AVA Labs, the team behind Avalanche, an open-source platform for launching decentralized applications in a highly-scalable ecosystem, recently raised $42M in a 4.5 hour-long token sale last Wednesday. The sale marks one of the largest ICO’s out of the U.S. since 2017.Avalanche’s Recent Key HiresAVA Labs, founded by Cornell Ph.D.’s and led by Professor Emin Gun Sirer, initially completed a $6M Series A in 2019 backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, Metastable, Polychain, and angel investors, Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan.In early 2020, AVA Labs acquired a startup called Investery – a SaaS platform founded by John Wu to facilitate investor discovery, management, and transacting of private market assets.The acquisition allowed the company to acquire top talent John Wu and

According to Samson Mow, Chief Strategy Officer of Blockstream, Craig Wright’s lawyers have been sending out letters regarding Craig Wright’s Tulip Trading Limited revealing that access to two of Wright’s Bitcoin addresses has been compromised.This puzzling assertion comes amid a legal battle between Wright and the Kleiman estate, during which Wright has claimed that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin, but will not pay the Kleiman estate the 1.1 million Bitcoin which they feel they are entitled to.Craig Wright Involved In Mt. Gox Hack?The letter states that Wright’s Tulip Trading owns the Bitcoin in two addresses, known as “1Feex” and “12ib7” that contain 79,957 BTC and 31,000 BTC. On or around February 5, 2020, access to these addresses was apparently compromised during a hack of

The Nasdaq Composite reached an ATH today, propelled mostly by large technology stocks, even while Bitcoin hovered below $10,000.NASDAQ HITS ALL-TIME HIGH!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2020Nasdaq Erases Previous LossesToday, the Nasdaq erased Coronavirus losses to seize a new record with the index led by the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix, and Facebook, which have driven a surge of 45% since last March. The Nasdaq Composite hit an all-time high today, breaching 10,000 for the first time. It has retraced a bit since then.Firms like Hertz Global, a U.S.-based car rental company, also surged by almost 1000% in two weeks even after filing for bankruptcy as the S&P 500 is also recovering steadily.Somewhat ironically, all of this happens as the environment in

Vitalik Buterin applauded the successful launch of various Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum, saying that “the initial deployment of Ethereum’s layer two scaling strategy has *basically* succeeded.” In a recent thread, he sheds light on some of the most recent developments and challenges ahead.While everyone wasn’t looking, the initial deployment of ethereum’s layer 2 scaling strategy has *basically* succeeded. What’s left is refinement and deployment. A thread: https://t.co/30Dfr9XmFs— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 1, 2020Layer 2 Technology Does Not Equal Mainstream AdoptionAccording to Buterin’s posts, the systems that are “near-ready today” are mostly limited to payments and decentralized exchanges (DEX). However, he explains that token transfers / DEX contribute to a large part of

Bitmain officially launched sales for its Antminer T19, a new Bitcoin mining ASIC designed to produce a hash rate of 84 TH/s ± 3% and power efficiency of 37.5 J/TH ± 5%. The Antminer T19 has technology that bears similarity to the custom-built chips found in the higher end Antminer S19 and S19 Pro, albeit at a lower price point.Bitmain’s Previous Product LinesCompared with the previous Antminer T17, which consumers were able to receive partial price adjustment refunds on for those shipped between mid-February to the end of April, the T19 performs more efficiently, possibly allowing miners to achieve profitability faster. The T19 does this by utilizing a new power supply technology and upgraded firmware, which offers faster mining speeds.The T19 launch follows the debut of the Antminer S19.

After the restrictions of quarantine are over, the leading U.S. based crypto exchange, Coinbase, will embrace a ‘remote-first’ culture. The remote-first shift has been accelerated with the duty to comply with the six feet apart social distancing measures currently in place due to Coronavirus.Implications for Coinbase EmployeesCoinbase estimates that between 20 – 60% of the company employees will work remotely despite the restrictions of COVID-19 are lifted.Once the proper procedures have been put in place, the Company expects its remote culture to grow organically. Over time, the Company expects to have a more decentralized geographical setup of one floor of office space in ten cities, rather than ten floors of office space located in San Francisco.Coinbase headquarters. Source:

Bitcoin crashed 10% in 30 minutes, and almost 20% over the past hours, plunging below $8000 on some exchanges. Just two days before the anticipated Bitcoin halving event and no more than 48 hours after touching the $10K mark, a classic “sell the news” dump had initiated.As of writing these lines, the price of Bitcoin corrected a bit and currently trading around $8500, which is a 12% drop over the past 24 hours. While Bitcoin’s current daily low on Bitstamp was $8117, Binance Futures platform saw a steeper collapse to $7940.The volatility had also affected the altcoins, whereas Ethereum saw a similar 12% drop, dipping below $200 to a current price of $186. The total market cap shrunk to $235 billion over the past few hours.BTC/USD over the past five days, Bitstamp exchange. Source:

A new post published on May 4th on Medium details in-depth Craig Wright’s alleged plagiarization of his PhD thesis. Wright was originally awarded his PhD by Charles Sturt University in 2017, many years after the publishing of the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008.His thesis is titled The Quantification of Information Systems Risk: A Look at Quantitative Responses to Information Security Issues. Community members speculate that if the plagiarism accusations gain ground, they could prompt the academic community to discredit Wright’s PhD degree and even disallow Wright from using the title “Doctor.”Accusations of PlagiarizationAccording to the analysis, at least thirty pages of Wright’s thesis contain plagiarized aspects including sentences that are taken verbatim without citations. In many cases,

Binance exchange had seen an all-time high in daily trading volume of more than $12 billion exchanged over the past 24 hours as of April 29th, 2020. The last time the exchange had seen volume at the current levels was in January 2018.According to Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of Binance, the last time the daily volume spiked over $11 billion was during January 2018, which was the peak of the famous 2017 crypto bubble.As per the data from CoinMarketCap, Binance saw over $12 billion of daily trading volume. The number consists of all trading products Binance offers, led by Binance Futures, that recorded over $9 Billion of volume in the past 24-hours.This past day, Wednesday had seen Bitcoin gain about $1,300 in terms of price, starting the trading day at $7,700 and reaching $9,000 on some

KFC announced its status as the first quick-service restaurant (QSR) in the MENA region to implement an innovative blockchain platform for its digital advertising and media buying. Ads, the backbone of any direct to consumer business, will have greater transparency through the new blockchain-based framework that KFC will implement.KFC’s Foray Into Blockchain-Enabled Ad BuyingThe digital advertising industry is fraught with conflict of interest. Companies can “fake” impressions and clicks through various methods such as robots and click farms. Consumer brands may end up paying for users or conversions that are not real or authentic because of the lack of transparency inherent in the ad buying space.KFC believes that introducing a blockchain layer will help bring further transparency to the

BitMEX announced Tuesday on its blog that it will restrict Japanese residents from signing up for the platform starting on April 30 and ban the usage of the platform starting May 1 for existing Japanese residents.According to a BitMEX announcement, existing Japanese residents will not be able to place orders that would open a new position or increase an existing open position.Open positions will otherwise not be affected and will continue in accordance with the terms of the relevant contract.The restrictions are in response to the amendments to the Japan Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and Japan Payment Services Act effective as of May 1, 2020, following the cabinet order earlier this month.BitMEX has pledged to continue to work with Japanese regulatory authorities to support its

DigiByte caught the public’s attention in April as its price increased by as much as 300% throughout the month. However, a recent report indicates that an unknown entity has begun monopolizing two pools of DigiByte’s five consensus algorithms and that it could, theoretically, pull off a 51% attack on the network relatively easy.DigiByte’s Reported VulnerabilityAccording to a detailed analysis posted on Reddit, an unknown entity is using superior mining hardware and is beginning to monopolize two pools of Digibyte’s mining algorithms: Skein and Qubit. The entity carries out the operations at a rate approximately three times higher than other miners.Now, DigiByte is a network based on the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. It was launched back in 2013, and it, unlike a lot of the other

David Clifton was recently appointed Interim CEO of Bakkt by the board replacing previous CEO Mike Blandina who has only held the CEO position for less than four months.The move comes after Blandina replaced former CEO Kelly Loeffler during last December, as she opted to take a Senate seat for the state of Georgia.Mike Blandina had come into his role with high expectations having previously held roles at PayPal and Google. However, he didn’t hold in the position at the popular Bitcoin futures platform for more than 120 days.Mike Blandina, former CEO At Bakkt. Source: MediumLargest Series B in History of CryptoBakkt is a company majority-owned by ICE the Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (NYSE: ICE), a leading operator of global exchanges and clearinghouses.Clifton was previously ICE’s Vice

In a recent write-up, a defendant named “Li” was convicted of theft for having stolen cryptocurrency from his previous company following his firing. Li had resigned from the company on May 31 due to underperformance after a probation period. The defendant used his knowledge of the private key and payment password from his previous company’s ‘Haode Star’ project to complete the theft.The TheftThe cryptocurrency that Li stole was mainly through the company’s imToken wallet. Li took 3 ETH and 4 million Haode coins on June 20, 2019. About a month later, he also stole 0.4 ETH from the account again. He transferred the cryptocurrency and Haode coins to his account in OKEx and imToken.The assessed amount of damages was 6000 Chinese yuan, and after the crime, Li was asked to return all the stolen

Binance has launched a new crypto asset pegged 1:1 to Ontology called ONT-33D on its DEX using its new BEP2 standard. Binance plans to issue about 1.5 million ONT-pegged tokens and will continue to mint more in response to market demands.
Binance’s Focus On Increasing Wrapped Assets
Binance has recently focused on its DEX as one of the main core use cases of its Binance chain. The DEX currently boasts a trading volume of $400,730 over the past 24 hours. Binance could be taking a page out of Ethereum’s playbook, which sees DEX’s as among the blockchain’s top five use cases with Uniswap and Kyber having $10M of ETH in daily volume combined with a 4K+ combined user base.
When DEXs based on Ethereum s first took off, wrapped assets such as Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) saw an increase in popularity

At the time of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at $7,230 with $32.46B volume and a $132.56B market cap after trading below $7,000.00 for most of the past week. Those who have been “long the dip” when it hit the $4,000’s market have already almost doubled their money.
The question remains to be seen as to what the weeks that lie ahead predict for the price of Bitcoin and whether or not the bottom is already in.
Has Bitcoin Already Bottomed?
With the impacts that COVID-19 had initially, Bitcoin seemed to bear a correlation with the broader equity markets. Many posited that institutional investors who held Bitcoin felt the impact of having their stocks drop dramatically and wanted to convert some of their Bitcoin into cash to rebalance their portfolios.
The Bitcoin price, however, fell a

FTX derivatives exchange launched early 2019 with more than $400 million worth of daily trading volume, has recently announced plans for a new product: the BVOL tokens, which will be available to non-U.S. users.
The new tokens are ERC20-based tokens that attempt to track the volatility of the crypto markets through exposure to the FTX MOVE contracts that represent the absolute value of the amount Bitcoin (BTC) moves over daily, weekly and quarterly periods. The new tokens aim to become the VIX (stands for the volatility index) version of the cryptocurrency markets.
BVOL stands as an innovation because of the decentralized nature of having volatility captured in an Ethereum-based ERC20 token. The token offers self-custody as a feature. It simplifies the process of having to manage

John McAfee recently announced on an up-coming launch of a new privacy coin called GHOST, unveiling the project’s new Twitter account and accompanying website.McAfee states that the whitepaper and more details will be posted in one month on May 15th.The GHOST website reveals that the proof of stake privacy coin will help protect user’s privacy by making users “nothing but a ‘ghost’ when transacting online.”According to the official website, GHOST transactions will utilize a state-of-the-art escrow pool and will be verified using zero-knowledge proofs. GHOST will utilize a proof-of-stake network and have faster transaction times and lower fees, among other benefits.Transactions processed on-chain will settle in under 60 seconds and users will simply pay less than a penny for transaction

Craig Wright’s objection that attorney relationship between himself and his attorney and “spousal privilege, relevance, overbreadth, undue burden, disproportionality and cumulativeness” allowed him to deny producing the 11,000 documents in his historic case involving the Kleiman estate has now been overruled in a new court ruling April 13 that requires that Wright deliver all the relevant materials by April 17, 2020. The lawsuit concerns 1.1M bitcoin worth billions of dollars.Wright Denied Attorney-Client PrivilegeThe decision on April 13 is one produced after a series of hearings about the validity of Wright’s objections to providing the relevant information in his lawsuit on February 25, March 5, and March 9, stating mostly attorney-client privileges. The original lawsuit, filed in