Rapid Fire

• Bitcoin has reached 6k!!

• Regulators Ready to Approve Ethereum Futures

  Regulators Ready to Approve Ethereum Futures, CFTC Insider Says - CoinDesk

  A futures contract might bring in fresh institutional funding to the crypto space

  The CFTC is willing to let an ether futures contract go to market after soliciting market feedback last year

• Microsoft Azure Blockchain DK For Ethereum Has been released

  Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum Released - Build Azure

  provides developers an enhanced experience for building Blockchain apps utilizing Azure Blockchain Service, or even the public Ethereum network. It also enables you to utilize popular, open source Blockchain tools such as Solidity and Truffle.

• Fidelity Will Offer Cryptocurrency In A Few Weeks

   

• Binance is going to allow Margin Trading

  Kinda hilariously updated in the same tweet where they mention the hack, as the 2nd most important thing.

Executives polled on Crypto (K)

• Poll by Deloitte conducted of 1,386 Senior Executives (500m+US, 100m World)Feb-March, dozen countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Luxembourg, Singapore, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States)
  • 53% Say blockchain is top five strategic priorities (up from 43% in 2018)
  • Financial sector is leader in adoption right now, but we do see technology, media, and healthcare diversifying blockchain projects
  • 27% said important but not top priority, 14% some relevance but not strategic initiative
  • Only 3% said it would not be relevant, down from 4% last year
  • 86% Broadly scalable and will eventually achieve mainstream adoption, 83% said their executive teams see compelling case for blockchain
  • 81% plan on replacing systems of record, 77% think the lose competitive advantage if they dont adopt.
  • Over-hyped? 43% said yes
• BRENT RANT

TRON suffered from a critical bug that could have brought their entire blockchain to a screeching halt (ADAM)

TRON suffered from a critical bug that could've crashed its entire blockchain

• This took place in January, and the bounty was paid in Feb., but was just disclosed May 2.
• Using a single machine, an attacker could send a DDoS attack to all or 51 percent of the [Super Representative] nodes and render TRON network unusable, or make it unavailable
• This flaw in TRON‘s wallet allowed all of the network‘s available memory to be taken up by a single party with just one computer, which would have effectively broken the blockchain during that time
• This was discovered by a company / person called HackerOne, and disclosure was just released. They were also paid for one other bug where they were paid double the bounty that they haven't disclosed the nature of.

BINANCE HACK (Brent)

• Just want to do a quick follow up about the thought of a re-org
• CZ Basically said something stupid on his live stream
• He took it back within the hour.
• You do need to reset your 2FA keys
• Also disable any API keys you have, and maybe re-enable if you trust them?
• https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1126109361154215936

Block-chain Researchers weigh in on Wright Lawsuit (K)

• Let's Catchup
  • Self proclaimed Satoshi, aka Faketoshi Craig Wright sued by (David) Kleiman family
  • Accused of stealing $11b worth of bitcoin, intellectual property
  • Last week the court ordered Wright to disclose bitcoin addresses that belonged to him before 2013....which remember he claimed to have mind the first 70 blocks

• So.....

  • He turns in a list of the 70 addresses, it was redacted & unsealed

  • This is what his lawyer writes regarding the addresses...

    Dr. Wright knows that he mined the first 70 blocks on the blockchain. Because the public addresses associated with blocks are publicly available, Dr. Wright is able to identify the public addresses associated with the first 70 blocks on the blockchain and provides those public addresses below.

• WizSec (Bitcoin Security Specialists) Write a report

  • First they point out we have no reason to believe these bitcoins even exists
  • Basically Wrights claim is he didnt remember the addresses...but he can share them since they are one the blockchain and he mines bitcoin

  • We know because even though list is redacted the addresses match up perfectly

  • "It beggars belief, for the self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin to act so ignorant about the fundamentals of his invention. Perhaps Wright thinks that being a bitcoin miner means pointing at bitcoins and yelling "Mine!"?

• Reggie Fowler is somehow connected to this. He used to play football years ago and was an owner of the Vikings.
• The accusation is that Fowler opened a bunch of bank accounts to make it easier for Bitfinex to move money around. The connection was made because modernconsensus.com noticed the bank account was one of Fowler's in the actual indictment.
• There was another warrant issues for a Israeli citizen named Ravid Yosef. Shes also a dating coach.
• Fowler has had a few other scandals (He's been sued 36 times) and accusations, but this one in particular is saying that he worked with Yosef to run a "shadow bank" to process US based payments. Their charges are conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
• There's even chats out there where the owner of Bitfinex is asking the company CryptoCapital for millions of dollars - even yelling at them for not sending any money this month. CryptoCapital is the company that these bank accounts from the Football player and Dating coach are linked to.
• When Fowler was arrested he had $14,000 worth of fake $100 bills at his office.
• There's also possible ties to both Colombian Cartels and Quadriga which we won't get into, but the links are in the shownotes if you want to learn more - this all centers around CryptoCapital
  • Here
  • And here

• Ethereum 2.0 is an upcoming new Eth chain with improvements in security, scalability, and decentralization.
• Shards are a core concept behind Eth 2.0. Sharding refers to splitting the entire Ethereum network into multiple portions called shards. Each shard would contain its own independent state, aka a unique set of account balances and smart contracts. It will help scale
• Testnet is publicly accessible with links to start staking. It's bare bones.

• Facebook’s Secret Cryptocurrency Just ‘Months Away’ from India Launch (K)
  • Project Libra may be launching in a few months
    • stable-coin type coin, probably for buying stuff on FB or sending $ thru Whatsapp
  • One main reason to launch in India, facilitate remittance payments for its WhatsApp users lol (200m)
  • Then they cite a crypto guy with a crypto fund saying this will be good for crypto
  • Trajectory? Led by former PayPal president David Marcus, 1/5th of blockchain team are PayPal alumni
• Facebook Ads
  • Facebook reverses ban on crypto ads —-Although cryptocurrency ads are once again permitted on Facebook, advertisements for initial coin offerings (ICOs) will still be rejected.
  • That doesn't mean its easy, everything still needs review.
  • Also a good chance there's a snafu when some scam exchanges start promoting.
  • Basically they're going to default to yes vs default to no.