Crypto News - Tether and Bitfinex Controversy, IOTA and Vechain Big Partnerships
Some major gains this week (mostly for Bitcoin) and the sentiment seems to be bullish with many users predicting 6k for Bitcoin.
Current prices:
BTC = around $5.7k (+9%)
ETH = around $162 (+2%)
XRP = around $0.30 (+2%)
EOS = around $4.89 (+3%)
NEO = around $9.31 (-1%)
IOTA = around $0.30 (+11%)
XLM = around $0.10 (-1%)
BNB = around $23 (0%)
XMR = around $66 (+7%)
VET = around $0.006 (+4%)
A lot of analysts agree that we are bound to test 6k resistance with potential pullback after that.
Bitfinex/Tether Controversies
On 30th of April it was revealed that the USDT stablecoin is only about 74 percent backed by fiat equivalents as it was annouced by its issuer’s general counsel.
Tether, the company behind USDT, holds about $2.1 billion in cash and short-term securities while the market cap is around $2.8 billion. It was revealed by Stuart Hoegner who is also general counsel to Bitfinex, a crypto exchange which shares executives and has overlapping owners with Tether.
It was also revealed that Bitfinex, that used funds (collateral) from Tether to cover up $850 million in (alleged) losses. On the other hand Bitfinex is claiming that the funds were merely seized, not lost, they are theoretically recoverable.
I am personally not surprised since Tether and Bitfinex has always been very controversial. As a result crypto markets dipped significantly but since then recovered.
IOTA and Jaguar
On 28th of April Jaguar Land Rover, Britain's largest auto manufacturer, said on Monday it is testing software that will allow drivers of its cars to earn the IOTA cryptocurrency as a reward for sharing data.
The company is developing what it calls "smart wallet" technology to be installed in its automobiles. This would reward Jaguar car drivers with IOTA coins for actions such as enabling their vehicles to automatically report useful data, such as traffic congestion or potholes to navigation providers or local authorities as well as car sharing.
Currently there is no a timetable for when it will be commercially available however the British car company is testing the technology at the new Jaguar Land Rover software engineering base in Shannon, Ireland. IOTA reacted greatly to the news since it a massive scale world life application case.
Vechain developments
VeChain has annouced a series of developments that include:
HSM based key escrow turnkey solution which is designed to solve the risks of existing private key escrow services. The aim is to fulfill the development of blockchain applications on the VeChainThor Blockchain.
It launched Blockchain as a Service Platform — VeChain ToolChain which allows small and medium enterprises to provide a one-stop solution to optimize supply-chain management. It is focusing on product life cycle management, which can be used as a SaaS solution or customized as a turnkey package.
Deloitte (audit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services with 286k employees) and DNV GL (provider of risk management and quality assurance services to the maritime, oil and gas, and power and renewables industries with 12k employees) have announced that they are migrating clients and certificates to Vechain so overall great ongoing progress for Vechain.