Day: September 18, 2020

Law Decoded: E Pluribus SHA-256

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New developments at the state level in the U.S. defined this week’s regulatory news. By way of disclaimer, today’s Law Decoded is going to be especially America-centric. Writing to you from the ghastly swamp that is Washington, D.C., I generally try to keep these newsletters more globally minded, displeased as I am with how often the news cycle acts like this town is the center of the solar system.  Thematically, however, the relationship between the capital and the rest of the country is central to this week’s news. U.S. federalism…

Alison Brie Fans, Relax – Tatiana Maslany Is the She-Hulk We Need

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“Orphan Black” star Tatiana Maslany has been confirmed as the MCU’s She-Hulk. The actress has proven herself as a talented performer who can boost Marvel’s television landscape. Alison Brie fans aren’t happy with the decision despite the actress never having formally been up for the role. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally found its She-Hulk. Tatiana Maslany has been announced to play the superhero in the Disney+ series expected to debut in 2022. Her confirmation has been met with minor controversy; however, as rumored contender Alison Brie’s fans have taken…

Mystery shoppers reveal that banks are struggling with COVID-19 response

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A recent study examined the response of the 15 leading North American banks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers discovered that tellers only at three banks wore masks 100% of the time.  Participants visited 700 bank branches across the continent belonging to leading institutions, such as Bank of America, Chase, Citibank and TD Bank. Overall, these 15 banks operate over 33,000 branches. Source: Dalbar. It appears that the ATMs present the sorest point for the banks. The ATMs in only 19% of the examined U.S. branches had a sanitizer available, and only…

INX Crypto Exchange Has Started Distributing Tokens From Its Blockchain-Based IPO

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The cryptocurrency and security token exchange’s blockchain IPO is the first of its kind and gives observers and issuers a ground-level view of what’s going on through the Etherscan block explorer.  The public can see roughly the number of investors receiving INX tokens after putting money into the sale by watching the number of holders on the token tracker. (Some of these are internal operational transactions, however, like when Tokensoft loads the distribution smart contract.) Traditionally, to get information on who beneficially owns an interest in shares held at central…

US Stock Indices Dow Jones, SPX Tank, Taking Down Bitcoin In Tandem

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Bitcoin has been collapsing after failing to hold $11,000, and it could be thanks to negative sentiment surrounding a tanking stock market that’s taking the crypto market down in tandem. Here’s why things could get really bad for Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto space if major US stock indices continue to plunge. Major US Stock Indices S&P 500, Dow Jones, Drop On Today’s Quadruple Witching The S&P 500 is down more than 7% from local highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, has also lost 5% from its recent…

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Got Some Upgrades This Week

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While so-called “DeFi degens” are busy bidding up the price of food-themed tokens, on the other end of crypto’s DeFi spectrum two teams working on the most popular implementations of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network have been busy pushing out new features.  This week, both Lightning Labs, which maintains the Lightning Network Daemon (LND) implementation of the Lightning Network, and Blockstream, which maintains the c-lightning implementation, updated their tech stacks.  Read more: What Is Bitcoin’s Lightning Network? For Lightning Labs, the update comes to its Faraday suite with the addition of an automated…

Bitcoin Whales Aren’t Selling Their BTC; It May Be Boosting Its Price

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Bitcoin’s price action has been rather mixed as of late. Although the cryptocurrency has been slowly grinding higher, the lower-$11,000 region has proven to be a heavy resistance zone that is hampering its growth. The intensity of the selling pressure here seems to indicate that bulls may not be quite as strong as they previously appeared to be, indicating that the benchmark digital asset may be on the cusp of seeing further downside. Despite these short-term signs of weakness, one factor that is boosting Bitcoin and could indicate that a…

Bitcoin News Roundup for Sept. 18, 2020

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As bitcoin battles to establish a foothold above $11K and with DeFi surging on Ethereum, CoinDesk’s Markets Daily is back for your latest crypto news roundup! Bitcoin is again looking to establish a foothold above $11,000 on Friday, although the technical charts are anything but stridently bullish. More than 92,000 bitcoins have been tokenized on Ethereum. Decentralized trading platform Uniswap has launched a governance token, UNI, minting 1 billion coins to be released to the public over the next four years. A minimum of 400 UNI was airdropped to everyone…