IOTA has increased in value to $10 billion, up from $4 billion in about two weeks; the cryptocurrency though is different than most in that it is not based on blockchain; the article outlines how IOTA tokens work, which use a “tangle” to address the high cost of blockchain transactions. Source
Coinbase has been the top cryptocurrency exchange for the US market as it’s process makes signing up and buying bitcoin simple; they have seen accounts jump from 5.5 million to more than 13 million in less than a year; their success has not been without growing pains with a number of outages occurring and customers lodging complaints that no one was available to help them; recently they also came to an agreement with the IRS to hand over records of customers involving more than $20,000 which was a compromise from a year long battle. Source.
Prices of cryptocurrencies NEO, OMG and ETP crashed close to 90 percent on the Bitfinex exchange before reverting back to normal levels; the crash caused the closure of many accounts that made leveraged trades and lost those accounts thousands in potential profits; Bitfinex claims the exchange worked as it should in the situation, but traders disagreed and complained via social media about the crash as well as demanding refunds; the site was slow to respond and traders unable to access their accounts according to complaints; incidents like this test the overall cryptocurrency markets as many believe they are unstable and not safe. Source.
Digital banking app Revolut is looking to embrace the cryptocurrency wave and incorporate features into the app; the new features would let users exchange and use bitcoin as well as other digital currencies; there is no set plan for the new features but Head of Mobile, Edward Cooper, tweeted that potential changes were coming on cryptocurrencies as Crowdfund Insider reports. Source.
Coinbase built the platform, Coinbase Custody, to serve investors like hedge funds and family offices; "We are designing Coinbase Custody to meet the needs of institutional clients," Armstrong said in a Medium post as reported by Business Insider; the features include account representatives and support, multi-user accounts and insurance in some cases. Source.
The statement provides considerations for main street investors and market professionals; investors should be aware of the risks of these types of investments which have less investor protections compared to the traditional securities market; to date no coin offerings have been registered by the SEC; the statement notes, “A change in the structure of a securities offering does not change the fundamental point that when a security is being offered, our securities laws must be followed.” Source
Bittrex customers are unable to withdraw money from the cryptocurrency exchange and they have not heard from the company as to why this is occurring; the main issues appear to be involving verification of identities when they try to withdraw the money; the issues have been going on for close to 30 days for some customers and the company said the issue has only affected a small number of accounts. Source.
While speaking at an event by the office of Financial Research Federal Reserve Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles talk about the issues digital currencies could pose to the markets; the current level of use doesn’t pose a risk but as the scale of usage increases so does the potential potential problem; Quarles said, “if the central asset in a payment system cannot be predictably redeemed for the U.S. dollar at a stable exchange rate in times of adversity, the resulting price risk and potential liquidity and credit risk pose a large challenge for the system.”; he also talked about the the benefits of blockchain technology and if the central bank would issue their own digital currency. Source.
The focus of the partnership is tokenization of assets to make the lending process easier and bringing in real-world assets as collateral; ETHLend is a peer to peer lender operating on the Ethereum network to connect lenders and borrowers globally; Brickblock is a trading platform connecting real-world assets and cryptocurrencies. Source
A consensus over the upcoming bitcoin split was not reached and the plan was cancelled; the hope was for a new version that could handle double the number of transactions; upon hearing the news bitcoin’s value shot up to over $7,800; the current version can only handle about five transactions per second and to compete with names like PayPal and Visa that will need to change at some point in the future. Source.