For the week ending 30-Oct-2018

This is a roundup of top stories from the EOS community, and from the greater blockchain industry in which EOS exists.

Curated weekly by Jeanene and brought to you by Thomas. 

EOSIO could debut a public beta version of a referendum system this week. EOS Nation explains, “The referendum system is made up of a forum smart contract for submitting proposals and casting votes, a tally system for counting the EOS staked towards each ballot option, a voting portal UI with support documentation to facilitate easy voting, and support for integration with wallets and alternative UIs so token holders can participate in the interface they’re most comfortable with.” (Link 1)

Kode P.C. posted an article at Coin Diary discussing three charity dApps on EOSIO. (Link 2)

James Risberg posted an article at Coin Central explaining what EOS is and how it works. (Link 3)

Over at Ethereum World News, Dalmas Ngetich posted and article covering the lack of promised audits by Block.One regarding the wash trading allegations. (Link 4)

Belgium

Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority has added 21 websites to its list of websites it says are cryptocurrency trading platforms showing signs of fraud. In the announcement, the agency elaborated that “this list is based solely on observations made by the FSMA on the basis of reports received from consumers. It, therefore, does not include all players that may be unlawfully active in this sector.” (Link 5)

China

The Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration ruled in favor of an unnamed plaintiff in an equity transfer dispute, ruling that bitcoin is property. The defense had attempted to argue that the contractual equity transfer agreement was invalid, as cryptocurrencies are not recognized as legal tender in China, and that their circulation is subject to severe restrictions. However, the arbitrator found that the contractual obligation under dispute did not fall under the relevant provisions, stating that, “There is no law or regulation that explicitly prohibits parties from holding bitcoin or private transactions in bitcoin, [only warnings to] the public about the investment risks. The contract in this case stipulates the obligation to return the bitcoin between two natural persons, and does not belong to the [Sept. 2017 ban].” (Link 6)

India

Indian police have seized a recently-installed crypto ATM, operated by Unocoin. According to the Times of India, the machine is “illegal as it had been set up without approvals.” The company’s 37-year-old co-founder, Harish B.V., along with CEO Sathvik Viswanath were arrested in connection with operating the machine. (Link 7)

Japan

Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has granted the cryptocurrency industry the authority to self-regulate. According to the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association website, “With the acquisition of accreditation, we will continue to make further efforts to create an industry that you trust for everyone who uses virtual currency with [its] members.” (Link 8)

Malta

The Malta Financial Services Authority has issued a warning against PrimeTradingBot, stating, “Information available to the MFSA suggests that https://www.primetradingbot.com/ is likely to be a scheme of dubious nature with a high risk of loss of money. The public should therefore refrain from undertaking any business or transactions with the above-mentioned entity.” (Link 9)

Taiwan

The Taiwanese Financial Supervisory Commission is drafting a set of national standards for ICOs. The FSC aims “to make virtual tokens as easy to invest in as stocks and just as liquid,” (Link 10)

Thailand

Thailand’s SEC has issued a warning against four unauthorized ICOs (G2S Expert, Singhcom Enterprise, Adventure Hostel Bangkok, and Kidstocurrency. ) and five unauthorized tokens (Every coin, Orientum coin, Onecoin and OFC coin, Tripxchain coin, and TUC coin). (Link 11)

USA

The SEC has published a memorandum from a meeting regarding the Bitcoin ETF proposal from VanEck and SolidX. The memorandum presents a summary of the applicants’ history with the regulator, along with details of the parties’ arguments. (Link 12)

The SEC has suspended trading in the securities of American Retail Group Inc. “for making false cryptocurrency-related claims about SEC regulation and registration.” According to the SEC, “The company [claimed it] had partnered with an SEC qualified custodian for use with cryptocurrency transactions that would be ‘under SEC regulations,’ and that the company was conducting a token offering that was ‘officially registered in accordance (with) SEC requirements.’ “ (Link 13)

The New York State Department of Financial Services announced that it “has approved the application of Coinbase Custody Trust Company LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coinbase Global Inc., to operate as a limited purpose trust company.” (Link 14)

EOSIO Usage

Zimbra X, an open source dApp, is the first email platform on EOSIO. It uses smart contracts and tokens to provide greater security to users. On why EOSIO was chosen, Senior Vice President of Platform Products at Synacor Erynn Petersen stated, “Extensive research into various blockchain solutions resulted in Zimbra X living on EOSIO technology. Its scalable high performance allows mainstream consumer products to leverage blockchain capabilities. We expect EOSIO to continue to emerge as a leading blockchain operating system“. (Link 15)

EOS-Forum, an accessible user interface to directly access content stored on the EOS blockchain, turning the platform into a decentralized discussion board. (Link 16)

Banking / Finance

Commercial bank Expobank CZ claims it is the first bank in Europe to offer account holders the opportunity to perform crypto-related transactions alongside traditional banking activities. (Link 17)

Coinbase and Circle's joint venture CENTRE Consortium created the ERC-20 USD Coin (USDC). The stablecoin will allow users to move U.S. Dollars as easily as they can move cryptocurrencies. This means traders can easily transfer liquidity between exchanges, and thanks to support from the Coinbase Wallet, they can now store it themselves and transfer it to other people as well. However, in their user agreement, Circle explains that they have near complete control over user accounts. They can freeze funds, terminate accounts, and even report accounts to the authorities. (Link 18)

Entertainment

On a recent episode of Shark Tank, Bundil, an automatic cryptocurrency buying app that rounds up everyday purchases, secured a $100,000 investment. (Link 19)

MobileGo has been picked up by Xsolla, allowing the altcoin to be used in more than 500 games, giving more than 500 million players getting the chance to purchase titles and use the altcoin for in-game purchases. (Link 20)

Johnny Depp is partnering with crypto-powered social entertainment platform TaTaTu in order to create and produce film and digital content together, set to be produced by the Infinitum Nihil film production firm owned by Depp. (Link 21)

“Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain”, a feature-length documentary, focuses on the political aspects of blockchain technology and why governments and the big banks fear it. It also looks at technological applications with potentially profound socio-economic implications, particularly those that are designed to help improve the lives of “unbanked” refugees, as well as individuals in countries such as Venezuela who might lack access to traditional financial services. (Link 22)

Social Good

The Bitcoin Association announced a new initiative where $1,000 worth of bitcoin cash will be sent to the two Eatbch campaigns in Venezuela and South Sudan every month to help the Eatbch crew acquire food by using the proceeds from bitcoin cash donations. (Link 23)

SC Johnson announced a new partnership with Plastic Bank, to help increase recycling rates in impoverished communities across Indonesia while addressing the challenges of poverty. SC Johnson and Plastic Bank will open eight recycling centers in Indonesia during the next year. Local waste collectors can bring the plastic they collect to any center, where they can exchange it for digital tokens. (Link 24)

Issues

Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Maplechange tweeted that it had been hacked, which took place one day after it had conducted “maintenance” to revamp its website. It claimed that “due to a bug, some people have managed to withdraw all the funds” it had been holding. After claims of it being an exit scam, Maplechange tweeted, “We have not disappeared,” it said. “We simply turned off our accounts temporarily to think this solution through.” (Link 25)

The COSS exchange had its 2-factor authentication hacked and $850,000 in crypto funds were stolen from users. (Link 26) According to COSS founder Rune Evensen, COSS managed to recover its tokens by using a function in the smart contract. (Link 27)

Financial / Exchanges / Wallets

IDEX plans to start blocking traders who reside in the state of New York, sparking protests throughout the cryptocurrency community. It’s unclear whether IDEX was pressured into excluding New York traders, or whether the platform’s operators elected to blacklist them out of caution. (Link 28)

Binance Uganda, Binance’s first fiat-to-crypto exchange in Uganda, has officially launched live trading of BTC and ETH with local fiat currency. (Link 29)

According to its blog, Square is open-sourcing its Bitcoin cold storage solution, Subzero. (Link 30)

Okex will delist 42 trading pairs for failing to meet its listing requirements. Affected tokens include, naga, prochain, ipchain, maggie and travel, which are all either paired with BTC, ETH or USDT. Realchain, commerceblock, encrypgen, viuly, monetha, aventus, change and others will also be delisted. (Link 31)

Coinbase has confirmed that the company is raising an IPO of $500 million at a valuation of $8 billion. (Link 32) Coinbase is also doing some restructuring, by terminating the contracts of mainly remote employees, stating, “We’ve learned that certain teams who are co-located are more efficient, effective, and happier in their roles. So moving forward, some teams—including Support, Fraud, and Compliance—will only hire employees into Coinbase offices.” (Link 33)

Management Changes

Ripple has hired Amir Sarhangi, formerly senior developer at Google, as VP of products. (Link 34)

Patents

MasterCard has applied for a patent to apply principles of fractional reserve banking to cryptocurrency. In its new filing, the company appears to wish to apply principles of the fiat banking system, which it considers “are specially designed and configured to safely store and protect consumer and merchant information and credentials.” The patent filing continues, “[...]The use of traditional payment networks and payment systems technologies in combination with blockchain currencies may provide consumers and merchants the benefits of the decentralized blockchain while still maintaining security of account information and provide a strong defense against fraud and theft.” (Link 35)