FOMO - Crypto News Digest

Blockchain technology offers a way for developing and / or smaller countries to leapfrog the behemoths. And many of them do!

Vanuatu announced that new, friendly legislation on blockchain and ICOs are soon to be introduced. Vanuatu is receiving assistance and support from Maltese government officials.

The Thai Ministry of Commerce starts conducting feasibility studies on the use of blockchain in the protection of intellectual property, agriculture and trade. Thailand is another country punching way above its weight when it comes to blockchain.

The Central Bank of Azerbaijan started working with IBM to bring blockchain to the government. It is a 5 year plan to transfer the economy by introducing blockchain in the banking sector and by putting digital identification on the blockchain.

China announced to open a blockchain pilot zone on the island of Hainan, in cooperation with the Oxford University. Their goal is to lure international talent to the island.

Our main story this morning is about Dubai and government-backed cryptocurrencies. The Department of Economic Development announced yesterday, that it will soon release a stablecoin, emCash, short for Emirates Cash, a digital equivalent to the Emirates Dirham, their fiat currency. Residents of Dubai will soon be able use emCash to pay for tuition fees, utility bills and also retail purchases. But is a government-backed cryptocurrency a good idea? It's not hard to imagine a dystopian future where the government has data about the finances and spending habits of every single citizen, as well as aggregate data which they can analyze to death.

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A new study has been published yesterday by researchers from Princeton and the Florida International University suggesting China now has the power to destroy Bitcoin, if it wishes to do so. Their numbers show Chinese mining pools now account for 74 percent of the hash power, up from 50% in 2015. This opens the door to a 51% attack, but it also has other, unexpected consequences. If I were them, I would rather weaponize Bitcoin to destabilize the economies of other countries. And this new study suggests this is, indeed, a distinct possibility.

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Binance announced yesterday that it will donate all the listing fees to charity. This PR stunt has very low if any downside risk for Binance. The ICO market is dead and projects which lost 50 or even 80% of the USD value of their funds raised won't pay the exchange millions of dollars even if they wanted to. And, let's not forget, any money channeled into a charity is tax free.

The Bitfinex saga continues and two things happened over the weekend, complicating the picture further. Crypto Twitter found out during the weekend that Bitfinex is now banking with HSBC US, but not directly. Rather through a shell company, Global Trading Solutions LLC, and the address of the headquarters of this shell company doesn't seem to be exist. Or rather it does, it is a valid address, but it is the address of a volleyball club on the outskirts of Chandler, Arizona. Bitfinex also published a blog post yesterday vehemently denying that the exchange is insolvent, and pointing to cold wallet addresses to prove their point; but fiat withdrawals are not really working.

Nicolas Maduro announced that passport fees have to be paid in the country's new cryptocurrency. But does Petro actually exist? Or is it possible that the Venezuelan government simply doesn't want to issue passports to anyone anymore?

Circle, the Goldman Sachs-backed crypto firm which bought Poloniex a few months ago announced acquiring SeedInvest, a platform where retail investors can invest in startup companies. Their plan is to make it easy for startups to issue their own tokens - securities as I imagine - and sell them to retail investors.

The Wall Street Journal published a 25 minutes long documentary about how they created their own cryptocurrency, WSJcoin. It is a absolutely fantastic piece of video journalism showing you how easy it is to create your own token and how incredibly easy it is to fool even the biggest names, thought leaders in the crypto industry.

Yesterday's biggest news on Twitter were the survey results presented by Fundstrat. The research firm asked 25 institutional investors directly, and 9500 retail investors in Twitter, to see how they think about the current market conditions. The results are fascinating.

Yesterday TD Ameritrade, one of the biggest brokerage firms in the US announced a strategic investment in ErisX, an exchange offering Bitcoin spot and futures trading.

The Israel Sercurities Authority, the ISA, announced yesterday to move its internal secure communications system to blockchain for the simple reason that it is immutable.

Welcome to the Exchange Edition of FOMO Daily!

Gemini is the first to obtain insurance for user funds on the exchange.

Poloniex: “The operation was successful but the patient died”… or did he?

Coinbase is raising half a billion dollars, and ICOrating releases a report on exchange security.

Google fights against crypto-mining Chrome extensions but others (including yours truly) think it's something to embrace. Blockchain is the "obvious solution" to solve the country's Brexit woes, says the UK's Chancellor. Everyone's favorite Giancarlo says 2/3 of fiat currencies are worthless.

Is Ripple growing into a tidal wave? Looks like Bitfinex and Tether lost access to banking, again. Big moves in the enterprise blockchain space.

Your daily digest of crypto news, 1st October 2018

Your daily digest of crypto news, 28th September 2018.

Your daily digest of crypto news, 27th September 2018.