1 Feb
13:50

Grayscale – An Institutional Approach to Cryptocurrency

Grayscale – An Institutional Approach to Cryptocurrency Grayscale Investments is the world’s largest digital currency asset manager and a subsidiary of the venture capital company Digital Currency Group (DCG) who also owns the digital media company Coindesk. CoinDesk also hosts a conference on digital currencies and blockchain technologies titled Consensus. As an asset manager, the company offers its services to investors looking to invest in Bitcoin as security, without making direct purchases or managing funds themselves. Grayscale was established in 2013 and incorporated into DCG when it was formed in 2015 by Barry Silbert. Grayscale manages multiple investment funds, each for large amounts of various cryptocurrencies such as BTC, BCC, ETH, ETC, LTC, XRP, Zcash, Stellar, etc. The most notable of these being the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC), which was the first publicly quoted Bitcoin security when it launched in 2013. The Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), launched in 2018, allows customers to invest in a group of prominent digital currencies. Grayscale funds were approved for public tradingContinue reading »

26 Jan
16:39

January 2021 – Weekly Recap 4

Weekly Recap Jan 18th, 2021 – Jan 25th, 2021 Welcome to our 4th weekly recap for February. Overview    Crypto News   [1] President Biden Freezes FinCEN’s Controversial Crypto Wallet Proposal President Joe Biden has frozen all new or pending rules introduced during the Trump administration. This includes the FinCEN’s controversial crypto wallet proposal. [2] Andreas Antonopoulos Fights FUD With Facts: Bitcoin Is Safe And Worked As Expected On January 21, 2021, a random dude sent $21 to another random dude. And this is news because that transaction triggered a series of unfortunate events that ended up wiping $84Billion from Bitcoin’s total market cap, driving the community into a panic and causing a drop of more than 11% in the price of the largest cryptocurrency in the crypto ecosystem. [3] GrayScale Bought $1.3 Billion Bitcoin GrayScale has had its most successful week yet, buying close to $1.3 billion bitcoin, up considerably from $500 million a week during December. [4] Grayscale has incorporated six more trusts, including ones for Chainlink andContinue reading »

21 Jan
15:27

BitMEX Research FUD

BitMEX Research FUD BitMEX’s Research team recently discovered and brought to attention a double-spending attempt on the Bitcoin blockchain, and the result was widespread FUD across the cryptocurrency market. [1/2] There was a stale Bitcoin block today, at height 666,833. SlushPool has beaten F2Pool in a race. It appears as if a small double spend of around 0.00062063 BTC ($21) was detectedhttps://t.co/o8lz9xagYG pic.twitter.com/IEdPu8JEjt — BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) January 20, 2021 Whilst alarming indeed if it had succeeded, the blocks’ confirmation can be easily verified using the associated URL. It is quickly apparent that only one transaction request was confirmed. This has been a thinly-veiled attempt at spreading Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt amongst the particularly newly invested crypto participants. Situations like this happen often as multiple stale, or orphaned blocks are abandoned when conflicting blocks are discovered. It is a fairly common occurrence. User sent 1st transaction (T1), then sent new transaction (T2) that would replace T1.2 blocks were found around the same time: B1 and B2. B1 included T1 andContinue reading »

19 Jan
02:02

January 2021 – Weekly Recap 3

Weekly Recap Jan 11th, 2021 – Jan 18th, 2021 Welcome to our 3rd weekly recap for January. Overview  Crypto News   [1] Cardano’s Mary hard fork to offer native multi-asset support in February Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson’s updates have been crucial to the development of the ecosystem over the past year. So is the case this time too, with IOHK’s CEO giving the community some important updates during his latest AMA. During the same, Hoskinson revealed that the Mary hard fork is coming in February, with the same promising to deliver “native multi-asset support” to the Cardano network. [2] Reuters: Gary Gensler, MIT blockchain professor and Obama’s CFTC chair, to head Biden SEC During the Obama administration, Gensler was the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in which capacity he was in charge of enforcing the many new provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act that followed the 2008 financial crisis. [3] Shopify Security Breach Exposes More Ledger Customers’ Sensitive Data A previous security breach at the e-commerce firm Shopify hasContinue reading »

12 Jan
17:34

January 2021 – Weekly Recap 2

Weekly Recap Jan 4th, 2021 – Jan 11th, 2021 Welcome to our 2nd weekly recap for January. Overview  Crypto News   [1] Banks Can Treat Public Blockchains Like SWIFT and ACH A new interpretive letter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency paves the way for stablecoins and public blockchains to be fully integrated in the financial infrastructure. [2] Cyprian Hospital Commences COVID-19 Vaccination with VeChain (VET) Solution Mediterranean Hospital of Cyprus has successfully vaccinated some of its staff against the COVID-19 virus, including 100 doctors and personnel. The process was carried out via the VeChain-powered E-HCert COVID-19 solution, according to a blog post on January 5, 2020. [3] XRP About to Leave Top 5 First Time Since 2014 as Cardano (ADA) Soars 40 Percent XRP is on the cusp of being pushed out of CoinMarketCap’s top 5 after Cardano (ADA) soared over 40 percent in a single day. [4] Grayscale Gains $1.9 Billion in Crypto in One Day, While Bitcoin Market Cap Hits Record $700 Billion TheContinue reading »

7 Jan
23:39

January 2021 – Weekly Recap 1

Weekly Recap December 28th, 2021 – Jan 4th, 2021 Welcome to our 1st weekly recap for January. Overview  Crypto News   [1] Miami’s Mayor ‘Open To Explore’ Investing 1% of City’s Treasury Reserves in Bitcoin In an interesting twist of events, the Mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, has said that he’s open to exploring the idea of putting 1% of the city’s treasury reserves in Bitcoin. [2] SkyBridge Capital Invested $182 Million in Bitcoin, Says It’s ‘Digital Gold’ SkyBridge Capital, the investment firm run by Anthony Scaramucci, has reportedly already invested $182 million in bitcoin and said in an investor brochure the flagship cryptocurrency is “digital gold.” [3] Bittrex To Delist Privacy Coins Monero, ZCash and Dash in Two Weeks Crypto exchange Bittrex today announced that it will delist privacy coins Monero (XMR), ZCash and Dash on Friday, January 15, at 23:00 UTC. [4] U.S. Congress Members Oppose Treasury Crypto Ruling in Letter In a letter sent to the Treasury on December 31st, 9 congresspeople wrote that they have concernsContinue reading »

4 Jan
00:00

December 2020 – Weekly Recap 4

Weekly Recap December 21st, 2020 – December 28th, 2020 Welcome to our 4th weekly recap for December. Overview  Crypto News   [1] SEC issues custody-focused guidance for brokers of digital asset securities In a new statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. securities regulator says it won’t bring enforcement actions against broker-dealers of digital asset securities that meet a number of requirements during the next five years. [2] White House releases stablecoin report The CME Group, a global markets company, and the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange, has announced that it will be launching Ether futures contracts for institutional traders. [3] Ripple Lawsuit Triggers XRP Led Altcoin Apocalypse Depending on your view, a devastating blow has been dealt to crypto, or a much-needed purge is in progress due to the SEC suing Ripple and two of its top executives for selling XRP tokens which the regulator claims were unregistered securities. [4] New Pro-Crypto SEC Chairman Appointed Elad Roisman has been appointed to chair the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionContinue reading »

23 Dec
14:48

December 2020 – Weekly Recap 3

Weekly Recap December 7th, 2020 – December 14th, 2020 Welcome to our 2nd weekly recap for December. Overview  Crypto News   [1] Bitcoin Fund Starts Trading on Canada’s Largest Stock Exchange According to its Dec. 16 press release, CI Global Asset Management has wrapped up the initial public offering (IPO) of its CI Galaxy Bitcoin Fund. [2] The CME Group to Launch Ether Futures in Early 2021 The CME Group, a global markets company, and the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange, has announced that it will be launching Ether futures contracts for institutional traders. [3] Germany Legalizes Blockchain-Based Securities Germany has passed a law that allows electronic securities to be recorded on a blockchain, according to reports from Reuters. [4] Crypto exchange Kraken to integrate Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Popular bitcoin exchange company Kraken, today announced new investments and forthcoming features designed to bring the benefits of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to its global exchange. [5] Coinbase Files with SEC to Go Public Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has confidentially filed a registration statement with theContinue reading »

21 Dec
12:33

Solana

Solana Solana is a layer-1 blockchain that is self-operational and does not delegate operations to any other attached chain, with a slight unique application of Proof-of-Stake; the addition of a component called Proof-of-History (PoH) within its consensus. Note that it is not a Delegated Proof-of-Stake, as that was a common mistake. In contrast to the traditional usage of PoS protocols, the platform uses its consensus mechanism to timestamp transactions to maximize efficiency. This optimization can process up to 50-60,000 transactions per second, or TPS, with a theoretical limit of over 70,000 TPS. Transactions are timestamped when they are added to a block, currently implemented at an interval of  800ms, using a decentralized clock based on the SHA256 hash function used in BTC’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Solana operates using a combination of leaders, validators, archivers, and etc. Leaders are responsible for producing new blocks and rotate every 4 blocks (1.6 seconds). Leaders produce blocks during their allotted slot, and timestamps received transactional entries. This allows transactions within a block toContinue reading »

16 Dec
11:58

December 2020 – Weekly Recap 2

Weekly Recap December 7th, 2020 – December 14th, 2020 Welcome to our 2nd weekly recap for December. Overview  Crypto News   [1] G7 Finance Chiefs Support Calls for Crypto Regulations Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the G7 nations are reportedly unanimous in their call for robust crypto regulations. [2] Fidelity to Offer Bitcoin-Collateralized Loans Fidelity Digital Assets, the cryptocurrency arm of the Boston-based mutual fund empire, is set to offer Bitcoin-collateralized dollar loans, according to a Dec. 9 report published by Bloomberg. [3] Singapore’s DBS Bank announces plans to launch BTC, XRP, ETH-offering exchange In what is yet another victory for the still-nascent crypto-market, DBS, Southeast Asia’s biggest bank, has announced that it will launch a cryptocurrency exchange. The planned digital currency exchange will offer Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). [4] Grayscale Reportedly Stockpiles Another 1.3K BTC & 100K ETH in 24 Hrs Grayscale Investment Trusts added another $240 million or more worth of crypto this week. Up to 100,000 ETH were also purchased by the company, whichContinue reading »