"Bitcoin Vault" idea may end Bitcoin thefts. View in browser

“Bitcoin is the best performing asset in the last decade.” ~  Anthony Pompliano, Co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital asset management firm

Market State

The cryptocurrency market started the week strong jumping from $307 billion to $319 billion. However, towards the end of the week the crypto market dipped below $300 billion. Currently the overall market capitalization stands around $293 billion. There doesn’t seem to be any real negative sentiment at all within the market. 

Bitcoin’s share of the total crypto market is still above 68%. Bitcoin briefly broke above $12000 during the week after Chinese yuan weakened more than 2% against the US dollar. However Bitcoin experienced a sharp fall at the weekend. Currently it’s trading around $11300. The largest altcoin Ether is trading around $209 which is a 9.5% drop compared to the previous week. According to a survey conducted among the Twitter cryptocurrency community Ether is most likely to trade above $1000 again in the future. Out of more than 5000 respondents, 54% predicted Ether would reach four digits again.

The price of Ripple dropped by 10% over the week to $0.296. Still Ripple remains the third largest cryptocurrency in the market. Ripple is looking to invest in multiple companies after a $30 million investment in MoneyGram. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO said that “We’re probably the largest investor in blockchain and crypto on the planet. We’ve publicly announced we’ve made about $500m of investments in the space over the last 18 months."

Check the latest Bitcoin Price
Quiz of the week

Which one of these countries is one of the current largest miners of Bitcoin?

  1. China
  2. Mexico
  3. Nepal

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

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Top stories of the week
China's Central Bank Announced Completion of Its Digital Currency

Mu Changchun, a senior official at the People's Bank of China (PBOC) announced at the third China Finance 40 Group meeting that its national digital currency is ready. The digital yuan has been in the research and development phase since 2014. Chinese central bank will use a two-tier operating system. The People’s Bank of China will first trade digital currency with commercial banks in the upper level and the commercial banks will trade them with the public on the second level. The two-tier system was chosen due to China’s complex economy with a vast territory and large population. Mu Changchun also stated that the Chinese central bank would maintain a centralised operating model, as opposed to cryptocurrencies that are decentralised. Though the digital currency is ready, it is still not public yet when it will officially launch.

Latest "Bitcoin Vault" Idea May End Bitcoin Thefts

In early 2016, couple of Bitcoin developers worked on an idea called “Bicoin Vaults” that will keep Bitcoin safe from hackers. The idea is to secure Bitcoins in cold storage with a set of code to delay transactions for a period of time before sending the coins out. Time delay would give the rightful owner time to reverse a transaction back into the cold wallet if someone tried to steal their crypto. However, the proposal couldn’t be implemented as it required a hard fork which could lead to chain split. Last week a Bitcoin Core developer Bryan Bishop announced his new “Bitcoin Vault” proposal that doesn’t require any forks. If Bitcoin continues to go up and become a more expensive, cryptocurrency, exchanges will be a huge target for hackers. Bishop said “Having the ability to revoke or undo a transaction, even in this constrained environment, could be quite valuable."

Blockstream Launches New Institutional Bitcoin Mining Service

Canadian Bitcoin and blockchain technologies company, Blockstream is launching a co-location and hosting service located in two huge new data-centers called Blockstream Mining and the world’s first mining pool to use the BetterHash protocol, called Blockstream Pool. Blockstream Mining is designed to host enterprise-level mining activities, in addition to Blockstream’s own mining operations. Two of their active customers are Fidelity Center for Applied Technology and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. According to the company’s blog post their mining facilities in Quebec, Canada  and Georgia, USA have over 300MW of combined energy capacity. Blockstream's mining facilities are able to generate 6 Exahash per second which is 7.5% of the current Bitcoin network hash rate. BetterHash based mining pools are designed to decrease Bitcoin mining centralization and gives individual miners the ability to control which Bitcoin transactions to include in their newly mined blocks.

British Authorities Seek Data from Crypto Exchanges

The United Kingdom’s tax authority, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has sent letters to at least three popular cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the U.K. requesting cryptocurrency exchanges to reveal customers’ names and transaction histories. Three major crypto exchanges in the UK, eToro, Coinbase and CEX.IO are reported to have received letters from the tax agency. According to HMRC, cryptocurrencies should not be treated as real money but should be treated as assets. The tax authority body recognizes the fact that many individuals hold virtual assets as personal investments where they need to comply with capital gains taxation guidelines. The tax authority wishes only to go back two or three years ago. Individuals who ventured into cryptocurrency in 2012 and 2013 and made the largest profits would not be affected, rather people who ventured into cryptocurrency at the time where crypto was at its all time high, will be affected.

Mastercard Is Developing a Team to Build Crypto Wallet Solutions

Payments giant Mastercard is seeking to hire a number of blockchain professionals. According to the company’s job listing Mastercard is looking to hire blockchain experts. Two of the job descriptions mention wallet solutions and also require candidates to have experience managing cryptocurrency wallet products. The job description speaks of the crypto industry quite favorably, asking a potential candidate: “Do you have the courage to look into the eyes of disruptive forces without fear, and maneuver them to your advantage? Do you have the desire to work at the cutting-edge intersection of payments and cryptocurrencies?” etc. It is not clear what Mastercard’s wallet solutions will look like. Mastercard is a member of the Libra Association, supporting Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency, Libra. It’s possible for Mastercard to create an alternative wallet solution to rival Facebook’s Calibra.

Insurance Giant Allianz Creating JPM Coin-like Token

German insurance giant Allianz is developing a token-based ecosystem that utilizes blockchain similar to investment banking giant JPMorgan’s JPM Coin. The token is still in the experimentation phase, though the basic infrastructure of the ecosystem has already been built and tested. A representative of Allianz said that the token aims to simplify and accelerate cross-border insurance payments for its corporate customers across 200 countries and territories. The token will be pegged 1:1 to the US dollar and is also built for instantaneous transfer of payments between the bank’s institutional clients. The firm stressed that its token would not be a cryptocurrency. Allianz joins a growing number of big-name companies who are exploring blockchain technology for quicker payments. 



Also last week a hacker had contacted Binance exchange and claimed to have thousands of photos and data collected during Binance’s KYC process. The hacker demanded 300 BTCs claiming that otherwise he would leak the KYC data. Binance released an official statement and said that the company is still investigating the legitimacy of those images as the images do not contain the digital watermark imprinted by their system. This suggests that the hacker may be bluffing. After Binance refused to cooperate the hacker created a Telegram group which has over 10000 members and shared hundreds of images of people holding their passports and identity documents from around the world. 

Binance is offering 25 BTC bounty to provide identity of the blackmailer. Binance claims the data is fake as it doesn’t match their database. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told his Twitter followers not to fall into the "KYC leak" FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, which means to  intentionally spread bad news in order to affect the prices) and they were investigating it and would update shortly. Binance Coin surged 7% during the week despite the KYC hack rumours.

Tweet of the week
Meme of the week

The first rule in cryptocurrency investing!

Quiz answer

Which one of these countries is one of the current largest miners of Bitcoin?

The correct answer is “A”.

Thank you for reading :) 

Have a great day!

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MrCoin

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MrCoin

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

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