Daily Cryptocurrency Bulletin For Wednesday, May 22, 2019

General News

Amazon China has partnered with a Lightning network service provider Bitrefill to “make it easier for residents to live with Bitcoin and altcoins”. The service allows users to load and recharge Amazon balance’s through Bitrefill-provided Gift card codes or mobile applications.

Bitfinex and Tether have asked Judge Joel M. Cohen of the New York Supreme Court to dismiss the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG) case against the controversial firms, claiming they have no customers in the state. They further claim the attorney general “has not identified any ‘victim’ in New York” or anywhere else. However, attorney David I. Miller let it slip Tether had previously invested a portion of its reserves in bitcoin, when USDT is meant to be backed 1-for-1 with U.S. dollars. He later said it was “a small amount.”

Circle has laid off roughly 30 people (10 percent of its staff) as they look to cut costs “in response to new market conditions, most importantly, an increasingly restrictive regulatory climate in the United States,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire announced.

DLive, the new Blockchain-based live streaming service, has grown its user base 67 percent since PewDiePie, the world’s most popular YouTubers by subscriber numbers, joined in April. DLive now has more than 5 million monthly active users and more than 70,000 streamers.

Mozilla has released an update for its Firefox browser which includes an option to block cryptocurrency mining scripts on websites – helping to fight against the rise of cryptojacking.

TD Ameritrade, one of the world’s largest trading platforms, revealed they have made an investment in ErisX, as they are developing spot and futures markets for cryptocurrency. 

Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin SV $102.30 USD (62.36 percent) has surged more than 200 percent on some exchanges today after the announcement Craig Wright has registered copyright claims on the Bitcoin Whitepaper and original code and promised to revert the copyright to the Bitcoin Association – a bold move following Bitcoin SV’s delisting from exchanges including Binance, Kraken and Shapeshift due to Wright’s claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto.

EOS $6.23 USD (-0.43 percent): Galaxy Digital has received $71.2 million (123 percent return) after selling its shares in Block.one, the maker of the EOS blockchain. CEO Mike Novogratz claims they now seek “to rebalance the portfolio to maintain an appropriate level of diversification” after the position substantially outperformed other investments. The move comes as Block.one announced its buyback program for 10 percent of its equity, valuing itself at $2.3 billion – up 66 times from its 2017 seed funding valuation. Galaxy Digital will still partner with Block.one on other businesses such as the Galaxy EOS VC Fund. 

Ethereum $6.23 USD (-0.43 percent) Foundation detailed how $30 million of funds will be used. $19 million has been earmarked over the next 12 months to “build the Ethereum of tomorrow,” including scaling upgrade Ethereum 2.0, “layer 2” scaling projects such as Plasma, among other research and development projects. Another $8 million is will be spent the year after on supporting the current Ethereum mainnet through initiatives such as Ethereum 1x, with the final $3 million reserved for developer growth and awareness.

USD Coin $0.997974 USD (0.03 percent) is now being accepted a mode of payment by businesses using Coinbase Commerce. This comes as a new report from Diar indicates the market capitalization for USD stablecoins has hit all-time highs, exceeding $4 billion. USDC’s trading volume has increased 435 percent since January 2019.

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos