From crypto whales at play to a luxurious celebration of Bitcoin’s anniversary, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of blockchain.
Crypto Whales Capitalize on Tether
Crypto firms reportedly earned millions by capitalizing on last week’s sell-off of the stablecoin Tether (USDT).
According to Crypto Briefing, New York-based Pythagoras Investment Management says it started buying massive amounts of Tether when the price of the coin, which is designed to be pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, started to drop and vary in price across different exchanges.
The firm’s managing director Mitchell Dong says Pythagoras engaged a team of six people across North America and Asia to execute a trading technique called arbitrage – buying large amounts of Tether on the cheap, and selling it on Bitfinex at a higher price.
“Some people say they saw as low as $0.86, but the lowest I ever saw was $0.88,” Dong said. “We would buy low and convert it quickly over to Bitfinex to sell.”
Bitcoin
To celebrate Bitcoin’s upcoming ten year anniversary, Swiss luxury watch maker Hublot has opened pre-orders for a custom BTC-themed watch.
The timepiece can only be purchased with Bitcoin, although the exact amount of BTC required is a mystery.
Ethereum
The total market cap of all Ethereum-based tokens is now more than half of the market cap of Ethereum itself.
As reported by Trustnodes, the market cap of every ERC20 token combined is worth about 61% of Ethereum’s $21 billion market cap.
Ripple and XRP
Ripple’s director of Xpring Vanessa Pestritto just spoke at the ATECH Conference in Aruba.
In a new video from the event, Pestritto expands on Xpring, a venture arm at Ripple that invests in companies creating products using XRP and the XRP ledger.
Tron
Trust Wallet, which was recently purchased by Binance, says it has added support for Tron (TRX).
The wallet currently supports Ethereum (ETH), GoChain (GO), POA Network (POA), Callisto (CLO), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Wanchain (WAN), VeChain (VET) and Tron (TRX).
IOTA
IOTA co-founder Serguei Popov has released a new blog post on how IOTA eliminates fees and operates without miners.
You can check out the post called “IOTA and Freedom” here.
VeChain
The national investment partner of the Republic of Cyprus says it’s collaborating with VeChain.
According to a press release, the two “will establish a joint entity in Cyprus assisting in the development and implementation of blockchain solutions. To facilitate a new digital age through blockchain technology the two parties will make suggestions to Invest Cyprus including policy reform that enables blockchain as an underlying infrastructure for operations and financial services.”