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Charles Hoskinson is Chief Executive Officer at Input Output HK

Charles Hoskinson

Cardano is a cryptocurrency with smart contracts and is similar to Ethereum.

Cardano

cardano hoskinson

colorado office

decentralized element

di iorio

end of 2020

ethereum

ethereum ecosystem

hoskinson

Adriana Hamacher

In his Longmont, Colorado office, there’s an odd painting on the wall that Charles Hoskinson faces. It depicts a Roman man sitting in a beautiful garden. What’s striking is the look of utter torment on the Roman's face, even as he sits in a such a lovely place.

In many ways that’s an apt metaphor for Hoskinson, the man who founded the new, long-anticipated and potentially revolutionary crypto platform Cardano.

“I’m kind of polarizing. People either like me or they hate me. There’s not a lot of people in between,” he says. 

True enough. As the creator of Cardano, Hoskinson, 32, is revered and celebrated as a serial entrepreneur and polymath. But as a co-creator of Ethereum, the second-most valuable blockchain, he’s been derided as an incompetent, a turncoat, a thin-skinned crybaby and worse. 

Hoskinson has spent the past five years building Cardano, the 13th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, working relentlessly to upend and displace Ethereum, the second largest. Now, with the launch of “Shelley”—the decentralized element of the project’s extensive roadmap— staking is about to come to Cardano. That means token holders will be able to gain rewards by pooling their resources to validate the Cardano ledger. 

A new era is beginning for Hoskinson. But if all goes according to plan, it'll be even more polarizing.

AN INVESTMENT BANK IN SKY 

Born in Hawaii, Hoskinson comes from a family of doctors. He eschewed medicine for math, but bailed before completing his PhD at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Despite this, he’s a big fan of the rigorous academic, but painstakingly slow, research process.

In 2008, the same year Satoshi’s Bitcoin paper was published, Hoskinson joined Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. He was enthralled with Austrian economics and theories of money, which argue that a monetary system based on fiat money is inherently unstable. “When Bitcoin came out, it was like the spiritual successor to what Ron Paul was talking about,” he said.

 A lot of people hate me in the Ethereum ecosystem. They say I'm a monster. 

But it wasn’t until 2013 that he quit his day job, “lived like a pauper” and “went “100 percent crypto, with no revenue.”

Fellow Bitcoin enthusiast, Anthony Di Iorio introduced Hoskinson to Vitalik Buterin’s white paper on Ethereum later that year. Hoskinson had plenty of questions. So Di Iorio and Buterin invited him to one of the early meetings, when the project was just getting started. 

“At that point, it was only four people in the meeting and I was the fifth person,” he said.  

Hoskinson jumped in with both feet. He helped design Ethereum’s ICO, and briefly became its CEO, making the pivotal decision to register the foundation in Switzerland. 
[Cardano]Vitalik Buterin (left) and Charles Hoskinson (right) in 2014. SOURCE: Flickr
But differences about the strategy the project should follow led to a falling out over whether Ethereum should be run as a non-profit organization or not. Hoskinson favored a for-profit approach, and in June 2015, he decided to quit. (Though others say he was fired.) 

A JAPANESE VERSION OF ETHEREUM

Ethereum, of course, kicked off a new wave in blockchain innovation, leading to the ICO and token boom. “The market just went batshit crazy, and Ethereum was used to fund all manner of crazy ideas and became like an ‘investment bank in the sky,’” Hoskinson said.  

He took a sabbatical after leaving the project, but was soon approached by former Ethereum colleague Jeremy Wood about a new project called IOHK, (short for “Input Output Hong Kong,” which is where Hoskinson was living at the time.) The idea was to  build cryptocurrencies and blockchains for corporations, government entities and academic institutions—to go even further than Ethereum in scalability and security. 

Cardano came about after IOHK clients proposed that the developer build “a Japanese version of Ethereum,” Hoskinson later said. Initially, Cardano focused on the Japanese market and aimed at building “something that was the intersection of commerce, computation and compliance,” he said.

Cardano became IOHK’s key project, a public blockchain and smart-contract platform that hosts the ADA cryptocurrency. 

Hoskinson says that Cardano is an improvement over first-generation platforms such Bitcoin, and second-generation blockchains such as Ethereum. He calls it a “third-generation, smart-contract platform and cryptocurrency,” which, he claims, is more rigorously researched, tested, secure and scalable than the competition. 

Cardano raised a respectable $62 million in its ICO, in early 2017. It was marketed as an “investment to retire on,” and sold primarily to Japanese investors; in fact, 95 percent of the buyers were Japanese. 

It’s expanded its base, since then, to include developers and corporate partners all around the globe.

“Two years from now I think everyone will define me by Cardano,” Hoskinson says. “It actually does the things that we’ve always wanted to do in cryptocurrencies, which is build a financial operating system for people who don’t have one, one that actually can compete with a global financial system.”

In a few weeks, a so-called “incentivized test net” will roll out, which will enable Cardano token holders to stake and earn rewards, while developers tweak the test net.

Then comes the real fun.
[Cardano]Charles Hoskinson marshals the Cardano community at the platform's anniversary celebrations. SOURCE: Decrypt.
Shelley is planned as a series of releases and is designed to incrementally bring complete decentralization to Cardano. Eventually, the network will be 250 times more decentralized than other blockchain networks and, “once turned on, it will run like Bitcoin,” says Hoskinson. That means Cardano is designed to run forever and without censorship or intervention.

Shelley’s bleeding edge rests on a next generation protocol named Hydra. Its development is nearing completion, and it will ensure that multiple versions of the consensus algorithm can run in parallel, so that you get many times more performance, David Esser, Cardano’s senior project manager told _Decrypt_.

Soon after—or even before—Shelley’s main net launch early next year, Cardano plans to add smart contracts enabling decentralized applications, a development phase it calls “Goguen.”

 Will Cardano’s simple smart contracts start a stampede?

A fourth phase, “Basho,” aims to dramatically increase scalability, enabling interoperability and upwards of 10,000 transactions per second. (In contrast to Ethereum’s 15 transactions per second.)

And the final phase, “Voltaire,” is dedicated to on-chain governance, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2020.

THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE

Cardano has often been compared to a tortoise, struggling to keep up with the rapid development at other blockchain platforms such as EOS or Tron. But development is proceeding to schedule, said Hoskinson.

Test net rewards will be transferable to the mainnet when it launches next year, giving people a convincing near-term reason to buy and hold Cardano’s ADA coins, according to crypto ratings firm, Weiss. 

“Cardano, has always impressed us with the high quality of all the elements that contribute to a robust proof-of-stake, blockchain-based ledger,” Juan Villaverde, who leads the Weiss Ratings team of analysts, told _Decrypt_. 

The Weiss review called out the caliber of Cardano’s team and the rigorous nature of its research.

Indeed, the body of academic research on the Cardano protocol, “Ouroboros Hydra,” is now nearly complete. 

Ouroboros Hydra “is the capstone, and it's all done,” said Hoskinson.
Charles Hoskinson with Cardano ambassador Vasil St. David (center) planting commemorative trees in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. SOURCE: Decrypt
He’s most proud of the work his team has done on theproof-of-stake protocol, which he claims will put Cardano ahead of Ethereum, which is racing toward the same goal. Many people believe that a functioning proof of stake protocol will make blockchain networks more secure while eliminating the consumption of electrical power as the underlying staking mechanism.

Buterin started grappling with Casper, his own proof-of-stake solution, in 2014, well before Cardano. Hoskinson claims that, even though Cardano started later, it has produced more objective results that make it further ahead. 

Hoskinson says that the full Cardano network, with proof-of-stake and all the trimmings, will launch before the end of 2020.

“We were the first to prove that proof-of-stake can have the same security properties as Bitcoin,” he says. Ethereum has adopted a “serpentine” approach, he asserts, and is “trying to reinvent the whole world.”

Asked for comment, Buterin told _Decrypt_ that it wasn’t about being the first to launch a proof-of-stake (PoS) network, which actually has happened in 2013. “The goals of modern PoS protocols are much higher now,” he said. “Maybe Ouroboros will launch some form of PoS first, but that is unremarkable.” 

The Ethereum co-inventor also challenged Hoskinson’s claims that Cardano is technologically superior: "Last time I looked at Ouroboros, it does not even try to deliver the things that Casper has tried so hard to deliver. Finality, fast confirmations, etc.” 

IT’S COMPLICATED

Though it’s been five years since he left, Hoskinson’s relationship with Ethereum is still complicated. 

He grabs every opportunity to contrast the rigorous and methodical pace of development on Cardano, with Ethereum, which he believes has been hijacked by what he says is a cult of personality that surrounds Buterin.

“In general, I don’t have good relationships when there’s a competitive reason not to, for example with Ethereum or EOS,” he admits.

But, much as he likes to slam Ethereum, he dislikes talking about his early involvement. He’s been asked—repeatedly—to pore over every small, granular detail, he said. Three books have now been written on the incendiary story of its founding, and two have been optioned as movies.

The cause of much of the bad blood that remains, according to Hoskinson, is actually his championing of Ethereum Classic—the cryptocurrency arising from Ethereum’s DAO hack and subsequent fork.

“A lot of people hate me in the Ethereum ecosystem. They say I'm a monster, that the only reason I got involved was because I wanted to hurt Ethereum,” he said. “They said that I'm the DAO hacker!”

In his defense, Hoskinson contends that Ethereum and Ethereum Classic are non-competitive and can co-exist and even complement each other. And, two years after the fork, that view now finally appears to be gaining momentum.

A SOUL IN HELL

Thanks to progress with “Shelley,” the decentralized element of Cardano, an air of achievement hangs over the 100-odd Cardano community members standing on the grounds of the Agricultural University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, for Cardano’s second anniversary celebration.  

Hoskinson, wearing a Cardano anniversary t-shirt and his customary cowboy boots, is on his knees, planting a Gingko tree. Cardano’s self-described “community sage,” the Rasputin look-a-like Vasil St. Dabov, helps him.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit,” quotes Hoskinson, from a Greek proverb.

Soon after the “Voltaire,”  self-governance phase of Cardano is rolled out at the end of next year, Hoskinson is planning to take a back seat. 
[Cardano Charles Hoskinson]The eye catching painting in Hoskinson's Longmont, Colorado office. SOURCE: Cardano
He says he intends to hand over the reins for overseeing the development of Cardano to the Switzerland-based Cardano Foundation. Earlier this year, a new chairman, Nathan Kaiser, was appointed. His job has been to build an interim board, after a power struggle led to a falling out between Hoskinson and the previous chair, Michael Parsons. 

There’s still a lot of work ahead. “And that's the point—why we're here planting trees,” said Hoskinson. “It takes a long time to grow these systems and build these systems up—20, 30, 40 years.”

Planting trees, the beauty of the garden—it calls to mind the picture that sits on the wall of Hoskinson’s office.

It turns out it’s a copy of a painting, done at the turn of the 20th century, by Evelyn De Morgan, called, _A Soul in Hell_. According to its description, forwarded to us by Hoskinson’s office: “This man, surrounded by all that is beautiful and desirable, by the force of his own dark spirit dwells in a Hell of his own making.” Perhaps with the advent of Cardano, Hoskinson will at last make his peace with the world.


investment bank

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led to a falling

longmont colorado

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people hate

test net

token holders

version of ethereum

With the upcoming rollout of Cardano’s decentralized mainnet, can Charles Hoskinson finally slay his old demon, Ethereum?

Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson: A Soul in Hell?

The Brexit effect: how bitcoin, gold and the pound reacted to Europe's biggest story

Insights into the biggest events shaping the crypto industry.

News

Business

bitcoin

brexit

european union

gold

uk government

Bitcoin is the world's first peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. It was invented by a mysterious inventor Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 and is regarded as the first digital currency to fix the double spend problem.

Bitcoin

according to data

cap of bitcoin

daily trading

daily trading volume

digital asset

initial vote

leave the eu

march 2017

Nawaz Sulemanji

Brexit might be, may be coming to a close. With the announcement that the British government has reached an accord with the EU earlier this week, all eyes are on ‘super Saturday’–the debate in the Houses of Parliament which would decide the UK’s fate on October 31. As a result, we decided to look back at how, if anything this seismic shift in European politics has affected the price of the British pound, gold, and of course, bitcoin.

It all started on 24 June 2016, the day after the shock win for the Leave campaign. With the public choosing to vote 51.9% in favor of Brexit, the pound nosedived—nearly 8% against the US-dollar, 13% against gold—and finally a mammoth 20% against Bitcoin. 

On that day, the market cap of Bitcoin surged to reclaim its $10 billion valuation. Prior to Brexit, the digital asset had been steadily growing in value since it fell to a market cap low of $2.9 billion in January 2015. Since that low, the cryptocurrency rocketed over 300% in 18 months, as the network eagerly awaited the project’s next supply halvening—from 25 to 12.5 new Bitcoin’s every 10 minutes. 

The 12% rally for Bitcoin against the dollar that day was facilitated by around $120 million worth of daily trading volume to take the decentralized asset to a high of $660. Back in mid-2016, the most liquid GBP market was the London based Coinfloor exchange. According to data from TradingView, the exchange did around 772 Bitcoins’ worth of volume that day, valued back then at around $4.9 million.

After the pound hit a momentary high of $1.5 against the dollar on the night of the vote, the British national currency fell by around 20% over the next 8 months. After hitting a low of  $1.2 in March 2017 the pound rallied 6% in a 4-week period, as the UK Parliament finally voted to activate Article 50 and begin the UK’s two-year countdown to negotiate its exit from the single market. 

In the same mid-March to mid-April 2017 period, Gold also saw its own price rise by around 7% against the US dollar. The same cannot, however, be said for Bitcoin. Back in March 2017, having started the year around $1000, Bitcoin had gone on to hit a then all-time high of $1300, based on the expectation that a Bitcoin ETF may potentially be approved. With the rejection confirmed on the 10 March 2017, the digital asset subsequently crashed to a low of $888, at exactly the same time that the EU departure was being confirmed into UK law. 

A GAME OF TWO BREXIT HALVES

With the countdown clock now ticking to leave the EU, the pound managed to rally 15% over the next 10 months. The rally was aided by the government’s majority party retaining its control during a snap election on June 2017, and the subsequent departure deal the UK government was putting into place with the EU. 

Over the same 10 months, Bitcoin had rallied from the March 2017 low of $888 to hit a high of $20,000 in December 2017. The 2200% rally was fueled by the launch of two US-regulated bitcoin futures markets, and a surge in speculation around altcoins and continued coverage in the mainstream media. While the pound and bitcoin saw increased volatility, gold was pretty much flat during the same 300 day period, leveling out around $1350—around the same level following Britain’s initial vote to leave the EU. 

As the UK’s Brexit negotiations with the EU deteriorated, so did the Pound against the US-dollar. Between April 2018 to the current day: the EU’s deal was rejected by the UK parliament (January 2019), UK’s Prime Minister Thersa May was forced to ask for a Brexit extension (April 2019) before finally resigning (May 2019), to then be replaced by Boris Johnson (July 2017).

In this period of time, the Pound retraced all of its 15% gains, to fall from a high of $1.43 to hit $1.20 on 3 September. In the same 500 day period of time, gold broke out of its critical $1400 resistance to rally 15% against the US-dollar. Bitcoin, on the other hand, remained flat around $8,000—but the true story of those 17 months included the digital asset falling back down to $3,000 (December 2018) before rallying to hit a high of nearly $14,000 in June this year. 

In the final period of analysis, over the last 7-days, based on the Prime Minister securing the endorsement of his Brexit plan at the EU summit, the pound has come back strong to rally almost 6% against the dollar to climb back up to $1.29. Over the same one week period, Gold has fallen 0.4% with bitcoin also down around 4% on the week.  

The conclusion from all this seems to be that apart from the shock of Brexit vote, gold and the world’s biggest cryptocurrency seem pretty unaffected by the pounds near-constant volatility over the last 3 years. According to data from FiatMarketCap, the M3 money supply of the Great Britsh Pound is around $3.6 trillion. That money supply is smaller than the physical market cap of gold—around $9 trillion today—but a long way short of Bitcoin’s market cap that is over 25 times smaller at just $143 billion today.

Since the day of the initial vote for Brexit, the market cap of Bitcoin has risen by 1400% or $133 billion. In the same period of time, the cryptocurrency’s daily trading volume has rocketed a gargantuan 83 times—from $120 million to over $10 billion. For Gold, the overall change is up 13% or around $1 trillion in market cap. In comparison, the Pound is currently down around 15% from the day after the vote. It’s been a volatile couple of years for all these assets, but for Gold and Bitcoin’s sake, let’s hope a potential canceled Brexit doesn’t end up reversing all those gains. 


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How Brexit affected Bitcoin, Gold and the British pound - Decrypt

We decided to look back at how this seismic shift in European politics has affected the price of the British pound, gold, and of course, bitcoin.

The Brexit effect: How bitcoin, gold and the pound reacted to Europe's biggest story

The people and companies shaping the crypto industry.

crypto-retail-retailer-adoption-france-holland

crypto

Dash

Decathlon

france

Retail

shopping

shops

woocommerce

according

adoption

briand

briand's system

cases the fees

crypto adoption

crypto payments

customers

Robert Stevens

Real-world crypto adoption is booming, according to a slew of recent announcements. Earlier this month, Crypto.com made their Pay Checkout plugin available for WooCommerce merchants, which it claims make up about 30 percent of the world’s online stores. 

Payments and privacy coin Dash recently announced partnerships with a number of payment providers that reach millions including Overstock.com. Some of France's largest retailers meanwhile, are planning to accept Bitcoin come 2020; you can buy bitcoin from 7-Eleven in the Philippines, and an Icelandic firm just settled a payment from IKEA using the Ethereum blockchain. It’s even possible to use cryptocurrencies to buy food at refugee camps. 

So, is this finally crypto’s big break? Nearly.

CRYPTO RETAIL IS STILL IN ITS EARLY STAGES

According to an April 2019 research paper by Nicole Jonker of the De Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves anytime soon. “Acceptance of crypto-payments [by online retailers] is modest,” she wrote. Just two percent of a random selection of 768 retailers in the Netherlands accepted payments in crypto. 

Jonker’s study analyzed survey responses from retailers in the Netherlands, and found that most retailers simply don’t feel like there’s enough demand for crypto to make an effort to apply it to their systems. After all, who _really _needs to buy their groceries in Bitcoin? Jonker is doubtful this will change any time soon. “The potential of cryptos to drastically change the existing retail payment ecosystem by making financial institutions superfluous or even disrupt the monetary system seems small,” she wrote.

IS LIBRA THE KEY TO ADOPTION BY RETAILERS?

“But there is substantial interest among online retailers to adopt them,” and “acceptance may rise once certain (perceived) barriers are lowered,” concludes Jonker’s report. Since Jonker’s study, one major news hook might help boost retail interest in crypto—Libra, the Facebook-led crypto network that promises to bring crypto mainstream. 

According to Eric Anziano, COO of Crypto.com, Libra has played a huge role in increasing consumer adoption: “It was a high-profile announcement that, along with [a] partnership with retailers like Lyft and Uber, drew the attention of retailers who were “not sure” previously,” he says. “While Libra has faced significant concerns from regulators, it has helped draw more attention to crypto as a viable payments alternative for consumers and e-commerce merchants.” 

And according to both Anziano and Stéphane Djiane, the CEO of Global P.O.S., a point-of-sale systems provider for retailers, millennials are pushing sellers to adopt crypto. “There are now roughly 65 million crypto wallets and Millennials have expressed an appetite for alternative banking. Thus, retailers are likely facing a pull factor from customers,” says Anziano.

CRYPTO ADOPTION IS STILL CONTROLLED BY PAYMENT PROVIDERS

For Jonker however, he concluded that most power lies with the payment service providers; the companies and organizations that sort out payment systems for retailers. It’s these companies, wrote Jonker, who mitigate risks like the volatility in exchange rates, or by reducing fees by handling crypto payments on behalf of retailers. 

Why? “Digital currencies solve many fundamental issues for retailers, which typically operate on razor-thin margins,” said Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core Group, which creates Dash, a digital currency optimized for payments through instant settlement and fees that undercut credit cards companies. According to Taylor, the benefit of crypto is that retailers can also access new customers, eliminate chargebacks, enable cross-border transactions from anywhere in the world, and help their customers avoid cross-border fees that drive away potential sales.

Another advantage of these payments companies is that they create the tech, too. A potential roadblock for brick-and-mortar retail stores is that old cash-tills with beep boop scanners might not be able to accept cryptocurrencies. So did Hugo Briand, of the digital consulting company Ekino, before he masterminded the project for Global P.O.S, the company that’s helping French retailers like Decathlon set themselves up to receive crypto payments early next year. To get around ancient tech, Briand and his team built a mobile crypto-wallet that generates a QR code that lets even the most rudimentary of scanners accept crypto. 

Briand’s system also makes everything quicker. One of the biggest pain points for crypto-retail partnerships is the speed; it takes an age for most Bitcoin transactions to go through, and shoppers don’t want to wait. With Briand’s system, however, it isn’t necessary to confirm transactions on the blockchain straight away. It takes under five seconds for transactions to go through, and Briand hopes to hit one second in the near future. And, despite the aging technology, Briand said his solution is secure. The wallet is actually a multi-sig address; when you make a payment, the application sends a signal to the Global P.O.S API, who holds the other key. This, says Briand, prevents double-spending. 

CUSTOMERS WILL FOOT THE CRYPTO ADOPTION BILL 

But customers excited to try Briand’s system might be disappointed by one major caveat; it’ll be customers, not retailers, who’ll pay a premium for using the new tech. Not much—just a couple of percent per transaction—but it’ll make transactions more expensive than paying with a credit card or cash. Briand said the fees are for retailers to exchange from Bitcoin to Euros. Those fees will go away if retailers decide to accept payments in crypto, but that’s not likely to happen any time soon. 

Not so for Ryan Taylor’s Dash: “Dash fees are de minimus, and average just 1/20th of a U.S. cent. In most cases, the fees are paid by the sender but can optionally be deducted from the transaction amount. Other than micro-transaction machine-to-machine use cases, the fees are too trivial to warrant consideration.”

Gentlemen, start your shopping trollies. 


dash

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global p.o.s

jonker's study

payment

payment providers

payments

payments in crypto

retailers

retailers in the netherlands

Retailers are rushing into crypto–is mass adoption upon us? - Decrypt

Several big announcements suggest crypto is coming in from the cold for retail. Analysts suggest there’s still a way to go. Decrypt finds out.

Retailers are rushing into crypto–is this the start of mass adoption?

whales move hundreds of millions of Bitcoin

trade

whale alert

whales

XRP is a type of cryptocurrency designed to help banks move money more quickly, and cheaply than existing methods. It is largely spearheaded by Ripple, a for-profit company based in San Francisco.

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binance

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exchanges

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price

sent

Whale watchers have been busy as of late. A slew of whales–the colloquial term for holders of large amounts of cryptocurrency–have been moving hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin and XRP to unknown wallets and exchanges. 

The largest shifts, according to the Twitter whale-watchdog, Whale Alert, were near $100 million Bitcoin trades between unknown wallets and the crypto exchange Binance.

On Thursday evening, someone transferred 9,999.9 Bitcoins ($80,331,150 USD) to an unknown wallet. A couple of hours later, the wallet holder sent the same amount—which had already appreciated by some $300,000, back to Binance.

Seemingly unrelated, someone sent 9,240.756 BTC ($74,752,460 USD) to an unknown wallet a couple hours earlier.

In the past 24 hours, other whales have traded close to $100 million of Bitcoin between unknown wallets and exchanges. Among them; $40 million worth of BTC between an unknown wallet and Poloniex, $16 million between Bitfinex and an unknown wallet, and $10 million from Xapo to an unknown wallet. 

Why? Who knows: the Bitcoin market has remained relatively stable in recent weeks after a nosedive late last month. The price of Bitcoin mid September was around $10,000, but dropped to around $8,000 towards the end of the month. The price has remained fairly stable throughout October. 

In the past 24 hours however, the price has been yo-yoing, as the impact of large movements ripple throughout the ecosystem.


unknown wallet

unknown wallets

unknown wallets and exchanges

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usd to an unknown wallet

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whale

Whale watchers have been busy. A slew of whales have been moving hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin and XRP to unknown wallets and exchanges.

Whales trade big despite stagnant Bitcoin market

Telegram court date pushed back to February

court

date

grams

Telegram

$1.7

february

filed

gram

gram token

hearing

injunction

launch

The New York District Court announced in court documents filed Friday it has postponed the SEC’s hearings against Telegram’s Gram token to February 18 and 19, 2020. At the initial court hearing, set for October 24, the SEC had brought a case against Telegram on the basis that its sale of $1.7 billion worth of Grams didn’t adhere to US securities laws.

Telegram’s TON blockchain network, and associated Gram token, was due to launch by the end of October, but Telegram has now agreed not to deliver, sell, or distribute any of the Grams tokens until the conclusion of the SEC’s hearing in February. 

On October 11, the SEC filed a lawsuit claiming that the sale of Telegram’s Grams token, which had raised $1.7 billion, was not registered as a securities offering, and thus illegal. 

Telegram filed a legal challenge against the SEC on October 16, requesting to court deny the SEC’s injunction. It claimed that Telegram had fully cooperated with the SEC, and that Grams were not securities.

But in an SEC letter to the judge dated October 17, the regulator claimed that Telegram was trying to “short-circuit the specific procedures that govern the Court’s consideration of the request for a preliminary injunction, while refusing to participate in the discovery needed to aid the Court’s resolution of that request.”

Telegram’s sale agreement said that it would refund investors the $1.7 billion if TON didn’t launch by October 31, but a “force majeure” clause, made public on October 14, outlines that the social network does not have to give back funds in the event of a delay.


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The New York District Court announced in court documents filed Friday it has postponed the SEC’s hearings against Telegram’s Gram token to February.

Telegram court hearing delayed to February

Technology

big data

Bitmain

data

2017

bank

bitcoin cash

bitmain

blockchain

cash

exchange

Your crypto week in data - September 24-28

Tim Copeland

Well hello, data fans. Bitmain has finally filed for an initial public offering with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after months of speculation. In the documents it submitted, Bitmain revealed that after making $2.5 BILLION of revenue in 2017, it reached $2 BILLION in just the first six months of this year. Unsurprisingly, as Bitmain owns a lot of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin’s long forgotten siamese twin JUMPED 30% in response to the news.

[bitcoin cash data chart ]Bitcoin Cash: having a gay old time. 
Governments are getting closer to the blockchain action. The auction of a government bond worth €1.15 BILLION ($1.3 BILLION) will be notarized on the ethereum blockchain by the Austrian government, according to its finance ministry. Japan’s FSA is demanding answers regarding the Zaif crypto exchange which was suffered a $60 MILLION HACK.

[bitcoin auction data chart ]We're going to need a bigger gavel.
ICOs may be struggling but companies are still managing to find fundraising. Goldman Sachs led the charge in a $25 MILLION FUNDRAISE for blockchain payments company Veem, following a $26 MILLION RAISE in 2017. A group of former UBS bankers has raised 100 MILLION SWISS FRANCS ($104 MILLION) for their crypto bank SEBA Crypto AG. And crypto payments startup Bitwala has raised €4 MILLION ($4.6 MILLION) to develop a blockchain-based bank account.
[blockchain fundraising data chart]The numbers speak for themselves.
That's all, folks. Stay charty. 

READ NEXT: YOUR CRYPTO WEEK IN DATA - SEPTEMBER 17-21



government

raised

Your week in data: Bitmain files for an IPO, government bonds go under the hammer, Goldman Sachs raises on behalf of Veem and Bitwala flies high.

The new tools, protocols and infrastructure shaping crypto today.

Your crypto week in data - September 24-28

Bitmain's making moves, fundraising is up and governments want to get closer to the action.

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