Amber Baldet, former JPMorgan blockchain program lead (and current CEO of Clovyr), has expressed her doubts about the proliferation of blockchain protocols: “Each of these blockchains speaks a different language,” she said in April. Getting different blockchains to talk to one another has become a pressing issue, as more and more protocols pop up – eos, tezos, neo, cardano, not to mention the two incumbent giants, bitcoin and ethereum. The growing interoperability problem may be meeting its match, however. On Monday, the Beijing- and Austin-based startup Wanchain announced the live release…
Category: ICO
An $8 Million Airdrop Ran Out of Tokens – What’s Next Is Anyone’s Guess
“Scarcity” may be a crypto buzzword, but “shortage” has hardly made the footnotes – until now. In early July, the developers behind U Network, a blockchain publishing protocol valued at around $8 million, abruptly announced that it had run out of its reserve of UUU crypto tokens, and that it planned to buy back some of the supply it distributed to early investors through its airdrop in February. At the start of the project, U Network established a 10 billion UUU cap on its token supply (worth approximately $15.6 million), setting aside…
Who’s In Control of Tezos? That Answer Is About to Change
“To me, it kind of feels similar to the beginning of ethereum.” Andrew Paulicek, founder of Happy Tezos, isn’t the only one excited about the upcoming milestone in the life of Tezos, a blockchain network that launched three weeks ago after a series of long, painful delays. Every three days or so – the exact intervals vary – Tezos enters a new “cycle.” At some point this weekend, likely Saturday, it will cross the threshold into cycle number seven. When that happens, the Tezos Foundation, the entity that conducted Tezos’ initial…
Ex-Trump Advisor Steve Bannon Is Making a Cryptocurrency
Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to U.S. President Donald Trump, confirmed that he wants to launch a cryptocurrency of his own. Speaking to CNBC on Wednesday, the Breitbart co-founder said “they’re the future,” adding that “we’re working on some tokens now, utility tokens, potentially, for the populist movement on a worldwide basis.” Bannon first hinted at the idea in June, though at the time he was hesitant about revealing too many details of his cryptocurrency plans, according to the New York Times. He did contemplate naming his token the “deplorables…
Sex Workers Have Serious Issues With a Crypto-Powered ‘Uber for Escorts’
“Too pimp-like and not safe to use.” That’s how one sex worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the cryptocurrency platform PinkDate, for which she was invited to test the service but refused. Describing itself as the “Uber of escorting,” PinkDate is one of several sex industry startups launching a crypto-fueled booking app funded by an initial coin offering (ICO). The platform, currently in a closed beta, aims to match sex workers with clients (just as Uber does for drivers and passengers). Except instead of credit cards, clients would…
CoinList’s Fifth ICO Is a $61 Million Bid to Tokenize All the Assets
The website aiming to be the gold-standard for token sellers has been picking up the pace. Since spinning off from venture capital giant AngelList last October, New York-based CoinList has been able to make a spot on its website a coveted place for serious projects, even in a crowded market for compliant coin offerings. So, on Monday, the wider world of token entrepreneurs and investors took notice when the company opened registration for its fifth sale. The new entrant? TrustToken, a platform that aims to simplify trading real-world assets on a blockchain.…
Report: More Than Three-Quarters of ICOs Were Scams
About half of the existing crypto-asset market today – numbering some 1,500 – functions on top of an existing blockchain like ethereum, according to a new report. The study from Satis Group, which forms part of a five-entry series analyzing the state of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, explores the state of what it calls “platform networks,” honing on ethereum as well as other blockchains like NEO, EOS and Cardano, among others. In looking at the “market share” of those platforms, it’s perhaps not surprising that ethereum constitutes the bulk of that figure…
Augur Passes CryptoKitties: Ethereum App Sees $400K in First-Day Betting
One Augur user was so eager, they didn’t even wait for the user interface. That may have summed up the state of affairs Tuesday, hours after the Forecast Foundation, the non-profit behind the Augur protocol, announced the launch of its decentralized platform for betting on the outcome of events. By 5:00 UTC, the first prediction markets were being created, and by day’s end, new bets were being placed on everything from U.S. elections to World Cup soccer games, all with the help of bleeding-edge tech. “Someone must’ve really wanted to be…
PBoC Will ‘Crush’ Foreign ICOs Targeting Chinese Investors: Official
A vice governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has again issued strong statements against initial coin offerings (ICOs), singling out those that have moved overseas, but are still marketing to investors in China. Speaking at an internal meeting of the Internet Finance Rectification Working Group on Monday, Pan Gongsheng reiterated that ICOs, “disguised” ICOs and crypto asset trading are illegal in the country, and represent illicit forms of fundraising and securities issuance. Although China issued an outright ban on ICOs in September 2017, Pan said a lot of the…
BitGo Adds 57 Ethereum Tokens In Largest-Ever Custody Service Expansion
The wider world of crypto tokens is becoming a bit more accessible to institutional investors. The security startup BitGo exclusively told CoinDesk on Tuesday, July 10, it will expand its suite of custody products and services to support 57 new ethereum assets, a move driven by demand for services that safeguard private keys – the alphanumeric strings that act as passwords for crypto assets – and that, once lost, are gone forever. As such, the move is a telling one for the blockchain security sector, one that showcases how it’s…