Daily Bit #158: May Deloitte Be With You
By: Daily Bit
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Fintech, Blockchain, Blockchain Technology

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General

(1) BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes went scorched-earth on Ether in the company’s latest digest… see it to believe it — and to appreciate his candidness — here.

(2) Come for the trading, stay for the lectures: Binance Academy is open for business. The latest branch of CZ’s empire will bring a collection of educational content to the heavily trafficked site.

You heard it here first: other top exchanges will do the same to attract, engage, and retain users. And hey, we’re all for the movement — promoting education is kind of our thing.

Markets

(1) Coinbase acquired Distributed Systems, a team researching decentralized identity solutions. Rather than give up a copy of your information (i.e. centralized route), “a decentralized identity will let you prove that you own an identity… without making a copy” (Coinbase Blog).

Super innovative stuff coming from Distributed Systems — now go wow your boss.

(2) Japanese comms app LINE stretched their blockchain engagement even further, committing $10 million towards their new wholly-owned subsidiary Unblock Ventures. The token venture fund arrives on the heels of LINE’s crypto trading platform, Bitbox, that launched last month.

Products

(1) Everything comes better in threes. That includes dogs, goals, brothers (speaking from experience) and index funds. Bitwise Index Services launched three of the latter, which will be hereby known as (1) 20 Mid Cap Crypto Index, (2) 70 Small Cap Crypto Index, and (3) 100 Total Market Crypto Index.

Why indexes are important: “Well-constructed indexes and index-linked products are key to the development of efficient investment and risk management in any new asset class.” — Srikant Dash, Bitwise index advisory board // MDR & Research Head @ Standard & Poor’s Indices.

(2) Bitcoin ETFs are on the back burner for now, though a Bitcoin ETN (exchange-traded notes) known as Bitcoin Tracker One is all the rage. The debt-instrument was listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange back in 2015 and is now quoted in USD for American investors.

Protocols

(1) Wormhole is a protocol created by Bitmain that will allow projects to launch ICO’s on top of Bitcoin Cash. But is it too late? ICO funding took a hit in July, and there are more developers working on other protocols — Ethereum and EOS come to mind — whose guidance can possibly be more valuable for teams.

From that perspective, the protocol sounds like more of a Blackhole… *ba dum, tssss*.

(2) … can’t let Bitcoin Cash get all the attention. Steemit is full steam ahead (had to do it) with developing their own protocol that will also allow projects to raise capital via ICOs and launch “STEEM-like” tokens with unique features.

The hub of smart contract platforms just got larger. Plus, this feels like a trend — will other crypto tokens make similar pivots? Is this a new strategy to attract developers? Is anybody even listening to me?

Problematic

(1) AT&T better call a lawyer. The telecom giant was smacked with a $224 million negligence lawsuit after *allegedly* sharing a customer’s phone number with a hacker, who then *purportedly* stole $24 million in crypto.

How bad was their service? “What AT&T did was like a hotel giving a thief with a fake ID a room key and a key to the room safe to steal jewelry in the safe from the rightful owner” — 69-page complaint.

(2) Playboy sued Global Blockchain Technologies, a Canadian startup whose business performance allegedly fell short of expectations. The bunnies claim GBT did not integrate a crypto token onto their website as promised while leveraging the relationship for their personal gain.

Brain Fuel