📰 Weekly Crypto Meta: 2 Popular Exchanges Hacked, Bitmain Cancelled IPO, Receiving Lawsuit from Pre-IPO Investors, Fresh Report by Bakkt and more
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Bakkt has Published its Progress Report
This week, Bakkt CEO Kelly Loeffler reported on the progress of the platform launch. As it turned out, the exact launch date of the futures infrastructure cannot be said. However, the company has achieved such results as:
- 'solid progress in bringing the first physical delivery price discovery contracts for bitcoin to the U.S.';
- developing digital asset custody;
- communication with regulators and market participants.
Of course, this information contains few specific things. At the same time, the year 2019 was already marked by the ICE as a period for launching Bakkt futures and other related products, which have the potential to change the cryptocurrency market. This long journey of Bakkt provokes many investors to skepticism. While regulatory processes are not yet complete, it is too early to talk about the actual progress of company in this matter.
Bithumb Hacked, Lost Over 3 Million EOS and 20 Million XRP
Bithumb, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea and other markets, reported on suspicious anomalous transactions that could supposedly signal a decrease in platform's security, to put it simply Bithumb has been probably hacked again. Deposits/withdrawals of funds now suspended on the exchnage.
Dovey Wan, the source close to the matter, also reported on the estimated losses of the platform:
BREAKING 🚨🚨🚨
Dovey Wan 🦖 (@DoveyWan) March 30, 2019
Bithumb is being hacked, at its EOS cold storage level!!! Over 3 million EOS has been transferred out 👀👀👀
Detail to be reported, confirmed by security firm who’s auditing for Bithumb
As one can remember, in June 2018, Bithumb lost about $30 million in cryptocurrency in result of the recent hack. During investigation, and after many reports from regulators about the complication of digital assets oversight, the exchange returned only $14 million of stolen funds.
SEC Postponed Decision on VanEck and Bitwise Bitcoin ETFs
As in the example with the launch of the futures crypto platform, regulators are probably not in a hurry to make decisions related to Bitcoin ETF. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) postponed decisions on Bitwise and VanEck Bitcoin ETF applications, which existed for almost a year, but then were canceled this winter at the request of the companies themselves. The decision may be postponed for a total of 240 days, and, as practice shows, may be extended for yet one year.
This month, Bitwise prepared a presentation for the SEC, in which company notes improving situation in the cryptocurrency market, despite the fact that the number of falsified transactions is very big. One of the formal requirements of the Commission in relation to the Bitcoin market at the moment is transparency, the ability to store funds safely, the absence of market manipulation, and so on.
Bitmain Will Receive a Lawsuit due to the Cancellation of IPO
Bitmain, one of the largest companies in the cryptocurrency market, at the same time, presumably continues to suffer losses. At least, such factors as rivalry for leadership positions within the company, the cancellation of IPOs signal that the mining giant is trying to find new strategies. Recently, the company also announced changes in its management.
The application by the Chinese mining company Bitmain to conduct an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) expired on March 25th. However, until that time and after it no action was taken. This made investors to start preparing a class action lawsuit, according to which the company must return the money invested.
1/ there are now tons of pissed of Asian investors that were duped by Jihan to invest during summer at $12 - $14 bn with a promise of IPO at minimum $18 bn. Now many understand this is mirage and Jihan deceived them on numbers and outlook. His reputation is shit!
BTCKING555 (@btcking555) March 26, 2019
Local publications also publish news about Bitmain, noticing the fact that the Hong Kong stock exchange is the main rival of the US markets in terms of IPO. Hong Kong attracts quite a lot of companies, including large ones, to hold a public offer of its shares. However, Nasdaq may probably get more influence in this area.
Huobi Will Issue Institutional Products and Services
Although the ongoing stagnation of cryptocurrency markets has forced investors to forget a little about the ideas of growing institutional influence in the field of digital assets, many companies continue to move in this direction.
HBUS, the US division of the Singapore-based crypto exchange Huobi, led the developers who work on products and services targeted at institutional clients. These products are: token-based lending service, OTC trading site and HBUS's stablecoin.
At the moment, trade volumes that correspond to institutional activity or the use of OTC platforms remain unknown. While volumes of the cryptocurrency market are approximate, and exchanges receive more and more complaints from researchers, these types of digital platforms become even more mysterious. Nevertheless, even fundamental analysts now view institutional interest as one of the possible growth factors.
Rumors About Possible Hack of CoinBene Is Still Spreading
Well, the digital asset infrastructure continues to show its instability. This applies to both large and smaller exchanges. However, the estimated amounts of theft appeared on Coinbene do not look so small. 105 million dollars may be threatened or irretrievably lost, according to experts.
Researchers from the audit company Elementus released a report that indicates a suspicious withdrawal of funds on this platform. What may also matter, the exchange, shortly before this point in time, began technical maintance, which caused serious concern among users. So far, CoinBene representatives have argued that all funds are safe.
On March 25, $105 million located on the hot wallet of the exchange were sent to three different addresses. Later, on March 26, the money was transferred to cold wallets. These operations, the cause of which is not yet clear, were performed as users began to complain about the inability to withdraw funds.
EOS and TRON to Continue a Victorious Marketing Program Against Ethereum
Competition in the cryptocurrency market is where you can insist on the advantages of an asset, or just the interesting thing, showing a little more than when developing assets were less well known and more careful with marketing.
Now Ethereum is experiencing not the best of times: its price did not stand up and also returned to much lower values. Its development is accompanied by controversial decisions and postponed dates of hard forks. In the end, an ordinary user, who is unlikely to understand anything in the complex inventive plans of a team, can begin to look for alternative solutions, converting the rest ETH that have fallen in price into something else.
All these factors, which are difficult to assess unambiguously, in general, create the basis for such assets as EOS and TRON to get a greater share of fame among investors. At the moment, TRON, and earlier the EOS, were the pioneers of the shilling, although these two are unlikely to be able to overtake XRP.
Finally,
'The reason why they got so much adoption, those new protocols, is that they offer considerably better speed, transactions per second… The volume of transactions they can do is considerably higher. That means if you have a dapp, then you have a much better user experience'.
here we do not yet have accurate and contextual results.
Could this mean anything? Probably, Ethereum is somehow more cautious about marketing.
Coinfirm Report Shows That Crypto Exchanges Need More Security
Crypto-related studies have become very popular in recent times. Investors, researchers and all concerned people want to learn more about the state of the digital assets market, which does not even have clear metrics, confirmed volumes, and so on. However, something still managed to find out, namely, the level of supported security on crypto-exchanges in the 'platform-user' relationship.
Coinfirm analyzed 216 digital currency exchanges. 69% of cryptocurrency platforms don't have a KYC policy (“know your customer”). Only 26% of exchanges, according to experts, comply with the security requirements to prevent money laundering (AML). These two already standard policies, KYC and AML, have been repeatedly considered by regulators as a mandatory requirement. Now KYC/AML are also evaluated when making decisions by investors at various levels.
However, it may seem that researchers take into account only small exchanges that attract few investors, or they are guided by the fact that investors themselves do not want to work with the KYS policy (the same is indicated in the report). However, authors noted that Binance may not have the stated safety record. The popular exchange probably responded to various complaints, including from supervisory organizations, and has already introduced new protection tools with IdentityMind.
Wells Fargo, Mastercard CEOs Say Blockchain 'has yet to live up to the hype'
As part of the recent fintech event, the representatives of the financial world again did not avoid the blockchain subject. This time the meeting was held without inspiring speeches: according to the leaders of the largest organizations, this technology may change the market in the future, but so far the hype has not yet been justified. By the way, on the same week, Tim Sloan, the CEO and President of Wells Fargo, informed the board of directors about his decision to leave the bank’s management.
Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan concluded:
'Blockchain has been way oversold'
The leadership of Mastercard, a company with the maximum number of patents related to the use of decentralized technology, is also thinking in the same direction. As we can see today, banks, insurance companies, organizations that often use some blockchain solutions are still aloof from discussing the “revolutionism” of this technology. How legitimate is this - we will find out in the future.
Best 7-day Performance (Dynamic/Hystorical):
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- Tezos up to +50%
- TrumpCoin up to +55% but PutinCoin only up to +45%
- Elastos up to +45%
- Ellaism up to +40%
- Grin up up to +30%
- EOS and Golos up to +15%
- Lisk, Dash, Nano, BitShares up to +12%
- PIVX up to +10%
The mention of coins and projects in news or somewhere else cannot be perceived as investment advice or definitely 'good' long-term indicators of a cryptocurrency asset. Wishing all the best, bye
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