Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie reportedly plans to sell tokenized shares in his contract through a securitized “digital investment vehicle.”

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Sports and crypto—an unlikely partnership that seemingly grows closer by the day.

Late last week, _The Athletic_ reported that Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie is taking his latest contract extension, worth $34 million, and turning it into a securitized “digital investment vehicle.”

In other words, Dinwiddie is launching an STO in himself, offering investors a piece of his own contract.

According to a Fox News report, the point guard plans to sell thousands of digital tokens tied to the contract and use the money to make other investments and develop new streams of income. Those who buy in will be paid back principal and interest, according to the report.

On the day of the announcement, Dinwiddie tweeted simply:

> $btc
> 
> — Spencer Dinwiddie (@SDinwiddie_25) September 13, 2019

Why would the professional basketball player do this? Dinwiddie’s contract is set to pay out over the next three years. Rather than wait to get the money he’s owed, the STO allows him to get his money _now_—from investors. And, according to _The Athletic, _Dinwiddie is creating a whole new company to set it all up.

The scenario is, perhaps surprisingly, not a new idea. A venture a few years back called Fantex sought to do something similar. The California-based company provided “athlete tracking stocks” linked to various professional football players in the NFL and was planning a second IPO in 2017 (the first occurred the year prior). The offering never made it to market, however, according to the Financial Times, and the firm has struggled to attract interest.

But others in the sports world have managed to make some headway in the crypto space. Last August, the Dallas Mavericks made a surprising announcement that they would soon accept Bitcoin as a means of payment for both event tickets and merchandise. The Mavericks became the second NBA team to do so, with the Sacramento Kings being the first in early 2014.


NBA player to tokenize $34 million contract, sell shares in ICO-like sale

The people and companies shaping the crypto industry.

Crypto startup Unstoppable Domains is awarding digital wallet providers Coinomi and CoinRequest with funds to build blockchain web domain integration.

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Imagine creating a website that you controlled entirely, could never be shut down by a third party, _and_ also served as your personal cryptocurrency wallet address.

That’s what the San Francisco-based, blockchain startup Unstoppable Domains is trying to build, and it’s putting up a significant chunk of change to do it.

The Tim Draper-backed company, which aims to build "uncensorable websites" for both individuals and businesses on the Zilliqa blockchain, recently unveiled the second wave of recipients for its $250,000 Blockchain Domain Grant Program. The grants aim to fund digital wallet companies who agree to integrate the firm’s .zil domains into their infrastructure.

The latest recipients of the grant money include Coinomi, a multi-asset wallet platform; CoinRequest, a digital wallet that aims to simplify daily cryptocurrency transactions, and Viewblock, a blockchain domain explorer. Each company will receive part of a $250,000 pool of funds to support their development teams and integrate Unstoppable Domains’ Zilliqa-based products.

 Unstoppable Domains raises $4 million to make “uncensorable websites” a reality

The Blockchain Domain Grant Program, which began in late July, operates through a community voting system. Unstoppable Domains’ users vote publicly to select which applicants should receive funds. From there, the firm’s executives tally up the votes and announce the winners. Members taking part can vote for as many as 10 applicants at a time.

Unstoppable Domains launched in late 2018 with financial help from organizations like Boost VC, Draper Associates and the Ethereum Foundation. Its mission is to replace complicated BTC and cryptocurrency addresses—typically comprised of several letters and numbers—with easier, “human readable” addresses, not unlike the goals of the Ethereum Name Service. 

Typically, users seeking payment to their cryptocurrency accounts are often required to copy their wallet addresses and forward them to the sending party. If a single letter or number is off, or not included in the message, the funds being sent can be lost permanently or sent to an incorrect address.

The company’s primary goal is creating .zil domains. Addresses are simplified into a word or phrase of a user’s choosing (i.e. their first and last name) followed by .zil. A user can then send crypto funds to that address without worrying about the money being lost or stolen.

Brad Kam—co-founder and head of business for Unstoppable Domains—told _Decrypt_ that one of the primary benefits of having a .zil domain is that a user can attach all their crypto wallets to the address, thereby directing all future payments to a single source and easing the transaction process.

The .zil domain “is cryptocurrency agnostic, so users can connect any cryptocurrency address to their domain,” he said_._ “Blockchain domains provide a system that can easily work across any crypto application. The more wallets that support blockchain domains, the more currencies that can be sent to a single domain.” 

In addition, .zil domains provide companies with unique, blockchain-based websites that cannot be compromised or seized by third parties. Purchasing a domain from a company like GoDaddy or HostGator means that, in certain cases, your domain can be taken back by the selling party.

At the moment, more than 90,000 individuals and businesses have pre-ordered .zil domains, many of which went live over the weekend, according to Kam.

“Blockchain domains benefit parties by providing owners with full control over their assets,” Kam said. “Your keys, your domain.”


Draper-backed Unstoppable Domains is giving away $250,000 in grants

Facebook’s Libra is not intended to challenge the “monetary sovereignty of nations,” according to cofounder and Calibra CEO David Marcus.

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A wrap up of news covering the announcement of Facebook's cryptocurrency, Libra.

The latest news on Facebook's Libra

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France, Germany, China, the United States—and just about every other country on Earth—they’ve all got Libra all wrong, according to Facebook’s David Marcus.

And the former PayPal executive, who now serves as one of the lead developers of Facebook’s Libra project, is once again coming out in defense of his crypto baby. 

In a series of tweets, Marcus attempted to put to rest the various fears raised by governments around the world by explaining that the notion of Libra negatively affecting the “monetary sovereignty of nations” is wrong for several reasons.

 Calibra executive: Why Facebook's Libra needs a blockchain

For one thing, he said, Libra is built to run atop a system of already existing currencies, _not_ to replace them. He explained that Libra will itself be backed by several forms of fiat. So, in order for Libra to exist, it must have the “equivalent value” of these currencies “in its reserves.” 

The creation of new money is only permitted for sovereign nations, not businesses, Marcus said, and the Libra project is working with governments everywhere to ensure regulation is in place that will prevent it from deviating from its present infrastructure.

_Phew_. What a relief—right?

Nah, not so fast, said Eric Wall, a privacy technology fellow with the Human Rights Foundation. “Just because there isn’t new money creation does not mean you can’t threaten monetary sovereignty,” Wall responded on Twitter. “The Libra could enable a population in a country to abandon their native currency in favor of Libra (when the native currency isn’t even a part of the basket).”

Indeed, others such as Olta Andoni, head of Ziliak Law’s blockchain practice and an adjunct professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, were similarly unimpressed with Marcus’s attempts at an explanation: “You need a 1/4000 thread to address all concerns/legal questions about Libra, [David Marcus]. You barely scratched the surface,” she wrote on Twitter. 

Marcus’s impromptu defense of Libra likely came as a response to both French and German finance officials who said they would not allow Libra to move forward in Europe. (The two nations are, incidentally, backing the European Central Bank (ECB) and its plans for a digital currency that will compete with Libra.) 

In a joint statement last week, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and Germany’s federal minister of finance, Olaf Scholz, said that “France and Germany consider that the Libra project, as set out in Facebook’s blueprint, fails to convince us that risks will be properly addressed.”

Facebook’s reputation has yet to fully recuperate from its scandalous ties to Cambridge Analytica revealed last year. The company had been selling users’ private data to third parties for advertising purposes for years. What followed was an embarrassing Senate hearing in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled unmercifully on live television, culminating with Facebook being fined billions of dollars.

Since the hearing, overall trust in Facebook has fallen by more than 60 percent. David Marcus was also subjected to a congressional hearing earlier this year, with lawmakers expressing concern over the payment system’s potential access to customers’ financial information.


Facebook’s David Marcus: Libra is no threat to sovereign fiat currencies

The projects, currencies, and events shaping crypto today.

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The Telegram Open Network, or TON, is Telegram’s upcoming Proof-of-Stake network that promises to integrate blockchain payments into its messaging app that serves some 365 million users. If it delivers on promises of high speeds and decentralization, it will be the largest blockchain launch in history.

TON’s slated to launch by October 31, having raised $1.7 billion in a private ICO for its native token, GRAM. But the project has been shrouded in mystery from its conception; with little information, no regulation, and barely any acknowledgment by Telegram itself. It’s anyone’s guess how things will go.

But earlier this month, Telegram released the source code for the TON blockchain. With it, 450,000 lines of code, and several hundred pages of documentation, including a new whitepaper, detailed technical guides to the TON blockchain and the TON Virtual Machine, and a guide to Fift, a programming language created for TON. 

It’s the first time TON’s code has been released to the public. TON began closed testing in April 2019, but developers could only access TON through a client that connected to a single node, according to Russian news outlet Vedemosti. Now, there are 100 nodes operated by Telegram, many more by TON, and developers can use the code to create their own nodes. It’s the first public major stress test of the network, and developers are finally getting their hands on it. 

But even if TON’s network turns out to be a dud, Telegram's probably going to stick to the October 31 launch date “because they _have to_,” blockchain critic David Gerard told _Decrypt_. Gerard’s referring to a leaked private sales agreement which stated that, if Telegram doesn’t build a GRAM wallet into its messaging app by October 31, investors have a right to ask for their $1.7 billion back, paid in US dollars. We spoke to those currently building on TON to find out more about the secretive project.  

SO WHAT IS IT?

The recent data dump finally gives the public something concrete to go on.

First, we finally got confirmation about what TON actually is. The release included a new description of the blockchain and a description of TON’s virtual machine providing us with the most recent, comprehensive explanations of the TON network to date. TON, then, is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform, promising instant, secure transactions. There’s one master blockchain, many more “working blockchains” that do the heavy lifting, and then “shard blockchains” that separate the “working blockchains” even further.

What else? “We learned that it's a very fast blockchain,” Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs, a company that develops apps for the TON network, told _Decrypt_. “It has around [a] five-second master chain block time [confirmation], and an average of about two to three seconds on the shard chain,” he said.

These early signs suggest that TON seems to be delivering on its promise to be faster than popular competitors like Ethereum and Bitcoin, but speed is more than just a number. “There are 2,000 applications on Ethereum, but they’re more or less simple dapps with limited functionality because you’re waiting seventeen seconds [for transactions to be finalized],” Goroshevsky told _Decrypt_. “We can create very complex applications [on TON] of different smart contracts interacting with each other”. Think decentralized fintech, gaming, and e-commerce, said Goroshevsky. “It can push the blockchain use case to another level”, he told _Decrypt_.

And although some blockchains, like EOS, are already faster than Ethereum, not many people are using them (apart from bots). By comparison, “300 million users of Telegram will have access to the blockchain by the end of October,” Goroshevsky told _Decrypt_. First-time users of crypto still have to install a new app, like Coinbase or Binance—companies most people have still never heard of before. TON, by comparison, will be integrated directly into Telegram messenger, a shiny, easy to use application built by a company that hundreds of millions already know and trust. “That’s never happened before”, said Goroshevsky.

Goroshevsky said all this means that Ethereum and EOS developers are very interested in working on TON because their products will finally be accessible to the masses. His own company, TON Labs, is working on tools that make it easier for developers to build on the TON network, and he told _Decrypt _that hundreds of developers are already working on projects for the network. 

450,000 LINES OF CODE, BUT SOMETHING’S STILL MISSING

But the new data dump is also notable for the things it _didn’t _mention. Blockchain critic David Gerard has long noted that documentation on the TON network never adequately addressed security concerns, and this new documentation doesn’t do much better. But Goroshevsky, who’s worked closely with the developers of TON told _Decrypt _that the code has been available to developers for over a year now, and that anybody could have performed a full security audit if they wanted to. ”We'll see how TON goes when it's live with money circulating in it, and attackers have a prize to win,” Gerard told _Decrypt _in response to hearing Goroshevsky’s defense_._

But that’s not all: Mitesh Shah, CEO of blockchain analytics company Omnia Markets Inc, and an expert in crypto regulatory issues said that Telegram has given little information about where and how user data is stored. “There are more users here than on any other chain, and having it stored in a proper place is one of the largest concerns,” Shah told _Decrypt_. With a novel, untested protocol, launching to more people than ever before, TON is a risky business.

And it’s still too early to tell if TON is actually any good: Constantine Koltsov, a partner at Qiwi Blockchain Technology, told _Decrypt _that there’s so much code that it’ll take a long time to sift through it all. Koltsov told _Decrypt _he expects it’ll take longer than a month for the public network to stabilize, cutting things close to the looming October 31st launch date.

If Telegram bungles the launch date, and doesn’t end up pushing TON out by Halloween, investors can ask for their $1.7 billion back.


Telegram’s Proof-of-Stake network, TON, promises to integrate blockchain payments into its messaging app that serves some 365 million users.

Inside Telegram's secretive TON blockchain network

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Facebook gets a grilling from regulators today

Representatives of the Libra Association, Facebook’s blockchain network, will today face tough questions from disgruntled central banks at a conference for global stable coins in Basel, Switzerland. 

The conference sees the Libra Association, JP Morgan and Fnality International answer questions about regulatory issues posed by BigTech-funded stablecoin initiatives by senior officials from the Bank of International Settlements’ Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). 

The meeting is chaired by Benoît Coeuré, an executive from the member's board of the European Central Bank. Other members of CPMI include the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the People’s Bank of China.

Libra won’t get an easy ride. "As a new technology, stablecoins are largely untested, especially on the scale required to run a global payment system," said Mr. Cœuré in a press release today. "They give rise to a number of serious risks related to public policy priorities. The bar for regulatory approval will be high."

A speech on Libra earlier this month from Yves Mersch, also an executive on the board, said that the Libra Association is “cartel-like” in its aims to reduce central-bank authority. “[Libra] could reduce the ECB’s control over the euro, impair the monetary policy transmission mechanism by affecting the liquidity position of euro area banks, and undermine the single currency’s international role, for instance by reducing demand for it,” he said. 

"The Libra Association participated in constructive dialogue with policymakers during the G-7 conference,” Dante Disparte, Head of Policy and Communications for the Libra Association, told Decrypt. “Our goal is a stable, secure, low-cost payment system that can expand access and improve financial services for billions of people. We are committed to ongoing engagement with central banks and financial regulators as we work toward that goal,” she said.

Last week, Facebook announced intentions to apply for a payment license from the Swiss banking authority, FINMA, and asked for more clarity over regulations. But in his speech at the beginning of the month, Mersch warned Europe away from “the beguiling but treacherous promises of Facebook’s siren call.”

Mersch’s concerns were met by France’s Economy and Finance minister, Bruno le Maire, who said in front of an OECD conference on cryptocurrencies: “I want to be absolutely clear: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil." The Bank of France is part of the CPMI.

"It's important for regulators to coordinate and come to a common understanding,” said Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements in a press release today.

The group will produce a final report on its work by mid-October.


Representatives of the Libra Association, Facebook’s blockchain network, will today face tough questions from disgruntled central banks.

Libra to face central bank scrutiny in Switzerland

Matt Corallo, a former engineer at Chaincode Labs, cofounder of Blockstream, and renowned bitcoin developer has teamed up with Jack Dorsey's Square Crypto.

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Square Crypto is on the board with a big-time hire from within the cryptoverse.

Matt Corallo, former engineer at Chaincode Labs and cofounder of Blockstream, has joined Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Square Crypto to help advance the company's Bitcoin development efforts.

"Matt will play a vital role at [Square Crypto], much as he did at [Chaincode Labs], providing valuable experience of Bitcoin engineering within the team and broader ecosystem of new devs," the company announced today on Twitter.

> So excited to be joining the @sqcrypto team over the coming weeks. Experimenting with different models to accelerate Bitcoin OSS is awesome!
> 
> Gonna miss the @ChaincodeLabs folks, but given they host anyone who works on Bitcoin OSS, I'll probably be there every other day anyway. https://t.co/L00gqV1LLD
> 
> — Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt) August 20, 2019

Corallo's work "spans projects from Core to Bitcoinj, FIBRE, BetterHash, Rust-Lightning, plus other open-source initiatives like Signal,” according to Square Crypto. “His background is the best imaginable foundation for our goal of accelerating bitcoin adoption on a massive scale."

DESIGNING THE FUTURE OF BITCOIN

Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and Square, launched Square Crypto in an effort to accelerate the adoption of Bitcoin by promoting more effective user experiences.

Dorsey previously announced in March 2019 that Square would be hiring "3-4 crypto engineers and 1 designer to work full-time on open source contributions to the bitcoin/crypto ecosystem."

Corallo appears to be the ideal choice. Earlier this year, Corallo made headlines for helping to fix a potentially disastrous “inflation bug” in Bitcoin's code first discovered in September 2018. More recently, Corallo made waves for criticizing the behavior of certain members of the "Bitcoin community."

But in terms of welcoming new users to the world of Bitcoin, a lack of consideration for design and user experience has long been cited as one of the biggest impediments. Part of getting people to use blockchain and cryptocurrency involves making it as easy to use as existing financial services.

Square Crypto is designed to do just that, describing itself "a unique opportunity for a designer to help shape the future of how Bitcoin will be brought into the mainstream."


Bitcoin core developer Matt Corallo joins Square Crypto

Bitcoin core developer Matt Corallo joins Square Crypto

Matt Corallo, a former engineer at Chaincode Labs, cofounder of Blockstream, and renowned bitcoin developer has teamed up with Jack Dorsey's Square Crypto.

Designing the future of Bitcoin

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