Crypto Month in Review — May 2018

Previous reviews: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr
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 May. My main holdings are ETH and NANO, but I try to make these lists as unbiased as possible.
Market cap movement throughout May — Peaked early on, and has been down most of the month.
5/1 — Car manufacturers BMW, GM, Ford, and Renault team up with Iota, Ethereum, and Hyperledger to research potential uses for blockchain in the automotive industry.
5/2 — The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance releases a standardized architecture set in the same vein as the ISO/OSI networking model to develop web apps on Ethereum.
5/3 — IOTA announces the development of Project Qubic, which will allow for smart contracts and oracles to be built on top of the IOTA tangle.
5/4 — Request Network announces a partnership with MakerDao that will allow stable payments on the network.
5/5 — EOS release its Dawn 4.0 version in anticipation of its main net release in June. The update focuses on cross-chain communication.
5/6 — After Warren Buffet compared cryptocurrency to “rat poison”, Elon Musk continues their feud by proposing a candy company called “Cryptocandy” that will go after the market of Buffet’s See’s Candies.
5/7 — Originally referenced by a Wall Street Journal article, an alleged public Securities & Exchange Commission meeting scheduled for May 7th to determine whether ETH and XRP should be considered securities turns out to be fabricated.
5/8 — The New York Times reports that the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company Intercontinental Exchange is planning to open a Bitcoin exchange.
5/9 — Bloomberg partners with billionaire crypto investor Mike Novogratz to create an index fund of the 10 most liquid cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Litecoin, Dash, Monero, Ethereum Classic, and ZCash.
5/10 — Financial institutions that participated in Ripple’s pilot test program report 40–70% cost savings and orders of magnitude time savings for cross-border payments.
5/11 — South Korean exchange Upbit is raided by authorities over questions of liquidity, causing a 15% drop in the market.
5/12 — The reserve bank of Zimbabwe bans the transacting in and trading of cryptocurrencies to “protect the public”.
5/13 — Electronics giant LG launches its own blockchain service, called “Monachain”, to handle logistics.
5/14 — Gemini adds Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, and ZCash to its exchange.
5/15 — Consensys-backed startup Kaleido partners with Amazon’s AWS in a move to make it easier for customers to put their services on the blockchain.
5/16 — Streamr reveals partnerships with Hewlett-Packard and Nokia for its blockchain-based personal data marketplace.
5/17 — Tel Aviv, in partnership with Intel, Accenture, and The Floow, unveils a blockchain-based securities exchange for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
5/18 — A study by the Chinese Ministry of Industry concludes that there are 421 fake or fraudulent cryptocurrencies in existence.
5/19 — Marc O’Brien, the former CEO of Visa UK & Ireland, joins a crypto startup creating crypto payment cards for everyday shopping.
5/20 — Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck announces it will cease trading of 4 anonymity-focused coins in June — Monero, ZCash, Dash, and Augur — in the wake of a hack against them that stole over $500 million worth of crypto.
5/21 — Walmart files a patent for a blockchain-based system that would be used by customers to resell products they no longer need.
5/22 — A malicious miner takes control of two of Verge’s hashing algorithms to execute a 51% attack on the cryptocurrency for the second time in two months.
5/23 — IBM plans to hire 1500 new employees in France for its emerging tech initiatives, including distributed ledger processing.
5/24 — The U.S. Justice Department opens a criminal probe into whether traders are manipulating the price of Bitcoin.
5/25 — TorrentFreak uncovers a signed letter of intent by Tron founder Justin Sun to acquire torrent software producer BitTorrent.
5/26 — Fiat to crypto trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, and Litecoin opens on top rated stock exchange service LMAX.
5/27 — South African investment firm Cygnia announces plans to open their own cryptocurrency exchange by the end of the year.
5/28 — Poloniex freezes many users’ accounts after rolling out new KYC regulations.
5/29 — Chinese infosec company 360 discovers a multitude of “epic” bugs in EOS’ code, including an exploit that allows attackers to execute malicious code hidden in a smart contract. Dan Larimer pledges not to release the EOS mainnet until all of the bugs are fixed.
5/30 — Chinese president Xi Jinping calls blockchain a “breakthrough technology” despite the country’s current ban on cryptocurrencies.
5/31 — Bittrex secures a banking partnership that will allow them to offer USD trading pairs on their exchange.