Crypto && Coffee 011
- 4 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- On February 5th, 2020 at block height 616064 Bitcoin surpassed 500 million transactions!
Ethereum:
- In an AMA last week led by the Ethereum Foundation including core devs and Vitalik - the outline of a possible ETA for Phase 0 of Eth2.0 was posted. The end of the statement noted that they are hoping for a launch by July 30, 2020. This would be the 5th anniversary of Ethereum 1.0. Three clients plan to be in production for the launch.
Other Chains:
- Lightning Labs, the company behind the Lightning Network development and Lightning Loop announced their $10M Series A. Full recap from CEO and Founder Elizabeth Stark here.
- As statements fly regarding the role of Jae Kwon, CEO of All In Bits (dba Tendermint Inc.), Interchain Foundation jumps in with a statement on the sustainability of the Cosmos Network.
- Zcash shares how to build Sapling shielded transactions with their zcash_primitives Rust library. This same library is used for the mobile SDKs and ZecWallet Lite.
- In December 2019, Michael Davidson disclosed a vulnerability to the Electric Coin Company regarding consensus failure in the network. With this vulnerability Zcash nodes would permanently reject blocks based on their timestamps using subjective information. This information could be influenced by an attacker. The ECC team has addressed this in a new hotfix release (zcashd v2.1.1-1) which changes how nodes enforce timestamp requirements on block headers.
- A new, and possibly first, eSports DAO has been launched. MetaClan focuses on leveraging enhanced play-to-earn mechanics to unlock value for developers, players, and spectators.
- Ex-Plasma Group research-oriented company, Optimism wants to lead the charge on boosting transaction capacity on Ethereum. Yesterday, they launched Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM) which is meant to give Optimism’s second layer the same smart contract functionality as the underlying chain.
- The Monero community has opted to help fund, Locha Mesh, to support the goal of decentralized transactions over open-source hardware and software.
- Oasis Labs has successfully implemented their 2nd network upgrade. The full validator dashboard is available at oasis.SmartStake.io.
- Ethan Frey from the Regen Network, announced the release of Wasmd for Cosmos. Wasmd is a Cosmos SDK based blockchain application that supports CosmWasm contracts.
Mainstream Recap:
- Arwen, a blockchain infrastructure company based in Boston, has secured $3.3M in venture funding to continue innovating on secure settlement for digital asset trading.
- Germany’s Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) is clarifying how the country’s new cryptocurrency custody law will apply to firms that operate outside of Germany - yet still serve the German market.
- Blockchain based company, Blockstream, released BlockstreamGreen v3.3.3. This update includes support for Ledger Nano X via bluetooth for iOS, USB on Android, GDK 0.0.27, support for Liquid Network payment URIs, and more. This could technically be the first iOS wallet with native support for secure hardware.
- The Federal Reserve is looking at whether launching its own digital currency could be an effective counter to private initiatives such as Libra. Full statement from Governor Lael Brainard here.
- This coming April, chiefs of six central banks as well as the Bank for International Settlements (BiS) will hold a meeting in Washington to discuss the potential creation of their own digital currencies.
- Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), stated Bakkt’s acquisition of a loyalty rewards company will “expand Bakkt’s presence across an asset class that today spans over $1 trillion in value”.
- Bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rose to multi-month highs, breaking above $10,000 on February 7th, 2020.
- USDC and ZEC are now available to trade on Coinbase Pro in New York.
- JPMorgan Chase may soon merge its Quorum blockchain project with ConsenSys. Full report from Reuters here.
- Munich based, Bank von der Heydt, announced earlier this week it had partnered with blockchain financial services provider Bitbond to help integrate tokenization into its established securitization platform.
- Canada Stablecorp announced Monday, February 10th, 2020, that it was issuing the QCAD stablecoin for “mass market” including foreign exchange remittances and other financial products.
- Binance has added support for the Russian ruble trading directly with BTC, ETH, BNB, and USDT. Full post here.
- Japanese security firm, Trend Micro, announced the group known as “Outlaw” has begun infiltrating Linux-based systems in order to hijack power and mine Monero. This is not a new form of cryptojacking, but the most recent one since the CoinHive exploits.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are heading to Chicago, IL for a powerful rendition of a traditional house blend. A Love Supreme from Dark Matter Coffee is a rich and aromatic roast exuding notes of cocoa, fudge, walnuts, and minor hints of cherry. This will definitely be a wake up call for that mid-afternoon jolt.
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