Bulls, bunnies, and bomb threats. August 17 2018

The comeback from Wednesday’s crypto-slump continued through the night. Bitcoin zipped past $6,470 after sinking to a six-week low of $5,859. Chart-leerer Omkar Godbole says hitting $6,675 would confirm a “bullish” trend.

Pre-forked Ethereum Classic too enjoyed a surge after Coinbase listed it on its platform. It’s now at a balmy $13.66 after a near-50 percent drop. “Watch this thing PUMP!!!!” ventured one commentator.

Coinbase may have given ETH—which saw a three percent price rise—a boost, too. Toshi, the token’s dedicated wallet and browser, has been rebranded CoinbaseWallet by the California-based exchange, leading to a price bump. Proponents say the makeover is a boon for adoption and brings better security. Detractors say that until the wallet supports Bitcoin it’s "pointless."

As crypto prices rebounded, images of a meet-and-greet between Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Ripple veep Ethan Beard—and, weirdly, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington—prompted furious speculation. Will Binance take the steadily rising Ripple on as a base currency? Zhao, sadly, doesn’t want to “reveal too much.” (This tweet was later removed, inferring that maybe he did.

You're Adopted

Bitcoin Cash, too, got its own (sort-of) boost. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin confessed his dreams of using Bitcoin Cash—spurning his next of coin Ether—for everyday purchases.

The brighter outlook in prices over the last 24-hours hasn’t stopped cloud-mining platform Genesis Coin from forcing its low-paying customers to upgrade to premium subscriptions as a result of Bitcoin’s poor performance in 2018.

Crime Corner

Norwegian crypto-mining company Kryptovault meanwhile, has a trickier problem: a bomb threat. The would-be terrorist accused Kryptovault of making too much “noise.” Police are looking into it.

Police might want to look into this one, too: Millionaire crypto-investor Michael Terpin lost $24m in crypto-savings when a hacker in cahoots with an AT&T “insider” gained access to his cellphone. He’s now suing the provider for $224m. AT&T’s lawyers “look forward” to litigating the case.

UK courts, on the other hand, may have taken justice too far by freezing the assets of legal crypto-buyers. A new breed of anti-crypto intolerance appears to have emerged, with Clydesale Bank snidely referring to frozen-out investors as “these people.”

In a more wholesome courtroom drama, “media and lifestyle” empire Playboy is suing Canada’s Global Blockchain Technology for failing to complete a token-based rebrand of its media platform without, er, including any reference to “porn.” GBT dismissed the spat as a “normal dispute.” Who knew Bunnies were bullish on blockchain too?