👋 Goodbye 2018
2018 has been a brutal year in the markets but a great year for buidling — which included the merger of Block by Block and EthHub 😉
Some of the biggest happenings of the year included:
- ICE announced Bakkt
- Fidelity announced a crypto platform
- ErisX announced
- Coinbase made a lot of moves (acquired Earn.com, added new assets, launched new platforms, acquired Paradex, consolidated their brand, plus lots more)
- Basis raised $133mil but later shutdown
- The SEC cracked down hard on many ICOs and associated promoters
- Andreesen Horowitz launched a crypto fund (a16z crypto)
- Gemini, Circle, Facebook (among others) joined the stablecoin game
- SEC kept rejecting ETF proposals
- Shapeshift added KYC
- Crypto companies suffered layoffs due to the bear market
- Bitcoin Cash fork drama
- Blockchains LLC revealed
- ConsenSys bought an asteroid mining company
- More crypto exchanges were hacked
- 2 Bitcoin addresses sanctioned
- Harbor tokenized a building
And lots more that I’ve missed!
Personally, I believe the year belongs to MakerDAO — the decentralized stablecoin project that launched in December of 2017 and grew to currently hold 1.7% of all Ether. This project has been amazing to follow and learn about. I’ve watched the Maker team continually execute on their strategy — from launching partnerships to authoring a substantial amount of helpful content. I’m very curious to see how the system performs in a bull market after weathering an astonishing 94% draw-down of the price of ETH.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Eric and I would just like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! EthHub Weekly (and the weekly podcast recap) will be back in a couple of weeks!
- Anthony
News of the Week
💰 Brazilian Bank Is Using Ethereum to Issue a Stablecoin
A state-owned bank in Brazil is about to issue a crypto token designed to maintain parity with the national currency.
The Brazilian National Social Development Bank will launch a pilot in January 2019 for the BNDES token, which runs on the ethereum blockchain and is backed 1-for-1 by Brazilian real. The bank has been experimenting with the stablecoin throughout 2018 and will now use it for tax-deductible contributions to cultural institutions.
ConsenSys, the ethereum design studio, will be among the companies consulting the bank during this process.
⚖️ Executives at Korean Crypto Exchange UPbit Indicted for Fraud
The executives of UPbit, one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, have been formally charged by the country’s prosecutors.
According to a report from CoinDesk Korea on Friday, the Prosecutors’ Office of the southern district of Seoul has indicted three senior staff members, including founder Song Chi-Hyung, on charges of fraud.
The executives are alleged to have made fraudulent transactions between September to December of last year, using a fake corporate account to make bogus orders worth 254 trillion won (or $226.2 billion) to inflate trading volume figures and attract more customers to the exchange.
They are also accused of selling 11,550 bitcoins to customers to reap 150 billion won (or $133.8 million) through rigged transactions.
UPbit, however, denied the allegations in a notice issued Thursday, stating that, “The Company provided liquidity to the Company’s corporate account in order to stabilize the trading market at the beginning of the service opening. This period is from September 24, 2017 to December 11, 2017.” It added that the corporate account does not have a withdrawal function.
🤔 Facebook Developing its Own Stablecoin
Facebook Inc. is working on making a cryptocurrency that will let users transfer money on its WhatsApp messaging app, focusing first on the remittances market in India, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company is developing a stablecoin — a type of digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar — to minimize volatility, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans. Facebook is far from releasing the coin, because it’s still working on the strategy, including a plan for custody assets, or regular currencies that would be held to protect the value of the stablecoin, the people said.
🤯 SEC’s 72-year-old Securities Definition May Change to Exclude Cryptocurrencies
Congress may finally bring the cryptocurrency industry what it has been loudly calling for: regulatory clarity.
Two congressmen introduced a bill last Thursday that would exclude digital currencies from the decades-old definition of a security.
The “Token Taxonomy Act” — a bipartisan effort by Reps. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio and Darren Soto, D-Fla. — defines a “digital token” and clarifies that securities laws would not apply to cryptocurrencies once they become a fully functioning network.
😔 Further Layoffs at ConsenSys Expected
Layoffs are coming to ConsenSys, the Ethereum-focused startup incubator and blockchain technology conglomerate. According to sources at the company, ConsenSys is quickly spinning out startups that it previously supported, which will drastically impact its workforce and leave an uncertain fate for one of the blockchain world’s most ambitious and well-funded startups.
ConsenSys runs an internal incubator called ConsenSys Labs that houses startups — “spokes,” in company parlance. ConsenSys Labs incubates around 36 spokes, according to an email sent by Shawn Cheng, a partner at Labs. Spoke team sizes range from 5 employees to as many as 50, says a source familiar with the spokes, who also speculates the total number of employees who will be let go could be as high as 50 to 60 percent of ConsenSys’ approximately 1,200-person workforce.
Project Updates
Raiden Live on Ethereum Mainnet
The Raiden Network Red Eyes release is live on the Ethereum mainnet! The Red Eyes release is an alpha testing release. It is absolutely crucial to read the post including the security notes carefully before using the software.
Smart contracts completed, audited and deployed, first WBTC minted and burned, more ecosystem partners joined and many other updates from the WBTC team.
The Cent.co beta site has been updated and now includes post categorization, editing, user colors, copy/paste and NSFW options!
The dxDAO will be a community-governed DAO with total control over the DutchX trading protocol. Anyone can participate in what will be the first ever fully decentralized trading protocol.
Coinbase Expands to Six New European Markets
Andorra, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Iceland, Isle of Man and Lithuania can now interact with the Coinbase platform.
This week, 0x announced an upcoming hackathon they are hosting with CoinList! The online hackathon will run from January 10th through February 7th, 2019 and focus on improving the user experience in areas relating to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), compliance, and decentralized finance.
Gavin Wood from Parity recaps all the work the team has been doing on Polkadot throughout the year — from releasing Substrate to new hires.
A year ago, on December 18, 2017, the first MKR vote to activate single collateral Dai was made, and the Dai Credit System became operational.
Coinbase Earn is a new initiative that gives cryptocurrency enthusiasts the knowledge and confidence needed to use exciting technologies like 0x.
Parity Substrate 1.0 Beta Launched
Substrate is an open-source technology stack that makes it easy to create a blockchain customised for a particular application.
Introducing Swingby: BTC on Ethereum
Swingby is a decentralized cross-chain lending protocol which soft pegs Bitcoin and Ethereum using decentralized custodians.
0x announced their rebranding this week. They’ve redesigned their branding, dropped the “project” and “protocol” from their name and moved to 0x.org.
A year in review from the AirSwap Team: Where they’re been, where they are, and where they’re going.
Project Spotlight
MakerScan allows you to view information about the MakerDAO system — from detailed information on individual CDPs to quick view of at-risk CDPs — all wrapped up in a sleek interface.
Created by Somway Jain and Ravindra Kumar of InstaDApp.
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
- Bonding Curves In Depth: Intuition & Parametrization
- Questions from the Crypto Idea Maze
- The Role of Ether in Multi-Collateral DAI
- Crypto Narrative Watch: Crypto Winter Edition
- State of Crypto: 2018 Market Trends
- ZkDai — Private DAI transactions on Ethereum using Zk-SNARKs
- Exchange Volumes Report (recommended read)
- Compound Finance — A Liquidating Opportunity
- Everything You Didn’t Know About the Handshake Naming System
- Exploring the Emerging Crypto Debt Markets
Videos
- Company building in crypto: A conversation between Brian Armstrong and Chris Dixon
- Crypto, the Future of Trust
Podcasts
Misc
Feedback
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