The Month in Crypto — October 19

Xi Jinping endorses blockchain, Visa & Mastercard withdraw from Libra, Jack Dorsey invests in Coinlist.

The News

• China’s Xi Jinping publicly endorsed blockchain technology and called for more investment and support in the space. His comments caused a buying frenzy of Chinese tech stocks. ft
• Facebook’s attempt to create a global digital currency, Project Libra, suffered big blows as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, eBay and Stripe all withdrew from the project. theverge
• The SEC halted Telegram’s token distribution on the grounds that the token offering was unregistered. Telegram raised $1.7 billion in 2018. sec

Capital

• NuCypher raised $10.7M from Polychain Capital, Y Combinator and Bitwise. They have developed a network that offers data privacy for decentralised applications. theblockcrypto
• The crypto startup Coinlist raised $10M led by Polychain Capital with participation from Jack Dorsey. Coinlist is a token offering platform. wsj
• ACINQ raised $8m to continue development of the lightning network. It was backed by Bpifrance, a state-owned French investment bank. theblockcrypto

Adoption

• Alibaba’s Ant Financial partnered with Bayer to use blockchain to provide traceability for agricultural supply chains. ledgerinsights
• IBM partnered with Raw Seafoods to use blockchain technology to improve food safety. techcrunch
• Softbank partnered with IBM to develop cross-carrier blockchain solutions to allow users to make smartphone payments whilst travelling overseas. coindesk
• tZero and Tezos will work together to tokenise £500M of real estate in the United Kingdom. coindesk

Market:

For the first time in three months, the monthly candle is green. On the back of Xi Jinping’s comments, bitcoin had a strong month, finishing the month 10% up with a global average of $9,150 USD. Ethereum was neutral in October finishing the month 1% up, with a price of $180 USD.