On Today’s Episode of The Cryptoverse…

Chris covers the Top 10 Crypto Stories of October 3rd, 2018:

Ripple Launches xRapid Product
Chrome Extensions Will Soon Protect Against Miners and Hackers
Spanish hardware hacker Ricardo Reis adapts a coke vending machine to accept Bitcoin Lightning payments
The Ratio Of Legal To Illegal Uses Of Crypto Has Flipped From 90/10 to 10/90
The highly anticipated Chintai app has been released (David Kalin)
Coinbase could be on the verge of being reasonably valued at $8b
CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo Does Not Believe Crypto Regulation Will Hold The US Back
A Bitcoin Transaction Has Been Sent Via A Mesh Network
The Recently Discovered And Now Fixed Bug In Bitcoin Codebase Is Starting To Be Exploited In Other Coins That Use The Bitcoin Codebase
Block.one Considers Stepping in to Prevent Voting Cartels Among 21 EOS’s Block Producers (eosio)

Episode Transcript & Notes

Ripple Launches xRapid Product

https://btcmanager.com/ripples-cryptocurrency-product-xrapid-goes-live/

This is the only 1 of the 3 products that Ripple provides which actually uses the XRP token.

This is probably why you see the asset has been renamed on CoinMarketCap to XRP, because XRP is the asset and Ripple is the company Ripple Labs.

CEO Brad Garlinghouse told the audience at the Swell conference recently that Ripple was not out to replace banks.

https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-highlights-record-year-xrapid-now-commercially-available/

You can read the official release on Ripple.com and learn more about how the old banking system is gradually taking crypto.

In response to the news XRP dropped sharply falling right through its 23% Fibonacci retracement line. Go figure.

Chrome Extensions Will Soon Protect Against Miners and Hackers

https://news.bitcoin.com/chrome-extensions-will-soon-protect-against-miners-and-hackers/

They aim to accomplish this by introducing machine learning to detect chrome extensions that may do malicious things such as mine cryptocurrency on your computer.

This is nice and all, but I was under the impression that Chrome extensions where going to be retired completely?

At least that’s why Ledger felt the need to move away from Chrome based wallet apps and build Ledger Live as a standalone app.

If you can reconcile that confusion please do so in the comments below.

Spanish hardware hacker Ricardo Reis adapts a coke vending machine to accept Bitcoin Lightning payments

https://bitcoinist.com/buy-coke-instantly-with-bitcoin-vending-machine-proof-of-concept-using-lightning-network/

A video released on his personal YouTube channel shows a countertop sized machine which displays a QR code, which he then scans with his phone to send a Lightning transaction.

It’s picked up within a second and starts dispensing the coke into a glass.

The point here is that if one guy can do this from what looks to be his own kitchen, the current technology is more than capable of being applied to this use case.

The Ratio Of Legal To Illegal Uses Of Crypto Has Flipped From 90/10 to 10/90

https://www.forbes.com/sites/pawelkuskowski/2018/10/01/why-crypto-isnt-as-risky-as-it-used-to-be/#3d2bcdb327c1

Lilita Infante an agent with the US drug enforcement administration said to Bloomberg that 5 years ago she saw 90% of Bitcoin activity was illegal and 10% was legit.

Now she says illegal activity is only as problem in 10% of transactions.

Said attributes this largely to the introduction of Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering regulations, which (being a government agent) she would do.

I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but regulation is not going to produce consumers, I know that because it’s addressing the problem at the wrong end.

The only way to protect consumers is to educate them so they have a sort of anti-virus for their mind which protects them from all scams, rather than trying to shut down the scammers that will endlessly pop up.

Sponsorship Slot!

If you don’t already own a Ledger hardware wallet I’d highly recommend you get one to make your crypto impossible to steal without your consent.

And if the thief has your consent it’s not really stealing.

Anyway if you would be kind enough to make your purchasing using The Cryptoverse Ledger referral link in the video description that will help fund more contecccnt like this.

You can also help fund more content like this by going to www.TheCryptoverse.show and becoming a patron at The Cryptoverse Patreon page.

Continuing The Show!

The highly anticipated Chintai app has been released

https://medium.com/@community_67113/chintai-is-here-october-2018-dfe4dbe02dbe

Chintai is a decentralized application that allows you to rent out the network capacity contained within your EOS tokens.

If you are a casual investor in the EOS token and don’t intend to use the network capacity that your tokens entitle you to then you may as well turn them into a cash flowing asset by renting them out to a developer who doesn’t want to tie up a load of capital just to test something out.

The first thing I did was go to eos.chintai.io to try it out and was greeted with a message saying they were down for maintenance.

Not a good look since making this kind of announcement causes people like me to talk about it and now they kind of have egg on their face.

Coinbase could be on the verge of being reasonably valued at $8b

https://www.recode.net/2018/10/2/17928274/coinbase-tiger-global-8-billion-funding-deal

Coinbase is negotiating an investment of up to $500m.

$250m to buy out some existing investors and $250m of new cash.

This would put the company’s valuation at around $8b.

Not bad when you consider Coinbase was valued in 2017 at $1.5b.

To me this proves the point about where the real money is. The real money is in building things that provide huge value to the crypto community, not so much in speculating on the tokens themselves.

In the time Bitcoin has dropped 70%, the value of Coinbase as multiplied 5.3 times. Think about that.

CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo Does Not Believe Crypto Regulation Will Hold The US Back

https://toshitimes.com/cftc-chairman-reassures-that-crypto-is-here-to-stay/

In an interview Mr Giancarlo disagreed with the idea that if the US is not sufficiently encouraging crypto innovation it might move overseas.

He disagreed on the basis that the US was ahead of the world in terms of Bitcoin derivatives on the CME and CBOE futures markets.

He did however say that he did think cryptos are here to stay even if they don’t end up rivaling the dollar.

Again as a government agent, of course he’d say that.

A Bitcoin Transaction Has Been Sent Via A Mesh Network

https://bitsonline.com/bitcoin-testnet-transaction-via-mesh-network/

Using a small radio transmitter called goTenna Mesh, your smart phone can broadcast a Bitcoin transaction even if you dont have a cellphone connection.

This works by sending the transaction via radio to the nearest peer so they can relay it to a device that has access to the Bitcoin network.

This works as long as another goTenna device is within 4 miles of your location.

This is the kind of thing I like because it is another step towards a level of resilience for Bitcoin where it will be completely unstoppable.

This is being worked on by the developers of the well known Samurai Wallet.

The Recently Discovered And Now Fixed Bug In Bitcoin Codebase Is Starting To Be Exploited In Other Coins That Use The Bitcoin Codebase

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-bug-exploited-on-crypto-fork-as-attacker-prints-235-million-pigeoncoins/

As you may know there was a bug discovered recently in the Bitcoin codebase that could have allowed an attacker to print new coins.

The Bitcoin developers have already patched the issue, however there are dozens if not hundreds of other cryptocurrencies that have taken the Bitcoin codebase and launched new coins under different names.

The plus side of open source software is that it let’s people experiment and innovate, but many of the developers copying the code don’t really understand it and are therefore vulnerable to flaws in the code they copied.

An example if Pigeoncoin which used the Bitcoin codebase and remained open to the bug that was discovered.

It was exploited by an attacker to increase the coin supply by 25% and take those newly created coins for themselves.

This is also the downside of announcing a security flaw to the community. It also let’s attackers know where the opportunities are.

Block.one Considers Stepping in to Prevent Voting Cartels Among 21 EOS’s Block Producers

https://toshitimes.com/block-one-steps-in-to-prevent-voting-cartels-among-21-eoss-block-producers/

If you are not already aware of this story, there is a spreadsheet going around that allegedly reveals the structure of a cartel of EOS block producers who are colluding to vote for each other and in some cases buying votes.

If this is true then the culprits are in violation of a the EOS constitution which is a legal document they signed when registering as a block producer.

Block.one the developers of the EOSIO software have 10% of the total token supply and have expressed their intention to use them to vote in their best interest.

To my mind that would be voting to punish bad actors.

While some will cry foul, I say all Block.one would be doing is objectively and mechanically enforcing a punishment on those who broke the constitution.

Without a rule of law, those 100m tokens Block.one own won’t be worth anything, which is why punishing cartels is not only enforcing the rule of law, but also acting in Block.one’s best interest.

In my personal view, StellarX is doing a stellar job.

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