From the true identity of a giant Bitcoin whale to an epic overture from Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.
Bitcoin
A series of incredibly large Bitcoin transfers totaling about $2.9 billion have been traced to a single source: Coinbase.
Chinese crypto outlet 8BTC says the movement of nearly 850,000 BTC came from the leading US crypto exchange, which posted a “Notice of Blockchain Movements” on November 29th.
“Over the next seven days, Coinbase will be running scheduled maintenance across our platform that may cause movements on all Coinbase-supported blockchains. These are controlled, closely monitored movements that are being performed in order to provide enhanced security and protection for our customers.”
Ripple and XRP
Women are a driving force in the Ripple and XRP community, according to a new survey.
Etoro and Mumsnet found that 90% of female investors on eToro are invested in cryptocurency, and XRP is by far the most popular coin. Here’s the breakdown.
Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin says the blockchain can do a whole lot more than improve the world of finance. To prove his point, the creator of Ethereum launched a 15-part tweetstorm on the subject.
“Time for a brief tweetstorm on non-financial applications of blockchains. As blockchain scalability gets better and better, and UX improves and fees drop as a result, this will become a bigger and bigger part of the story.
One underappreciated way to view blockchains is as an extension of cryptography that does different things. Cryptography allows you to encrypt data, prove data was signed by someone, etc etc…. blockchains OTOH allow you to prove that a piece of data was *not* published.
A simple example is a blockchain university degree verification app I saw recently. A degree is certified with just a digital signature, but *revocations* are put on chain. With cryptography alone you can’t check that a revocation was *not* signed; but with a blockchain….
To check that a degree was not yet revoked, you simply scan the chain and check all of the logs of the revocation contract. If a given degree was signed, and the revocation is not found on chain, then that means it’s still valid.
You can extend this to other contexts.”
You can check out the full tweetstorm here.
Litecoin
The fiat-to-crypto exchange Vertbase just added Litecoin. The relatively new exchange is designed to provide a simple and secure way to buy and sell digital assets with the US dollar.
Tron
Tron just released its weekly update, covering the latest technical advancements and community efforts on the network.
VeChain
VeChain just released a new episode of its Deep Dive series, which looks at the technical aspects of the platform. This episode looks at a number of services that the Shanghai-based blockchain company offers to developers.