CoinDesk Crypto

Crypto derivatives exchange Deribit has listed bitcoin options contracts that allow traders to bet on a potential price rally to $40,000 next year.

• Options at a $40,000 strike price expiring in March 2021 and June 2021 went live on Deribit early on Friday, as noted by research firm Skew.
• In effect, the new contracts will allow market participants to express a long-term bullish view on bitcoin.
• They will appeal to traders expecting a price rally to above $40,000 on or before the above expiries.
• Options are derivative contracts that give the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy (call) or sell (put) an underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date.
• The new contracts come at a time when bullish expectations are high due to rising institutional participation and mainstream adoption.
• So far today, Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by trading volume, hasn’t registered any activity for the $40,000 options.
• Bitcoin is currently trading at $13,290, representing an 85% gain on a year-to-date basis.

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

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Investors who say they lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in an alleged cryptocurrency fraud have had no luck persuading the police that there was in fact a crime committed.

According to an investigation by the Metro newspaper published Tuesday, a number of investors said they had invested in a cryptocurrency project called Lyfcoin on promises of hefty returns, but had not received their money back.

According to the allegations, investors were told to make staking commitments for five months to receive a 100% return, but as the period was ending they were told they’d have to extend to 12 or 24 months. Staking is a way of supporting some blockchain networks and earning rewards by committing funds for a period of time.

Related: Tether Froze $300K of Stablecoin Hacked After Victims Left Wallet Keys in Evernote

While it’s not alleged by the newspaper that Lyfcoin itself is a fraudulent scheme – though investors likened it to the multi-billion dollar OneCoin scam – investors who spoke to Metro.co.uk said they had been encouraged to invest by individuals claiming to be involved with the project.

The group says it lost around £100,000 ($130,000) in investing in the coin and estimates that up to £2.5 million ($3 million) could have been lost in the U.K. in total.

They allege that an individual named Sakhi Rezaie recruited people for the alleged pyramid scheme, showing presentations, holding Zoom seminars and inviting potential investors to his Birmingham office. Payments to stake the token were sent to Rezaie’s bank accounts and not to an official Lyfcoin account, they said.

Rezaie has claimed he was merely an investor in the crypto project, Metro said. However, the newspaper was shown WhatsApp chats and proof of payments to his account in the name of M.K. Brothers Ltd by an investor who lost £36,500 to the scheme.

Related: FBI Investigated Extortion Attempt Over Allegedly Negative Ripple Videos

The investors further allege that there were several “ringleaders” in the U.K.

After payments were made, Rezaie “ignored” queries from investors about selling their stakes, they claim.

The lyfcoin token had been touted as having a value of $1.60, but investors say they later found that it is not traded on most exchanges and in effect had a value of “zero.” They were not provided with a wallet or tokens, they said.

One investor made a report to U.K. reporting organization Action Fraud, which Metro said passed it on to the West Midlands Police. This spring, he signed a contract – seen by the Metro – with Rezaie promising to drop the case and apologize on social media in return for monthly payments of roughly £5,000 ($6,470). He claims to have received only one payment.

The investor said he managed to claw back £18,500 of the £36,000 he put in after warning members of a Lyfcoin WhatsApp group about the alleged fraud.

West Midlands Police dropped the case, however, saying none of the evidence provided took the case “further forward” and in a later statement to the Metro said “no offenses had been committed.” Fourteen investors are still pushing authorities to investigate the scheme.

Also read: OneCoin Investors Allege BNY Mellon Aided $4B Fraud

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As a financial adviser, you might feel pressured to know every answer to your clients’ portfolio needs. But you’ve got some burning questions about digital assets like bitcoin.

Now’s your chance to ask: On Purpose podcast host and Onramp Invest CEO Tyrone Ross invites the public to CoinDesk’s first podcast live taping party and AMA on Wednesday, Nov. 3. 

Attendees will be part of the experience and get to ask frank questions to Ross and his guests Adam Pokornicky, COO of Digital Asset Investment Management; Andy Edstrom, financial adviser and investor at WESCAP Group; and Sunayna Tuteja, head of digital assets at TD Ameritrade; as they raise the big questions for financial advisers in a jargon-free, transparent discussion.

Related: Mirage Recovery: What ‘Record’ GDP Growth Tells Us About the Economy

Pokornicky, Edstrom and Tuteja, who are also speaking at CoinDesk’s Bitcoin For Advisors event for registered investment advisers Nov. 9-10, are experts in the digital asset class in the context of how it fits in the realm of portfolio management, including understanding bitcoin’s value proposition in the macro context, preparing against its volatility and how to fold it into retirement accounts.

Podcast taping attendees will also be fast-tracked for approval to attend Bitcoin For Advisors after applying separately here.

Register for On Purpose’s live taping party:

By registering, you agree to receive marketing communications and possibly appear in the podcast episode, which will be published on the CoinDesk Podcast Network and YouTube. If you can’t see the embed, register here.

‘On Purpose’ Podcast Exclusive Live Taping

Related: Bitcoin News Roundup for Oct. 29, 2020

Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020 | 12 p.m. ET

Guests

Adam Pokornicky, COO of Digital Asset Investment Management

Andy Edstrom, financial adviser and investor at WESCAP Group

Sunayna Tuteja, head of digital assets at TD Ameritrade

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Remittance firm MoneyGram continues to receive millions in “market development fees” from its investor, blockchain payments firm Ripple.

• According to MoneyGram’s financial results for Q3 2020 posted Thursday, Ripple handed over $9.3 million over the period.
• After $0.4 million in “transaction and trading expenses,” MoneyGram saw a net benefit of $8.9 million.
• The payment is the latest since Ripple, which provides several payments products aimed at financial institutions, invested $50 million in the money sender in November 2019.
• In Q2 2020, MoneyGram received $15.1 million for the same stated purpose.
• Previously, MoneyGram has described the market development fees as compensation for providing liquidity to Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) network – its payments product using the XRP cryptocurrency to send money across borders.
• MoneyGram also received $16.6 million in Q1, and a total of $11.3 million in H2 2019.
• All in, Ripple has funded the firm to the tune of over $52 million for providing ODL liquidity.
• Back at the start of 2018, MoneyGram became one of the biggest firms to publicly say it was piloting XRP in its remittance services.

Also read: Ripple to Invest in Japan’s SBI Subsidiary MoneyTap

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Should users who interacted with Uniswap through a third-party interface be entitled to the free UNI tokens other users received on Sept. 17?

That’s the question at the center of a dispute currently taking place in Uniswap governance channels. The second-ever proposal to come before the Uniswap community would distribute airdropped UNI tokens to another 12,619 addresses, ahead of a second proposal set for nearly 27,000 addresses.

As of this writing, over 20.7 million UNI have been voted in favor of the proposal and more than 714,000 have been voted against. The vote closes on Oct. 31 at roughly 8:00 AM UTC.

Related: Harvest Finance Boosts Bounty to $1M for Information Leading to Return of Exploited Funds

While the vote may look extremely lopsided at the moment, the proposal will fail if less than 40 million UNI vote, establishing a quorum. The key obstacle to passage is probably reaching that threshold. 

The decision is widely interesting enough to the crypto community that it’s inspired a betting market on Polymarket, which currently leans toward the pitch for further UNI distributions failing.

If both proposals succeed, however, an additional 15,679,200 UNI would be distributed from the existing treasury, worth approximately $40.6 million, at the current price of $2.59 per UNI. Of that, 5,047,600 UNI would be redistributed from the treasury in phase one.

400 UNI, 40,000 more times

When the company behind Ethereum’s leading automated market maker, Uniswap, announced its governance token, UNI, in September, it surprised everyone by giving away 400 UNI to all wallets that had ever even used the decentralized application. Directly, that is.

Related: ‘Flash Loans’ Have Made Their Way to Manipulating Protocol Elections

At the time, each airdrop was worth well over $1,000.

Read more: Uniswap’s Distribution Is Built on Something That Can’t Be Forked: Actual Users

As a governance token, each UNI can be used to vote on decisions about changes to the dapp and also on expenditures from the Uniswap treasury, which has a supply of 430 million UNI or 43% of the initial supply.

The proposal under consideration now, and the one that will follow, concerns giving the airdrop to people who missed out on the gravy train through a technicality.

These individuals interacted with Uniswap using third-party software that enabled the transaction, touching Uniswap by way of a proxy contract. That made each of their wallets invisible to Uniswap itself. As the proponents of the proposal have argued: If decentralized finance (DeFi) is about money legos, what message does it send if only users of the base lego get the free crypto?

The current proposal centers on users who interacted with Uniswap via 10 different dapps – the largest being MyEtherWallet (MEW), Argent and Dharma, in that order.

Phase two involves users who interacted with Uniswap via decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregators. Five DEX aggregators represent 26,598 accounts, with the largest by far on the Kyber Network.

Lots of talk

The idea of a retroactive airdrop was raised almost as soon as UNI was announced by Nadav Hollander, CEO of DeFi portal Dharma. Hollander has said that as soon as people started receiving UNI, Dharma users began saying they were missing out.

“Ultimately the crux of the argument we are making is that the status quo has sort of negatively punished developers who took risks building on top of Uniswap,” Nadav Hollarnder of Dharma said during a group discussion hosted by Chris Blec, on his YouTube show, Thought Bubble.

In a Twitter thread, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams acknowledged the team was aware that some users might feel left out. That’s why Uniswap decided to leave future decisions about further distributions to UNI holders, Adams said, in part because it is hard to distinguish actual users from the many bots who also use Uniswap at a remove.

Additionally, there’s no way to know how many users of the 15 applications listed on the governance proposals may have already received the airdrop because of interacting with Uniswap directly through another wallet.

SpankChain CEO and MolochDAO summoner Ameen Soleimani wrote on the Uniswap forum that the proposal illustrates what a dangerous time-suck governance disputes can become.

“The outcome is also fairly zero-sum,” Soleimani wrote, adding: 

“1) it doesn’t create any wealth for UNI holders, it 2) takes UNI from the treasury that could be spent on other things and 3) gives it to folks who will likely sell it, probably having a small negative price impact.”

The debate has caused an emerging class of protocol politicians to weigh in on the matter.”I would like to see this gigantic stimulus package-like situation, where we are going to fund 15 or 20 different projects, to be reframed like a development grant on an individual basis,” one such blockchain populist, Hiturunk, leader of the Penguin Party, said during the call with Hollander.

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Cryptocurrency deposit withdrawals are still suspended at the OKEx exchange following a founder’s recent arrest, but officials with the Malta-based company are moving ahead with other matters, including planning around an upcoming hard fork on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

• The BCH hard fork expected Nov. 15 is a result of a blockchain update proposal in August from a group known as Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH ABC), led by Amaury Sechet.
• Among other changes, Sechet and his team plan to introduce a new “Coinbase Rule,” which requires 8% of mined BCH to be redistributed to Bitcoin ABC as a means of financing protocol development.
• This change is, however, opposed by Roger Ver, executive chairman of mining pool Bitcoin.com and the Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN).
• “Diverting part of the #BitcoinCash block reward to pay a single development team is a Soviet style central planner’s dream come true,” Ver wrote in a tweet. “Please stop.”
• OKEx said Oct. 28 in a post on its website that in the event of a successful fork, holders of BCH will receive two new assets, BCH ABC and BCHN.
• “After the fork is completed, we will refer to the trading prices of the forked currency pairs on major exchanges and select the chain with the higher price to inherit the BCH name. The tokens of the other chain will be airdropped to users’ funding accounts at a 1:1 ratio.”
• Futures and perpetual swaps on BCH will “follow one of the forks,” according to the document. 
• “In principle, the underlying asset of the post-fork contracts will be the more expensive post-fork asset, determined by the post-fork spot market on various major crypto exchanges,” it added.
• As of press time, of the last 1,000 blocks mined on Bitcoin Cash, about 70% have signaled support for BCHN, and only 0.2% for Bitcoin ABC, according to data from Coin Dance.
• OKEx CEO Jay Hao told CoinDesk in a Telegram message that the two groups “hold very different ideas about the proposed miner tax.”
• “OKEx understands that in the blockchain space, core developers have differences of opinion over the best way to fund development, growth, continued innovation, and future direction,” Hao said. “Of course, it’s always preferable when an agreement can be reached and a change implemented via a soft fork.”
• All withdrawal activities on OKEx remain suspended after the exchange said earlier this month that a holder of a private key needed to authorize withdrawals had been out of touch while “cooperating with a public security bureau in investigations.”
• The Chinese news source Caixin reported that an OKEx founder, Mingxing “Star” Xu, had been taken into police custody.

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Bitcoin’s price is turning bullish as ether options traders accumulate half a million of ETH options for December expiration.

• Bitcoin trading around $13,519 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 2.6% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $13,105-$13,649
• BTC above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.

The price of bitcoin moved upward Thursday, going as high as $13,649, according to CoinDesk 20 data, and settling around $13,519 as of press time. 

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

Related: Bitcoin Transaction Fees Rise to 28-Month High as Hashrate Drops Amid Price Rally

Often when other asset classes like stocks sell off, as they did on Wednesday, bitcoin drops. “It would not be the first time bitcoin’s price action falls in line with traditional markets as a general sell-off occurs,” said John Willock, CEO of Tritium. “However, it is also totally reasonable for BTC to experience this level of pullback.” 

Yet, on Thursday equities fared better, particularly in the United States.

• The Nikkei 225 in Asia ended the day slipping 0.37% on worries about further global coronavirus lockdowns.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe closed flat, in the red 0.02% as the U.K. government faces pressure to follow France and Germany and enact coronavirus restrictions.
• In the United States the S&P 500 ended the trading day up 1.7% as positive economic data and earnings reports boosted the index.

Read More: FTX Launches Bitcoin Pairs for Top Stocks Like Amazon, Apple and Tesla

Constantin Kogan, a partner at crypto fund-of-funds BitBull Capital, sees no reason why the world’s oldest cryptocurrency can’t go higher in the near term. “Bitcoin is heading for $13,800 resistance and 2019 all-time highs,” Kogan told CoinDesk. “It might break $13,800.”

Related: The Global Macro Case for FA Allocations to Bitcoin With Kevin Kelly

Taking a look at the bitcoin futures market, open interest has picked up, going to levels not seen since August. 

“We are almost at new highs for open interest for all BTC futures – $5.4 billion right now,” noted Jason Lau, chief operating officer for San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin. “With many new positions being opened, it suggests the market is still bullish at these prices,” Lau added.

“That said, there are a considerable amount of order book ‘asks’ in the $14,000 region for bitcoin,” Lau said. “Bitcoin should close above that level on a weekly or monthly basis to confirm it is acting as support.”

Ether options in December pile up

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether was up Wednesday trading around $389 and climbing 1.1% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

The amount of open interest on ether options for December expiration hit 500,000 ETH, worth $195,500,00 as of press time, as traders make bets on the dynamics of the Ethereum network.

Vishal Shah, an options trader and founder of derivatives exchange Alpha5, noted that a lot of ether options bets seem bearish. “It looks like there’s some strong ETH put buying going on into the year end mainly around the mid-low $200s,” he said. Indeed, data aggregator Genesis Volatility shows strikes amassing around the $200-$280 price points.

“I think people are buying the downside for some reason,” Shah added. “It definitely throws water on the narrative that Ethereum 2.0 would create a supply shock in Ethereum 1.0 due to the initial lock-up – perhaps it is something else, but it’s definitely hard to glean any bullish implications.”

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mixed, mostly red Thursday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• ethereum classic
• 0x

Notable losers:

• orchid
• tezos
• stellar

Read More: The Graph Raises $12M in GRT Token Sale; Teases Mainnet Launch 

Commodities:

• Oil was down 2.8%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $36.31.
• Gold was in the red 0.34% and at $1,869 as of press time.

Treasurys:

• U.S. Treasury bond yields climbed Thursday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were up most on the 10-year, jumping to 0.830 and in the green 7.3%.

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Cryptocurrency trading colossus Binance Holdings Limited created a corporate plan for profiting from the U.S. market while avoiding the country’s regulatory scrutiny, Forbes reported Thursday, citing a 2018 document it obtained.

• The leaked presentation outlines a “Tai Chi entity” that would funnel revenue to Binance through a web of corporations without exposing its parent to the financial regulator’s microscope, according to the Forbes article, which included a screenshot of a slide but not the entire deck.
• When asked for comment, a Binance spokesperson directed CoinDesk to tweets by exchange chief Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. He called Forbes’ reporting bunk and asserted that Binance follows all local laws, including those in the U.S. “Anyone can produce a ‘strategy document’, but it does not mean Binance follows them,” said CZ, adding that the slide deck was produced by a third party, not his company.
• U.S. affiliate Binance.US operates under a corporate structure similar to the “Tai chi” network, according to Forbes. Binance.US chief executive Catherine Cooley has long refused to discuss Binance.US’s ownership.
• Binance in June 2019 unveiled plans to launch a U.S. exchange registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department. The exchange updated its terms of service the following day to bar U.S. users from accessing Binance’s global hub.
• Forbes said the Tai Chi document calls for “strategic” virtual private network (VPN) usage to sidestep the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York State Department of Financial Services and warns Binance employees against working in the U.S. to mitigate “enforcement risks.” Forbes additionally claims the document contains a “detailed strategy for distracting” U.S. regulators.
• Binance used to be based in Malta, but its headquarters location has been something of a mystery for most of this year. CZ has been cagey on the matter in public appearances.

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Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Harvest Finance has upped its bounty from $100,000 to $1 million for information leading to the return of $24 million in siphoned funds taken in an exploit Monday.

According to the Harvest Finance Twitter and Discord account, the anonymous Harvest Finance team is offering the bounty for “tracking down” the attacker and returning the funds.

A $50 million flash loan from Uniswap was used Monday on Harvest Finance to sway the price of USDC and USDT pools. Harvest Finance’s pricing feeds – based on Curve Finances stablecoin pools in this case – were manipulated by the flash loan leading to traders suffering large amounts of “impermanent loss” (where token prices change momentarily against investors).

Related: ‘Flash Loans’ Have Made Their Way to Manipulating Protocol Elections

The exploit led to the project’s total value under lock (TVL) dropping 70% from $1 billion to $296 million, according to DeFi Pulse.

Read more: Harvest Finance: $24M Attack Triggers $570M ‘Bank Run’ in Latest DeFi Exploit

The Harvest Finance team implied it knew the identity of the attacker who is “well-known in the crypto community” and who left “a significant amount of personally identifiable information,” according to the project’s Discord.
Harvest Finance did not return questions for comment.

The anonymous developer team is currently administering returning $2.5 million in stablecoins given back to the developer contract. The team is also weighing releasing an IOU reserve pool that extracts value from the protocol to reimburse haircut traders, according to announcements in the project’s Discord channel.

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Flash loans can be used for more than just siphoning funds out of poorly put-together decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.

That’s one lesson investors can learn from Israel-based startup BProtocol’s manipulation of flash loans to sway election results on DeFi legacy project MakerDAO earlier this week.

According to the MakerDAO community forum, on October 26, BProtocol borrowed 13,000 MKR tokens worth some $7 million through a flash loan from derivatives platform dYdX swapped for MKR on lending platform Aave. Voting with the flash-loaned MKR tokens enabled BProtocol to speed up desired election results for its project built on MakerDAO.

Related: All-In on DeFi: Why the Days of Centralized Exchanges Are Numbered

The “attack” was less an attack than yet another unexpected consequence of flash loans, a crypto-first product that made its debut in early 2020 with DeFi platform Aave.

Read more: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the DeFi ‘Flash Loan’ Attack

Flash loans enable an in-the-know trader to amass mad leverage behind a trade by providing a temporary loan that must execute and settle in one block space. Here – and perhaps for the first time – BProtocol borrowed millions of MKR tokens to sway a protocol election and hand back the money in one block.

Other DeFi degens have used flash loans to perform what is commonly known as an oracle attack. In these situations a project’s funds are at risk due to poor project infrastructure – typically, shoddy pricing feeds. This happened last Sunday with $1 billion protocol Harvest Finance, which had prices for its stablecoin pools swayed by a flash loan, resulting in a haircut for Harvest traders.

Flash votes

The ability to use flash loans to exploit governance events is fairly new, however. Holders of MakerDAO’s governance token typically decide how the platform changes. 

Related: Huobi Beefs Up Venture Arm With Former DragonFly Partner Leading DeFi Investments

But here BProtocol showed that if there are enough MKR tokens up for borrowing on DeFi markets, a flash loan can be used by just about anyone to sway Maker’s election results. All someone needs to do is wait to be last in line at the ballot and drop in the borrowed tokens, BProtocol CEO Eitan Katchka said in a WhatsApp call.

Katchka added he thinks the Maker Foundation was aware of the unlocked door BProtocol went through with its flash loan, and that the outcome of the vote would have likely been the same.

He said the team had been waiting extra days to be whitelisted for using MakerDAO’s pricing oracles and had become “curious” after months of studying Maker’s infrastructure to see if the flash loan was possible. So they decided to play a bit.

Read more: MakerDAO’s Embrace of Centralized Stablecoins Offers Risks and Rewards

Now MakerDAO community members and the Maker Foundation are considering options for “disincentivizing large MKR Holders from providing MKR Liquidity on Lending Platforms and AMM Platforms” until MakerDAO can blacklist votes using flash loans, according to the MakerDAO forum. 

In lieu of comment, the Maker Foundation pointed CoinDesk to a community forum discussion from October 6 on limiting the use of flash loans for governance procedures.

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Decentralized music app Audius announced Thursday it will migrate its content management system over to Solana’s high-speed blockchain from an Ethereum sidechain operated by the POA Network that runs on a set of trusted validators.

Audius occupies a similar space to popular music players like Pandora or Spotify, but it allows artists to set their own terms. It also lets other developers make use of its underlying content. Audius reports strong recent growth in users, currently boasting 800,000 active users and over 150,000 tracks available for streaming.  

Due to high gas fees and slow block times on Ethereum, it appears to be porting season in the dapp space. We previously reported on Terra, Kin and USDC moving onto Solana. Similarly, the automated market maker and pooled assets manager Balancer has been incentivizing efforts to help it offer services on other networks, such as Oasis and NEAR. 

Related: The Graph Raises $12M in GRT Token Sale; Teases Mainnet Launch in 30-60 Days

In an announcement shared with CoinDesk in advance, the Audius team wrote:

“Given our need to utilize a high-performance blockchain today, Solana’s growing set of 182 validators (as of this writing) combined with a battle-tested architecture gives our community the confidence that Audius’s catalog can scale at ease, a crucial component of our path to mainstream adoption.”

Notably, when Kin announced its move to Solana in June, it also announced an incentive arrangement with Solana that would unlock grants of SOL tokens for each million users Kin brought in over a 24-month period.

Audius CEO Roneil Rumburg declined to disclose the exact arrangement with Solana, stating that it was primarily a technical consideration. However, he wrote to CoinDesk in an email, “There’s an agreement between the two teams that involves technical support, deliverables for support, and incentives. … Solana will help Audius have the best user experience possible.”

Related: Ocean v3 Brings Wave of Data Monetization Tools to Ethereum

Audius node operators and artists use the AUDIO token to stake, allowing for different functions on the network. Staking and governance functionality will remain on Ethereum.

However, the higher-throughput needs required by actually hosting, finding and streaming music will port over to Solana, which boasts extremely low transaction fees and millisecond block times. Audius expects the migration to happen in three phases, wrapping up in the second quarter of 2021. 

The Audius app is available on iOS and Android app stores and on the web. The company behind the platform has raised $9.8 million to date, according to Rumburg, over two rounds. The first in 2018 was led by General Catalyst and Lightspeed; the second in 2020 was led by Multicoin and Blockchange.

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The executive director of Stanford’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative, Lawrence Rufrano, is facing federal wire fraud charges following a disability benefits fraud investigation by his former employer, the Federal Reserve.

• Prosecutors allege Rufrano hid employment at two law firms, three companies and a university while also collecting long-term disability benefits from the Federal Reserve System for five years after departing due to a “purported” mental illness.
• CoinDesk found at least two of Rufrano’s jobs intersected with cryptocurrency and the blockchain ecosystem. He directed Stanford’s digital currency group and also advised Factom, a now-defunct protocol development firm. Rufrano is also listed as an adviser to Christopher Giancarlo’s Digital Dollar Project.
• The Stanford Future of Digital Currency Initiative researches “all forms” of digital currency with the aim of standardizing their technicals and engaging government stakeholders, according to its current website. It boasts Ripple and IBM as corporate sponsors. Rufrano last appears as its executive director in an Oct. 25 cached version of the website.
• Rufrano also led the Stanford School of Engineering’s Advanced Financial Technologies Lab. He managed that AI-focused program’s relationships with banks and fund managers, according to the criminal complaint.
• Stanford did not immediately return questions regarding its ties to Rufrano.
• An Oct. 21 criminal complaint suggests Rufrano also assisted an unnamed law firm on matters related to blockchain and initial coin offerings. He received over $18,000 a month for advising that firm on fintech, the complaint said.
• Rufrano was released Wednesday on a $25,000 bond.

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The cost of doing transactions on bitcoin is surging while the network suffers its worst congestion in nearly three years.

As of Wednesday, the mean fee per transaction, or the average transaction cost, was 0.00086764 BTC, the highest since June 2018, according to data source Glassnode. In dollar terms, the average transaction fee was $11.66. 

Average fees in bitcoin terms have increased by 573% in the past 12 days alongside the cryptocurrency’s price rally from $11,200 to $13,800.  

Related: The Global Macro Case for FA Allocations to Bitcoin With Kevin Kelly

“Bitcoin mempool [memory pool] is back in focus in the wake of rising transaction volumes, causing congestion in the network and consequently driving fees higher,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based prime brokerage Bequant, told CoinDesk. 

Mempool is the collection of unconfirmed transactions. When bitcoin transactions are executed, they are first sent to the mempool, where they wait for approval by miners. Bitcoin miners can process only 1 megabyte (MB) worth of transactions per block mined roughly every 10 minutes. 

When the blockchain experiences a rise in traffic, it causes delays and a backlog of transactions. As demand outstrips supply, miners increase their revenue by prioritizing transactions with higher fees. That, in turn, forces other users to offer higher fees to avoid long waiting times. 

Network congestion is usually seen during price rallies. As noted earlier, bitcoin has chalked out a significant rise over the past 12 days. During that time frame, network congestion, as measured by the total number of unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, worsened by 1,800%.

Related: First Mover: Bitcoin Falls as COVID-19 Surges, ECB’s Lagarde Steps Up, US GDP Hits 33%

As of Tuesday, there were 121,340 unconfirmed transactions in the mempool with a total block size of 66.8 MB. According to data source blockchain.com, that’s the highest level since the bull market frenzy of December 2018.

Hashrate drop contributes to congestion

The recent slide in bitcoin’s hashrate looks to have played a big role in causing network congestion along with a general price-driven pickup in activity. In other words, the mining power dedicated to approving transactions and mining blocks has gone down amid the price rally, boosting waiting times and network congestion. 

The seven-day moving average of bitcoin’s hashrate has declined from 146 exahashes per second (EH/s) to 120 EH/s.

In other words, the mining power available to approving transactions and mining blocks has gone down amid the price rally, boosting waiting times and network congestion.

With the end of the rainy season in China’s Sichuan province, a mining hub, some miners may be shifting to other areas with cheap hydroelectricity sources, causing a drop in the hashrate.

Related Stories

• Bitcoin’s Options Market Sees Just 6% Chance of $20K Before Year’s End
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FTX is now offering a tokenized way to trade fractions of stocks. Coinbase predicts its consumer-directed debit card to hit shelves next year. Caitlin Long’s Avanti bank is in line to become the second “crypto bank.”

Top shelf

Fractional offering
You can now trade high-demand stocks like Tesla, Apple and Amazon, represented by tokens, on the FTX derivatives exchange. Through its fractional stocks offering, 12 equity and cryptocurrency pairs will be offered, allowing users to trade tokenized fractions of stocks (seemingly up to half a stock at a time) against bitcoin and stablecoins, CoinDesk’s Sebastian Sinclair reports. The product is conducted in partnership with capital markets solutions provider Digital Assets AG and investment firm CM Equity. FTX calls it a “first of its kind” product.

Coinbase card
Coinbase’s debit card is coming to U.S. consumers sometime next year. Active for nearly a year in the U.K. and European Union, the card will become available in all U.S. states except Hawaii. Any cryptocurrencies that Coinbase supports in the U.S. (and that users hold in their accounts) can be spent through the debit card – with rewards paid in lumens or bitcoin. The card is issued by South Dakota-based MetaBank and powered by payments platform Marqeta, though users will manage it directly through their Coinbase accounts, according to CoinDesk banking whisperer Nathan DiCamillo.

Related: First Mover: Bitcoin Falls as COVID-19 Surges, ECB’s Lagarde Steps Up, US GDP Hits 33%

Avast ye? No, avanti!
Speaking of banks: Blockchain pioneer Caitlin Long is now the CEO of her own special purpose depository institution (SPDI) in Wyoming. Avanti Financial’s banking charter was approved unanimously by the Wyoming State Banking Board on Wednesday, becoming the second newly chartered bank in the state in 2020. Kraken Financial earned approval last month, beating Long – who helped design the state’s rules – to the draw. Avanti is now in the process of raising fresh capital, adding to a $5 million angel round, before it can be granted a certificate of authority to operate, DiCamillo said.

Token sale
The Graph, a data-indexing protocol used by many popular decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, has raised $12 million in a public sale of its native GRT token, CoinDesk’s Zack Seward reports. With approximately 4,500 buyers, the sale used in-house technology to distribute some 400 million GRT tokens. “What we’re excited about with the sale is getting GRT tokens in the hands of indexers, curators and delegators that are going to be participating in the decentralized network,” The Graph co-founder Yaniv Tal said. The firm previously raised $5 million in a private token sale involving Coinbase Ventures and a $2.5 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital.

Four-digit growth
Publicly traded digital-asset brokerage Voyager Digital saw revenue increase 1,159% (from $87,318 to $1.1 million) in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2020. CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole also reports, customer assets jumped by 1,959% to $35 million. Stephen Ehrlich, Voyager CEO, said increasing adoption of digital assets has helped the company extend its growth momentum. Up next? Revenue is expected to have risen to $2 million in the July-September period while the firm looks to obtain a virtual currency license, or “BitLicense,” this year.

Quick bites

• The chief of Canada’s central bank has said its national “digital dollar” initiative is progressing past the experimental phase. (CoinDesk)
• Investors are rattled by the latest COVID-19 prognostications, with bitcoin’s price rally possibly on pause. (First Mover/CoinDesk)
• New York’s top financial regulator wants firms, including crypto miners, to look closer at climate change risks. “DFS is developing a strategy for integrating climate-related risks into its supervisory mandate,” a new note reads. (CoinDesk)
• An Algorand-based micro equity exchange has launched a token tracking top tech stocks including Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix and Google. (Modern Consensus)
• A group used a flash loan attack to ensure its proposed governance vote on the Maker protocol went through. Maker is now asking for MKR governance token holders not to put them on trading platforms to mitigate the possibility of a similar attack. (Decrypt)

Market intel

Bloody chance 
Traders are betting bitcoin won’t cross its 2017 high-water mark of $20,000 by year’s end. According to data source Skew, there’s a 6% probability of bitcoin trading above the historical 2017 all-time high. “Bitcoin’s price has rallied from $3,867 to $13,800 over the past 7½ months. However, while prices have risen by over 250%, the chances of bitcoin reaching record highs by the end of the year have seen what appears to be a marginal rise from 4% to 6%. The probability peaked at 8% in July,” CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole reports. 

At stake

Related: The Graph Raises $12M in GRT Token Sale; Teases Mainnet Launch in 30-60 Days

Tokens rising (Happy Halloween)
Following the pop of initial coin offering bubble that began in 2017 and tapered off in 2018, many looked at token offerings skeptically. Although a more democratic way to raise funds, this novel blockchain-based fundraising mechanism ran into a host of problems: many were potentially unregistered securities sales for projects not-yet built and unlikely to gain traction.

In 2018, Satis Group released a report detailing that approximately 78% of ICOs were Identified Scams, or projects that “did not have/had no intention of fulfilling project development duties with the funds, and/or was deemed by the community (message boards, website or other online information) to be a scam.”

A similar overview from Boston College largely backed up these claims.

That’s why in 2020 it’s surprising to see token sales are on the up and up, although with a few notable changes. This past summer, Leigh Cuen reported that “token sales are back.”

“Unlike 2017, today the norm is for token sales to be conducted through an exchange, whether it’s CoinList, Gate.io or Binance,” she wrote. Additionally, projects now lean into controlled distribution. Unlike the original ETH sale in 2015, and the 2017 copycats that followed, many token founders now prefer ongoing sales with controlled distribution – meaning geofencing regions (like the U.S.) where investments may prove to be an issue.

Halfway through the past year Ava Labs’s Avalanche blockchain raised roughly $42 million in a public token sale. Polkadot, one of the largest blockchains, raised $43 million in a private sale days later. And NEAR, another layer 1, brought in $30 million. Then there’s Dapper Labs, which closed an $18 million token sale in early October

Notably, all these projects had already raised significant venture funding, often conducting a private sale, before turning around to publicly list their tokens on a gated platform that manages know-your-customer information and compliance.

The Graph is the latest project to join the trend of high-value public token sales to close this year. Following a similar set of stringent rules and capital caps, The Graph is different in choosing to use in-house technologies – rather than the suite of hosting platforms.

The verdicts out on what, if anything, will buck the trend. But for now, it’s safe to say, token sales are back.

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Users of cryptocurrency custody platform Casa can now purchase bitcoin on the platform using their bank accounts. 

The platform announced on Thursday it is rolling out the service for its U.S. customers, and the bought BTC would be directly deposited into a user’s wallet. Casa said users can buy a maximum of $20,000 worth of bitcoin per month using this service, with a fee of 0.99% on every purchase.

• According to Casa CEO Nick Neuman, the BTC is bought via partner platform Wyre. He said that because all BTC purchased with Casa is being sent on-chain directly to users’ wallets, every purchase also includes a mining fee. 
• A mining fee is also levied by crypto exchanges, generally at the point when users transfer their digital assets to their own wallets. 

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Alex Pack, a former managing partner at crypto investment firm Dragonfly Capital, has joined Huobi Group as a corporate investment advisor to help the firm behind the world’s top centralized exchange by derivatives trading volumes to invest in decentralized finance, of DeFi.

“When I left DragonFly earlier this year, Huobi was also ramping up its internationalization efforts and its corporate investment practice,” Pack told CoinDesk in an interview. “I thought Huobi has the potential to be one of the most impactful companies in crypto. When I was approached by my old friends there to help them, I thought it was a no-brainer.”

Pack’s new role at Huobi will largely focus on expanding Huobi’s stakes in DeFi projects in Western countries, after Huobi’s newly launched venture investment arm began pouring money into DeFi projects in Asia. He told CoinDesk he and Huobi are willing to spend up to “tens of millions of dollars” funds to support new DeFi projects.

Related: All-In on DeFi: Why the Days of Centralized Exchanges Are Numbered

In his previous role at DragonFly, Pack was an early-stage investor of many significant crypto projects including DeFi protocols MakerDAO and Compound Finance. He left the crypto investment firm in April, citing “a difference in vision on the direction of the firm,” though he stayed on as a part-time venture partner. 

Huobi, along with other centralized crypto exchange giants, is rushing to reposition itself as an integral part of the exploding DeFi sector. Those semi-decentralized, blockchain-based lending and trading platforms have accumulated more than $10 billion in total value locked, most of which has occurred since the start of the second half of 2020.

Unlike Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volumes, which has built a public decentralized blockchain to help support DeFi projects, the company behind the Huobi exchange has been focused more on incubating DeFi projects by funding, research and leveraging its established user base.

“Today there are two things: ‘CeFi’ [centralized finance] and ‘DeFi,’ in crypto parlance,” Pack said. “In the next 10 years, I think they will merge … and you will see companies that have wallets – Huobi already has a large wallet – do decentralized exchanges and decentralized versions of everything they offer. And you will see decentralized finance grow and mirror many of the aspects of centralized finance exchanges as well.”

Related: The Graph Raises $12M in GRT Token Sale; Teases Mainnet Launch in 30-60 Days

“Huobi is one of the largest entities so it is in a perfect position to help this merging happen,” he added.

While current DeFi projects are still mostly centered around lending protocols and stablecoins, Pack said the particular type of DeFi projects he will initially look at are those that build synthetic assets on blockchains.

“The most interesting thing next that we are going to see are things in particular like synthetic assets, the ability to make a derivative or a synthetic version of anything: a stock, a bond, an entire fixed income space,” Pack said, “and then more products that support security, like insurance products, that makes it more trustworthy to enter into DeFi.”

Pack went quiet after he left Dragonfly Capital earlier this year. According to Pack, Huobi’s strong presence in Asia is also part of the reason why he decided to join.

“The most users and the most business model information and infrastructures are in Asia,” he said. “And yet, by far, the most interesting technology and the new frontier things are happening in the West. And I’ve always tried to be a bridge between those two areas.”

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Strapped for international currencies, Iran is turning to cryptocurrency to allow imports to continue to flow.

• Citing an article from The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Iran Daily reported earlier this week the country’s cabinet has amended recent legislation on digital assets to allow cryptocurrency to be used for import funding by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI).
• The amendment had been jointly proposed by the CBI and the cabinet previously.
• The change means legally mined cryptocurrency in Iran can only be exchanged if used to fund imports from other nations.
• Miners will supply the cryptocurrency directly to the CBI within an authorized limit, per IRNA’s report.
• This would be based on how much subsidized energy a miner uses, as well as instructions to be published by the Ministry of Energy.
• Cryptocurrency has become increasingly important in Iran as the nation suffers from economic woes brought by U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic.
• Mining was legalized last year, however the industry is heavily regulated by the government making it a tough jurisdiction in which to operatate.
• Iran Daily suggested that using bitcoin for import payments could help the nation avoid sanctions that impose limits on Iran’s access to the dollar.

Also read: Iran Is Ripe for Bitcoin Adoption, Even as Government Clamps Down on Mining

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• First Mover: Bitcoin Falls as COVID-19 Surges, ECB’s Lagarde Steps Up, US GDP Hits 33%
• FTX Launches Bitcoin Pairs for Top Stocks Like Amazon, Apple and Tesla
• The ‘Everything Crash’ Is Coming? Markets Go Risk-Off as European Stocks See Worst Day in 5 Months

New York state’s financial regulator is urging firms to pay closer attention to financial risks associated with climate change.

In a letter sent to all regulated entities on Thursday, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) said that it expects firms, including virtual currency businesses, to start assessing such risks and develop possible approaches to mitigate them. The letter follows similar guidelines issued by the NYDFS for the state’s insurance providers in September. 

Noting that each rise of one degree celsius in global temperatures leads to damages worth 1.2% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), the letter said reduced economic output in communities hit harder by climate change could also lead to an increase in default rates, reduced lending activity, devalued assets and losses. It added that flood risk could impact regional and community banks in particular. 

Related: What It Means if Companies Like Twitter Are ‘Systemically Important’ to Financial Regulators

Addressing virtual currency businesses, the letter stated that studies suggest the environmental impact of mining cryptocurrencies like bitcoin can be substantial. “The energy cost for mining virtual currencies is sizable compared to the value of the virtual currencies,” said the letter. 

While the letter acknowledged the exact energy consumption of bitcoin mining also depends on the geography, it added that “virtual currency firms should consider increasing transparency of the location and equipment used in bitcoin mining,” in order to add clarity about the environmental impact.  

A similar concern regarding the environmental impact of crypto mining was also raised by Heath Tarbert, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), during an interview at CoinDesk’s invest:ethereum economy event. “There are issues with mining, of course, so number one [is] environmental issues,” he said, speaking about Ethereum’s move to a proof-of-stake system and how that could help make Ethereum more environmentally friendly. 

Read More: The Last Word on Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption

Related: PayPal Embraces Crypto, Igniting Market as Mainstream Adoption Inches Closer

While there are pressing concerns about bitcoin’s energy consumption, it is also important to note that the environmental impact also depends on how that energy was produced. For example, China’s Sichuan region is a bitcoin mining hub but is also plush with supply of hydroelectric power. 

According to the letter, the NYDFS expects all regulated virtual currency businesses to conduct an assessment of climate change associated risks which could impact them directly or indirectly. 

The letter said organizations like banks, mortgage servicers, etc. should also designate a board member, a committee of the board, as well as a senior management function, responsible for the assessment and management of financial risks from climate change. 

Adding that the NYDFS understands climate change is likely to affect organizations differently, the regulator’s letter said each organization should take a “proportionate approach” that reflects its exposure to climate change associated financial risks. 

“DFS is developing a strategy for integrating climate-related risks into its supervisory mandate,” the letter said, indicating that mitigating climate change-associated risks is likely to stay on the regulator’s radar. 

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Canada-based blockchain infrastructure provider Figment has completed another multi-million dollar funding round.

• Announced Thursday, the startup said it raised $2.5 million in an additional funding round led by Bonfire Ventures with participation from FJ Labs, XDL Capital Group and BKCM, among others.
• “This new round of capital will enable Figment to continue to invest in our best-in-class blockchain staking, governance and developer tools,” Figment’s CEO Lorien Gabel said in a statement.
• The funding follows a pre-seed round of $1 million in 2018 and a seed round in 2019 bringing in $1.5 million, also with participation from Bonfire, XDL and FJ Labs.
• Gabel said the company believes in an internet where people control and profit from their own data, rather than “large data monopolies and governments” – an objective Figment is working to achieve.
• The company provides infrastructure and tools for networks such as Cosmos, Polkadot, Celo and Skale, as well as offering what it calls “institutional grade” staking services on over 30 blockchains.

See also: Predictions Platform Polymarket Raises $4M From Polychain, Naval Ravikant and More

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Bitcoin was lower for a second day, even as traditional markets showed signs of stabilization following Wednesday’s sell-off. 

Cryptocurrency analysts looked for solace in bitcoin‘s October-to-date return, still at an impressive 22%, during a month when the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. stocks has declined by 2.7%.

“The sell-off in equities and gold due to rising COVID infections and restrictive lockdowns had only a limited impact on the digital asset,” Lennard Neo, head of research for the cryptocurrency-focused firm Stack Funds, wrote Thursday in a report. 

Related: Iran Amends Law to Allow Imports to Be Funded With Cryptocurrency

In traditional markets, European stocks rose as traders awaited a decision from the European Central Bank, headed by President Christine Lagarde, on whether further monetary support is needed amid a resurgence in coronavirus cases. 

U.S. equity futures pointed toward a higher open, as a key government report showed that the world’s largest economy grew at a 33% pace in the third quarter – a somewhat context-less data point that’s likely to do little beyond serving as an easy talking point for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. 

Market moves

Just as bitcoin bulls were starting to salivate over the cryptocurrency’s powerful rally over the past week toward $14,000, a sell-off in traditional markets has dragged prices back down.

Investors globally were rattled by reports of a resurgence in coronavirus cases. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the country would implement tough new business restrictions, and French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to impose a national lockdown. 

Related: The Global Macro Case for FA Allocations to Bitcoin With Kevin Kelly

Such restrictions could crimp economic growth, theoretically a deflationary development, which could reduce demand for bitcoin in the short term as a hedge against higher consumer prices. There’s also the possibility that some investors, seeing further turmoil ahead, decided to bulk up on cash. One of the easiest things to sell is bitcoin, which is still up 84% year-to-date, even after Wednesday’s sell-off.  

“It seems the pressure was too much,” Mati Greenspan, founder of the foreign-exchange and cryptocurrency research firm Quantum Economics, told clients Wednesday. 

As detailed in First Mover on Wednesday, analysts relying on price-chart patterns have identified few points of resistance along bitcoin’s path from the hitherto rarely breached $14,000 psychological level to the all-time-high around $20,000, reached in 2017.   

According to Greenspan, “$14,000 is a huge psychological barrier, and I would be delightedly flabbergasted if we were able to pass through it without first seeing a significant pullback.”

And as reported Thursday by CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole, bitcoin options traders are assigning a low probability that the cryptocurrency will end 2020 above $20,000.

The implied chances of prices above that level currently stand around 6%, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Skew. 

“A below-10% probability of record highs by the year end means the market is unconcerned with that outcome,” Vishal Shah, an options trader and founder of Polychain Capital-backed derivatives exchange Alpha5 told Godbole in a Telegram chat.  

Despite the sincerest wishes of bitcoin bulls, it would take a rally of more than 60% in the next eight weeks for prices to set a new record. It wouldn’t be unprecedented: There have been eight times in the 11-year old cryptocurrency’s recorded history where prices have rallied more than 50% or more in a two-month span. 

It could be that traders are just being realistic. 

“The options market is seemingly not getting carried away with the recent strong price momentum,” Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, said in a statement to CoinDesk. “If we extrapolate bitcoin’s price action and volatility of the past 90 days till December expiry, then bitcoin appears set to end the year between $14,000 to $15,000.”

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

Bitcoin watch

Bitcoin’s price rally has paused, with the top cryptocurrency by market value near $13,100, having reached 16-month highs above $13,800 during Wednesday’s Asian trading hours.

Investors are rotating money out of stocks and into safe havens like the U.S. dollar and Treasurys on concerns that Germany and France’s new lockdown restrictions would torpedo Eurozone’s fragile economic recovery.

Not just bitcoin, but almost every asset denominated in U.S. dollars has taken a beating in the past 24 hours or so. Markets saw similar but more violent action in March when recession fears triggered a global dash for cash.

Should the virus figures continue to rise, risk aversion will likely intensify, fueling a more profound decline in the cryptocurrency. However, it’s possible investors could buy the dips, with rising institutional adoption boosting the cryptocurrency’s long-term prospects.

Besides, stock markets will likely stabilize, helping bitcoin regain poise if the ECB announces more monetary stimulus later Thursday. While the central bank is expected to maintain the status quo, it could lay the groundwork for additional stimulus in December. Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs said the central bank could boost its pandemic bond-buying program by 400 billion euros ($470 billion) in December to counter deflationary pressures.

From a technical analysis standpoint, the immediate bias will remain bullish as long as prices are held above $12,500. On the higher side, the June 2019 high of $13,880 is the level to beat for the bulls.

– Omkar Godbole 

Token watch

Bitcoin (BTC): Winklevosses’ Gemini cryptocurrency exchange allows purchasing and trading with euros. 

Ripple (XRP): San Francisco-based payments firm plans to invest in blockchain money-transfer app MoneyTap, a joint venture with Japan’s SBI Holdings. 

Crypto.com Coin (CRO): Cryptocurrency-focused credit-card lender expands in Latin American market, hires former Visa exec Filomena Ruffa as general manager.

What’s hot

Fidelity’s digital-asset division expands crypto custody service to Asia (CoinDesk)

Blockchain pioneer Caitlin Long’s Avanti wins approval from Wyoming regulators for new banking charter (CoinDesk) 

Bank of Canada Governor Macklem says digital currency initiative is progressing beyond proof-of-concept stage toward launchable product (CoinDesk) 

FTX crypto exchange launches bitcoin pairs for tokenized versions of top stocks Amazon, Apple, Tesla (CoinDesk) 

Coinbase crypto exchange to launch Visa debit card in U.S. early next year (CoinDesk) 

Former regulator who oversaw New York State’s BitLicense development and more recently led New York Stock Exchange’s regulatory division will now join crypto-friendly venture-capital firm Andreesen Horowitz (CoinDesk) 

Analogs The latest on the economy and traditional finance

Federal Reserve might be running low on ammunition to juice market and the economy (CNBC)

Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO who also oversees payments-firm-turned-cryptocurrency-investor Square, grilled by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz over tweet platform’s content controls (WSJ)  

Lenders now telling U.S. mall owners to pay up on past-due mortgage bills (WSJ)   

Chinese Communist Party set to detail 15-year economic growth plan (Bloomberg) 

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