Monero’s ‘Fluffypony’ Steps Down as Lead Maintainer of Privacy Coin Project

After five years at the helm, monero’s lead maintainer says he is stepping down. Riccardo Spagni, better known by the alias “Fluffypony,” will relinquish his day-to-day leadership role in the privacy coin project. Longtime contributor “Snipa” will assume the responsibilities of lead maintainer, according to a post by the monero core team. The post says the move is being made to “better streamline developments and collaborations” but does not say when the changeover will take place, although it notes Spagni “will continue as a backup maintainer to relieve Snipa during…

Former Kraken Employee Sues Exchange for ‘Unethical and Illegal Business Tactics’

A former employee of United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken initiated legal proceedings against the company in connection with breach of contract and sanctions violation, among other issues. Per a court document filed on Nov. 26, Nathan Peter Runyon — a marine wartime veteran and ex-employee of Kraken, where he served as a financial analyst under the exchange’s chief financial officer Kaiser Ng — brought the case to court accusing the company and Ng of an array of legal violations and falsifications. A range of accusations Specifically, Runyon accused Kraken of unethical…

Contrary to Popular Belief, Bitcoin is in Full Bear Market, Says Analyst

People who believe bitcoin is currently in a bull market just because it avoided a drop below $6,400 are wrong, according to Alex Krüger. The prominent market analyst made bold comments about halving, an event that would reduce the bitcoin mining reward from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC effectively from May 2020. Krüger refuted popular price prediction models, such as the Stock-to-Flow, that envision bitcoin at its all-time high after halving. “Contrary to what cheerleaders want people to believe, the halving is not supposed to make longs rich,” said Krüger.…

Orchid’s OXT Price Slips Over 20% After Launch for Trading on Coinbase Pro

American blockchain and software development firm Orchid Labs has launched its privacy network alongside its native token OXT. According to a blog post on Dec. 16, Orchid’s digital currency OXT was immediately available for trading on major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Pro. According to an announcement, OXT will be available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State. Coinbase Pro started accepting OXT deposits on Dec. 13. OXT token allows one to buy and sell VPN services or provide bandwidth As previously reported, Orchid provides a…

Ripple (XRP) Hits 27-Month Low: What’s Behind the Sustained Crash?

Ripple’s native asset XRP fell into an extreme negative area this Wednesday as investors pulled billions of dollars out of the entire cryptocurrency market. The XRP-to-dollar exchange rate established an intraday low of $0.174 on BitStamp around 1300 UTC. That brought the pair down by 4.39 percent from the market open. At the same time, the move downhill pushed XRP towards its lowest level since September 2017. XRP has plunged by circa 10 percent in the last 24 hours | Source: TradingView.com, BitStamp The downside move came as part of…

Tradeshift Says It’s Slashed Cross-Border Transaction Costs Using Ethereum

Supply chain fintech startup Tradeshift, which boasts two million firms on its platform, says it’s slashed the cost of cross-border transactions between buyers and suppliers using the public ethereum blockchain. Tradeshift Frontiers, the innovation division of the Goldman Sachs-backed unicorn, represents invoice values as tokenized IOUs between buyers and sellers and then settles them in a novel form of on-chain fiat currency.  Tradeshift Cash, as the system is called, has implications for banks and financial institutions that typically make money on cross-border payments. It could do for supply chain management…

Tradeshift Says It’s Slashed Cross-Border Transaction Costs Using Ethereum

Supply chain fintech startup Tradeshift, which boasts two million firms on its platform, says it’s slashed the cost of cross-border transactions between buyers and suppliers using the public ethereum blockchain. Tradeshift Frontiers, the innovation division of the Goldman Sachs-backed unicorn, represents invoice values as tokenized IOUs between buyers and sellers and then settles them in a novel form of on-chain fiat currency.  Tradeshift Cash, as the system is called, has implications for banks and financial institutions that typically make money on cross-border payments. It could do for supply chain management…

Kyber Network Aims to Improve DeFi Liquidity With ‘Katalyst’ Protocol Upgrade

Kyber Network, the ethereum-based protocol focused on aggregating liquidity and facilitating swaps for ERC-20 tokens, is about to launch a major upgrade. Planned to go live in Q2 2020, the Katalyst upgrade is a major upgrade to the Kyber protocol to better meet the liquidity needs of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. Currently, the Kyber Network (KNC) design allows for any party to contribute to an aggregated pool of liquidity within each blockchain while providing a single endpoint for takers to execute trades using the best rates available. Katalyst aims…

Bitcoin Crashes to New 7-Month Low But Bounces Off $6.4K Support

Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $6,500 on Dec. 18 in what is rapidly becoming a pivotal day for transaction analysis. Cryptocurrency market daily overview. Source: Coin360 Long “squeeze up” could spark big BTC reversal Data from Coin360 showed the largest cryptocurrency continues to erase its value on Wednesday after losing support at $7,000 as the week began. At press time, BTC/USD traded at around $6,600 amid considerable volatility, having bounced back after dipping to $6,430 — its lowest level in over seven months. Bitcoin 1-day price chart. Source: Coin360 Current levels…

EY Launches Token and Smart Contract Testing Service in Open Beta

Accountancy giant Ernst & Young (EY) has made its token and smart contract review service available for public testing.  Launched earlier on Wednesday, the public beta version allows users to paste code for analysis, during which it identifies security risks by testing the functionality and efficiency of a smart contract, as well as evaluating the quality of the coding.  Currently the service can only review ERC-20-based smart contracts, which are written in the Solidity programming language. EY has not said whether it plans to expand support to other blockchain protocols…