Token Report Newsletter: The Legal Storms On Crypto’s Horizon
Welcome to Q2 2017*
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Financial services was the hottest category for Ethereum-based ICOs in Q1 2018, taking both the highest amount raised and number of ICOs. Crypto exchanges and gambling platforms followed second in amounts raised, with Huobi and Dragon Coin both posting ~$300 million rounds.
Both the blockchain infrastructure and adtech / marketplace categories appear to have been relatively competitive for fundraising, as there were more projects being funded in the category with less overall amounts raised.
To put these fundraising amounts in perspective, here’s how the total ICO market’s activity in Q1 compares to the largest tech IPOs from last year:
The Telegram presale continues to post more in private funding, and the company is still expected to hold a public token offering for the “Gram” currency that they plan to use on the Telegam Open Network. It is difficult to estimate how large that crowdsale will be, but based on the figures today it appears that there will be significant demand. The Telegram app currently has around 200 million monthly active users; compare that with Roku’s 19 million monthly subscribers.
Crypto Climate:
⚔️Legal storms are brewing. ⛈️
For instance:
- Industry groups are lining up to sue Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other advertising networks for barring token sales and cryptocurrency wallet provides from user their services,
- The Tezos lawsuits are kicking into gear, with plaintiffs in one suit alleging they are owed the equivalent of what their contributed BTC or ETH would be worth today,
- Ripple is taking its own fight to ex-partner R3 Holdco,
- and Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum has directly criticized the governance model of EOS. Matt Odell responded on Twitter:
Vitalik attacks EOS’s DPOS model.
Interesting that he’s against coin holder voting now,
but was fine with it when it allowed them to push
through DAO hack roll back with
less than 5% of holders voting.This is going to get interesting. There’s a war brewing.
Last Week’s FOMO & FUD
You don’t have to believe any of it, but here’s what the Internet was saying about people and projects in crypto last week.
FOMO:
- Korean tech giant Kakao confirmed their intent on building a blockchain-based platform, but deny rumors that they are planning an ICO — Finance Magnates
- Ford has been issued a U.S. patent for a “Cooperatively Managed Merge and Pass (CMMP) system” that allows vehicles to send & receive cryptocurrency in order to “marshal traffic” -Bitcoin.com
- Zeppelin Solutions’ founder Demian Brener published this primer for their KYC solution for P2P crypto exchanges, “TPL — the Transaction Permission Layer”
- Lightning Network nodes surpassed 4,000 in number, with the total network capacity now at ~10.5BTC — DecentralPost
- Uphold added support for Ripple (XRP) to their digital payments system, allowing for zero-fee exchange and use in transactions, including for purchasing 4 separate precious metals — Coin Desk
- SelfKey has begun private testing for their Identity Wallet, “a desktop application that aims to solve current digital identity related problems, such as massive data breaches and tedious, unsecure and inefficient KYC processes.” — CCN
- Coinbase announced their intent to support ERC20 assets across their exchange products, including GDAX — Medium
FUD:
- Coinprism, the pre-eminent wallet service for “colored coins,” shut down their operations, citing “unpredictability of fees on the Bitcoin blockchain” — Coin Desk
- Monero annnounced that they will continue with regular updates to impede development of ASIC miners, in direct response to Bitmain’s hardware dominance of Bitcoin mining — Coin Telegraph
- Zhao Changpeng, CEO of Binance, was profiled by Bloomberg as his exchange deals with a “global regulator crack down” — Bloomberg
- Bittrex made a joint statement after their partner exchange Upbit inadvertently made data for yet-to-be-released tokens on the Bittrex exchange available on their API — Press Release
- Vitalik Buterin chose April 1 to propose that the total supply of Ethereum should be capped at 120 million — GitHub
- China’s central bank announced their agenda for 2018, with “Protecting the integrity of the Yuan from cryptocurrency speculation and pyramid schemes” — Coin Desk
- Indeed.com data suggests that interest in crypto jobs has declined in tandem with market prices, with searches for “cryptocurreny” down 41% since mid-December. Coin Desk
Who to Follow:
“It seems I feel less nostalgia for the early days in Bitcoin than most. Values & trade offs are more clearly articulated now, many brilliant engineers and entrepreneurs have joined, and many more resources available. Overall I prefer Bitcoin City over Bitcoin Village.” -Tuur Demeester on Twitter
also known as the jungle.
Have questions, or think we missed something?
Token Report is an independent financial information service founded by Galen Moore and Peter Vessenes. Galen is a financial journalist with a background in startups, venture capital and launching news sites. Peter is a co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, and launched the first VC-backed Bitcoin company in 2011. He is managing director at New Alchemy, a boutique consulting and investment group based in Seattle, Wash., that is making a pre-seed investment in Token Report.
Nothing contained in Token Report materials or posted at tokenreport.com constitutes an offer or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell a security, financial instrument, or other category of asset, or investment advice or recommendation of a security, financial instrument or other category of asset. Tokens involve risk and are not suitable assets for everyone. Token Report believes its information was obtained from reliable sources but does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness and accepts no liability for losses arising from the publishing of this information. The information provided by Token Report is not a substitute for financial, legal and other professional advice. Each individual should always consult his or her own financial, legal or other professional advisors and discuss the facts and circumstances that apply to the individual.
