Daily Cryptocurrency Bulletin For Friday, August 2, 2019

General News

Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s flagship airline, has introduced the first blockchain project to manage unit load devices (ULDs), reducing the paper-intensive process. The company expects to roll out the technology across the entire Cathay Pacific network soon.

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) CEO Jeffrey Sprecher announced during their Q2 earnings call: “subject to final regulatory approvals, we plan to launch our physically settled bitcoin futures in the very near future.” The company is waiting on its New York trust charter.

LedgerX has still not launched Bitcoin futures trading, as the firm had claimed yesterday, after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said it has not approved the exchange. LedgerX press representative Ryan Gorman has now told CoinDesk he will no longer be representing the company over ‘concerns’ about the events of the last 24 hours.

Quedex, the Gibraltar-based crypto derivatives exchange, has secured a license from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC). Quedex claims to be the world’s first regulated crypto futures and options exchange.

R3 is adding a second floor to its London office to accommodate 50 new staff members. 

Square Q2 earnings shows $125 million in Bitcoin sales through its Cash App, nearly doubling a record first quarter.On the investor call CEO Dorsey said: “We love you Bitcoin.”

Walmart has applied for a stablecoin patent very similar to Facebook’s Libra token. “Using a digital currency, low-income households that find banking expensive, may have an alternative way to handle wealth at an institution that can supply the majority of their day-to-day financial and product needs… can be spent at retailers and, if needed, easily converted to cash.” Users of a “Walmart Coin” could “even earn interest,” the application suggests.

Cryptocurrencies 

Bitcoin $10,518.64 USD (5.57 percent) has regained the $10,000 handle. This has come as the Fed decided to cut rates with negative sentiment causing stock markets to plunge. 

Brave $0.235683 USD (-3.03 percent) has officially launched tipping on Twitter following a beta phase. Tweeters can now tip content using Brave’s BAT.

Dukascopy Bank, the Swiss-based FOREX banking service, is launching a reward program for mobile current account (MCA) users. In February, the bank launched Dukascoin (DUK+), the first-ever crypto issued by a regulated Swiss bank, developed on the Ethereum. MCA users globally can now earn DUK+ rewards through referral activities and deposits. Notably, for each DUK+ deposited for a 1-year period, the bank will pay a reward of 50-euro cents.

Tezos $1.45 USD (15.65 percent) continues to see huge gains after a positive news week with its Coinbase listing and Proof of Stake support from Huobi wallet.

Zcash $67.62 USD (1.43 percent): Zooko Wilcox, CEO of Electric Coin Company (ECC) – the firm behind Zcash – has made an appeal for the creation of a new “Dev Fund” to support the projects’ future operations. The move comes after much debate over the continuation of the project’s controversial “founders’ reward,” which took centerstage at Zcon1 and even drove a portion of the Zcash community to fork off into a new network, Ycash. The Zcash Foundation is expected to publish a procedure for making a community decision “soon,” while ECC will set out how it will assess proposals in the next few days.

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos