The market is one regulatory decision away from the next market surge.

MrCoin

Weekly Crypto Recap

“The Internet wasn't built in a day. Neither shall the Internet of Money.” ~Jameson Lopp, creator of satoshi.info

Market State

BTC: €5,694.74 | +7.27% since last week

ETH: €409.8 . | +7.45% since last week

BCH: €694.53 . | +9.47% since last week

LTC: €75.26 . | +8.51% since last week

The second half of 2018 is starting with significant market rebound after weeks and weeks of downtrend. Last friday Bitcoin dropped to as low as €5029.35 which was the lowest level of 2018. Bitcoin lost 60% of its value from its 2017 December peak. Yet Bitcoin was at around €2,250 last year this time and it’s still up more than 150% since then. The overall market cap increased by 7.86% to €235.463 billion. Bitcoin is up by 7.27% to €5,694.74 since last week. Ethereum is currently at €409.8 which is 7.45% increase since last week.

Quiz of the week

How many Bitcoins are issued per block currently?

50 Bitcoins
25 Bitcoins
12.5 Bitcoins

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

Top stories of the week

ICO Market is Alive and Booming

Though the market is in downtrend, this year the crypto crowdfunding has already doubled its volume and its average size compared to last year. The size of an average ICO has increased from $12.8 million to over $25.5 million. In the first 5 months of 2018 a total of 537 ICOs with a volume of $13.7 billion have been closed successfully. While in 2017 there were a total of 552 ICOs with a volume of $7.0 billion. Telegram & EOS have been the outliers of ICOs in 2018 with their record breaking $1.7 billion and $4.1 billion respectively.

ERC1155, a New Ethereum Token Standard

ERC1155 is a token standard for video games. Video games have thousands of items each of which require separate smart contracts. However, the cost of deploying this many contracts on a blockchain is so high, that it would be impossible. It is like buying a new phone for every application you use. ERC1155 tokens can store many items in a single contract and send any number of items to one or multiple recipients in one transaction. This way it saves transaction costs and congestion on theEthereum blockchain.

Facebook Removes Ban on Cryptocurrency Ads

In January Facebook banned cryptocurrency ads. At that time Facebook didn’t have a good filtering system to recognise scam projects. Facebook updated its ad policy and now allows cryptocurrency ads from pre-approved advertisers. Advertisers must submit an application in order to prove their eligibility. Facebook will continue to prohibit ads for ICOs as they are too risky financial products.

Flood Destroyed Bitcoin Mining Centers

China has more than 70% of Bitcoin network’s hashrate. The Sichuan province of China has 70% of that hashrate. Sichuan has been called “Bitcoin mining capital” due to its cheap hydro power. Most of their mining hardware are placed in shabby buildings in the countryside. The global Bitcoin hashrate temporarily dropped due to recent heavy rains in Sichuan that destroyed thousands of hardware devices.

BitMEX CEO Predicts $50,000 Bitcoin by the end of 2018

BitMEX is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume where you can leverage trade with 100x leverage. Leverage magnifies both gains and losses. The company's CEO, Arthur Hayes, stated that Bitcoin could still reach the $50,000 milestone by the end of 2018. According to him the market is one regulatory decision away from the next market surge. If regulatory decisions enabled an ETF (publicly tradable instrument based on Bitcoin) to launch on a public stock market, it could fuel the price of Bitcoin to achieve $50,000.

List of Failed Crypto Projects are Expanding

Over 1000 coins are considered as dead according to Coinopsy and Deadcoins. Most of them are failed ICO projects. According to a March analysis from ICO advisory firm Satis Group, less than 4% of ICOs were successful. Failed projects have cost investors billions and the list of dead coins are growing rapidly. There is still hope for these failed projects. Even though they failed they worth something. CoinJanitor is buying up the inactive coins and pay users to trade them in, and finally burn the coins, then turn off the blockchain. CoinJanitor raised over $2 million through ICO.

A New Malware Targeting Bitcoin Users

Attackers created a new type of malware called CryptoCurrency Clipboard Hijackers. The malware monitors the Windows clipboard for cryptocurrency addresses, if one is found, it will swap it out with an address that they control. Windows users can lose their Bitcoins unless the user double-checks the address after pasting it. The previous malware monitored 400-600 thousand cryptocurrency addresses whereas this new type of malware monitors over 2.3 million cryptocurrency addresses.

Fake Trezor Wallet Website

Trezor, the hardware wallet, warned their users about a fake Trezor website. The fake website displayed an alert about device memory damage, asking users to enter their recovery seeds. Unfortunately some users have already reported having their crypto funds stolen by the phishers. The company published a blog post on how to avoid such phishing attempts. You should never enter your recovery seed anywhere but on your Trezor device. Make sure you are accessing the correct URL and check the “Secure” sign in your browser’s address bar.

Tweet of the week

Meme of the week

Crypto word of the week

Fungibility refers to indistinguishability of each unit of a cryptocurrency which means every single unit of a currency is treated equal. For example 1 euro is equal 1 euro. A euro won’t worth less just because it was previously used in illegal activity. When a currency is fungible it means that each unit of it is equal regardless of its transaction history.

Quiz answer

Which one is the least safe place to keep your cryptocurrency?

The correct answer is : “A”

The correct answer is A. An exchange or an online wallet is the least safest option to keep your cryptocurrencies as your private keys are stored on a server by a third party. Basically you are asking someone to hold your cryptocurrencies on behalf of you. It is not safe to store a large amount of cryptocurrency on an exchange.

Thank you for reading :)

Have a great day!

MrCoin

MrCoin

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+36 1 812 22 50

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

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