From Bitcoin and Ethereum’s potential to disrupt the status quo to big news from IBM and Stellar, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.
Money, Power and Crypto
Crypto advocate and educator Andreas Antonopoulos says Bitcoin and Ethereum are unstoppable. The crypto outlet Decrypt recently spoke to Antonopoulos, and highlights why he believes the two leading cryptocurrencies will work in tandem to disrupt the status quo of money and power.
“’The moment Bitcoin becomes the only choice,’ he intoned, ‘the level of corruption and abuse of power that we’re going to see in the Bitcoin community is going to require us to build something to disrupt it.’ He continued: ‘If you just replace the power structure of traditional central banking with a power structure of Bitcoin-maximalist-billionaires,’ he continued, ‘that [won’t] change anything.’
Worse still, power compromises. As he’d discussed at length in his two-hour-ish talk at ETHDenver Saturday, the promise and purpose of crypto – in this case Ethereum – is ‘unstoppable code,’ software that cannot be manipulated, co-opted or killed by any singular power. (Bitcoin, meanwhile, is ‘unstoppable money.’) So, it worried him that a new breed of power brokers had concentrated on the Ethereum network and inserted themselves as central points of failure.”
Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash
The Japanese crypto exchange BitPoint has received regulatory approval to launch a crypto exchange in Thailand, reports Nikkei. The exchange is expected to initially support Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Bitpoint Japan was one of the first crypto exchanges approved by the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA). The company also operates in Malaysian, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, with plans to expand to Singapore in the future.
Ripple
Ripple’s global head of banking will speak at the Women in Mobile conference on February 26th in Barcelona, Spain. According to the event agenda, she will talk about blockchain’s potential impact on the world of finance and beyond.
Let's start highlighting our amazing speaker line-up! Marjan @delatinne will discuss how #blockchain is improving and revolutionizing the global #financial system and beyond. Get the keys! https://t.co/hLYpWHvJUw #MWC19 pic.twitter.com/VW2NuDFnBM
— WiM (@Women_in_Mobile) February 19, 2019
Stellar
IBM’s vice president of blockchain and digital currencies Jesse Lund says the tech giant will reveal a major announcement about its Stellar-powered IBM World Wire next month. World Wire is a financial network that allows banks and financial institutions to send and settle cross-border payments in near real-time.
At IBM Think 2019, Lund said a number of banks plan to issue digital assets on the platform.
“We’re going to be supporting more than 50 countries out of the gate, 30 to 40 currencies, and enough market makers to drag along 30 or 40 banks. So we’ll have a significant portion of the world covered…
We’ve got letters of intent with several banks around the world to support and issue digital currencies, stablecoins and other currencies. Our goal is to continue to expand that network and to provide global coverage within three to five years where you can actually send remittances in a consistent way, immediately, at a very low cost, from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world.”
Tron
Tron just finished a new coin burn, removing 339,707,697 Ethereum-based TRX tokens from circulation. The burn is one of the final steps in Tron’s migration off of the Ethereum blockchain.
#TRON completed the 9th #ERC20 token coinburn of 339,707,697.730671 $TRX, we welcome the supervision from our supporters and believers. https://t.co/pRBkLxzxnq pic.twitter.com/GWdclOJeMW
— TRON DAO (@trondao) February 20, 2019
Bitconnect
The FBI says it’s investigating the fallout from Bitconnect, and wants to talk with investors burned by the infamous cryptocurrency.
“The FBI is seeking potential victims who invested in the cryptocurrency Bitconnect coin (BCC), which was first released through an initial coin offering orchestrated by Bitconnect in November 2016.
For a majority of BCC’s existence, the only place to purchase, trade, or sell the cryptocurrency was the through the proprietary exchange hosted by Bitconnect. By mid-December 2017, BCC boasted a market cap of over $2.5 billion. Bitconnect guaranteed investors up to a 10 percent total return per month on their investment, following a tiered-investment system based on the sum of an investor’s initial deposit. The entire market for BCC crashed in late January 2018, after two U.S. state-level securities regulators issued public letters warning investors of the Ponzi-type nature of Bitconnect. This led to Bitconnect completely shutting down its exchange for BCC, eliminating the market for the cryptocurrency and stranding investors with near-worthless cryptocurrency.”
You can check out the full request for information here.
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