The leading top 50 cryptocurrency assets have been showing strong growth in recent weeks, which could be the beginning for a repetition of the powerful upward rally that many traders remember in the fall and winter of 2017. For the “to the moon” to take off, about which investors already spoke so much in the past year, demand from “big capital” is necessary. We’ve reviewed the main news of this year and how they can affect the future rates of digital assets.

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⌚️ Everything you need to know about Constantinople, an upcoming system-wide upgrade to the Ethereum network.
via The Block

🏦 HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, has settled over $250 billion in trades using distributed ledger technology.
via CoinDesk

🤝 Bakkt, a cryptocurrency platform run by Intercontinental Exchange, announced the completion of its first acquisition.
via Cointelegraph

🖥 Hackers behind Ryuk malware received approximately $3.7 million in ransom in less than six months.
via CrowdStrike

🇩🇰 Denmark’s tax agency will soon start collecting trader information from local cryptocurrency exchanges.
via Bloomberg

Cryptopia, a cryptocurrency exchange based out of New Zealand, released a statement today saying that it “suffered a security breach which resulted in significant losses.” The platform’s website is currently out of service, with no information regarding the amount of losses, names of digital assets affected, or further steps that will be taken to refund users.

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A cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX is shutting down trading accounts in the U.S. and Canadian province of Quebec due to regulatory restrictions.

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CoinDesk published an article on how the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history is affecting the cryptocurrency market. In particular, the piece says that “the closure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has put key developments—namely, the approval and launch of products and services involving cryptocurrencies—on hold.”

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When critics of cryptocurrencies talk about digital assets, they first bring up a skeptic argument about the impossibility of using Bitcoin and other coins in everyday life. “Cryptocurrency cannot be used to paid in a regular grocery store; non-existent money cannot be spent using a card”—this reflects the reality of the implementation of crypto payments in financial activities. The introduction of digital money in Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, or Android Pay, however, can change the attitude.

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Much time has passed since cryptocurrencies ceased to be a toy for geeks and received the status of a serious tool that multiplies the capabilities of any platform by hundreds of times. The last two years in the blockchain world have become decisive, and over this small period, the population of Earth has grown acquainted with the technology real fast. On the one hand, now they know about cryptocurrencies and crypto technology in every corner of the world, and this is good. On the other hand, an impressive part of the population still does not understand how cryptocurrencies can improve their lives because they hear the “Bitcoin is a financial bubble” mantra on TV all the time. It is time to fix it.

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🗓 Ethereum’s core developers have delayed the Constantinople upgrade due to discovered critical security vulnerability.
via CoinDesk

💶 Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched a new fiat-to-cryptocurrency trading platform supporting the euro (EUR) and British pound (GBP).
via Cointelegraph

🇧🇬 Bulgaria’s authorities have started to investigate exchange platforms to demand taxes from cryptocurrency investors.
via ccn

👥 Proper regulation may help Bitcoin supersede gold, the Winklevoss brothers believe.
via Fortune

👨🏻‍💻 A new malware disguised as a movie was detected on The Pirate Bay, one of the largest torrent sites. It swaps wallet addresses to steal Bitcoin and Ether.
via BleepingComputer

Check out Larry Cermak’s thread on the Lightning Network development: https://twitter.com/lawmaster/status/1085198042800758784

Blockchain security company BitGo has entered into a partnership with Genesis Global Trading to enable customers to trade in digital assets directly from its custody.

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CoinDesk published an article on the impact that exclusive discounts offered by stablecoin-issuers Gemini and Paxos had on the astronomic increase in trading volumes of GUSD and PAX, respectively.

“They were offering that as a sweetener for getting it kick-started with adoption,” as the story cites an OTC trader who wished to remain anonymous.

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An interesting read on two organizations suing the SEC over what they describe as “perpetual, lifetime gag orders” that violate the First Amendment rights of settling defendants in civil enforcement actions.

“When you settle charges with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, you become bound by the SEC’s decades-long ‘neither admit nor deny’ policy, which hinders your ability to speak freely about the specifics of your case and explicitly prohibits you from even implying that the government’s allegations are without merit.

But that could soon change.”

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Today, the total number of daily users of all dApps barely exceeds 50,000 people, and this can hardly be compared with the multi-million audience of popular computer games. The most famous EOS dApp, Endless Dice, has 11,644 users, while the most popular Ethereum dApp, My Crypto Heroes, has a total of 2,647 users. DeCenter gathered expert opinion on why 2018 did not become the year of dApps.

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💠 When can one expect the arrival of futures contracts on Ether (ETH)? The Block tried to answer that question.
via The Block

💵 Cryptocurrency payment processing company Bitpay reportedly handled over $1 billion in payments in 2018.
via Bitcoin.com

🇹🇭 The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is seeking a cryptocurrency license from the country’s Finance Ministry.
via ccn

✍🏻 WordPress is launching a new publishing platform backed by Google and ConsenSys. It will offer blockchain features.
via CoinDesk

❌ After filing for bankruptcy, cryptocurrency mining firm Giga Watt has reportedly stopped day-to-day operations.
via Cointelegraph

Read: https://bloom.bg/2DdaOWh

Developers of the Brave browser will soon introduce a feature allowing users to collect reward for viewing web ads.

This version provides a preview for users to test ad display and delivery, but does not yet include advertiser confirmation or user payment for ad views. The ability to earn BAT (Basic Attention Tokens) for viewing ads will come in several weeks in our beta channel. Users will then be able to earn 70% of the revenue share coming from those ads. Brave Ads will be integrated in Brave’s upcoming 1.0 desktop browser on all platforms (macOS, Windows, Linux), as well as in the Android app (iOS will be available later). As part of Brave Rewards, Brave Ads are opt in and always will be.

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Auditing firm Grant Thornton published an attestation report on the USDC stablecoin. According to the audit, Circle—the issuing company—had $251,211,209 in custody accounts against 251,211,148 tokens in circulation at the end of the previous year.

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On January 16, the network of the third-largest cryptocurrency by capitalization was supposed to activate the Constantinople upgrade. Less than a day before the long-awaited hard fork, however, the Ethereum team announced their decision to postpone the upgrade indefinitely. The reason was a critical vulnerability found in one of the scheduled updates. DeCenter reviewed the Constantinople hard fork plan and the reasons for its postponement.

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The founder of the Mythos Capital cryptocurrency fund, Ryan Sean Adams, believes that “banks today are like newspapers in the early ’90s,” meaning that the development of the Internet has led to the fact that large amounts of information received by people started migrating to the computer screen, and later—to the smartphone. But the print press still exists, trying to survive, including through better printing, the inclusion of goods samplers, as well as other tricks that support interest in it. Almost 30 years have passed since the appearance of the Internet in society, but the print media survived. But will banks survive in the collision with new technologies, such as the blockchain and, actually, cryptocurrencies?

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❄️ Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has frozen a portion of funds that had been stolen from Cryptopia and then transferred to the platform.
via The Block

👨🏻‍💻 ICORating analysts released the Exchange Security Report, according to which, 16 percent of the world’s major cryptocurrency exchanges scored an A.
via Cointelegraph

🤝 Coinbase has acquired Blockspring, an Andreessen Horowitz–backed startup that designs tools for retrieving and managing data from APIs.
via CoinDesk

👨‍🎓 Academic staff from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University teamed up to design a cryptocurrency that would be capable of processing thousands of transactions per second.
via Bloomberg

🇺🇿 After legitimizing cryptocurrency activity last fall, the state of Uzbekistan is now considering new moves in the Central Asian digital assets arena.
via Forbes

Cryptocurrency payroll service provider Bitwage has entered into a partnership with a Texas-based firm Simply Efficient HR. The move will now enable regular payroll employees all over the U.S. to receive salaries in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

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