Block by Block Weekly Newsletter #33
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News of the Week
🤯 Fidelity Launching a Crypto Trading Platform
Financial services provider Fidelity Investments is launching a cryptocurrency trading and storage platform.
The platform will custody bitcoin, ethereum and other yet-to-be-named cryptocurrencies at launch. As part of its security system, Fidelity will hold the cryptocurrencies in cold storage, along with “multi-level physical and cyber controls,” the release explained.
The platform hopes to draw institutional investors, including hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries.
Fidelity is one of the five largest financial services providers in the world, maintaining some $7.2 trillion in client assets.
⚖️ SEC Setting Up New Division to Talk to ICO Startups
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is launching a new division with the goal of making it simpler for fintech startups — including those launching initial coin offerings (ICOs) — to navigate the legal implications of their products.
Announced Thursday, the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology (FinHub) will act as a central point for the securities regulator to interact with entrepreneurs and developers in the financial technology world, in particular with groups focusing on distributed ledger technology (DLT), automated investment advice, digital marketplace financing and artificial intelligence.
Crypto exchange Coinbase is launching in a new office in the capital of Ireland.
Coinbase vice president of operations and technology Tina Bhatnagar announced late Monday that the exchange is opening a new office in Dublin, Ireland in response to customer growth in the EU. What’s more, it’s a helpful backstop against the looming exit of the U.K. from the European Union, known as Brexit.
The news comes weeks after the exchange opened a new headquarters in New York to provide services for institutional clients.
Cryptocurrency trading platform Bitfinex has reportedly shifted its banking business to the Hong Kong-based Bank of Communications, The Block reported Oct. 16.
A source familiar with the matter reportedly said that Bitfinex appears to be banking with the Bank of Communications through the private account “Prosperity Revenue Merchandising Limited.” According to the Block, Bank of Communications — which is partly owned by HSBC — has been using U.S.-based Citibank as the intermediary bank for U.S. dollar wire transfers to Bitfinex.
The Block speculates that HSBC — with whom Bitfinex previously conducted its banking business — was unaware it was providing services for Bitfinex, and subsequently closed the previous account.
💸 Korea’s Largest Exchange Sells Stake in $350 Million Deal
Bithumb, currently the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea by trading volume, just confirmed it has sold more than 38 percent of its total ownership to a blockchain consortium based in Singapore, for 400 billion won, or $350 million.
Bithumb confirmed the deal was signed on Oct. 11 with BK Global Consortium, a blockchain investment firm formed by BK Global, a plastic surgery medical group in Singapore.
👍 Huobi to Launch All-in-one Stablecoin
Huobi announced this week that it will launch an all-in-one stablecoin wrapper called HUSD. HUSD will support all four regulated stablecoins: TrueUSD, Paxos Standard, USD//Coin and Gemini dollar. After depositing any of these four stablecoins, they will be shown as HUSD in the account.
Users will be able to withdraw any stablecoin regardless of which one was deposited. Huobi says that HUSD will help to eliminate the need to choose between multiple stablecoins as well as save costs when switching between stablecoins.
Project Updates
POA Network Partners with MakerDAO
POA Network has launched the first ever blockchain where the native currency of the chain is USD-stable. xDai Chain, an Ethereum compatible sidechain with Dai as the native currency of the network, combines POA Network’s interoperability knowledge and technology with MakerDAO’s Dai.
A bunch of new projects joined the #DeFi movement this week including MakerDAO, dYdX, Compound and many more. All projects that are interested in joining #DeFI can now do so through a webform.
Ethereum Foundation Grants Update — Wave IV
The grantees for wave 4 were announced this week. Many projects working on projects in the scalability, security, usability and client diversity categories were given a grant!
dYdX has raised a Series A round led by Chris Dixon at a16z crypto and Olaf Carlson-Wee at Polychain Capital.
Experimental — the creators of an blockchain-based strategy game called CryptoWars — will be building their game on top of the Loom SDK.
Chainbreakers Joins Decentraland
Qwellcode’s upcoming game, Chainbreakers, is the latest experience to be built exclusively for the Decentraland platform.
Blockstack Announces App Mining
On the Blockstack network, instead of just “mining” through computation, developers can “mine” by contributing apps to the ecosystem and making applications the community wants.
Rocket Pool announced the release of their new whitepaper for Rocket Pool 2.0 — a decentralised staking infrastructure service for Ethereum 2.0
The FOAM Map has been updated to include new tags, a new proof of use Modal, a search function and much more.
Salus is a docker container that decides which security scanners to run, coordinates their configuration, and compiles the output into a single report.
MyCrypto version 1.4.0 released that contains updates to the design and user experience of the site.
Prysmatic Labs Ethereum Sharding Update #15
Various updates from the Prysmatic Labs team including the release of a minimal viable RANDAO implementation!
Project Spotlight
Mustekala is an in-development Ethereum light client from the team at MetaMask.
Mustekala uses the libp2p network stack (the same technology that powers IPFS) to make Ethereum data available as ultra-light, content-addressed elements.
This is made possible by a p2p overlay network that the team calls “Kitsunet.” Imagine if your MetaMask client were one participant in a massive mesh that helped make blockchain data available to all types of devices, from phones to browsers, IoT hardware, even miners!
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
- Mapping Out Crypto Investors
- Measuring the Binance Bump (and Dump)
- 11 Ways Ethereum Can Benefit Enterprise
- Verifying Crowdsourced Spatial Data Without Central Gatekeepers
- The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust
- Tether is Exiting and Nobody Noticed
- Close to 19% of Mined Bitcoin Blocks Were Empty
- Decentralization ≠ Disintermediation
- Private BitTorrent Trackers are Markets
- Why Isn’t Bitcoin Banned Everywhere?
- Insights Into the Ethereum Ecosystem
- Explain like I’m five: Cryptographic Hashing
- Introduction to Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs)
- The Evolution of Digital Cash
- Post-Bitcoin Maximalism
- If Games Drive Crypto mass Adoption, They Will Be Grassroots
- Mapping out Ethereum’s ‘Open Finance’
- The Global Coordination Machine
Misc
Website Updates
New research added to the site
New resources added to the site
Feedback
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