Day: October 29, 2020

Hoskinson Estimates March 2021 For Full Decentralization of the Cardano Network

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IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson hosted a surprise AMA recently in which he announced a reduction in Cardano’s “D” (decentralization) parameter to 0.5. “That means we’re just about to cross a threshold here in a little bit for “D” to fall below five, which means more than half of all the blocks will be made by the community, not the OBFT [Ouroboros Byzantine Fault Tolerance] nodes. That’s a major milestone.” What’s more, at the current rate of progress, Hoskinson states the network will be fully decentralized in March 2021. At this…

The curious case of Harvest Finance, Oct. 21-28

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We were graced with one more typical “degen yield farm” popping in and out of relevance this week. Harvest Finance collected as much as $1 billion in total value locked before an “economic exploit” sent it tumbling down. Its value locked measure now hovering around $300 million and prospects for a recovery looking bleak. The exploit has once again reignited debates among DeFi community members as to whether these types of flash loan-based arbitrage attacks are actually hacks. Harvest features yield farming vaults similar to Yearn’s. They issue tokenized vault…

HSBC and Wave Facilitate Blockchain-Powered Trade Between New Zealand and China

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HSBC, a leading British multinational investment bank and financial services holding company, and Wave, a blockchain-based digital courier platform, have facilitated a blockchain trade transaction for the shipment of milk powder from New Zealand dairy processor Fonterra to China’s Sichuan New Hope Trading. Cryptographic Lading Bills HSBC gave banking services on both ends, while Wave provided the underlying blockchain technology. Specifically, the milk powder shipment carrier issued Fonterra a cryptographically signed electronic bill of lading through Wave’s platform. As per the announcement: “Fonterra added additional trade documents and presented…

Winklevoss’ Gemini exchange to count crypto taxes in real time

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American cryptocurrency exchange Gemini is partnering with tax compliance firm TaxBit to help its customers treport their crypto taxes with TaxBit’s Tax Center Suite solution. Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Gemini exchange, said that TaxBit’s software will help reduce the “pain point of crypto tax,” enabling users to track the real-time tax impact on their crypto trades on Gemini. According to the announcement, the tool will also allow customers to potentially increase their tax refund and lower their tax liability, providing trade alerts when tax-saving opportunities are available. TaxBit’s Tax Center…

Shell Q3 Results Surpised, Shares Jumped Over 7% During Pre-Market,

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During the third quarter that ended in September, Shell reported adjusted earnings of $955 million. Multinational oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell Plc (NYSE: RDS.A) shares jumped approximately 7.14% during Thursday’s pre-market to trade around $24.75. Shell shares closed Wednesday trading at $23.10 having dropped 4.51% during the day. Shell Q3 results were non-predictable. Detailed Shell Q3 Results The jump on Thursday is attributed to news that the company reported better than predicted Q3 results. Moreover, Shell announced that it would raise its dividend to its shareholders by approximately 4%.…

No Relief for Compound (COMP) as Downtrend Resumes After 45% Rally

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COMP, a governance token associated with lending platform Compound, is back into rough waters after sailing calmy for days. The 37th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap fell by $25.14, or 20.15 percent, to $100.68. Its move downside started at a local top of $126.10, established after an eight-day upward consolidation of around 45 percent. That was similar to how other altcoins performed in the same timeframe: beginning with a rebound rally and lately falling after setting a sessional high. The Compound’s long positions failed to match expectations. Source: COMPUSD on TradingView.com…

Gold drops to 7oz per BTC as Peter Schiff calls Bitcoin ‘biggest bubble’

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Bitcoin (BTC) hit seven ounces of gold for the first time in over a year this week as the precious metal comes off all-time highs. Data from CoinGecko showed BTC/XAU returning to the pivotal 7 ounce mark on Oct. 25, continuing to edge up to press-time levels of 7.02 ounces. Gold hits one-year lows in BTC Despite Bitcoin losing ground after challenging $14,000, the gains against gold remained on Thursday, as the traditional safe haven felt the pressure of Coronavirus tensions and U.S. election uncertainty. The last time that BTC/XAU…

Ethereum Could Plunge Towards $315 Region if This Level Doesn’t Hold

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Ethereum has seen an interesting trend in its price action over the past two weeks. Despite a strong surge in the price of Bitcoin, ETH has been an underperformer. In the past 10 days, BTC has gained approximately 16% while ETH has only gained around 6%. This is a stark difference from earlier this year, when ETH surged dozens of percent while Bitcoin gained a mere 5-10%. Analysts fear that this weakness is a precursor to a strong drop to the downside. Ethereum may be saved by Bitcoin, though. Analysts…

Bitcoin’s Options Market Sees Just 6% Chance of $20K Before Year’s End

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While bitcoin’s rally over the past month has revived talks of its price reaching new record highs above $20,000 by the end of the year, the cryptocurrency’s options market continues to assign a very low probability of that scenario playing out.  At press time, bitcoin was seeing a 6% probability of bitcoin trading above the historical 2017 all-time high of $20,000 by the end of December, according to data source Skew.  Probability of Bitcoin Being Above $X at MaturitySource: Skew “A below-10% probability of record highs by the year end…

Greater Manchester claims management company fined £250,000 for making millions of nuisance calls

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The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined Reliance Advisory Limited (RAL) £250,000 for breaking electronic marketing law.                  The ICO found that over a six month period from the start of 2019, the Bury-based company RAL made 15.1 million calls in relation to claims management services such as mis-sold PPI. All of the calls, of which 1.1 million connected, were made to people who had not consented to receive them.   The ICO received 85 complaints from members of the public about the persistent…