Crypto Month in Review —February 2018
Link to January’s list
Crypto moves way too fast for me to keep up, so I started making a list of each day’s biggest headline. Below is my list for last month. My main news source was reddit. My main holdings are ETH and NANO, but I tried to make the list as unbiased as possible. Starting next month, I plan on including a source for each headline. Hope you like this, and let me know if you have any feedback!
2/1 — The Proof of Weak Hands smart contract is hacked, resulting in the theft of over 800 ETH.
2/2 — Nano trading opens on OKEX and Binance at the same time.
2/3 — Vitalik Buterin donates $2.4 million in Ether to the SENS Foundation to research therapies against age-related diseases.
2/4 — Days after Facebook banned cryptocurrency related ads from its website, Chinese search engine Baidu and social network Weibo do the same.
2/5 — China bans citizens from accessing foreign crypto exchanges and large western banks ban crypto purchases with credit cards as regulations around the world tighten and the crypto market cap falls to 50% of the all time high.
2/6 — CFTC chairman Christopher Giancarlo advocates a “do not harm” approach to cryptocurrency regulation (and gives a shoutout to hodlers) in his testimony to the US Senate Banking Committee.
2/7 — IOTA announces the IOTA Ecosystem Platform, which will house educational and developer resources, pair up organizations with developers, and support hackathons and philanthropic initiatives.
2/8 — Technical issues with Binance’s database cause it to go down for over 24 hours for maintenance. This leads to accusations by several members of the crypto community, including John McAfee, that the exchange was hacked or is exit scamming, which are debunked by Binance staff.
2/9 — A team of programmers for MyEtherWallet break away to form MyCrypto, hijacking MEW’s Twitter account and causing confusion in the process.
2/10 — Chat logs between the Nano core dev team and BitGrail reveal that the exchange has been insolvent for several months due to critical software issues. Deposits and withdrawals remain frozen.
2/11 — Kyber Network’s decentralized exchange goes live.
2/12 — ICON partners with biometrics tech company Raonsecure to develop a blockchain based identity authentication system.
2/13 — Washington Post’s head of innovation Jarrod Dicker announces he is stepping down to become the CEO of Po.et.
2/14 — Prices across the market rise as the Central European Bank and the South Korean government backpedal on their threats to regulate or ban cryptocurrency.
2/15 — Coinbase issues continue as users report random, unauthorized withdrawals from their linked bank accounts, leaving some with overdrawn accounts. Coinbase confirms the reports and begins to rollback the transactions.
2/16 — Visa issues a statement clarifying that the unauthorized transactions are not the fault of Coinbase.
2/17 — The CFTC urges investors to avoid crypto pump-and-dump schemes and offers a bounty to whistleblowers of such groups.
2/18 — Pro gaming team NRG utilizes Enjin Coin in their fan rewards system to educate their followers on blockchain technology.
2/19 — The Wyoming state senate proposes a bill that would exempt cryptocurrencies from tax considerations.
2/20 — OmiseGo signs a deal to produce both a payment and identification system for the Thailand government.
2/21 — Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro announces that the first round presale of the Petro, the country’s new oil-backed cryptocurrency, has raised $735 million.
2/22 — Robinhood’s Bitcoin and Ethereum trading platform goes live in 5 U.S. states.
2/23 — Coinbase completes implementation of full Segwit support on GDAX to reduce Bitcoin transaction times and fees.
2/24 — TD Bank becomes the latest large bank to ban cryptocurrency purchases with credit cards.
2/25 — During a meet with Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, Vladimir Putin stresses the importance of staying ahead of the curve in blockchain technology.
2/26 — P2P payment tech company and ex-Bitcoin purchasing service Circle, which is backed by Goldman Sachs, acquires cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex for $400 million.
2/27 — In a Reddit AMA, Microsoft founder Bill Gates condemns cryptocurrency, saying that it is a rare technology that directly causes deaths, and that investing in an ICO is extremely risky.
2/28 — OmsieGo releases its open source e-wallet software development kit (SDK) which allows developers to integrate OMG wallet services into websites and phone apps.
