“Bitcoin’s price jumped Wednesday by the most in six weeks, outpacing U.S. stocks, after the Federal Reserve pledged to keep pumping new money into markets and government data showed the economy sliding into recession. Gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 4.8% during the first quarter.
The Fed said it would keep benchmark U.S. interest rates close to zero while reiterating a pledge to continue buying U.S. Treasury bonds and other assets in an unbounded amount to keep global markets functioning smoothly. Some economists had speculated the central bank might announce plans to start tapering the asset purchases, which along with emergency-lending programs have ballooned the Fed’s balance sheet past $6.5 trillion for the first time in its 107-year history.
We won’t run out of money. It’s an unlimited pot.”
See Also: Coinbase Crashes As BTC Skyrockets
“Eleven members of Congress are calling on the U.S. Treasury Department to look at new technologies, including blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT), to help streamline how cash and supplies are distributed.
A letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin points to blockchain and DLT as secure “new mechanisms” for moving money quickly and transparently, which could in turn boost liquidity in distributing funds via the federal CARES Act.
The letter points to China’s rollout of its own blockchain system as an example of other nations pursuing the same technology.”
See Also: New App for COVID-19 Combines Blockchain With Web Inventor’s Privacy Tech
“When Circle bought Poloniex back in February 2018, it moved assets into better cold wallets and had strong reserves. However, when the exchange was acquired by a group that included Tron’s Justin Sun, it is speculated that some of these cold wallets were drained to become fractional reserves.
The wallets appear to have only been drained into exchanges listing Tron (TRX). Cochran questions whether the exchange’s purchase by Sun was actually just a scheme to boost the price of Tron.
Cochran also highlights the methods used by a group of at least 12 whale accounts. These accounts seem to manipulate the market in coordination with Bitfinex and possibly also BitMEX. The most controversial claim by Cochran is that cold wallets belonging to Bitfinex appear to get in on the dumping action around 40% of the time.
Another allegation against Bitfinex concerned the use of user-funds to vote for the move to Programmatic Proof-of-Work (ProgPoW). This shows that the community was not actually behind ProgPoW, which was being pushed by big self-interested parties.”
“ETH is used 440 times more than Bitcoin for transacting. There has also been an influx of new ETH whales, coming from fiat on-ramp exchanges serving large scale customers.
Another finding is that whales have been accumulating in the down market and they have not been alone. A subsection of miners have also started to aggressively hoard Ether, potentially in readiness to convert mining operations into staking operations.
A deeper look into staking, predicted a 17–20% yield for early phase 0 adopters, dropping in stages before finally leveling out at 4–6% once ETH 2.0 is fully rolled out and transactable.”
Maker getting serious.
“Recruiting two highly respected and valued voices from outside the Foundation team pool helps to ensure the board has the experience required to fuel the next phase of growth and guide MakerDAO to full decentralization with transparency and accountability.
Tonya M. Evans, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, directs the school’s Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Law online professional certificate program.
Shefali Roy boasts a wealth of experience in compliance and regulatory affairs within the financial services industry. She previously oversaw Apple’s regional compliance in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa, and later joined Stripe as MLRO and Chief Compliance Officer for Europe.“
“Capital markets participants can now use Corda to support the issuance, trading, settlement and custody of digital assets.
The relationship with R3 plays an important role in Nasdaq’s development of solutions that support the creation of dynamic and trusted digital asset marketplaces.
In October 2019 Nasdaq listed an AI-powered index of the crypto market’s top 100 coins. A month before that, the exchange listed a new decentralized finance (DeFi) index.”
“With Bancor V2, scheduled for launch in Q2 2020, the team believes to have solved several risks incurred by liquidity providers to its platform. […] The solution to both these problems was to use a price oracle provided by Chainlink (LINK).
We expect and we hope that this [V2 upgrade] will bring tons more liquidity to the protocol.”
“The TON OS will soon become available on smartphones and personal computers for mainstream users, a source close to Telegram told Russian news agency RBC.
TON OS is not an alternative to existing operating systems, but will serve as an add-on for devices. The source said that with TON OS, users can create applications that are automatically compatible with the blockchain platform.”
“Weirdly, YouTube just decided to suspend my channel (SJoelKatz) for impersonation. I wonder who they think I was impersonating.
Wednesday’s events come a week after Ripple initiated a lawsuit against YouTube on allegations the platform had failed to prevent fake XRP giveaway scams on the platform.”
The Disrupt 