Bitcoin sent over national border without internet or satellite. View in browser

"Bitcoin wallets are your own personal bank, and nobody can close them.”  Bitcoin Magazine
Market State

There hasn’t been much action in the cryptocurrency market up until Sunday. The new week started with 11% overall market capitalization gain. Ether is leading the price surge with an impressive 23% gain to $148,7. It has jumped from $123 to $148,7 just in two days. Ethereum’s next update is approaching in two weeks which will reduce Ethereum’s block reward from 3 ETH to 2 ETH. Block reward refers to new Ethers that are created and awarded to miners. Reducing the block rewards increases the scarcity of a coin which usually has positive price impact.

Bitcoin is up by 8.7% to $3941. The first Bitcoin transaction was successfully done over a radio antenna using 7.077 Mhz radio waves without internet or satellite. The Bitcoin transaction was sent over the distance of over 640 kilometer all the way from Toronto, Canada to Michigan, USA. A number of institutional investors showed continued interest in cryptocurrency market. Including JP Morgan new coin, which brought a lot of attention to crypto. Second largest stock exchange Nasdaq will be adding Bitcoin and Ether indices to its platform.
Check the latest Bitcoin Price
Quiz of the week

Which of these cryptocurrencies is most anonymous? 

  1. Bitcoin
  2. Monero
  3. Litecoin

Scroll down to see the answer at the end of the newsletter.
Top stories of the week
JP Morgan is Launching its Own Stablecoin

JP Morgan Chase the largest bank in the United States has announced its own stablecoin called JPM coin on Valentine’s day. Every JPM coin is backed by one US dollar in a JP Morgan account. JP Morgan moves $6 trillion for its clients around the world every day. Small portion of JP Morgan’s global payments will be done in JPM coin to instantly settle payments between clients. The coin is exclusively for institutional customers such as banks, brokerage firms and corporates and will not be available for individual clients. JPM coin has already received harsh criticism from the crypto community that it is not truly a cryptocurrency. The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse also shared his view and said that the JPM project misses the point of cryptocurrency. A real cryptocurrency is open to anyone to use and participate in its consensus mechanism and is not private and regulated like JPM coin.
Contactless Crypto Hardware Wallet

Status, the Ethereum mobile dApp (Decentralized Application) browser and messenger startup has launched a contactless cryptocurrency hardware wallet, called Keycard. The new hardware wallet has the same shape as a regular credit card and uses NFC (Near Field Communication) technology instead of USB cable connection to unlock private keys. Keycard also has an open source API (Application Program Interface) that allows developers to integrate  with their own mobile apps and build a smartcard that fits their needs. The wallet already supports major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens. The first 1000 developers who preorder will receive the wallet for free. The retail price for Keycard will be around $29.    
Chinese Google Launching Blockchain Platform

Baidu, Chinese Google has launched Baidu Blockchain Engine (BBE) an operating system (OS) that will help developers create dApps (Decentralized Apps). The new operating system uses the so called ABC tech which is the combination of Artificial intelligence, Big data and Cloud computing. BBE is hosted on Baidu’s cloud platform and is designed to eliminate the high cost of data storage and lack of computing power. Baidu aims to make the dApp development as simple as creating a mobile app. BBE will provide developers with multi-network frameworks and templates for smart contracts and dApps that should help developers create applications much faster and simpler.
450000 User Data Stolen From Coinmama Exchange

Israel-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinmama has informed its users in an email that 450,000 email addresses and hashed passwords have been stolen from them. Coinmama has over 1.3 million users. The data was stolen in 2017 and was posted for sale on a dark web market for the price of 0.3497 BTC. The hackers don’t have the actual passwords but the encrypted version of password. Coinmama advised all its users who registered before 5th of August, 2017 to immediately change their passwords as well as on all other services where they use the same email address. The data breach has affected not only Coinmama but 24 other companies and a total of 747 million user records.
Nasdaq Adding Bitcoin and Ethereum Indices

Nasdaq, the second-largest stock exchange in the world, will be adding two crypto indices to its global data service starting from 25th of February. The two indices are Bitcoin Liquid Index (BLX) and the Ethereum Liquid Index (ELX) created by New Zealand-based blockchain data and research firm Brave New Coin. The indices are designed to offer real-time price updates on 1 BTC and 1 ETH respectively in U.S. dollar, based on the most liquid markets. The price data will be refreshed every 30 seconds. Nasdaq offering Bitcoin and Ethereum indices shows that there is interest in cryptocurrencies from institutional investors.

You Can Now Buy Crypto At Liechtenstein’s Post Offices

Liechtenstein’s official post office has announced their new service which will allow their customers to buy Bitcoin in one of its offices in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein starting from 15th of February. Liechtenstein’s post office has partnered with Värdex Suisse, a Swiss-based financially regulated payment service provider in order to introduce the service. The service will extend to other post offices across the country and will add support for other major cryptocurrencies, including Ether, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple. The customers will receive a physical cryptowallet which generates public and private keys.
Tweet of the week
Meme of the week
Crypto word of the week

Oracles bring data from outside a blockchain into a blockchain. They provide the necessary data to trigger smart contracts to release fund when certain terms are met. The data, oracles bring could be anything associated with the smart contract such as temperature, price changes, outcome of certain events etc.
Quiz answer

Which of these cryptocurrencies is most anonymous?

The correct answer is “B”.

Monero provides full anonymity for the sender and the receiver while keeping the transaction amounts hidden. You can’t see the details of a transaction such as who is sending to whom and how much Monero they are sending.

Thank you for reading :) 

Have a great day!
Cheers,
MrCoin
hello@mrcoin.eu
+36 16 555 333
MrCoin

96 Kensington High Street, London, W8 4SG, UK

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