“Weekly what changed in crypto” by Alte.Capital — 21–28 May 2018
Most important stuff we’ve seen previous week in crypto world with personal thoughts
Whole week major drivers
It was a poor week for crypto in terms of prices and we saw some interesting trends appearing. Some people are linking falling prices with EOS dumping their ETH received during long ongoing ICO. This looks very strange and indeed can be some kind of market manipulation by EOS. They were already accused of doing wash trading.
Another thing to note is that 51 % attacks are becoming more popular on coins with smaller market capitalization. Looks like it’s easier for hackers to start such attacks because they are gaining knowledge and experience from previous attacks. This can be dangerous for coins with POW algorithm which don’t have many miners and hash power or network is not so big compared to coin capitalization. We will see more such attacks in upcoming weeks.
Lastly, there was a nice announcement from MaidSafeCoin (MAID) project. Team announced releasing white paper and specification for a new kind of consensus mechanism (called PARSEC), which gives the ability for networks without a central authority (decentralized networks) to agree on a state. It looks very interesting because this should allow making fully decentralized blockchains with big throughput (transactions-per-second), comparing to current solutions with BFT consensus which are centralized (for example EOS and NEO). It’s still in early phase of development, but it’s good starting point.
Important crypto events 21–28th May 2018
The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) announced on Monday 21st May coordinated series of enforcement actions by state and provincial securities regulators in the United States and Canada to crack down on fraudulent ICOs, cryptocurrency-related investment products, and those behind them. The action resulted in nearly 70 inquiries and investigations and 35 pending or completed enforcement actions related to ICOs or cryptocurrencies since the beginning of May. Whole list is here.
Verge (XVG) hit by 51% attack. It seems that attack is the result of Verge ’s security problems. Which previous exploits weren’t properly patched by developers. Very similar methods were used as during previous hack (back in April 2018) and attacker managed to “print” over, 35.000.000 XVG (about 1,5 million USD).
The US Department of Justice has launched a first criminal probe into alleged Bitcoin price manipulation. The investigation is reportedly exploring with traders are manipulating the price of Bitcoin and other cryptos, through spoofing, or flooding the market with fake orders. Things which are illegal in regulated markets, but hardly possible to track in the crypto world.
The Bank of England again announced working paper on central bank issued digital currencies. The paper includes various scenarios of financial stability issues and possible risks with central bank cryptocurrencies. This comes as other banks have also announced that they are studying the introduction of national crypto coins.
Commerzbank (German bank) and ThyssenKrupp (a steel company), have started to use Corda (open source project allowing building private blockchains) for settling a forex transaction on the blockchain. This shows that slowly adoption for blockchain technology is progressing.
South Africa’s central bank stated that crypto tokens are not a currency and they don’t meet the South African requirements of money. This comes as South Africa’s Reserve Bank’s fintech unit is working on regulation and policies.
Ashton Kutcher donates $4 Mln in crypto live during the TV show.
Kutcher and Guy Oseary — his business partner as well as manager to Madonna, U2, and Amy Schumer among others — gave Ellen the donation on behalf of Ripple and transferred XRP. You can watch this here:
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