The market continued to post small gains after yesterday’s sudden spike. Nearly $1 Billion was added to the total market cap in the last 24 hours. While all of the top 10 cryptocurrencies are flashing green right now, they’re up by less than 1%. This weekend could once again prove to be very crucial for the market.
In other news, Tron unveiled a new live streaming service called BitTorrent Live. The app allows customers to create content on mobile devices and connect with others who share common interests. An official medium post from Justin Sun said that “simply firing up the BitTorrent Live app [will allow users to] chat with your favorite athlete, become immersed in a music festival, or meet new friends to share your passions.” Users will be able to search for subjects of interest, then directly engage with broadcasters to provide instantaneous feedback and likes. Also, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) announced that it had finished its investigation into crypto mining firm Environ AG and the regulator concluded that Envion’s January 2018 initial coin offering (ICO) was unlawful. Envion claimed to provide decentralized, clean energy for mobile mining units and the firm faced a liquidation order from a regional court in the Swiss city of Zug in November 2018 for conducting an illegal token offering. FINMA said the ICO raised more than $90.5 million from 37,000 investors and the entire process was carried out without the firm acquiring the required statutory license from FINMA.
1) London Metal Exchange (LME), the world’s largest market for metal derivatives is looking to use blockchain to track physical metals. According to a recent report, LME has backed a consortium initiative led by commodity trading firm Mercuria. They would build a blockchain system to track the trade of physical metals such as copper, zinc, and aluminum. Also, buyers can track the source of their metals and prove ownership of their stock on the platform. The LME has 500 “approved” warehouses in 34 locations across the world. (Read More)
2) A recent blog post from Kraken cryptocurrency exchange announced that two-factor authentication (2FA) is now mandatory for the exchange’s users. The blog post explained that Kraken supports Google Authenticator and YubiKey as 2FA implementations and 2FA has been an optional security option to Kraken users since 2013. Kraken chief security officer Nick Percoco said the new policy is part of a larger set of security changes that span “into 2020 and beyond” and Percoco said future changes will be announced over the coming months. The blog post also disclosed the formation of Kraken Security Labs which is a team focused on enhancing overall security for the company’s various products and trading environments. The team will also be tasked with performing vulnerability research and tests against third-party software and hardware products. (Read More)
3) According to research from blockchain analytics firm Messari, Stellar quietly patched a bug which was exploited by a user who created 2.25 million XLM worth approximately $10 million in 2017. The bug was later identified by Stellar’s Development Foundation (SFD) and patched at a later date. At the time of the attack, the amount of XLM generated was approximately 25% of Stellar’s circulating supply and once SDF patched the vulnerability it announced a coin burn equivalent to the amount created by the attacker. Messari says that the “public disclosures” from the SDF were relatively muted, and no media seems to have reported the exploit. Messari said that the impacted addresses and related records of the bug are no longer accessible on Stellar Expert or any other block explorer and the analytics firm believes that the 2.5 million XLM may have been moved to various exchanges and sold during the 2017 peak of the crypto bull market. (Read More)
