Cryptocurrency Daily News Bulletin: May 3 2019

General News

eToro has announced its partnership with the Napoleon Group which will launch NapoleonX, France’s first regulated cryptocurrency asset manager.

IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric has been re-engineered by researchers from Canada’s University of Waterloo to support almost seven times more transactions per second (TPS) – a major boost for e-commerce and supply chain firms using the platform, such as Intel, FedEx and Poste Italiane.

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) CEO Jeffrey Sprecher said during the company’s Q1 earnings call that the ongoing bear market has been “helpful” for Bakkt as “it took some of the heat off the timetable to launch,” allowing regulators to fully examine the industry. It also created cheap buying opportunities, such as their acquisition of Digital Asset Custody Company (DACC).

Microsoft will promote JPMorgan Chase’s Quorum blockchain to their enterprise customers through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform after signing an MoU. “Microsoft will drive preference to the Quorum stack for Blockchain applications built on Azure.” JPM will also build its own first-party applications for the service, as well as supporting the bank’s Interbank Information Network, JPMCoin and royalty payment points for the Xbox gaming platform.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has teamed up with more than 100 global supply chain and logistics leaders to standardise blockchain apps in the industry. The project is called “Redesigning Trust: Blockchain for Supply Chains.”

Singapore and Canada’s central banks have successfully used their blockchain networks to send each other digital currency. The process linked the two DLT networks: MAS’ nascent Project Ubin platform and BoC’s Project Jasper. JP Morgan and Accenture, which assisted in the development of the platforms, also partnered with the banks to make the trade possible.

Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin SV $54.20 USD (2.06 percent) has had a disastrous month following its price debacle, and now the coin has seen its hashrate fall 86 percent in the past five months – a new all-time low. 

Cosmo’s $4.81 USD (9.07 percent) ATOM token has seen significant gains recently due to multiple listings and hype surrounding the project. Binance has now announced support, without requiring any listing fees. The project is largely seen as a rival to Tezos; focussing on cross-blockchain interoperability and staking.

Dogecoin $0.002652 USD (4.27 percent) is the latest coin to gain support from Coinbase. Users can now store DOGE directly in the Coinbase Wallet app. The wallet update with DOGE support is expected to roll out to users on iOS and Android over the next week.

Ethereum $162.74 USD (1.07 percent) developers claim code specifications for the first phase of Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake network are “on track” to be finalised by June 30. Dubbed “Beacon Chain,” Phase Zero will activate a new block validation system in which validators – instead of miners – stake tokens on the network and vote on different block proposals.

MakerDAO’s $1.00 USD (0.14 percent) stablecoin DAI is still trading below one dollar but is now considered to be in a “stable” position. From 0.5 percent to now 16.5 percent, the Stability Fee has been increased 33 fold over the past three months. Now, MakerDAO token holders have again voted to increase fees by another 3 percent to sit at 19.5 percent.

Qtum $2.59 USD (6.19 percent) is expanding its reach by adding Google’s Cloud Platform to its list of software partners. The code available on Google Cloud is a copy of the Qtum compute engine and offers a developer environment and full node on the Qtum blockchain. Users can also use it as a testbed for code forks, dapps, or staking.

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos