Governments aren't testing Bitcoin. Bitcoin is testing governments.

MrCoin

Weekly Crypto Recap

“Governments aren't testing Bitcoin. Bitcoin is testing governments." ~ Andreas M. Antonopoulos, author of “The Internet of Money”

Market State

BTC: €5,309.02 | -12.80% since last week

ETH: €233.52 | -35.99% since last week

BCH: €433.85 | -29.15% since last week

LTC: €45.48 | -29.46% since last week

The crypto market is in major downtrend. Over the last week the crypto market capitalization plummeted by €57 billion as major cryptocurrencies fell by 30%. Bitcoin is down by 12.8% to €5,309.02. Bitcoin dominance hit over 50% for the first time this year. The price of Ether has suffered the biggest loss during the last week. The market cap of Ether recorded €13 billion loss which is 36% loss since last week.

The delay in the approval of the Bitcoin ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) started the steep fall in crypto market. However the real reason might be the result of several factors such as big whales selling off large amounts of cryptocurrency on the OTC (Over The Counter) market or the ICO projects that have raised thousands of Ether during 2017 are selling their Ether holdings to protect themselves from the further drop in the crypto market.

Currently the market shows no sign of recovery. According to crypto enthusiasts the bear market is the best time to work on the crypto projects to make adoption easier for newcomers.

Quiz of the week

What is cold storage?

A private key stored on a paper
A cryptocurrency wallet encrypted with a password
A cryptocurrency wallet on a computer or a device that has never been connected to the internet

Scroll down to see the answer at the end of the newsletter.

Top stories of the week

Bitcoin Cash bug was discovered and fixed

Bitcoin Cash aims to increase user adoption by providing faster and cheaper transactions. Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash communities have an ongoing disagreement ever since the existence of BCH. In April, 2018 a bug was discovered in Bitcoin Cash by a Bitcoin Core developer, Cory Field. The bug allowed a specially crafted transaction to split the Bitcoin Cash blockchain into two incompatible chains making safe transactions impossible. Cory anonymously disclosed it to Bitcoin Cash developers which then got fixed in May, 2018. It is always nice to see the community supporting each other despite the conflict between them.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and .LUXE domain

ENS stands for Ethereum Name Service which allows Ether holders to replace their long addresses with "human readable names" such as “example.eth”. Unfortunately .eth addresses are not compatible with regular domain names we use daily such as “mrcoin.eu”. Minds + Machines Group (MMX) and Ethereum announced a partnership to create human readable .luxe addresses. The “.luxe” stands for “Lets U eXchange Easier” and its main job is to replace Ether addresses with “example.luxe” domain names. The .luxe addresses will be useable on regular web browsers and will be available to the public from October 30, 2018.

Ether falls below €250

The price of Ether fell below €250 which is the lowest level since 2017. In February 2018 Ether increased above €1000 as it is the best platform for ICO projects. ICO projects that are built on top of the Ethereum blockchain are called ERC20 tokens. These ICO projects are the biggest ETH holders and they have been selling nearly 100,000 ETH in the past month. You can check out which projects sold how much ETH on Sanbase website, which is a crowdsourced database of cryptocurrency projects.

Bitmain IPO

The Chinese mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain, is planning to raise $18 billion through IPO. Bitmain is considered to be the most valuable crypto company in the world, just in the first 6 months of 2018 Bitmain made $2.5 billion in profit. After the IPO the estimated market capitalization of Bitmain would be between $30 billion and $40 billion. This will make the Bitmain IPO one of the largest IPOs in history. Bitmain IPO is scheduled for this September and Bitmain shares will be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Trezor integration with Metamask

Trezor now allows to sign transactions via Metamask. Metamask is a Chrome browser plugin that allows you to make Ethereum transactions and access Ethereum dApps from your browser. Thanks to Metamask and Trezor integration you no longer need to transfer your funds from your Trezor wallet in order to use a dApp, exchange, or participate in an ICO. Your funds can stay safely in your Trezor wallet while you sign your transactions. Whenever you make a transaction, Metamask will send a request to your Trezor where you will need to approve the transaction.

Everipedia is now Live

Decentralized encyclopedia Everipedia is now live. Everipedia is an open source, censorship-free database where users can add articles on any topic. Everipedia is similar to Wikipedia but it incentivizes its users for adding, editing or correcting articles. Contributors receive IQ tokens, which is the native token of Everipedia network. This way the editors become stakeholders of the network and have voting rights within the network. Everipedia was originally launched on the Ethereum blockchain and moved to EOS blockchain to avoid Ethereum’s scalability problem.

Tweet of the week

Meme of the week

Crypto word of the week

BIP stands for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal. A BIP is a technical document written by developers which introduces solutions to problems that the Bitcoin network is facing. The first BIP was created on 19 August 2011 by Amir Taaki. It was called BIP 0001 and it described what a BIP is. BIPs make sure that all the problems that Bitcoin faces are addressed and recorded. Lightning Network started off as a BIP in 2015 which recommended micropayment channels that would enable Satoshi level (0.00000001 Bitcoins) micropayments with near-instant transactions.

Quiz answer

What is cold storage?

The correct answer is : “C”

Cold storage is a cryptocurrency wallet that exist on a device that has never touched the internet. The private keys are generated and stored on the device that is isolated from internet connection. Setting up a cold storage wallet requires a lot of technical knowledge and it is easy to make mistakes while setting it up. For the regular cryptocurrency users cold storage wallets are very complicated. We recommend using the dedicated devices that are called hardware wallets such as Trezor and Ledger.

Thank you for reading :)

Have a great day!

MrCoin

MrCoin

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MrCoin will be more than happy to answer your questions at hello@mrcoin.eu

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