Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin:
“Fungibility is the only property of sound money that is missing from Bitcoin & Litecoin. Now that the scaling debate is behind us, the next battleground will be on fungibility and privacy. I am now focused on making Litecoin more fungible by adding Confidential Transactions.”

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The Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) and the United Arab Emirates Central Bank (UAECB) have announced a joint digital currency project trial.

The cryptocurrency will be used in blockchain-based financial settlements between the two countries.

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The issue of the development of cryptocurrency turnover in Russia rests with the regulation of this sector, as in most countries of the world. Except for some states, such as China, government regulators tend to be a wait and see attitude toward digital assets. The vagueness of cryptocurrency regulation is what can be said about both the United States and the European Union. But the new law proposed by the Ministry of Economic Development makes Russia one step closer to regulating the cryptocurrency industry and successful application of digital currencies in practice.

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The PoS and DPoS consensus algorithms are already used by such cryptocurrencies as Cardano, Dash, Qtum, EOS, Lisk, and Tron, and four of them are in the top 15 by market capitalization. With Ethereum that is preparing for a major upgrade and Tezos that is running atop Liquid Proof-of-Stake, the total market capitalization of such projects would have stood at $18.6 billion on January 24. Michael J. Casey, the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board and a senior advisor for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, believes that PoS will bring in new cryptocurrency businesses and financial models—in particular, staking-as-a-service that in its essence would be similar to interest income in the traditional banking model.

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

🗓 American investment giant Fidelity that oversees more than $7.2 trillion in client assets will reportedly launch its Bitcoin custody offering as soon as March.
via Bloomberg

🔍 Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini passed a security compliance and data protection audit that was conducted by a “Big Four” firm Deloitte.
via Cointelegraph

📉 Graphics processing units manufacturer AMD expects that decreasing demand from cryptocurrency miners may negatively affect its revenue next quarter.
via CoinDesk

🔓 According to a recent report from blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace, in 2018, the amount of stolen cryptocurrency funds increased by more than 300% compared to the previous year.
via ccn

🗞 Media company Cheddar has partnered with the Brave browser to present users with limited-time free access to its premium content.
via The Block

SWIFT, a global provider of secure financial messaging services, has revealed plans to integrate technology from R3, the company behind the Corda platform.

Speaking at the Paris Fintech Forum, SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt has said that the formal announcement will come later today.

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Japanese IT giant Fujitsu has successfully piloted a blockchain-powered solution for improving electricity surplus management.

“Fujitsu has now devised a system in which electricity consumers can efficiently exchange among themselves the electricity surpluses they have produced through their own electricity generation or power savings,” the company’s press release reads.

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According to a report by blockchain analysis firm Elementus, two weeks after New Zealand-based cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia first reported a hack, it is still suffering from cyber criminals who have now managed to take another $180,000 from 17,000 wallets.

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Over the last three years, the number of cryptocurrency ATMs has increased by 700%. This is indicated by data from the DRIVE Markets exchange. According to the company’s research, on January 1, 2016, 501 automatic teller machines for digital coins were in operation, and in 2019, the figure has reached 4,128. Experts believe this trend is related to the growing popularity and confidence in the crypto industry and the simplicity and accessibility of the devices compared to digital assets exchanges.

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In a recent Let’s Talk Bitcoin! podcast, renowned cryptocurrency advocate Andreas Antonopoulos talks about decentralized identity and how it could help users regain control over their sensitive personal data.

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

💵 Cryptocurrency lending company Genesis Global Trading processed over $1.1 billion in borrows and lends last year.
via The Block

🏢 In 2018, the cryptocurrency industry saw more new venture funds than hedge funds for the first time.
via Bloomberg

🇮🇷 Iran, which has been under U.S. sanctions for years, is reportedly pushing its state-backed cryptocurrency for settlements with foreign countries.
via ccn

🇷🇺 The chairman of the upper house of Russian parliament has called for the work on digital economy bills to be accelerated.
via Cointelegraph

🤝 Decentralized identity startup Glyph is partnering with three crypto firms in a bid to appeal to accredited investors.
via CoinDesk

Cryptocurrency custody company BitGo has launched “Wrapped BTC” (WBTC), a new token that is backed with Bitcoin at a 1:1 ratio and runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

The project aims to bring “greater liquidity to the Ethereum ecosystem including decentralized exchanges and financial applications.”

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South Korea’s primary financial watchdog, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), will not lift the ban on domestic initial coin offerings (ICOs). The reason behind such a decision lies in the fact that some projects have been violating rules.

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Almost all IOTA tokens (worth $11 million) that were allegedly stolen last year from over 85 victims have been found. As of now, the police are holding the funds as evidence in an ongoing investigation.

Dominik Schiener, the co-founder of IOTA, said the company thought that a hacker group was involved, but in the end, the mastermind behind the theft was a single individual who appeared to have a normal job and be well-educated.

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The World Economic Forum (WEF), which took place on January 22 to 25 in Swiss Davos, left different impressions. On January 28, the British Financial Times wrote that if at the event a year ago, blockchain and Bitcoin were the favorite words of the participants, then this year, they have been forgotten. This, however, is not the case.

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Peter Bel—former editor with Cointelegraph, now founder and managing partner of the ICO PR agency Byzantium—told DeCenter about a formula for successful ICO projects, his crypto preferences, and why it’s a good sign if there are things that a blockchain project has in common with zipper manufacturer YKK.

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📨 #DeCenterDaily

💳 Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, has enabled its users to purchase cryptocurrency with credit cards.
via CoinDesk

📁 CBOE, VanEck, and SolidX have re-applied with the U.S. SEC for a rule change that would allow for the listing of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
via The Block

📈 The number of cryptocurrency exchanges that are currently utilizing Nasdaq’s proprietary surveillance technology has reached seven.
via Forbes

🦅 One more Bitcoin ATM operator has been granted a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
via Cointelegraph

👩‍⚖️ The Florida appeals court has overturned the decision that was based on the fact that Bitcoin was not considered legal tender in the country.
via Bitcoin.com

American investment behemoth Fidelity, which oversees a whopping $7.2 trillion in client assets, has announced on its official blog that its cryptocurrency trading and custody offering entered the final testing phase.

We are currently serving a select set of eligible clients as we continue to build our initial solutions. […] Our initial clients are an important part of our final testing and process refinement periods, which will eventually enable us to provide these services to a broader set of eligible institutions.

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Major Canada-based cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX seeks creditor protection, as per filing submitted in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. The company asks for an advisory, assurance, tax, and transaction services provider EY to be appointed an independent third party that would monitor its proceedings.

The announcement comes after the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) froze a substantial part of the exchange’s funds last year.

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In this week’s #CryptoCaselawMinute, Stephen D. Palley and Nelson M. Rosario take a look at the allegations involving the dark web, a lawsuit involving harassment, and an appeal in a case dating back to 2013.

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The use of cold storage requires more intermediate steps to transfer funds to another user or an exchange; therefore, online wallets and even exchanges are more popular when it comes to storing crypto savings. Nevertheless, there are ways to spend or sell Bitcoins without taking them out of cold storage, and many companies are actively developing user-friendly and easy-to-use offline wallets and “cold trading” solutions. At the same time, it is impossible to “get everything,” and even if we combine convenience and safety—features that are rarely offered as a bundle—we still have to make trade-offs. In that case, we will be sacrificing the basic and even ideological characteristics of cryptocurrencies.

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