Highlights: New Ledger apps, EOS to raise their RAM limits, and another credit card executive dismisses the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies.
Source: Ledger
Ledger has released HODL and RecoveryCheck, two new security apps. HODL allows transaction addresses to be entered directly from the Nano S, and RecoveryCheck verifies a user’s 24-word recovery phrase. We weren’t able to get the apps working. (Is it something we’re doing??)
Source: EOS Authority | Block Explorer
EOS block producers have approved a gradual increase of RAM, raising the current 64GB limit. RAM will be raised 1kb per block.
Source: Medium
MetaMask is back on the Chrome store after it mysteriously disappeared yesterday. It appears to be an error on Google’s part, possibly targeting a look-a-like which has also since been removed. Google claims to have sent an email, which supposedly bounced. MetaMask published a fairly detailed post-mortem, linked above, and overall has handled communication of the issue to the community very well.
Source: Bloomberg
Prediction market Augur may have some issues to address with its business model, according to a Bloomberg report. Augur, which allows users to wager on binary outcomes, sought no approval from the CFTC to do so. Additionally, some of the predictions, like whether Donald Trump will be assassinated within the year, could be unsavory from a legal perspective. It’s another case where a decentralized platform will need to determine how & if it wants to implement censorship.
Source: CoinDesk
The U.S. CFTC is “falling behind” on blockchain, according to Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo. Speaking at one of the U.S. House session earlier this month, Giancarlo told Congress that, essentially, his hands are tied by bureaucracy - one particularly frustrating example being that the CFTC cannot operate a node because the data sharing required “is considered a gift,” which they are therefore not allowed to accept. He advocated for legislation which would enable the agency to pursue blockchain more freely.
Source: CCN
Institutional investors have completed the first swap of “physical” BTC to resolve a futures trade. The itBit cryptocurrency exchange facilitated the trade in conjunction with a registered futures commission merchant. This is the first time such a swap has been made for BTC instead of the cash value of the asset, hence the “physical.”
Source: Bitmain 1 | Bitmain 2 |
Bitmain published a blog post detailing its new policies on transparency for shipping and mining activities ahead of its upcoming IPO. The new policies include a self-disclosure of their hashrate (the first of which is in the second source linked above) and the public availability of new miners’ shipping and volume data.
Source: BC Focus
Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga had some harsh words for cryptocurrencies at a lecture earlier this week, calling them “junk” and citing price volatility, while making unsubstantiated claims that “95 percent of all illegal transactions on the dark web” are funded through crypto. He also has unfavorable positions on cash, favoring a society which relies entirely on electronic payments. Go figure.
Source: CoinDesk
Venezuela is replacing the bolivar, its national currency, in the hopes of salvaging the nation’s economy in the face of skyrocketing inflation. It will be replaced with the bolívar soberano, whose value is tied to the oil-backed petro cryptocurrency. The move is not supported by Venezuela’s congressional majority.
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