CRYPTOSILV

  Tel Aviv-based multi-asset global investment platform eToro has entered into a historic partnership with seven Premier League football clubs, which will make payments to their players in Bitcoins. WHEN BITCOIN COMES TO THE WORLD OF FOOTBALL The seven Premier League clubs who have agreed to set up a digital wallet with eToro include Brighton & Hove Albion F.C., Cardiff City F.C., Crystal Palace F.C., Leicester City F.C., Newcastle United F.C., Southampton F.C., and Tottenham Hotspur F.C. As a part of the deal, team players will be made payments in bitcoins through eToro digital wallets. eToro’s UK MD Iqbal V. Gandham tweeted the announcement through the company’s official handle. As a global multi-asset platform where you can purchase the world’s biggest cryptoassets alongside more traditional investments, we are excited to be partnering with so many Premier League clubs and make history by being the first company ever to pay for a Premier League partnership in

Vocal cryptocurrency skeptic Paul Krugman is offering a more complete picture of his views on Bitcoin and blockchain. At ChainXChange, a recent blockchain conference in Las Vegas, Krugman joined Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee and Ripple’s chief marketing strategist Cory Johnson on a panel focused on the future of money. From the start, Krugman admitted he hasn’t looked at the entire cryptocurrency industry at large, and has instead focused on trying to learn how Bitcoin works. “Bitcoin is the only one I halfway understand,” Krugman said, reports Nulltx. Krugman then admitted that despite his concern that Bitcoin mining uses a lot of energy, the leading cryptocurrency already has more utility than gold. Gold is dead… Bitcoin has more utility than gold. There is some chance for Bitcoin to be valuable in the future.” When comparing Bitcoin’s utility compared to fiat, Krugman says his major issue is the cost of transactions used to transfer BTC. He believes if those fees were

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, a computer engineer and inventor, is explaining why he trusts Bitcoin and its underlying technology over our current financial system. “Bitcoin caught my attention. It had so many unusual aspects for any technology I had ever heard of. Nobody is really known to be the creator. It doesn’t have any centralized [component]. It’s based on mathematics. There’s a certain number of Bitcoin that can ever exist… Mathematics to me is like nature. It’s much better than human beings… I trust those things of nature more than what man makes up. Man makes up currencies, controls them, and issues new US dollars every year. Bitcoin was immune to that.” https://dailyhodl.com/2018/08/20/steve-wozniak-trusts-math-and-bitcoin-over-humans-and-fiat-backs-blockchain-startup/ F

PayPal has come in for fresh criticism as commentators renew claims the company has all but failed in its mission to transform money usage. PAYPAL SLIPS UP IN TURKEY Now, amid reports of fresh account freezes in order to bend to regulatory demands in some jurisdictions, cryptocurrency industry figures are more skeptical than ever of the company whose original remit was to break down borders associated with payments and give consumers borderless freedom. “PayPal’s original vision was to prevent governments from doing exactly this,” Messari CEO Dan McArdle tweeted August 14 in response to PayPal’s admission it had blocked access to customers from Turkey. “We have no choice but to suspend processing payments in your region. We will continue to seek to obtain the necessary approvals to enable us to recommence PayPal services in Turkey in the future,” the agent explained. Responses to the message quickly turned to suggest those affected use Bitcoin instead. …BUT BIT

In his tweet, it was mentioned that the quest of changing the Ethereum blockchain algorithm from a Proof-of-Work which it’s currently running to a Proof-of-Stake, which is said to make the community better and most importantly, make it less expensive for the community to engage in transaction processing on its blockchain actively started in early 2014. The first attempt as he reiterated was with the Slasher algorithm. Though it introduced some important updates, Slasher came with a whole lot of challenges which included “long-range attacks” where “attackers withdraw their stake from deposits on the main chain and use it to create an alternate ‘attack chain’.” Vlad’s research clearly got Vitaliks attention, and all efforts were put into making the Casper the winning protocol that will drive the Ethereum blockchain. With some modifications from the founder himself, the project was making headway with the new modification called the Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG).

The peer-to-peer BTC markets of numerous emerging markets have witnessed significant action this past week, with the Localbitcoins markets of Venezuela, Argentina, and the Philippines posting record weekly fiat trade volume. The P2P markets of Tanzania and the Dominican Republic also saw notable surges in trading activity. Venezuela and Argentina Witness All-Time High Fiat Volume for P2P Trade A number of Latin American P2P BTC markets have witnessed an upsurge in trading activity this past week, with Venezuela and Argentina setting new records for the fiat value of weekly trade volume on Localbitcoins, according to Coindance. A record-breaking nearly 21 trillion Venezuelan Bolivar (VEB) (roughly $84.5 million USD) worth of BTC exchanged hands on Localbitcoins during the week of the 11th of August. When measured in BTC, this past week saw the second highest volume ever for the P2P BTC/VEB markets, with 695 BTC traded in a single week. https://news.bitcoin.com/p2p-mark

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by means of trade volume, and a local professional Swiss cryptocurrency exchange will be making a fiat-to-crypto exchange available for its users. Binance Continues to Grow According to the official announcement, Binance will be responsible for the technology and the maintenance of the platform whereas the joint venue, called Binance LCX, will be managing the customer support, due diligence, legal requirements, KYC, AML, and so forth. Reportedly, the plan is to build up a team of up to 15 people for the office in Liechtenstein. The new venue will enable traders to exchange Swiss Francs (CHF) and Euros (EUR) against some of the major cryptocurrency pairs. More trading pairs are going to be added after receiving regulatory clearance. Focus on Serious Investments While there is no mention of required minimum trading amounts, the new venue is seemingly geared towards catering to the needs of professional investors.

Back in July, when Bitcoin was trading around $7,500 and the price was climbing, Arthur Hayes, co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, predicted Bitcoin could continue to drop. He marked $5,000 as a possible bottom, before a big market rally could propel Bitcoin to an astonishing new all-time high of $50,000 by the end of the year. While Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market as a whole is searching for widespread adoption and critical developments tackling security flaws and solving scalability issues, Hayes made his assessment based on market behavior. In a July interview with CNBC, he explained why he believes the summer months and a financial world of globe-trotting vacationers is at play. His expectation: the markets will heat up in Q3 and Q4. Hayes is a former equity derivatives trader and market-maker for Deutsche Bank and Citibank’s Exchange Traded Funds (ETF). He co-founded Hong Kong-based BitMEX in 2014. The exchange is now valued at $3.6 billion on a

Nic Carter, is a highly respected cryptocurrency researcher. He recently stated that Bitcoin has eventually surpassed the OTC gold market most especially in terms of settlement volumes, undermining the 70 percent fall in its price. In accordance to the clearing statistics of the London bullion market (LBMA), about five major clearing members of the LPMCL which includes HSBC, ICBC Standard Bank, Scotiabank, JP Morgan, and UBS, the global gold over-the-counter (OTC) market is now on track to settle about $446 billion in 2018, after it had settled just less than $30 billion on a monthly basis ever since January. Carter explained: “I’m conservatively estimating the London OTC market for gold, overseen by the LBMA, at 70% of global volumes. They publish clearing statistics. With these I can estimate the total net volume of regulated gold settlement at $446b for 2018 (based on 6 months of data). Conservatively, (adjusted estimates), Bitcoin has settled about $848b this year, an

Jeffrey Tucker, economist and editorial director for the American Institute for Economic Research, is calling out banking elites and governments for their long-standing monopoly on money, which has led to “world wars, depression and inflation, enormous government indebtedness, and the rise of leviathan states that learned to print their way to power and riches.” In a recent report, Tucker advises central banks and governments to stop meddling in the world of crypto — where they’re not wanted, not qualified and not going to succeed. But banks are hardly lying down and rolling over. They’re lining up solutions to kick Bitcoin and crypto to the curb, challenging the fintech startups that are vying to take away their monopoly and world dominance. Tucker addresses their central scheme to stop the competition: issue their own digital currencies. But a government-backed, central bank-branded coin would have nation-state borders and would live on a permissioned blockchain. It would

Dash CEO and former Wall Street executive Ryan Taylor spoke out about the recent Wall Street activity seen in the cryptocurrency space recently, with ICE establishing a bitcoin market and financialization coming in from other avenues of the traditional finance world. Dash CEO Explains Why He Left Wall Street to Go All in on Crypto In an exclusive interview “I was led away from Wall Street for two primary reasons. The first is the tremendous opportunity I believe is inherent in the space. This is an incredibly immature industry with enormous potential for well-run projects. The second reason is that this technology has the potential to change the world for the better by empowering some of the most disaffected people in the world with a greater degree of financial freedom. It is truly an exciting place to be working.” Dash is a cryptocurrency and a digital autonomous organization (DAO) aimed at enabling merchants to handle private payments in crypto. The currency has been ad

Bitmain has announced the launch of two internet routers that can mine Dash and Siacoin. In a tweet shared online, the company said the new miners, known as the Antrouter R3-DASH and Antrouter R3-SIA, will function as internet routers that can mine cryptocurrencies at the same time using the devices’ idle processing power. The routers are models from Bitmain’s R3 series of products, which already includes the R3 Litecoin Mining Router. Earlier this year, Canaan Creative, the second largest manufacturer of mining equipment in the world launched the AvalonMiner Insider, a smart TV that doubles as a bitcoin mining device with the capacity to process 2.8 trillion hashes per second. As expected, the capabilities of these dual-purpose miners are limited compared to professional miners. It also seems to be targeted at amateur miners who are not after making profits, but love the idea of mining cryptocurrencies. The product page of the Antrouter R3-DASH’s shows the specificatio

Cryptocurrencies are designed to be used as a payment method first and foremost. Most top cryptocurrencies have lost track of the bigger picture in this regard. Dash, a privacy-oriented coin, aims to make a big splash in this regard. Their infrastructure has evolved in such a way it caters to merchants all over the world. The Future of Dash Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, Dash is not content with being a speculative cryptocurrency. Instead, it is designed to be a payment currency first and foremost. Opinions among financial experts differ greatly when it comes to using cryptocurrencies for payments. Most financial experts don’t see a bright future ahead in this regard. It is up to individual coin developers to ensure the outcome is very different. Ensuring that Dash can become a payment method requires key features. It needs to be fast, secure, and intermix with cash or payment cards. The first two aspects can be solved by most other cryptocurrencies on the market today. I

Ecobank Report Finds Significant Presence of Crypto in 36 African Countries A report published by the pan-African bank, Ecobank Transnational Inc., has found that despite cryptocurrencies exerting a notable presence in each of the 36 African countries in which the company operates, only South Africa and Swaziland have adopted a “generally favorable and permissive [regulatory] stance” pertaining to cryptocurrencies. Africa’s Regulators Adopt ‘Wait and See’ Approach Regarding Cryptocurrencies Ecobank’s report finds that “As in many other parts of the world, African governments and central banks are mostly adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach when it comes to regulating cryptocurrencies.” The report states that “Many African governments and regulators recognize both the risks and the potential positive impacts of cryptocurrencies,” and that some African governments have shown an “appreciat[ion of] the difference between cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology.

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance has revealed a “rough, pre-alpha” demo version of DEX, its own decentralized exchange which could ultimately take over from its current platform. ‘A BIG STEP’ Introducing a video walkthrough of the exchange, CEO Changpeng Zhao said developers were “very aggressively” on getting a usable product to market. The DEX demo is the first major event on the timeline of the Binance Chain project, the public Blockchain, which the exchange formally announced in May. “As a public blockchain, Binance Chain will mainly focus on the transfer and trading of blockchain assets, as well as provide new possibilities for the future flow of blockchain assets,” a blog post issued at the time reads. Binance Chain will focus on performance, ease-of-use, and liquidity. Binance Coin (BNB) will be upgraded to exist on its own blockchain mainnet, becoming a native coin. At the same time, Binance will transition from being a company to a community. Zhao descr

The bitcoin cash (BCH) centric wallet Electron Cash has seen a bunch of development with Coinshuffle integration, and a new iOS version of the wallet. Now another version of the Electron Cash wallet has launched which can run on basic feature phones (Nokia-style) adding more versatility to the BCH ecosystem. Electron Cash Can Now be Installed on Nokia Style Feature Phones Last February the Electron Cash lead developer, Jonald Fyookball, announced the development team would be funded by the firm Coingeek, and Electron Cash would launch a bunch of new features over the course of the year. So far the team has launched a new iOS version of the wallet and added a Coinshuffle plugin to the client’s desktop version. Now, this week the Electron Cash team has released a Java Micro-Edition of the wallet (J2ME) which makes the client available to feature phones much like the popular and less sophisticated Nokia phones. Over 1.3 Billion Feature Phone Users Can Now Use the Bitcoin Cas

The Lightning Network active on the Bitcoin mainnet has passed 3000 nodes with capacity for almost 100 BTC in August. CAPACITY EXPANDS 85% IN JULY Data from monitoring resource 1ml.com confirms that network capacity increased 85 percent in the past thirty days, bringing mainnet Lightning’s total funds accommodation to 97 BTC ($628,000). Lightning originally debuted around the start of 2018 in its mainnet form, with growth accelerating through Q2. In May, Twitter commentator Kevin Rooke notes, capacity remained comparatively low at just 18 BTC before a dramatic increase began in July. At the time, Bitcoinist reported on a single node entering the network with a capacity of 35.4 BTC, which at the time doubled its size. That node has since all but disappeared, leaving familiar names such as Bitrefill and less familiar entities leading the capacity count. https://bitcoinist.com/lightning-network-3000-nodes-capacity-100/