The Block prepared a roundup of the Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO), analyzing where the tokens distributed during the crowdsale eventually ended up at and whether Ether—the network’s native digital token and third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization—could be deemed a security.

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Mark Dow—a former International Monetary Fund economist who bet that the world’s first cryptocurrency, which was then trading at its peak, would decline in price due to the arrival of futures contracts—has closed his short position on Bitcoin.

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Despite that at the moment, many crypto market players are primarily concerned about the prolonged fall in cryptocurrency rates, experts warn of growing threats in the field of cybersecurity. In particular, we are talking about cryptojacking, or hidden mining, the cases of which have increased by 400% since the beginning of the year. This is indicated by representatives of Kaspersky Lab. In Russia alone, the number of cases of cryptojacking increased from 3.5 million to 13 million. In the article below, we will discuss how the situation in the field of cryptosecurity has changed over the past 365 days and what to expect from 2019.

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While the crypto market is preparing new-year gifts, or low prices and the opportunity to enter the market, people think about what to give to their loved ones for the winter holidays. DeCenter has compiled a guide on New Year gifts that can be bought for cryptocurrencies. We emphasize that it is not necessary to convert digital assets into fiat money because there are already companies in the world that accept Bitcoin, Ether, and other coins as payment.

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

📈 Crypto market gains $29 billion this week as Bitcoin adds another 6% on the day taking it to $3,750.
via CCN

💸 The San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase moved $5 billion in crypto into its upgraded storage model last week. Specifically 5% of all BTC, 8% of all ETH, and 25% of all LTC.
via Coindesk

📚 According to a new survey completed by cryptocurrency trading platform eToro 44% of online investors state that lack of educational resources is the main barrier to trading crypto.
via Forbes

💰 New Bloomberg report says Tether may in fact have the promised billions backing its stablecoin secured at Noble Bank in Puerto Rico.
via Bloomberg

🗣 Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao remains optimistic for the future of crypto as he calls 2018 a “Correction Year” in a recent interview.
via Cointelegraph

​​Vitalik Buterin must be feeling particularly festive during this holiday season. Yesterday famous "non-giver of Ether" gave away 3,000 in ETH. The reason? Well, because, YOLO. Projects Sigma Prime, Prysmatic Labs and ChainSafe received 1,000 ETH each as an early Christmas present. All three are currently working on creating the next version of Ethereum, dubbed Ethereum 2.0.

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Coinbase, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of users, is taking a step towards creating a more informed user base by launching Earn, an educational platform that allows users to earn tokens while learning about crypto.

By using this service, which is still in the ‘invite-only’ mode, users can watch educational videos about new coins and tokens, and then earn them by answering skill-testing quizzes.

According to TechCrunch currently Earn provides educational content on 0x (ZRX), a protocol that lets you create decentralized exchanges, while preparing to launch webinars on Bitcoin and Ethereum.

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RChain is facing major budgetary shortfall and is “functionally bankrupt”, The Block reports. Once ranking 30th on CoinMarketCap and led by an all-star team including Vlad Zamfir, this project was hoping to rival Ethereum.

But now RChain’s management is accused of alleged financial mishandling, reckless investments with developers losing faith left and right. Projects lead developer, Medha Parlikar, quit in October alongside three board members, and RChain’s CFO Kate Gonsalves resigned a fortnight.

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The anniversary year for the first cryptocurrency was not entirely festive. Since January the total capitalization of the crypto market has fallen about eightfold. However, if we do not compare the current market position with the anomalies witnessed in the end of 2017, and evaluate it as a very young, emerging industry, the conclusions will be much broader and more favorable than just a multi-billion dollar FUD.

“I believe the disruption this technology will bring won’t be fully realized over the course of just one year,” says Max Kordek, CEO and co-founder of the Lisk cryptocurrency, noting that this area also needs many educational and research projects that will not be completed within one year. However, there are already some predictions for 2019. With the help of expert opinions DeCenter figured out which direction the crypto industry will develop in the upcoming year.

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Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose development teams are striving to keep their value at a fixed level. Today these coins are developing rapidly. According to the latest data 48 of them are supported by fiat or any physical asset, and another 23 are backed by other cryptocurrencies. 15 stablecoins try to maintain balance by using an algorithmic mechanism that should regulate the number of coins in circulation based on the state of supply and demand at the current market. Another 24 stablecoins do not belong to any of the listed types, but still claim to maintain value, despite market fluctuations. Thus, now there are 110 different types of stablecoins, and their number is constantly growing.

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👨🏻‍⚖️ Two congressmen are pushing for a bipartisan bill, that would exclude cryptocurrencies from SEC's 72-year-old securities law.
via CNBC

💸 Social media giant Facebook is reportedly developing a stablecoin for WhatsApp transfers.
via The Block

😨 ConsenSys, the Ethereum-focused startup incubator and blockchain technology conglomerate, is spinning out or cutting off funding for a number of startups it previously backed, which might lead to major layoffs with as many as 50-60% of its employees possibly being let go.
via The Verge

🕵🏼‍ University research identified 4,818 pump and dump signals that were advertised on Telegram and Discord over a six month period.
via Bloomberg

⚒ Parity Technologies has launched beta version of Substrate, a highly-anticipated open-source tool for creating customized blockchains for DApps.
via CoinDesk

​​When it comes to receiving money as a Christmas gift most choose cryptocurrencies. In a recent Twitter poll conducted by the Bank of England followers were asked to choose one of four options: Cash, Bank transfer, Gift voucher, or Digital currency.

As of today Digital currency has taken the lead with 71% out of 8,597 respondents preferring crypto over other options. Some say this might be a clandestine way through which the BoE is looking to measure public interest in cryptocurrencies.

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UPbit, one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has been accused of manipulating its order book in an attempt to inflate the exchange's volume between October 2017 and December 2018. According to local media Prosecutors’ Office of the southern district of Seoul has formally charged three senior staff members, including founder Song Chi-Hyung, on charges of fraud. Allegedly executives have made fraudulent transactions, using a fake corporate account to make bogus orders worth 254 trillion won (over $226 billion).

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This week’s #CryptoCaselawMinute delivered by The Block brings expert cryptocurrency legal analysis of how Ripple was able to maneuver through two class action lawsuits.

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Bitcoin’s price has been showing signs of growth recently. The $20,000 mark is still far off, although the green color of the digital asset is beginning to calm crypto enthusiasts. How fair is the current price of Bitcoin and how much should BTC truly cost at the end of 2018: $0 (because the bubble has burst), $20, $600, $4,000 or more than $20,000?

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​​Since December 17, the Bitcoin price recovered by 28% on most major crypto exchanges. But, on a 30-day basis, the value of the first cryptocurrency still remains down about nine percent from $4,400 and must surpass resistance levels above this mark to confirm a bullish movement on the upside. Why Bitcoin isn’t ready for a rally beyond $5,000?

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

🗓 Launch of Bakkt, futures trading and custody platform, might be delayed for the second time due to lack of necessary approvals from CFTC and current US Government shutdown.
via CoinDesk

📲 Today, at 11:00 AM (UTC), Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange by volume, will add two trading pairs with XRP, and will rename the original ETH Trading Market into the ALTS Trading Market, to support more trading pairs with different quote currencies.
via CryptoGlobe

🇷🇺 A recent poll among residents of the Russian Federation showed that more than 13% of the country's population use cryptocurrencies to pay for online purchases.
via Bitcoin.com

💵 According to crypto analytics firm Data Light in 2018 the number of cryptocurrency ATM machines in the world has doubled, with approximately six new machines installed every day.
via CCN

⚡️Lightning Network, a second-layer scaling solution that facilitates instant, low-cost, scalable Bitcoin transactions, has breached the capacity of 500 BTC in its network.
via NewsBTC

The Block asked top crypto experts to share their vision of Facebook’s upcoming stablecoin. Some say that Mark Zuckerberg is going to successfully co-opt DLT to the benefit of Facebook. While others fear that world's largest social network won’t have adequate internal controls to manage the complexities and moral hazard of mingling social media with financial access. Or maybe it will become world’s leading global bank, providing access to financial services to 100’s of millions of users?

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​​Travis Kling, the founder and chief investment officer at Ikigai, believes that there’s a “significant chance” that cryptocurrencies could outperform all other assets in the upcoming year. After all, as Kling highlights, Bitcoin was brought into existence at the very beginning of globally coordinated quantitative easing (QE), a move that allowed the U.S Federal to lower interest rates and buy trillions of dollars’ worth of government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

Twitter Post

According to a recent report by CoinMetrics, a cryptoasset data provider, during a Bitcoin Private fork 2.04 million additional units were covertly minted, thus pushing the actual supply of BTCP to 23.04 million, instead of 21 million. Bitcoin Private is a fork-merge of Bitcoin and ZClassic, which was initially released on March 6, 2018. The 10-page report states that secretly coined cryptocurrency is worth $3.672 million.

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In a recent video interview for Cointelegraph, Peter Brandt, spoke of how best to act during the bear market period. Brandt is a trader with 40 years of experience and is the CEO of Factor Trading, which was founded in 1980. DeCenter collected some tips and opinions on why a bearish phase can be favorable for the market and what is the best course of action until Bitcoin flies “to the moon.”

https://dcntr.org/bitcoin-bear-market