the launch of a new CAD supported stablecoin called- ‘eCAD.’ The properties of this stablecoin are- it will sustain the price of the Canadian dollar; also, it will sustain the fiat collaterals in escrow. Sustaining the fiat collaterals in escrow basically means that they are permitted to receive funds in exact number as the number of tokens that are in circulation in the crypto market. The exchange also revealed that it would be of high use to the consumer and businesses.

eCAD will prove to be highly useful for cross-border payments and remittance, P2P lending, merchant solutions, trade settlements, and FX conversions, as per the digital currency exchange giant. Further, the exchange thinks that this will bring in around 5 billion USD every year of crypto trades, and will attract approximately 100,000 customers towards the platform.

On the other hand, there are several launch plans for many Euro, British pound and U.S. dollar based crypto tokens. The launch of eCAD only stirs up the heat in the market and raise the bar of the competition.

One can say that the lack of trust around Tether USDT has indirectly encouraged the emergence of new alternative solutions. A few days ago, the CEO of OKEx noted that his company is supporting new cryptocurrency that can be pegged to the U.S. dollar. It is done in partnership with Prime Trust. Prime Trust is SEC-regulated.

There is more news from the Coinsquare land. In 2018, the digital currency exchange bought BlockEQ. BlockEQ is a private stellar wallet. Another feature of BlockEQ is that it can function as a decentralized network for cryptocurrency P2P payments and trading, as reported by financemagnets.com. This deal was the first time when the digital currency exchange purchased a smaller blockchain company. Further, the exchange is planning to enter the Asian market. As reported by financemagnets.com, “the trading venue is also making inroads into Asia as it plans to open a new cryptocurrency exchange in Japan.”

Further, the Cole Diamond, CEO of Coinsquare said,

“We are thrilled to announce the first step of our plan to bring stability and opportunity to the Canadian cryptocurrency market. The launch of eCAD™ will create the first transparent, affordable, and secure way of transferring value in Canada and beyond, without the risk of instability in the traditional cryptocurrency market.”

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14

Bitcoin Could See Another Drop

With Bitcoin (BTC) recently surmounting $5,000 in a move that came straight out of left field, some are sure that bears are done. Jonathan, a forex and cryptocurrency trader, however, recently explained that it would be unfair to assume that the bear market is over. In fact, in a recent Twitter post, he seemed to hint that proclaiming a bear trend over is irresponsible.

https://twitter.com/jcho710/status/1114574507597893633

He recently explained that this same cycle of optimists calling for an end to the bear after a short-term, emotion-inducing spike always ended in disaster, looking to Bitcoin’s bear market rallies throughout 2018. Past performance isn’t indicative of future action, but considering the reliability of short-term upticks resulting in an eventual move to fresh lows, Johnathan might have a point. Certain technical indicators, too, could also be hinting that a move lower is inbound.

Nunya Bizniz recently wrote on Twitter that the last time Bitcoin’s one-week Guppy, a technical indicator that weighs moving averages to predict price trends, looked as it is now, BTC rallied into the top of its range, before a final capitulation event, which brought the cryptocurrency lower than the seeming bottom. Thus, if history repeats, BTC will move to as high as $5,600 in the coming weeks, before a rapid sell-off that brings the asset under $3,000 for mere days.

https://twitter.com/Pladizow/status/1114241649151029248

Even if there are unlikely to be fresh lows, many analysts are adamant that a return to all-time highs won’t occur until 2020 at the earliest. Dave The Wave, an analyst who favors the MACD indicator, recently posted the chart below on Twitter. While little was divulged, other than “2019 — a year of accumulation and consolidation,” the chart implies that if history repeats itself, Bitcoin could trade relatively flat over much of 2019, eventually rallying into 2020’s block reward reduction.

https://twitter.com/davthewave/status/1114343295642005505

Magic Poop Cannon, a technical analyst that has been tacitly endorsed by Tom Lee, recently made a similar comment. Per previous reports from this outlet, the trader believes that Bitcoin will trade between $3,200 and the “low 4,000s” for much of the year.

Maybe “Crypto Winter” Is Over

The aforementioned sure seem to be making the case that the cryptocurrency downturn isn’t over yet, but some analysts have begged to differ. As reported by Ethereum World News earlier today, Tom Lee, revealed that he thinks the worse may be over for BTC.

Fundstrat’s in-house crypto bull remarked that Bitcoin’s sudden spike last Monday was based on “true buying,” making it not an act of manipulation as some postulated. This is likely in reference to a Reuters report, which claimed that a single group or entity managed to purchase $100 million worth of Bitcoin across three exchanges, creating a short-term influx of FOMO that pushed BTC higher.

Furthering the bullish narrative, Lee looks to the 200-day moving average, which has acted as an overarching level of resistance for BTC since early-2018. The Fundstrat co-founder explains that while many proclaimed cryptocurrencies dead as a result of their -85% performance from top to bottom, BTC closing and holding above the aforementioned level confirms that it is “back in a bull trend.”

Technicals, too, could also show that Bitcoin’s downturn has likely bitten the dust. According to analyst Altcoin Pyscho, the Guppy has “flipped green” on the one-day Bitcoin chart on BitMEX.

https://twitter.com/AltcoinPsycho/status/1114216099514540032

While there’s a fleeting chance that this shift in the Guppy is a bull trap or “fakeout,” which has purportedly only occurred twice in BTC’s history, Pyscho asserts that the bear trend has likely been reversed. He adds:

“This is where you start longing every bullish swing failure pattern (with stops).”

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15

Tron remains at the vanguard of the blockchain community, and despite all the controversy surrounding this popular crypto, Justin Sun is undoubtedly one of the most prominent personalities in the crypto ecosystem.

The CEO of BitTorrent and the Tron Foundation has achieved several partnerships aiming to exploit Tron’s potential not only in terms of capitalization but also in adoption and real usability. Of all of them, the last maneuver was to get Tether, the creators of USDT, to agree on issuing a stablecoin running on this platform.

In a dialogue with The Crypto Chick, Justin Sun finally revealed that the long-awaited USDT-Tron token would be released on April 9. He explained that because of the advantages provided by Tron, many institutional investors are interested in operating with this crypto and with tokens running on this blockchain:

We’re getting lots of interest from these institutional investors. I think we’ll do everything to fulfill their requests because when the institutional investor gets into this industry they have lots of requests.”

For Justin Sun, Tron is much better than Omni (BTC Layer) and Ethereum. Tron’s reliability, speed, and cost-effectiveness make it the best choice for stablecoins development, especially if high transaction volumes are expected:

Most of the congestion and the bad experience of the stablecoin comes from the Omni blockchain because this is an obsolete solution with extremely expensive, slow and also unreliable infrastructure for the stablecoin, so once we get to this better infrastructure I think the whole blockchain community will be benefited from this”.

USDT is currently the most important stablecoin in the ecosystem. According to Tether, the token was first backed 1:1 by physical dollars; however, the firm responsible for its emission recently changed these claims, explaining that it may have other assets as collateral.

Despite this important turnaround, USDT is the only stablecoin in the top 10 of CMC and is the preferred token for traders when it is necessary to freeze their profits.

USDT has a capitalization of 2.06 billion dollars, just less than 300 Million USD over TRX, which ranks 11th in the global marketcap.


Likewise, Sun commented that he intends to airdrop 20 million dollars in USDT-Tron to those early adopters who have created a portfolio.

“This just like the TRX – BTT airdrop we have been doing before… We just airdop assets to those addresses without touching any of the assets at all,”

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