Cryptocurrency Daily News Bulletin: January 18, 2019

General News

Binance is already feeling overwhelmed with user registrations 24 hours after the launch of its latest exchange, with a backlog of KYC verifications mounting.

Huobi’s crypto derivatives market is growing quickly following its November launch. Fifteen days ago, the exchange hit $10 billion in total volume and today announced the figure has doubled to $20 billion, as investors are eager to hedge their spot market holdings.

Kraken exchange CEO Jesse Powell has warned users of digital assets to not store funds on trading platforms, including his own, following the breach suffered by Cryptopia,

OKCoin may be seeking a backdoor IPO as they have filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) for approval to buy a 60 percent stake in construction engineering firm LEAP Holdings Group Ltd. The acquisition, if approved, would cost more than $60 million.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), is the latest chip-making giant to cite a big slumpin its crypto mining business revenue for last year.

Unit-e, a new cryptocurrency being developed by professors from MIT, UC-Berkeley, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Southern California and the University of Washington, will purportedly have the capacity to rival Visa and Mastercard in terms of transactions processed per second (TPS). Anticipating a Q3 2019 launch, the stated goal of processing 10,000 TPS trumps Visa’s 1,700 TPS and BTC’s 10 TPS.

South African Reserve Bank (SARB) have proposed a middle-line level of regulation it describes as “limited regulation.” The bank suggests a “useful starting point” for regulating the space would be to introduce a registration scheme for crypto asset service providers.

Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin $3,655.67 USD (0.59 percent): A New York-based investment firm has submitted a new Bitcoin ETF proposal to the US SEC. Wilshire Phoenix says its proposal would create a “less volatile” way for investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin, by creating a trust that holds Bitcoin, US dollars and short-term US Treasury bills. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ATM company Coinme is partnering with coins-to-cash converter Coinstar to allow bitcoin purchases through Coinstar kiosks in several U.S. states with “plans to extend this offering to additional U.S. markets and retailers following a successful launch.”

Litecoin $31.33 USD (0.99 percent) is finally getting support for Litecoin’s Lightning Network (LN) through CoinGate. A test run is now underway with selected merchants.

Ripple $0.326732 USD (-0.34 percent) client Mercury FX has revealed its largest commercial payment sent through Ripple’s XRP-based xRapid, sending a payment of $4,574 from the UK to Mexico. The payment executed in seconds compared to the 31 hours it would normally take and with fees reduced, saving a total of $102.

Stellar $0.106855 USD (0.58 percent) is gaining support from Grayscale Investments and its new investment product. The Stellar Lumens Trust, a “single-asset investment product” which exposes investors to XLM, joins Grayscale’s already offered single-asset trusts for BTC, BCH, ETH, ETC, ZEN, LTC, XRP and ZEC.

Tron’s $0.025034 USD (2.12 percent) BitTorrent says it will incorporate its new Tron-Based BTT Token by July, utilized in a new system called BitTorrent Speed. 

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos