Cryptocurrency and Blockchain – Industry News – (10.18.19 – 10.25.19)

[edmundSYM]

Total Market Cap, as of 10.25.19 at 12:00pm (PST): U.S. $231,808,660,371 (+ 6.63%)

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STORY OF THE WEEK
• In a recent Politburo Committee session, China’s President Xi Jinping provided a statement encouraging adoption and investment into blockchain technology.

CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING SERVICES
• USD deposits on Binance U.S. are now insured up to U.S. $250,000 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

• STX, the native token of Blockstack, a decentralized computing network and app ecosystem will be listed on Binance and HashKey Pro on October 23rd, 2019.

• Bittrex International, the Malta-based international arm of Bittrex will cease operations in Venezuela and 30 other countries. Users are instructed to
withdraw funds from the exchange before October 29th ,2019.

• Binance U.S. will list dogecoin (DOGE), offering a DOGE/USDT market with deposits opening on October 24th, 2019 at 1:00 UTC.

REGULATION
• The next hearing involving the high-profile court case between Telegram and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) involving its sale of “gram” tokens has been postponed until February 18th – February 19th, 2020.

• A draft bill has been issued looking to introduce legislation to the House Financial Services Committee to regulate stablecoins under the Securities Act of 1933.

• The president of Crypto Capital has been arrested by Polish authorities under suspicions of money laundering and involvement with a Columbian drug cartel. He is wanted for laundering up to 1.5 billion zloty, worth approximately U.S. $390,000,000 from illegal sources.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION
• Fidelity Digital Assets Services (FDAS) is rolling out its custody and trading services, previously limited to trial users while the platform was in its final testing stages.

• Galaxy Digital Asset Management, a merchant bank under Galaxy Digital will be launching two new bitcoin funds in November 2019. The new funds will require a U.S. $25,000 minimum investment with optional quarterly redemptions. Weekly withdrawals will also be available but at a higher minimum.

• BAKKT will be launching a regulated options contract for Bitcoin futures on December 9th, 2019. The benefits of the option contract will be capital efficiency, cash or physical settlement, early execution, low fees and instant messaging and analytics.

• Major cryptocurrency hardware manufacturer Bitmain has opened the “worlds largest” facility for Bitcoin mining in Rockdale, Texas.

TECHNOLOGY
• HTC unveils the Exodus 1s, the first smartphone to be able to run a full bitcoin node.

• Popular naming system “Ethereum Name Service” (ENS) has announced support for sending and receiving transactions across several blockchains,
previously only supporting Ethereum.

• Web browser Opera now allows payments with bitcoin directly within the browser.

• Cryptosteel has launched “Cryptosteel Capsule”, a physical backup device for the offline storage of private keys, passwords, and wallet recovery seeds.

TWITTER
• @ErikVoorhees – “Trump: blockchain bad Xi: blockchain good”

• @22loops – “BITCOIN BOTTOM 24 OCT 2019” (Tweeted on January 4th, 2019)

• @Thrillmex – “If you invested $100 into gold 20 years ago, you'd now have $500. If you invested $100 into $BTC 9 years ago you'd now have $16,381,493 F**k gold. Buy bitcoin.”

[nelson4lov]

Thanks for the updates! Key takeaways for me:

1. China's president wants China to be the leader for Bitcoin/Blockchain.
Source: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/44646/xi-jinping-says-to-let-china-take-the-leading-position-in-blockchain

2. Binance Lists Nigerian Naira:  It might not concern non-africans on the forum but this is a major milestone for the Nigerian crypto community. At least, Nigerian is getting on the spotlight. Maybe (just maybe) Our government will become more open to Cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the near future.

3. Opera adds Bitcoin to its wallet : Alright, this is a big one. Previously, Users of opera browsers were only able to use the embedded browser for Ethereum transactions (deposits, withdrawals, etc). I hope other browsers like Chrome and Firefox follows suit

Overall, this week has been pretty interesting. It's never been a dull moment.

[Murat]

So far this week is just interesting, at the beginning of this week we have seen a low price of Bitcoin and now we have got a rising price only after a speech of China president, this has brought a good atmosphere to this platform and also Blockchain is getting credible again to the people, of course blockchain is the ultimate set of innovation so every head of the states should encourage to their people to this platform because it may be the future of the monetary platform and also the payment system for the future purpose, I think it's an opposite challenge of the USA, when they are opposing the Libra then it this statement must clear the dispute between two giant at the current context. 

[MURONDI]

is this a news thread about crypto for fundamental analysis,? it seems like a lot of good news will pump up the price of bitcoin after yesterday experiencing a downtrend in the long term, maybe it's time for bitcoin to recover and return to the uptrend.