This week has been another fairly dull week for the cryptocurrencies. The prices have been ranging to within 1% and Bitcoin has managed to consolidate and stabilise between the $6400 mark and just below $6,600. There seems to be a lot of technical setups gearing for another breakout and “Santa rally” but until the moves are made by the bulls, we’ve covered 5 hot topics of the week that stand out in the market today.
SEC still sat on the regulation fence
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Tim Draper, the infamous venture capitalist and Bitcoin bull recently shared his thoughts on cryptocurrency regulations. It’s necessary for further progression in cryptocurrency that the American Securities and Exchanges Commission plays a major role in how crypto will be perceived and accepted on the global market. However, after several delays the last few months (as we covered in detail here) they’ve so far refused to give any clear regulations or directives. Draper commented:
I think the SEC is torn and I think that’s okay, because they’re torn between going after the fraudsters who are taking advantage of the elderly, and making sure that all that technology does stay in the US. They know that it’s a competitive world out there.
In a considered and objective interview, Draper said that the last thing that the SEC wants to do is stand in the way of innovation. A balanced approach is key:
These entrepreneurs are going to make our world just hum. This whole new financial world is going to be amazing and frictionless and honest. It’s going to be really incredible. As a government, you don’t want to mess with that. You want that to happen.
Australian Woman arrested over $450,000 worth of XRP heist
Police in New South Wales, Australia this week, apprehended a woman on suspicion of stealing over 100,000 XRP. Back when the stock was stolen in Jan 2018, the stolen stack was worth around $450,000 USD but the market contraction in the current calendar year, means value of the stolen property is currently sitting at $55,000.
It came to light when the unsuspecting victim, an unnamed 56-year-old investor, realized his wallet has been compromised when he was locked out of his e-mail account. The hacker changed the email password and added a secondary authentication method, thus preventing the owner from recovering his account.
We’ve written how to protect yourself in a short, sharp guide here.
The hacker managed to gain access to victim’s online cryptocurrency wallet and withdraw the mentioned funds, which the victim realized were missing once he recovered his account. Police tracked the source and worked backwards – the woman has been granted a strict conditional bail, with her court date set for November 19, 2018.
Coinbase feels the pinch and culls staff
Since the start of the year many platforms and exchanges invested heavily only to have to retract that investment as the volume of trading the market cooled. Coinbase, despite being one of the biggest and most mature platforms, cuts have come to Coinbase too.
This time the cuts were mostly focused on the outward circle of employees, with exchange’s customer service feeling most of the heat. This makes sense as there must be fewer customers enquiring on various issues. Other affected areas included fraud departments and compliance.
It’s only 15 people out of a 500+ strong company according to Yahoo Finance but understandably the staff is apparently disgruntled at the timing and handling of the decision.
Recently, the company has received various investment packages from high profile sources and has floated the idea of an Initial public offering (IPO).
The focus will be in more in the increase in listings of quality tokens and coins and stabilising the technical aspect of the platform to maintain what customers they have.
Alibaba cloud expands outside of China
Alibaba’s blockchain based cloud computing service has been made available to customers in the United States as well as countries in Europe and South East Asia.
“Our customers in China have already experienced the benefits from our BaaS platform and we are excited to extend this service to other enterprise customers all over the world,” said the Alibaba Cloud’s press release.
Alibaba Cloud’s BaaS focuses on enterprise-level platform services based on leading blockchain technologies and helps customers build a secure and stable environment for blockchain implementations.
ERP products such as smart contracts, user/certificate management, SDK applications, monitoring, operating and maintenance functions, consortium management, automatic deployment are just some of the applications that this service now offers. This is massive as its China expanding outside of Asia towards the western world – and in blockchain.
Public service benefits systems, logistics and medical industries will likely find application for Alibaba’s cloud computing technology but USA’s continuing trade war and anxiety of data breaches and thefts of IP will be fresh in the minds of adopters.
More on China
Credible news reports have emerged from China stating the country’s merchants can legally accept cryptocurrency as payment. According to reports by the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration, Bitcoin will now be officially recognised, allowing individuals and businesses to transfer and own Bitcoin mainly, without conflicting with the current financial regulatory protocol.
