Last Week in Crypto: 14 January to 20 January
Monday, 14 January 2019
Spanish Securities Regulator Adds 23 Forex and Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Warning List
Among the companies added to the list is Blonde Bear OÜ, also referred to as Black Parrot Ltd., which claims to be a forex and cryptocurrency exchange operator but reportedly operates in Spain without a license. The company, which operated on the ‘trade111.com’ and ‘tradex1.com’ domains, has also been flagged by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority for operating in Poland without the required license. Another company added to the CNMV’s warning list is Dax300, also known as Brown Fox Ltd., for operating in Spain without a license. This company is involved in the trading of contracts regarding different Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for tracking cryptocurrencies, commodities, and forex.
Spain was among the seven countries which have signed a declaration calling for help in the promotion of Distributed Ledger Technology’s (DLT) use in the European region.
Find out more about the Mediterranean Seven here.
Tuesday, 15 January 2019
The Marshall Islands is Getting Serious About Its SOV Cryptocurrency
SOV was announced back in March of last year where it was actually meant to improve the lives of the people of the RMI. It’s not ‘backed’ by barrels of oil or the islands’ main crops of coconuts or bananas either. And now they’re bringing blockchain expert Steve Tendon on board.
The SOV is of greater significance for addressing the pressing financial and environmental challenges that the country faces as an island economy in the Pacific. Moreover, the Marshall Islands will face a severe economic crisis in 2023 when the funding aids from the USA will end.
Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Cryptopia Suffers Losses from hack
On January 14; Cryptopia, a New Zealand based exchange, tweeted that the exchange was going through “unscheduled maintenance.” For the next twelve hours, the exchange continued to assure users that its team was trying to resolve the issue. Cryptopia, then tweeted an official statement confirming the hack as a “security breach”. The crypto exchange claimed that it had suffered “significant losses” and had been trying to deal with the situation.
In the course of a few hours, Cryptopia contacted New Zealand police and the High Tech Crime Consortium (HTCC) to investigate the incident.
Read more about the breach here.
Thursday, 17 January 2019
MIT and Stanford Professors Are Designing a Cryptocurrency to Top Bitcoin
Professors from seven U.S. colleges including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley have teamed up to create a digital currency that they hope can achieve speeds that Bitcoin users can only dream of without compromising on its core tenant of decentralization. ‘Unit-e’, as the virtual currency is called, is the first initiative of Distributed Technology Research.
DTR plans to launch Unit-e in the second half of the year and aims to process as many as 10,000 transactions per second. That’s worlds away from the current average of between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second for Bitcoin and 10 to 30 transactions for Ethereum. It’s also multiples quicker than Visa, a centralized network, which processes around 1,700 transactions per second on average.
Friday, 18 January 2019
Ethereum’s Split Pushed Back Until After Valentine’s Day
The developer group that helps manage the Ethereum cryptocurrency network said a delayed software update will now take place on Feb. 27.
The so-called fork will reduce rewards paid to miners to two coins from three per block, and it should reduce inflation and bring more stability to the Ether digital coin. The upgrade is designed to stave off the so-called difficulty bomb, which would make the network unusable unless regular software upgrades are made. The developer group made the comments via a conference call on Friday.
The upgrade called Constantinople had been postponed from earlier this week after a security researcher discovered a bug in the software that could let attackers steal funds.
Read more about the Ethereum Hard Fork here.
Saturday, 19 January 2019
Stock Exchange of Thailand moving towards Cryptocurrency
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is working out to apply for a digital license in order to run a cryptocurrency exchange. With continuous regulations, Thailand is set to become the cryptocurrency hub in Southeast Asia.
As more people are moving towards adoption of cryptocurrencies, institutional investors are getting attracted too. As such there aren’t many specific institutional platforms for trading cryptocurrencies and thus the stock exchange of Thailand is planning to introduce one for the institutional investors. If the financial regulators in Thailand approve the licensing, it would be a great step ahead for the crypto industry.
Sunday, 20 January 2019
United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia Collaborate on New Cryptocurrency
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia have announced an agreement on the creation of a cryptocurrency. According to the article, the cryptocurrency “will be strictly targeted for banks at an experimental phase with the aim of better understanding the implications of blockchain technology and facilitating cross-border payments.” The joint cryptocurrency project will also research the effect of a central currency on financial policies.
The initiative reportedly seeks to protect customer interest, create standards for technology, and consider the cybersecurity risks while determining the impact of central currencies on monetary policies.
This article was written by Rohit Baviskar and was published first on blog.bankofhodlers.com
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