“The French finance minister has said the nation plans to block Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency in the EU over concerns that it poses a threat to the sovereignty of national currencies.

I want to be absolutely clear: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil.”

See Also: BBC

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“We believe that the moment the gains are converted into traditional money is the right time to assess tax.

VAT is to be applied to cryptocurrency transactions only when they are used to acquire an asset or a service.

In August, a tax bill seeking to allow the exclusion of gain or loss on like-kind exchanges of virtual currency has been introduced in the United States House of Representatives.”

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“Normally, investors have had to watch constantly and reallocate quickly to catch an enhanced DeFi return. Now they can set a smart contract to do the monitoring and allocating for them.

With RAY, investors can put their assets (ETH, USDC or DAI) into an asset-specific pool and the smart contract will automatically invest all or part of that pool into contracts with the best yield at any given time. For now, it will invest only on the money market Compound and with the derivatives protocols DYDX and BZX. ‘Everything we do is non-custodial.'”

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“Spanish banking giant Santander says it has become the first institution to use a public blockchain to manage all aspects of a bond issue. Previously, the World Bank issued a similar blockchain bond but used a private version of ethereum.

It’s an evolutionary step. There are no secondary markets yet, but we are on that path.

One conclusion that can be drawn from Santander’s efforts and others doing similar things is that the banking world is slowly but surely coming around to trust ethereum.

I think it’s becoming apparent that ethereum is just part of the internet.”

See Also: Russia’s Largest Bank Buys $15 Million in Debt Using Hyperledger Blockchain

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“Warner Music has joined an $11.2 million investment in CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs in order to collaborate on the deployment of the company’s new blockchain network called Flow as well as building tokens on top of it.

The main goal is to create new avenues where the fans of our artists can explore their fandom and engage with the artists in new and different ways that they haven’t done before.

Additionally, Warner Music is reportedly looking into how cryptocurrency could be used to enable a new method for tipping artists on the network and testing two different blockchain platforms for directly connecting musicians with their fans without the need of intermediary distributors.”

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“The professional service firm’s analysis of the crypto ecosystem found that 41 percent of global fundraising deals in Q2 2019 took place in Europe. Similarly, cryptocurrency fundraises in the Asian market have jumped significantly, accounting for 26 percent of the deals in Q2 2019.

Meanwhile, the report identifies a significant drop in crypto fundraising deals in the Americas. While the region accounted for 51 percent of global deals in Q2 2018, the Americas captured just 28 percent in Q2 2019.

Except perhaps for crypto mining, we are seeing capital flow to every sector of the crypto industry.”

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“The foundation has released 14 new grants to projects targeting the advancement of the Tezos project.

Recipient projects prioritized developments such as applications built using Tezos smart contracts, Tezos block explorers, tools for smart contract development, Tezos-focused training resources and marketing initiatives that improve awareness of the ecosystem.”

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LOL, ‘nough said. Pass!

“The company does the pre-setup for each wallet being sold to generate blockchain addresses and the associated private keys, but Lee said the firm deletes the data after production.”

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“One of the primary reason for doing this pre-sale, according to Paul, is to get a sense of the levels of liquidity and market interest in the SOV cryptocurrency.

Called the Timed Release Monetary Issuance (TRMI), RMI minister David Paul explained that anyone (regardless of location) can register for the pre-sale on the newly launched website of the SOV Development Foundation.”

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“ETC Lab’s CEO Terry Culver said Atlantis signals a desire to work with ethereum. Many of Atlantis’ EIPs have been on ethereum for years and should allow for more crossover between the platforms.”

“Stablecoins there differ according to which asset(s) back the token — e.g. currencies, commodities, real estate or securities.

Due to the issuance of Libra payment tokens, the services planned by the Libra project would clearly go beyond those of a pure payment system and therefore be subject to such additional requirements.

The watchdog further underscores that a necessary condition for the Libra network being granted a license as a payment system would be that:

The returns and risks associated with the management of the reserve were borne entirely by the Libra Association and not — as in the case of a fund provider – by the ‘stable coin’ holders.

A last important point from FINMA is that the international scope of Libra requires an internationally coordinated approach.”

See More:
Facebook Libra Is Seeking to Register as a Payment System in Switzerland

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“As a Hyperledger member, ConsenSys plans to explore interoperability across blockchains and help drive standards to support enterprise-grade blockchain environments.

As a new premier member, ConsenSys is now an active part of the Hyperledger community and the open-source, open governance approach to blockchain.

Furthermore, ConsenSys founder and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin will join the governing board of Hyperledger.”

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“Mastercard said the two firms have inked a deal to “develop and pilot” the payments solution. It will initially be aimed at connecting faster payments schemes and banks backed by Mastercard’s clearing and settlement network.”

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“The service will allow institutions to customize the settlement of forwards contracts – for example, deciding the frequency of calculations – to provide “greater flexibility” for investors.

Seed CX has been building toward its physically-settled bitcoin forwards product for some time, announcing its intention last year.”

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“The device is planned to go on pre-order in Q4 2019 at a price of $599. Blok on Blok (BOB) will allow users to switch between PundiX’s blockchain OS, which powers the decentralized services, and Android. BOB will further support the Function X network by acting as a node on the blockchain.

BOB gives a sneak peek of a world powered entirely by blockchain technology, where everyone has control over their own data and everything is executed with the expectations of immutability and transparency.”

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“We have created a customized version of both our firmware and Wallet designed for everyone who supports the idea of Bitcoin. Every Bitcoin maximalist can now enjoy the Wallet interface with nothing else but Bitcoin.“

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“The testing units, if successful, would mark a major step toward mass production as Linzhi sets out to compete with makers of general-purpose computing chips, such as NIVIDA.

One possible risk for the business is that the ethereum community has previously voted to activate the so-called ProgPow algorithm in order to remove the edge maintained by large miners that can afford expensive, specialized chips.

Chen said the company is, in fact, more active in the ETC community, adding: ‘Our plan A is to focus on ETC mining.'”

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“Amazon QLBD is a new class of database that provides a transparent, immutable and cryptographically verifiable transaction log ‎owned by a central trusted authority.

Today, we are proud to announce Amazon QLDB, offering customers a fully managed service that provides the same ledger capabilities, along with the ability to cryptographically verify data integrity.”

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“Cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay faces another publicity nightmare amid claims it blocked donations to Hong Kong for several weeks.

BitPay has seen multiple scandals involving various aspects of its operations, including freezing payments, failure to support major wallets and allegedly attempting to make customers actually use Bitcoin less often.”

“The US cryptocurrency exchange is investing 1 million USDC each in lending protocols Compound and dYdX.

The USDC tokens we deposit cannot be used for items like salaries or user acquisition. It simply provides more liquidity in the protocol, making it easier to attract borrowers (for decentralized lending protocols) and takers (for decentralized exchanges). The USDC Bootstrap fund’s goal is to make the supply side easier, allowing the protocol to grow.

Compound CEO Robert Leshner added that the USDC Bootstrap Fund can also be seen as ‘the starting point for the legitimization of open finance. Coinbase is a financial institution and the fact that it’s engaging with open financial applications is going to be seen as a rallying cry for other institutions to [do the same].'”

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“Offered as a means for investors and traders to track “popular” defi-focused blockchain tokens, Defix lists projects including MakerDao, Augur, Gnosis, Numerai, 0x and Amoveo.

The index is listed by NASDAQ under the ticker DEFX, and can also be tracked on TradingView and Google, with a listing on Yahoo Finance planned in the future.”

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“Today marks the launch of what is most likely the first ever blockchain-based initial public offering (IPO), with the national stock exchange of the Seychelles selling tokenized shares in its equity to investors worldwide. The shares are tokenized on the public ethereum blockchain.

These novel financial instruments are here to reshape the financial industry for years to come. MERJ provides the regulatory framework necessary for investors globally to access these markets in a safe and compliant manner.”

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“Gemini exchange is launching an institutional-grade crypto custody solution.

Through the Gemini Trust Company, a regulated custodian overseen by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), the Winklevoss-backed exchange now offers “Gemini Custody,” a platform which would enable clients to trade assets instantly by offering them credits.

The custodian, which already supported bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, litecoin and zcash, now provides support for 0z, Augur’s REP tokens, the basic attention token (BAT), bread (BRD), dai, maker, decentraland’s MANA token, enjin, flexacoin, the Gemini dollar, Kyber Network’s token, Loom Network’s token and OmiseGo.”

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“A Google Play ranking is determined by how well apps perform against several key metrics such as crash rates, app-not-responding rates, excessive WiFi, location or processing in the background. 

Brave was downloaded 2 million times last month, while Firefox only saw 553,000 downloads.”

---

“The initial margin requirements are ‘the amount of assets (collateral) that need to be pledged in order to open a position.’

With bitcoin currently trading around $10,000, Tuesday’s notice matches the predicted margin rates detailed in a FAQ Bakkt published last month, which noted that the initial margin was ‘expected to be approximately 37 [percent] for outright contracts.'”

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“CasperLabs said in an announcement on Tuesday that the new funds will be used to speed up product development and bring more engineers on board.

The project aims to build a new blockchain based on a version of proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus protocol – specifically Zamfir’s Correct-by-Construction (CBC) Casper PoS. The firm said it is working to solve the ‘trilemma’ of scale, decentralization, and security.”

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“IBM has doubled the number of its employees on the technical steering committee (TSC) of Hyperledger, stoking concerns about the tech giant’s influence on the enterprise blockchain consortium.

It is very clear that IBM now controls the TSC and is that the direction Hyperledger wants to take?”

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“There are confirmed instances of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) ‘being exploited in the wild.’ The vulnerability was first reported on Aug. 30 by LN coder Rusty Russell.

This is also a great time to remind folks that we have limits in place to mitigate widespread funds loss at this early stage. There will be bugs. Don’t put more money on Lightning than you’re willing to lose!“

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“eToro cited a survey on generational investment conducted from July 18 to July 31 among 1,000 online investors in the United States.

40% of millennials said that they would prefer to invest in crypto assets if a recession occurs, while 50% of Gen Z said they would choose real estate. As for Gen X, 38% said that they would hedge with commodities.

We believe that if a recession were to occur, we’d see shrinking stock portfolios and growth in other asset classes like crypto, as well as new fractional ownership models.“

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“CiperTrace’s Travel Rule Information Sharing Architecture (TRISA) would allow exchanges and wallet providers to share payment details and confidentially exchange customer know-your-customer (KYC) information.

Binance, currently the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, is examining CipherTrace’s code (though the exchange hasn’t yet committed to implementing it).”

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“Investment management firm VanEck has issued just 4 Bitcoins (BTC) via its new trust focused on institutional investors. 

For Krüger, it has become proof that institutional investors do not want such limited Bitcoin-related instruments.”

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“By hasing data like GPS coordinates, video, photos, and flight and telemetry logs on a distributed ledger, Red Cat claims drone flights can be monitored with absolute integrity.

We’re full speed ahead on the commercialization of our blockchain black box and distributed storage system to move the drone industry forward and make the skies safer.

GoChain, which operates its own token, GO, is built on the ethereum blockchain. GoChain claims it can settle 1,300 transactions per second.”

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“According to a report by Bloomberg on Sept. 9, Facebook told United States senators about the backing reserves for the stablecoin.

Libra will reportedly be backed by several national currencies. These include the U.S. dollar, euro, Japanese yen, British pound and Singapore dollar. However, the Chinese yuan may be excluded from the group of reserve assets.

Facebook stated [however] that any final determination regarding the backing currencies is the purview of the Libra Association.”

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“The new token, known as CNH₮, is collateralized with yuan stored offshore. It remains unclear where Tether will store the yuan backing the stablecoin, though Dong told CoinDesk last month that the reserves will be stored in a bank in Belgium.

CNH represents a further expansion of Tether’s capabilities in facilitating the digital use of traditional currencies, such as US dollar (USDT) and euro (EURT).”

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“SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said “progress is being made” in the crypto space to allow a bitcoin ETF to launch, though concerns linger.

An even harder question given that they trade on largely unregulated exchanges is how can we be sure that those prices aren’t subject to significant manipulation? … People needed to answer these hard questions for us to be comfortable that this was the appropriate kind of product.

Clayton’s remarks come just weeks before the SEC is expected to approve or reject a pair of bitcoin ETF proposals.”

---

“The government of Catalonia has announced it will develop a decentralized identity platform aimed to give citizens control of their own data when interacting with online services.

The ‘IdentiCAT’ will be the first digital identity at European level, which will be driven by the public sphere and managed by citizens themselves.

As an example, a user may use the ID system to verify they are of legal age without having to provide either the date or the place of birth.”

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“An industry insider said LG had already held discussions with local decentralized application (DApp) developers and had worked out a use case for its future product. 

It remains unknown whether LG’s future offering will become internationally available.  An industry insider said LG had already held discussions with local decentralized application (DApp) developers and had worked out a use case for its future product.”

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“News of the insurance policy covering client deposits removes yet another concern for the institutional investors that Bakkt hopes to attract.”

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“Over the next 20 months, Keybase users can expect monthly airdrops of 100 million XLM.

All you have to do is have an authenticated Keybase account, and your XLM will appear in your wallet – automatically, every month, for as long as the airdrop continues.

The airdrop partnership comes as other messaging apps ramp up their own cryptocurrency efforts.”

1. The smart contract security seems legit.
   
2. Compound is a CUSTODIAL system, all lending pools can be trivially drained if their admin private key is compromised.
   
3. When you lend on Compound, you are NOT guaranteed to be able to withdraw whenever you want. If you try to withdraw your funds and all the money is locked up in outstanding loans, your withdrawal transaction will fail.

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SingularDTV Update:

SingularDTV’s mission is the creation of a decentralized entertainment industry powered by blockchain technology. The year 2020 represents an exciting new phase in achieving this goal — the launch of the SNGLS Media Distribution Protocol.

The SNGLS Protocol is intended to operate as the layer in which various entertainment DApps and services can create and sustain a decentralized entrainment marketplace. Breaker will be the first DApp to launch on the SNGLS Protocol.

SingularDTV has created and is in the process of patenting the process of programmatically embedding IP into data vessels (tokens) on the blockchain along with its required distribution infrastructure.

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Deep dive on layer 2 ‘rollup’:

The construction borrows heavily from both plasma and zkRollup designs, and builds on shadow chains as described by Vitalik. This construction resembles plasma but trades off some scalability to enable running fully general (eg. Solidity) smart contracts in layer 2 – providing a near term scalable EVM-like chain in layer 2.

In a mature layer 2 ecosystem it’s likely that we will see rollup, plasma, and state channels all working together in the same client.

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“Now developers and community members interested in the messaging app provider’s blockchain can start kicking the tires of a full node, a validator node and the blockchain explorer.

‘TON Labs will release Public Beta of its developer tools suite on Monday.’ The mainnet launch for the Telegram Open Network is set to happen no later than Oct. 31.”

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“Jerome Powell said that the United States Federal Reserve is monitoring digital currencies carefully, but not working on its own at the moment.

When asked about Facebook’s forthcoming Libra stablecoin, Powell said that the project would need to comply with higher standards and regulatory and supervisory expectations specifically due to the social media company’s large user base. Powell added that it is not clear how this would happen under the current regulatory system.”

Great new newsletter with extremely informative crypto-related posts – like yesterday’s on how to set up a local tax shelter for your crypto using a ‘self-directed IRA’:

“Tax sheltered crypto:

• No need to track capital gains/losses on the transactions in this account
• Any ETH staking income earned is never taxable
• Any interest earned on the lending of the ETH is tax free

The Self-Directed retirement account is a killer tool in the bankless toolkit—unparalleled flexibility to do what you want with your crypto in tax-advantaged format.”

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“Software giant Oracle has admitted Hydrogen, a developer of ethereum-based enterprise blockchains, into its Cloud Marketplace.

The listing means New York-based Hydrogen’s APIs are now available to nearly half a million Oracle customers to develop applications for banking, investing, savings, insurance and wellness.

Hydrogen Molecule is like Stripe for DeFi. It is a developer-centric set of APIs and libraries that will be the standard in decentralized finance. DeFi can now be added to any application globally.”

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“Over the weekend, the Ethereum Name Service launched an auction for short .eth domain names on the OpenSea decentralized marketplace. All three to six-character-long domain names that were not among the 194 approved during the reservation period that closed in mid-August are now up for grabs, and can be bid upon using ETH cryptocurrency.

The idea, if it catches on, is to help facilitate greater consumer adoption by enabling the use of easily recognizable names—such as “satoshi.eth” (currently going for 1,500 ETH at auction)—to receive tokens and perform transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.”

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“The SOV will have a fixed, tamper-proof money supply and that its growth will be predetermined at 4% per year.

We chose to create a fixed money supply with fixed growth because fiat currencies can be remarkably unstable. […] The policies of major central banks are not reassuring, as the gold and bitcoin prices attest. We as governments need to take a more sustainable approach to money, and not treat it as a limitless resource.”

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“According to a Sept. 4 report by state-owned media outlet China Daily, “closed-loop testing” has begun for the central bank digital currency (CBDC) to simulate payment scenarios involving ‘some commercial and non-government institutions.’

Citing industry sources familiar with the matter, that the system may be launched in Shenzhen first to test the waters. There, local companies including Tencent and state-owned financial institutions are researching technical frameworks to support the development of the CBDC.”

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“Bitcoin (BTC) has seen yet another sharp increase in its computing power after its network hash rate grew 25% in a week. The figure passed 80 quintillion h/s for the first time in early August, and has set new highs on an almost daily basis in recent months.

A rising hash rate means that forward-looking miners are investing vast amounts of resources to expand their operations, i.e. betting on Bitcoin’s value to increase in the future.”

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“The Hong Kong-licensed firm announced on Wednesday that the scheme will be on offer to both employees of participating firms and the self-employed, and will offer an underlying portfolio that includes cryptos as well as fiat currencies. It’s also expected to appeal to crypto investors.

The plan will be funded by either voluntary contributions or deducted directly from an employees salary. The pension will be paid out after retirement of the scheme member.”