I hope you have been enjoying the market correction along with the peace and tranquility with your families. Unsurprisingly, in crypto, it’s been a bumpy ride again so let’s sum up what happened in the past 10 days!
Bitcoin:
– Bitcoin futures went live on CME.
– The old man with white beard came a bit sooner this year and brought us bitcoins in discount, as well as lower transaction fees – thanks Santa!
– In the meanwhile, Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) applied for six Bitcoin-based ETFs!
– Things are happening also elsewhere – France is calling for Bitcoin regulation at G20!
– ZeroLink is testing a new Bitcoin mixer on the protocol level.
– The great Andreas gave some more talks, among others also this short explanation of Atomic Swaps.
– Bitcoin dev Jimmy Song had a nice chat with Tone Vays about scaling, Bcash and Hashgraph (!). And then he wrote an article on exploring Bitcoin’s anti-fragile properties.
– Chain, a blockchain tech company, released an open-source compiler for writing Bitcoin smart contracts.
– The Bitcoin folks are getting excited about the Lightning network – here is a short and simple explanation of the basics.
– And here is the critique of it, contemplating its weaknesses.
– And, since I know you are getting bored watching all those Xmas movies all over again — here is some food for your mind — a bunch of BTC videos from Princeton.
Ethereum:
– Dai Stable coin has launched on the Ethereum network!
– The EtherDelta’s domain was hijacked which caused some mess.
– While breeding CryptoKitties is still fun, the crypto world is getting addicted to the new game – Etheremon!
– Vitalik wrote a quick article on Gas analysis.
– While his friend Vlad Zamfir bursted a whole thread on on fault tolerant consensus protocols on Twitter.
– Guys at Gnosis decided to implement the Duch auction principle in to the concept of decentralized exchange.
– While folks at Grid+ came up with a lightweight solutions for Ethereum scaling via trusted relay networks.
Altcoins:
– Morgan Stanley estimates that hedge funds poured over 2 bln into crypto in 2017.
– The state of cryptocurrency investing in 2017 sums up all the important trends we could see in crypto this year.
– An interesting, and for many also outrageous, thing happened in the Litecoin community when its founding father Charlie sold all his litecoins.
– Pamela Morgan summed up all important steps you gotta do when doing your crypto inheritance plan.
– The Merkle put together 5 developments for 2018 that will make Monero holders happy.
– PIVx devs brought attention to the exaggerated claims of the Verge’s marketing campaign boasting with masking of IP addresses.
Blockchain:
– While many of us are enthusiastic about the future of blockchain technology, some folks are more sceptical — read their reasons why here.
– So what do you think? Will alternative data structures, like Hashgraph, kill the blockchain?
– Blockchain consortium Hyperledger is already loosing some of its members.
– On the positive note, decentralized storage built on top of blockchain might be a cool thing to have.
I will be always happy to read your feedback, and suggestions on possible topics to include to the newsletter. If you would like to share some with me, please do so at stancel@blockchainslovakia.sk.
