Day: July 7, 2020

CFTC Is Waiting on SEC to Allow Futures Trading of More Digital Assets, Says CFTC Chairman

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In a July 7 interview with predecessor Jim Newsome, current Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Heath Tarbert ran down a list of pending concerns standing between cryptocurrencies and the long-awaited promised land of regulatory clarity. Securities regulation and the CFTC’s purview Tarbert was careful to outline the distinction between the work of the CFTC and its elder brother regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC.  The determination of whether a digital asset is a security is “the sole province of the SEC,” Tarbert explained. “If their…

Basic Attention Token

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an Ethereum-based token integrated into the privacy-focused web browser, Brave. The company, founded in 2015 by Brian Bondy and Mozilla co-founder and JavaScript creator, Brendan Eich, launched Basic Attention Token in 2017 to remedy several problems it saw with digital advertising: the privacy violations of users, the declining revenues of traditional publishers and the inability of advertisers to assess the effectiveness of their ads. BAT measures users’ attention while they browse sites and rewards publishers accordingly. The browser includes an opt-in feature, Brave Rewards, which…

Dai

Dai is a decentralized cryptocurrency built on Ethereum stabilized to the value of U.S. dollars. The asset is pegged 1:1 to dollars via what is known as the Maker (MKR) Dai Stablecoin System. Unlike other popular stablecoins whose value is backed directly by USD, cryptocurrency collateral, which can be viewed publicly on the Ethereum blockchain, keeps dai’s value stable. Dai is a key component of many decentralized apps, or dapps, in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, ecosystem that is built on the Ethereum platform. With dai, DeFi users are able…

0x

Will Warren and Amir Bandeali co-founded 0x in 2016 with the intention of providing a standard protocol on the Ethereum blockchain that allows any Ethereum token to be traded. 0x enables the peer-to-peer exchange of Ethereum-based tokens and is often referred to as a decentralized exchange (DEX). The 0x platform provides a means of exchanging a variety of tokenized assets such as stocks, gold, real estate and video game items, seeking to promote interoperability between decentralized applications (dapps). 0x’s own ethereum token (ZRX) is used to pay trading fees to…

Tezos

Tezos, led by the husband-wife team of Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, raised the equivalent of $232 million in an initial coin offering in 2017. At the time, the sale of the XTZ tokens was the largest ICO to date, raising more than 10 times the initially targeted $20 million. The blockchain was one of the first to use a “proof of stake” consensus mechanism, a system that’s becoming increasingly popular compared with the “proof of work” mechanism used by the Bitcoin blockchain. Holders of XTZ can commit their tokens in…

Chainlink

Chainlink is a tokenized oracle network that provides price and events data collected from on-chain and real-world sources. Launched in 2017 by Sergey Nazarov, Chainlink aims to offer a solution to the “oracle problem,” or the ability to get the off-chain data needed to operate many blockchain-based smart contracts. The token incentivizes participants to provide and use this data. Chainlink does not operate its own blockchain. Instead, the token protocol is blockchain agnostic and can run on many different blockchains simultaneously. The Chainlink price page. CoinDesk also provides a suite…

USD Coin

U.S. Dollar Coin, or USDC, is an Ethereum-based stablecoin launched in September, 2018. Its policies, including its technical and financial standards, are managed by a consortium called CENTRE, started by peer-to-peer payment company Circle and crypto exchange Coinbase. USDC represents fiat, or government money, on the blockchain. It is redeemable on a 1:1 basis for U.S. dollars, issued by regulated financial institutions and backed by fully reserved assets which are audited by accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP every month. USDC can be easily moved across various cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms…

Tether

Tether was one of the first cryptocurrencies to peg its market value to a fiat currency. Launched in July 2014, Tether, originally called “Realcoin”, valued each token at $1.00 to reduce the friction of moving real currency throughout the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Due to its dollar peg, Tether and other similar cryptocurrencies have been dubbed “stablecoins”. Tether is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization and its users can redeem tethers for dollars. Originally, Tether launched on Bitcoin’s Omni Layer, but continues to expand to other protocols, including Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, TRON,…

Future Bleak for Private Stablecoins, SFB Economist Says

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SFB Technologies’ chief economist sees a future for central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, but not for privately issued stablecoins. Speaking on a Unitize digital conference panel, Peter Dittus, chief economist for SFB Technologies, said he does see a place for privately-issued stablecoins.  “I don’t see a great future,” Dittus said of stablecoins on the June 7 panel, live streamed by Cointelegraph.  Two stablecoin classifications exist Stablecoins exist in two categories — privately issued and CBDCs, according to Dittus. Issued by governments, CBDCs essentially turn paper cash digital, with each…

Cardano’s ADA is Either #6 or 7 By Market Capitalization — Depending on Who Counts

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Cardano’s ADA recently overtook Litecoin (LTC) in market capitalization. Now it may have passed Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) as well, depending on how the metric is calculated. BCH, BSV, ADA & LTC. Source: CoinMarketCap. How many ADAs out there? At the time of this writing, CoinMarketCap, or CMC, shows ADA in seventh spot, while Nomics has it at sixth —- just ahead of BSV. The controversy stems from the circulating supply —- CMC reports 25,927,070,538, while Nomics has the figure at 31,112,484,646. This represents a five billion ADA discrepancy. Blockchair,…