What important crypto events happened last week?
Cryptocurrencies
📌 Ethereum Price Uptrend Takes A Hiatus, Bulls Are Getting Ready To Rocket To $500
For most of the week, the altcoin was experiencing a downside correction, but as most analysts predicted, it continued the bullish trend and updated the annual maximum, testing the $500 mark. The last time Ethereum traded at this price was in June 2018.
📌 Binance Is Discontinuing Its GBP Stablecoin
The Binance cryptocurrency exchange delisted its BGBP stablecoin, pegged to the British pound as 1:1. A Binance representative explained that BGBP was their first experiment with fiat-backed stablecoins and “was more of a proof of concept”. BGBP had a very inconvenient process for entering and withdrawing assets and did not meet the exchange’s standards.
📌 Number Of Ripple XRP Whale Addresses Make New ATH
The number of addresses containing between 10 and 1 million XRP has reached 17625 — a new all-time high. 307 of them have over 10 million XRP in their accounts. Although the digital currency is still trading below the one dollar mark, Ripple holders continue to accumulate the digital asset.
Projects And Updates
📌 Binance Launches Ethereum Mining Pool, With Lower Fees Than Rivals
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched an Ethereum mining pool with zero fees until December 12, 2020. After this, the fees for mining ETH on Binance will be 0.5%, while Nethermine and SparkPool, competing Ethereum pools, charge twice more — a 1% fee. Yet it’s hard to tell whether the new Ethereum pool will gain the same popularity as the Bitcoin pool, started seven months earlier, especially when Ethereum is going to switch from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
📌 Payments Provider BitPay Rolls Out Cryptocurrency Payroll Service
BitPay, one of the largest cryptocurrency payment operators, has introduced the BitPay Send service, which will allow international companies to pay their employees’ salaries in cryptocurrency. This new service also lets companies pay for contracts and insurances with cryptocurrency, as well as settle accounts with customers. Recipients must have their BitPay ID and cryptocurrency wallet. The service will charge a fee of 1% for each payment.
📌 KuCoin Exchange Is Planning To Launch An NFT Marketplace
Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has announced the launch of its own marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFT). It will be serviced by the exchange’s Pool-X liquidity trading platform. The first supported NFT asset is the Dego.Finance project token. The actual launch of a separate NFT marketplace will take place in the next few months. They, in KuCoin, note that NFTs are still at the beginning of their development and many are not familiar with the new market, although it has great potential. By creating a separate marketplace, KuCoin intends to popularize NFT and lower the market entry threshold.
📌 VeChain ToolChain Receives Innovation Award At Largest High-tech Exhibition In China
On November 11, 2020, China’s largest technology exhibition, the China International High-Tech Achievements Fair, took place in Shenzhen. At the conference, the ToolChain blockchain platform developed by VeChain received China Green Technology Innovation Award 2020. VeChain ToolChain, are industry leaders, which open up new opportunities for many companies to make their business processes more environmentally friendly.
Regulation
📌 Argentina New Bill Seeks To Regulate Digital Currency Industry
Argentine lawmaker Ignacio Torres has proposed a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. It will be submitted to the Argentine Parliament next week. Torres engaged Efraín Barraza, the operations manager at the Argentine division of the Athena Bitcoin cryptomat network to be the leading consultant for the drafting of the bill. Barraza believes that the proper development of the cryptocurrency industry should take place within the framework of the law. The lack of regulation creates favorable conditions for fraudsters and cryptocurrency pyramids. Demand for Bitcoin in Argentina continues to grow due to hyperinflation and fears of default in the country.
📌 Pakistan Exploring Crypto Regulations? SECP Publishes Exploratory Report
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan has published a document discussing crypto regulation in the country. The document provides basic concepts for regulating the growing digital asset market in Pakistan, as well as explores the regulatory frameworks of other countries. This report focuses exclusively on crypto assets issued by non-state or non-central banks, and not CBDC. In the conclusive part of the document, the Commission emphasized that they will continue to study digital assets and expects a response from industry participants to create a better regulation system of the cryptocurrency industry in the country.
Mass Adoption
📌 Belarus State-Owned Bank Launches Cryptocurrency Exchange: Report
On November 13, 2020, Belarusbank announced the launch of a cryptocurrency exchange service. Belarusbank, the largest credit organization in Belarus, started this platform in association with the crypto startup White Bird. The new service allows clients to buy and sell crypto assets using Visa cards. The service is currently available for citizens of Belarus and the Russian Federation and operates with Belarusian and Russian rubles. Belarusbank said there are plans to expand the list of countries and supported currencies.
Hacking
📌 DeFi Protocol Akropolis Lost $2 Million To Hackers
DeFi Platform Acropolis lost more than $2 million in DAI stablecoins that was stolen from its yCurve and sUSD pools. The hackers withdrew assets in tranches of 50,000 DAI for seven hours until the pool was completely emptied. Hackers found a vulnerability in the system of flash loan issuing and also made re-entry attacks that allowed them to withdraw more funds than stipulated by the contracts. Akropolis developers said that they are searching for ways to reimburse affected users.
📌 Another Day, Another DeFi Flash Loan ‘Hack’: $7+ Million Lost
On the night of November 17, hackers attacked the Origin Dollar (OUSD) network. Startup’s co-founder Matthew Liu said the hackers gained access to the assets of OUSD users, with a total value of more than $7 million. Attackers, continuing the sad tendency, used the flash loans functionality, which allowed them to rebalance the value of the stablecoin in their favor. The stolen coins were sold on Uniswap and Sushiswap. Representatives of Origin Dollar appealed to the exchanges involved in money laundering with a request to freeze the funds of the attackers. The team intends to return for the losses. Also, Origin Dollar’s administration urged hackers to surrender, offering the role of the project’s security consultants in return.
People
📌 Mexican Billionaire Reveals 10% Of His Liquid Assets Are In Bitcoin
Ricardo Salinas Pliego said that the tenth part of his liquid assets is invested in the world’s leading cryptocurrency. Salinas is the founder and head of the Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas. In April this year, Forbes declared Salinas the second-richest person in Mexico, with an estimated net worth of $11.7 billion. He also became the only Mexican billionaire whose fortune has grown compared to last year, which shows that Bitcoin successfully helps Salinas compensate for losses from other investments.
📌 ETH 2.0: Vitalik Outlines 2 Year Transformation Plan For ETH 2.0
Ethereum сreator Vitalik Buterin answered some questions on Reddit on November 18. According to him, over the past few months, there have been many changes in the Ethereum roadmap that the team felt it necessary to highlight. In particular, he announced a simplified scheme of merger, which will allow you to achieve a better network performance much sooner. Vitalik emphasized that even though the creation of a reliable and stable system is the ultimate goal of Ethereum, the priority continues to be innovations and the creation of a brand new ecosystem.
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Originally published at https://coinjoy.io.
