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Today's top reads

1. Craig Wright's crusade
2. Assange's arrest
3. Blockstack's (historic) token sale
4. The Pentagon's problem

This week's poll: Is the bear market over?
Click to answer: Yes, we've already bottomed out No, we haven't seen the worst yet

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Market update

1. Craig Wright's crusade

Craig Wright's not playing around anymore. In the last week, the Australian computer scientist who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto has expanded his campaign to serve legal threats to anyone who publicly denounces him as a fraud.

But besides all the cat avatars spreading around crypto Twitter, here's what you need to know:

• Legal letters are plentiful. Aside from the anonymous Twitter account @Hodlonaut, both podcast personality Peter McCormack and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin were allegedly served legal notices.
• Binance has delisted BSV. In an effort to thwart Wright's actions, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao threatened Wright through Twitter saying "Anymore of this sh!t, we delist [BSV]." Since then, Binance has delisted the asset and has halted all trading pairs for the Bitcoin Cash fork.
• Donations topped $27,000. To defend @Hodlonaut, the Bitcoin community banded together to build weareallhodlonaut.com and gathered over $27,000 for the anonymous cat's legal fund from more than 1000 contributors.
• Augur markets have joined the party. At least one threat has come out of Augur's decentralized prediction market that allows users to bet on whether or not Calvin Ayre, a supporter of Wright, will get egged within the next three months.

It's quite the circus honestly. Not only that, but it is detracting away from real development going on in the space - on both coins.

Here are some projects that might be worth a peek...

• Snake on the BSV blockchain. Have a minute? You can literally play the popular arcade game snake on the BSV blockchain through a normal browser. It might not be a "world changing" use case, but it showcases a new side of development that is serverless and 100% powered by the blockchain.
• Bitcoin rewards when you shop. Lolli is a Chrome extension that lets you earn up to +30% back in Bitcoin when you checkout at partner stores...and they already have 500+ top brands including Walmart, Best Buy, Macy's and more.

2. Assange's arrest

"Free speech money" is flowing. At least that's what WikiLeaks supporters are calling the some $20,000 in Bitcoin that came pouring in 24 hours after founder Julian Assange was arrested and carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Now, more than 400 transactions later, the WikiLeaks donation wallet address has gathered over $31,000 in Bitcoin - a figure that excludes donations made with ZCash or other traditional methods like cash and check.

But WikiLeaks could care less about "traditional methods." That's because back in 2011, payment processor PayPal joined forces with U.S. and Swiss-based banks to ban WikiLeaks from using its platform. Since that day, the international non-profit organization has collected over 4,000 Bitcoin, or in USD terms, over $20,000,000.

Those 4,000 Bitcoin didn't come easy though. After being banned by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and various banks in an action that glaringly violated Bitcoin's censorship-resistant priniciple, even San Francisco crypto exchange Coinbase dropped Assange's publication as a customer.

However, despite repeated attempts to shut off WikiLeaks' funding, this week's message is clear: No one can control Bitcoin...not even you Coinbase.

3. Blockstack's (historic) token sale

In what looks like a world first, Harvard's $37.1 billion endowment fund has purchased $12.65 million in Stack tokens (STX) from BlockStack's recent $50 million token sale.

The news came after a report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by BlockStack LLC outlined Harvard Management Company as a participating investor.

But haven't other university endowments invested in blockchain ventures? Yes. However, this time it's different because Harvard will be holding Stack tokens directly. Not investing in the startup's equity itself.

In the end though, the result is the same. Blockstack received $50 million in startup capital to build its privacy-focused internet regardless of the investment method.

The bottom line: Harvard's investment is a pivotal moment for token sales and the types of investors they can attract.

[OP-ED]

4. The Pentagon's problem

Have we learned nothing? Last week the Pentagon announced that it has selected two finalists, Amazon and Microsoft, for its two-year-long interview.

The prize: A $10 billion contract that gives one cloud computing provider complete control over the migration of U.S. military information into the cloud.

So why is this so wrong? Here's a couple reasons:

• One target. That's right. The Pentagon's search for one cloud computing provider is the first red flag. Following the $10 billion award, who do you think hackers are going to target first to unveil classified military information? Not to mention that if the winner is Amazon, the bounty will be twice as much since the company already manages the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cloud.
• It takes two to tango. The scale of the project is too large for one provider. Moreover, a single cloud platform "complicates the integration of legacy applications and walls off access to future innovations." That means America's military would miss out on any innovations that happen outside of its contract winner's realm.

Does this have anything to do with blockchain or crypto? Well, not really. It's actually the exact opposite of decentralization and that's why it grinds our gears.

But who cares, when in history has a single point of failure ever actually failed?

In all seriousness, maybe the U.S. should take some advice from China. At least they are using 3 of their nation's top cloud computing providers to carry such a heavy (and sensitive) weight.

5. You should also know

• A new study has found that a vast majority of endowment funds have made investments in crypto-related projects despite concerns of liquidity and volatility.
• Bitmex CEO Arthur Hayes has plans to open a crypto options trading platform in the medium term.
• South Korea's largest crypto exchange Bithumb posted a whopping $180 million loss in 2018 after a massive market collapse, high infrastructure investments, and ongoing labor costs.

6. No to ASIC

From last week's poll, 60% of respondents answered that they are anti-ASIC miner. Let's take a look at the biggest arguments on each side:

• Pro: ASIC miners are faster, more efficient, and more powerful than their GPU counterparts. This allows ASIC miners to mine coins at a lower energy cost and maintain a higher ongoing profit margin.
• Con: The initial cost of ASIC miners creates a high barrier to entry and forces all participants to upgrade or be left behind. In this regard, it's a race to the bottom as ASIC miners push the hash rate higher and higher of a coin as they compete.

To each their own. Many coins have chosen the ASIC-resistant path and others, like Bitcoin, have parted ways with the GPU. It's just a matter of the community.

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