Crypto Month in Review —August 2018
Previous reviews: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul
Crypto moves way too fast for me to keep up, so I aggregate each day’s biggest headline and publish the list at the end of the month. Below is my list for August. My main holdings are ETH and NANO, but I try to make these lists as unbiased as possible.
8/1 — Research conducted by Chainalysis for Bloomberg News shows an 85% drop in the USD equivalent amount of Bitcoin handled by crpytocurrency payment processors since September 2017.
8/2 — Shares of Mike Novogratz’s crpytocurrency fund Galaxy Digital plummet by over 30% in the company’s Toronto Stock Exchange debut.
8/3 — ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, teams up with Microsoft and Starbucks to develop a digital asset marketplace.
8/4 — Bithumb reopens deposits and withdrawals for 9 different cryptocurrencies in wake of its $30 million theft last month.
8/5 — A study by the Wall Street Journal claims that organized crypto trading groups made $825 million in revenue by manipulating the market.
8/6 — Research from Duo Security unveils a sophisticated cryptocurrency scam botnet of over 15,000 bots that use phishing techniques to take cryptocurrency from users.
8/7 — The SEC further delays a decision on the VanEck Bitcoin ETF until September 30th.
8/8 — ICORating reports that the amount invested in ICOs this year has already doubled the value from all of 2017.
8/9 — The Tezos Foundation awards grants to 4 leading blockchain research institutions, including Cornell University.
8/10 — Cryptocurrency buying by Turkish citizens increases by over 100% as the Turkish Lira rapidly loses value amid tariff tension.
8/11 — Boerse Stuttgart, the second largest stock exchange in Germany, unveils plans to create an ICO exchange.
8/12 — A report by blockchain investment group Block0 shows that over 72% of cryptocurrency trading volume is generated by Asian markets.
8/13 — The Coinbase index fund reduces its annual maintenance fee to 1% to attract new customers.
8/14 — The Square Cash app opens Bitcoin buying and selling in all 50 states.
8/15 — A cryptocurrency investor who had $24 million in cryptocurrency stolen from his phone sues AT&T for $224 million over their negligence and alleged cooperation with the hacker.
8/16 — Nvidia reveals 2nd quarter revenue losses largely due to a severe decline in cryptocurrency mining interest.
8/17 — A stress test of the Nano network demonstrates that the cryptocurrency can handle up to 756 transactions per second at peak utilization.
8/18 — Porn website Tube8 plans to launch a blockchain platform that will pay users cryptocurrency while they watch videos.
8/19 — Divyesh Darji, the head of Bitconnect’s India branch, is arrested for his role in the Ponzi scheme.
8/20 — NYSE-backed company Bakkt states that all trades on its platform will be with real cryptocurrency, and that there will be no margin trading, leverage, or paper claims for a real asset.
8/21 — Amid rapid currency devaluation, Venezuela issues a new currency, dubbed the “Sovereign Bolivar”, which is pegged to their Petro cryptocurrency. Many analysts have called this untradable cryptocurrency a scam.
8/22 — The ProCoin Bitcoin ETF is denied by the SEC, marking the third ETF casualty in two months.
8/23 — Crowdfunding site IndieGoGo launches a blockchain expansion that will allow participants to purchase shares of real estate in a ski resort in Aspen, Colorado.
8/24 — CNBC crypto analyst Brian Kelly predicts that a Bitcoin ETF will be approved in February 2019 “at the earliest”, due mainly to a current inability for regulators to monitor exchanges.
8/25 — Following up China’s crackdown on offshore cryptocurrency exchanges, Tencent and Alibaba ban cryptocurrency transactions on their apps WeChat Pay and Alipay, respectively.
8/26 — A Dutch man lists his $474,000 house for sale, but claims he will only accept payment in VeChain Thor tokens.
8/27 — In an uncharacteristic move for the investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway purchases a stake in Paytm, India’s largest digital payments provider.
8/28 — A survey by Coinbase shows that 42 of the top 50 universities in the world offer computer science, finance, and/or anthropology courses in cryptocurrency and blockchain.
8/29 — Yahoo Finance integrates Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin trading into its interface, as well as market data for many other cryptocurrencies.
8/30 — Bitcoin mining pool Bitmain announces plans to create an ASIC mining pool for Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
8/31 — The Ethereum core dev team votes to delay the scheduled mining difficulty increase and to reduce the block reward from 3 ETH to 2 ETH.
