South Korean exchange, Bithumb, hacked for ₩35,000,000,000.
In an official statement on their website, Bithumb said they “noticed that between last night and today early morning, about 35,000,000,000 KRW (~$30 million USD) worth of cryptocurrencies was stolen.” As a result of the hack, deposits and withdrawals have been halted for the time being. To ease panic, Bithumb has stated they will compensate users for any lost funds.
Great response from Bithumb on the PR and damage control front. Fortunately, $30 million is only about two weeks of revenue for Bithumb.
I’m putting on my tin foil hat here, but the market really feels scripted to me – an exchange hack right as the market is showing some signs of life. A $30 million heist also seems like the right amount to cause a small drop, but not enough to cause a huge panic in this already bearish market. BitGrail lost $200 million and Coinrail lost 37.5 million – Bithumb dwarfs these two exchanges in terms of volume and market dominance. $30 million from a Top 5 exchange? Weird.
Apologies for missing the daily update yesterday. I was busy networking with some crypto folks in town, and spent the evening installing the MacOS Mojave Beta. Night Mode is awesome.
It looks like Ethereum is definitely not a security, but this is not the case for 99% of the other projects that conducted ICOs. Based on Hinman’s speech today, it’s pretty clear to me that the SEC is going to start cracking down on quite a few projects very soon.
This part of the speech was especially interesting to me:
But this also points the way to when a digital asset transaction may no longer represent a security offering. If the network on which the token or coin is to function is sufficiently decentralized – where purchasers would no longer reasonably expect a person or group to carry out essential managerial or entrepreneurial efforts – the assets may not represent an investment contract. Moreover, when the efforts of the third party are no longer a key factor for determining the enterprise’s success, material information asymmetries recede. As a network becomes truly decentralized, the ability to identify an issuer or promoter to make the requisite disclosures becomes difficult, and less meaningful.
I hope we get some clarity on this in the coming weeks, but it almost sounds like the SEC will allow tokens to morph into non-securities over time. I’m only speculating, but perhaps the SEC will give current ICO-funded projects some sort of grace period to get a functional and decentralized network up and running. I suppose this would be an example of regulation without regulating.
The market showed some signs of life after this announcement.
Overstock announced they generate $120,000/week in crypto revenue.
This figure was actually shocking to me. Sometimes I forget there are people out there who actually use Bitcoin for its intended purpose. It’s easy to get lost in the Sea of HODL.
Crypto only accounts for 0.2% of Overstock’s revenue. From what I understand, crypto payments are only available for shoppers in the USA and Canada. I suspect Overstock’s website in other countries processes payments through a third party service that doesn’t support crypto. Still, 0.2% for a major mainstream retailer like Overstock is impressive and an actual sign of real world adoption.
In order to request an audit from QuantStamp, the client must first hold a minimum of 200,000 QSP, worth ~$19,350 at today’s prices. I actually think this is preferable to transactions via QSP, as this form of temporary (or permanent) staking effectively reduces QSP’s circulating supply.
At ~$60 million, QSP is a fairly low market cap token with no fiat pairs. QuantStamp is in the business of providing audits, and they pay their bills with their profits. If you’re QuantStamp, why would you accept payments in the form of a low liquidity token that you can’t cash out at a stable price? When it comes to financial commitments, like paying your employees, you want a relatively stable form of income. Thus, I don’t see the issue in accepting ETH, which is relatively more stable due to its much higher market cap. As a startup business, the predictability and stable value of USD is even better.
ICO buyers, you purchased a utility token, and you were never promised a ROI. If QSP is required for QuantStamp’s services, there’s value. If that’s not good enough for you, sell your tokens.
Binance has signed a MOU with Jersey, a country that uses the British Pound.
According to Changpeng Zhao, Binance has “chosen Jersey to be the next big step in [their] global expansion strategy for its clear and pro-crypto investment and regulatory environment.” In a following statement, Binance CFO, Zhou Wei said, “with the set up of the fiat exchange here, there will be a lot of interest from the blockchain universe looking at Jersey.”
If Binance manages to secure EUR and GBP pairs against their extensive altcoin offerings, they’ll truly become a powerhouse in the cryptocurrency industry. Coinbase is doing too little, too late.
ICON’s token swap has been announced by Binance.
Binance has released a statement about supporting ICON’s ICX token swap. The exchange plans to suspend ICX deposits and withdrawals at 12 AM (UTC) on June 20, 2018.
It seems like Binance has a history of releasing ICON-related news before ICON. Last year, they announced ICX trading before ICON did. Now, they’ve announced the token swap before an official statement from ICON. It’s a little amusing.
Binance has also announced a ICX/USDT trading pair.
TRON (TRX) and Ontology (ONT) are currently in the process of preparing for their respective mainnet token swaps. To facilitate the token swap process for its users, Huobi Pro will automatically swap any TRX and ONT tokens that are deposited to the exchange.
What is a Mainnet Token Swap?
In the world of cryptocurrency, many new projects are looking to build their own blockchain platform, but need a temporary token of sorts to raise ICO funds. In order to do this, most developers use Ethereum’s ERC-20 standard, which defines a set of rules for token generation and usage. The ERC-20 standard allows projects to specify their own token economics, and the generated tokens can be stored in an ETH wallet. Similarly, the NEO platform also offers a token standard called NEP-5.
After a project’s mainnet, or live network, has been launched, developers may choose to do a 1:1 swap of the ERC-20/NEP-5 token to tokens that can be utilized on the mainnet. In this case, TRON and Ontology have launched their mainnets. The TRX ERC-20 and ONT NEP-5 tokens won’t have any function on the mainnet, so they will lose all value following the token swap. Thus, it’s important to receive your mainnet tokens, which will retain their value because they can be used on the mainnet for staking, purchases, etc.
Token Swap on Huobi Pro
Huobi Pro, which recently finished its EOS token swap, is now supporting both the TRX and ONT token swaps. Here are two reasons why you should use Huobi Pro to swap your tokens.
Swap TRX on Huobi Pro, and trade against USDT.
Manually swapping the tokens can be challenging, especially for new investors. For example, manually swapping ONT NEP-5 tokens require sending the tokens to a specified mapping address in addition to one’s private keys. With so many phishing scams at the moment, sending your tokens to an exchange is a safer and more convenient solution.
If you perform a manual swap, your tokens won’t be liquid during the swap process, which can take up to 24 hours. If you’re an active trader, this means you won’t be able to react to market news because your tokens will be “stuck” during the token swap. On the other hand, if your tokens are on Huobi Pro, you’ll still be able to trade freely during the swap process.
TRON & Ontology in the Future
TRON and Ontology are two of the biggest projects in the blockchain space. Just a few days ago, TRON’s Justin Sun announced an acquisition of Bittorrent, Inc. While not many details were revealed about the acquisition, TRON stated it is interested in building a “decentralized Internet”.
Ontology, while newer in the blockchain space, has made a number of significant accomplishments as well. Recently, Ontology formed a partnership with CarBlock, a blockchain-based transportation solution. Ontology has also formed the Ontology Olympus Accelerator, a program that “invites technology and product experts across fields to collaborate in entrepreneurship and build new distributed business applications.”
Don’t miss out on TRON and Ontology’s exciting future by forgetting to swap your tokens. The swap process will start soon, so sign up for Huobi Pro today, and let them handle the token swap for you.
A national banking group in South Korea is to roll out a blockchain-based ID verification system for domestic commercial banks in just weeks.
According to a notice revealed on Monday by the Korea Federation of Banks (KFB), the new system – dubbed BankSign – is scheduled to be launched in July following a testing phase that began in April of this year.
Built on top of Nexledger, a private blockchain platform developed by Samsung’s enterprise solution division, BankSign will offer local banks an option to replace the existing ID verification system that has been in place for decades in South Korea, the KFB said.
I know Samsung Group is a huge company, but I wonder why Samsung Pass is using theloop’s CHAIN ID instead of an authentication solution built on Samsung SDS’ Nexledger. Since a number of firms in Korea have already been using CHAIN ID for authentication, I wonder if we’ll see cross-chain communication between Nexledger and CHAIN ID via ICON.
