Tethers are legitimate

Issue: 041

Square receives BitLicense

Square became the seventh company to acquire a BitLicense that allows the company to buy and sell bitcoin in the state of New York. The New York Department of Financial Services (“NYDFS”) put in place strict regulations on trading cryptocurrencies back in 2015, causing a hard barrier to entry into the New York market. The only firms that have managed to acquire the license are Coinbase, Circle, Xapo, Genesis, bitFlyer, and Ripple affiliate XRP II despite receiving dozens of applications.

Tether releases data confirming their legitimacy

It appears Tethers are legitimate and backed 1–to-1 with USD across two main banking partners. The company said they were unable to hire top tier accounting firms because “the big four firms are anathema to that level of risk” implying the larger firms do not want to take on clients associated with digital assets due to regulatory uncertainty. Instead, Tethers gave access to Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan LLP, a law firm co-founded by FBI director Louis Freeh. The firm confirmed they had access to accounts that showed $2.5B across two unnamed banking partners, claiming banking relationships are private.

Another week, another exchanged hacked

This week, South Korean exchange, Bithumb, had $30M hacked and stolen.

Project Spotlight

• Coinbase Pro fully launches next week. All customers must switch from GDAX to the new Coinbase Pro platform.
• You can now play Pokemon using the lightning network.
• Satoshi’s Place garners a lot of attention as the first kill Lapp.
• EOS mainnet struggles to launch.