ICO Alert Crypto Minute: July 9, 2018
Facebook crypto rumors continue to swirl, China’s ban on crypto is working, Augur is launching on mainnet today! Happy Monday!
Facebook Continues Its Move Into Blockchain
After rumors swirled about Facebook buying Coinbase (huh?) and the social media giant relaxing its ban on cryptocurrency advertising, Cointelegraph reports that the Director of Engineering at Facebook will hold the same position within Facebook’s new Blockchain team. This team member, Evan Cheng, previously worked for Apple for ten years before joining Facebook three years ago. Cheng has supposedly consulted Zilliqa and ChainLink, but nothing has been confirmed.
The Chinese Cryptocurrency Ban Appears To Be Working
As seen on ccn.com, according to the Chinese state-run press agency Xinhua, Renmibi Bitcoin trading has fallen to under 1% of the global trading total. China initiated an ICO and cryptocurrency exchange ban, shutting down 88 exchanges, 85 ICOs, 110 websites and locking 3000 accounts on the platform Alipay for direct peer-to-peer trading. Exchanges like OkEx, Huobi, Binance and BTCC all moved out of China to more crypto-friendly countries.
Augur Set To Launch At 11:01am PST Today
One of the first ICOs on the Ethereum blockchain, Augur, is finally headed on to its mainnet today. Augur raised $5.5 million in an ICO in 2015 and has since been building out their prediction platform. Originally advised by Vitalik, Augur is often seen as one of the most exciting projects on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing anyone to bet on an outcome. It’s important to note that the Augur team is requesting the current REP tokens are moved off of decentralized exchanges if token holders want to receive the new 1:1 Augur Blockchain based tokens. Users who do not hold their tokens on a decentralized exchange do not need to do anything before launch.
