According to The Block’s recent investigative report, Shaun MacDonald, CEO of the Blockchain Terminal—a startup that promised a cryptocurrency version of the Bloomberg Terminal—turned out to be a convicted fraudster named Boaz Manor, wearing a disguise.

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Prosecutors at the trial at Tokyo District Court have sought a ten-year prison term on charges of embezzlement for Mark Karpelès—the former CEO of Mt.Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange platform.

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The rate of Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies continues to fall and set anti-records at lows. Now the price of the first digital currency is less than $3,400, and, in fact, crypto enthusiasts promised gold mountains and indicators with numerous zeros by the end of 2018. Almost everyone was wrong with the forecast, from ordinary investors to well-known analysts. Who promised what for the cost of Bitcoin at the end of December this year? Let’s start building our ranking of erroneous forecasts in increasing order of magnitude.

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“Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,” writes Satoshi in the Bitcoin white paper. And, as practice shows, over ten years, the banking system has not changed.

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

💵 Major stablecoin project Basis will cease operations and return most of its funds to investors.
via The Block

👩‍⚖️ AriseBank founders will pay $2,259,543 in disgorgement, $68,423 in prejudgment interest, and civil penalties of $184,767 each to settle ICO fraud charges.
via CoinDesk

🇷🇺 The deputy prime minister of Russia announced that there would be no significant amendments to the draft bill “On Digital Financial Assets.”
via Cointelegraph

🗣 The chief executive officer of Allianz Global Investors, one of Europe’s largest asset managers, said that cryptoassets should be banned.
via Reuters

🇳🇱 Dutch central bank is set to introduce a mandatory licensing procedure for companies providing cryptocurrency services.
via Cointelegraph

In November this year, initial coin offerings (ICOs) attracted a total of USD 65 million. For comparison, back in February, the figure stood at about USD 2.5 billion.

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Crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky’s thread on the ever-changing Bitcoin ETF approval situation.

BlockFi, a company that offers U.S. dollar-denominated loans against cryptocurrency collateral, raised USD 4 million in its latest fundraising round.

Among the startup’s backers were Fidelity subsidiary Devonshire Investors, Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Ventures, and Anthony Pompliano’s Morgan Creek Digital.

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Tensions are fueling in France: Can we assume that the matter is in the greed of those who supply the main types of fuel raw materials to France? No, the point is that there is a lag in the introduction of blockchain in this area when such global giants as BP and Shell are already doing it.

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Bitcoin SV users have found a significant vulnerability in the network of the new cryptocurrency. On December 8, a 12-minute video appeared on Vimeo with instructions on how to conduct a double-spending attack on Craig Wright’s cryptocurrency. The video casts doubt on the words of the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto that such attacks are virtually impossible and such statements should be considered as FUD manipulation.

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

🇩🇪 The second-largest German stock exchange Boerse Stuttgart Group will launch its own crypto trading platform.
via CoinDesk

💳 The number of verified cryptocurrency users has increased from 18 million to 35 million this year, a recent report by the University of Cambridge shows.
via Bloomberg

📈 In contrast with cryptocurrency market being in red, Pantera Capital’s venture fund VFII is up nearly 60% from Q1 to Q3, according to an investor letter sent out yesterday.
via The Block

💻 Gaming hardware manufacturer Razer plans to offer its customers an opportunity to mine cryptocurrency with their idle computers in exchange for loyalty points.
via Vice

🤝 Blockchain developer is the most rapidly growing emerging job in the United States, this year’s LinkedIn’s report indicates.
via Cointelegraph

“It’s a rare set of circumstances where you’d be deemed ‘not a security’ if you’re raising money to capitalize a venture,” said Valerie A. Szczepanik, SEC’s senior advisor for digital assets and innovation, on requests for no-action letters from token issuers.

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The European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution, ennoscriptd Blockchain: A Forward-Looking Trade Policy. The document outlines the ways in which distributed ledger technology could improve E.U. trade policies, including free trade.

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This week’s #CryptoCaselawMinute delivered by The Block highlights the following cases:

• SEC v. Trendon et al.
• SEC v. AriseBank et al.
• Solis v. Latium Network

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“Do you have our card? Not at all, or it’s just not with you right now?” Today it’s a familiar phrase from any dialog at any store checkout. And while the buyer is standing there, their card, as a rule, has long been resting somewhere home in one of the forsaken boxes next to all the other unused things. “Let’s check if it is tied to your phone number,” the seller happily exclaims. And usually, these attempts are not crowned with success. Because with today’s abundance of choices in clothes, food, and entertainment, users, having received another plastic card, are unlikely to “take care” of each retailer by registering separately, studying the terms of the loyalty program, calculating how much money 100 points are worth in this particular store, etc. DeCenter analyzed how blockchain will help “bring loyalty programs back to life.”

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On December 10, it was announced that the first crypto smartphone HTC Exodus 1 would have the Brave blockchain browser installed in it by default. Co-founder and CEO of Brave Software Brendan Eich wrote about this on his Twitter. DeCenter figured out how the crypto analog would differ from the usual Google Chrome, Safari, or Opera, and whether a new device adapted for digital currency is even needed.

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

🇭🇰 The Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) is concerned about approving the initial public offering (IPO) applications of Chinese Bitcoin mining giants.
via CoinDesk

👥 The number of unique addresses on the Ethereum network reached a 50 million mark.
via The Block

🔐 According to Kaspersky Lab, cases of cryptojacking have increased 400% this year alone.
via ccn

📉 51-percent attacks lead to an immediate 12–15-percent decrease in the corresponding coin’s price, a group of university researchers says.
via The Block

😔 Timothy C. May, the co-founder of the Cypherpunks movement who authored the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, passed away.
via Cointelegraph

Last Thursday, crypto-friendly Robinhood Financial LLC announced a new checking and savings account, stating the SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation) would act as an insurer.

In a Friday interview with Bloomberg, the Corp.’s president and chief executive officer said he “disagreed with the statement that the SIPC protected those funds.”

By Sunday, Robinhood had deleted the post from its official website.

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Recently, a Coinbase user accidentally sent Litecoin (LTC) to a Bitcoin (BTC) address. Cryptocurrency exchange’s support team representative claimed the funds “could not be recovered.” That’s when crypto Twitter came to the rescue and helped the user regain control over his assets.

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Increasing the length of a white paper by 1 page is predicted to increase the amount raised in an ICO by around 1%, a research conducted by The Block suggests.

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In early 2018, the market of crypto assets radically changed direction. A to-the-moon rocket was never able to reach the moon, having landed inexperienced players somewhere in the stratosphere, and continued its descent on the nerves of the most seasoned and tested. But the immunity of the latter is not unbreakable, either, as now the market is in the phase of an ice age. Traders no longer believe that “it is falling now, only to rebound later,” and the miners are just tired of pedaling to generate electricity for their farms. This is the best time to learn new ways to mine and support blockchain technologies. DPoS is probably the best choice of those known today.

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