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Serial entrepreneur Halsey Minor knows about mass adoption. He’s helped create technology platforms like CNET and Salesforce, to name a couple.

Announced Tuesday, Minor’s VideoCoin platform, which draws on dormant computing resources to process streamed video, is adding fiat payment rails as the project looks to move beyond the limited sphere of crypto and blockchain tokens. The network becomes commercially available starting May 27.

A broader reach is essential, says Minor, CEO of Live Planet, an immersive video startup that provides technology to VideoCoin, in order to take the fight to the market-leading Amazon Web Services (AWS). (Interestingly, Minor’s first job at Merrill Lynch saw him team up with co-worker Jeff Bezos on a publishing platform.) 

Related: Meet Red Date, the Little-Known Tech Firm Behind China’s Big Blockchain Vision

“Taking serious aim at mass adoption is surprisingly absent from the crypto industry. There are really no services you can use a credit card to perform,” said Minor. “A company like Fox is never going to go to an exchange and buy volatile tokens. You kind of have to be in the crypto world to use crypto projects – and we are trying to break that barrier down.”

That said, tokens still play a vital role on the platform. VID token holders stake them to earn a slice of the savings gained from decentralizing the work required to process online video. Indeed, VideoCoin’s private token sale raised $50 million back in May 2018, and part of this week’s platform launch (dubbed Everest) is making VideoCoin available on Bittrex, the Seattle-based crypto exchange.

Read more: CNET Founder Backs $50 Million ICO for Video Streaming

“Staking is a really good use case for tokens, but using them for payment just puts friction between you and your users,” Minor said.

Related: Two Social Networks Announce Plans to Integrate YouNow’s Props Token

VideoCoin’s new fiat capability comes courtesy of Public Mint and allows the platform to accept credit cards, ACH and wire transfers, and to send funds to anyone who has a Public Pay wallet.

Zombie servers

Stepping back, video accounts for 80% of internet traffic and every online video goes through various stages of processing, such as encoding and transcoding to suit different devices. It’s a shift that has upended the traditional broadcast model, which had basically zero distribution costs. 

It’s also where AWS is dominant and making big money from its vast network of data centers. But farming out the processing and storage requirements to hundreds of thousands of so-called “zombie servers” that do next to nothing most of the time means VideoCoin will cost firms a third of the price of Amazon, said Minor.

“As the global video business moves larger volumes of content to internet delivery, the costs of processing and delivering video have become a huge burden for major media companies,” said John Ward, executive vice president and CTO of video-streaming provider iNDEMAND. “The current [COVID-19] crisis has intensified this.”

AWS did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Work it

The VideoCoin platform can be accessed by developers looking to build on its infrastructure and streaming companies that can take advantage of cheaper processing, as well as hardware owners who want to earn money putting it to use (known as “workers”). It’s also open to stakers who allocate jobs to workers ensuring the best possible results, for which these token holders can earn 16% of the overall remuneration.

“Workers will get cash. They will want to build reputation with stakers so they attract more staking,” said Live Planet CTO Devadutta Ghat. “Workers get work dependent on their capacity and the amount of staking they’ve attracted.”

Read more: Meet Crypto’s New Best Friend: Fiat

Ghat said any owner of hardware, from a Raspberry Pi to a data center, can join the platform and become a worker. To illustrate the remuneration workers can expect, he said running a Raspberry Pi node or NVIDIA Jetson Nano 24/7 for a month (total cost of about a dollar) could be paid for by 15-20 minutes of video streaming.

All the workers and stakers on the platform will be visible using a block explorer soon after the Everest launch, Ghat added. 

Edgelord

Security cameras and video doorbell companies are another large and growing market, and one which Amazon Ring is capitalizing on by doing video processing at cost. “Streaming cameras have become one of the largest sources of video on the internet today, and demonstrates how dynamic the market for video processing is,” Minor said.

Read more: Bitreserve Overhauls Platform, Rebrands as ‘Uphold’

Looking back, the explosion of cloud computing, which saw Minor win big with platforms like Salesforce, is now being reversed. With the advent of 5G, things are moving back to the edge of the network, he said. 

“Everyone has done a great job of moving to the cloud,” said Minor. “But now it’s opening up all these opportunities at the edge with 5G’s low latency and high bandwidth – and with blockchain, which is sort of the ultimate edge-based technology.”

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Chinese internet giant Tencent is looking to invest heavily in new technologies like blockchain as it looks to move past the effects of the coronavirus epidemic.

The creator of popular messaging service WeChat, Tencent is investing 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) into “new infrastructure” based on emerging technologies over the next five years, as reported by Reuters.

In an interview with state media Tuesday, Dowson Tong, Tencent’s senior executive vice president, confirmed the company had also earmarked investment for sectors such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.

Related: Finance and the Real Economy Can’t Stay Out of Sync Forever

It isn’t clear how much of the $70 billion investment Tencent will ultimately set aside for blockchain, nor has it elaborated on what specifically it will be investing in.

As per Reuters, the firm has acknowledged that its cloud offerings have been hit by the coronavirus-induced economic slowdown. As the nation starts its return to normality, “Expediting the ‘new infrastructure’ strategy will help further cement virus containment success,” Tong said in a report by Guangming Daily.

See also: Inside China’s Plan to Power Global Blockchain Adoption

The news comes a month after China’s Blockchain Services Network (BSN) was rolled out for commercial use. Blockchain is a critical part of the country’s tech strategy, and the government hopes BSN will form the backbone infrastructure for services that leverage the technology all around the country.

Related: Chinese Government Advisers Propose Regional Stablecoin for 4 Asian Countries

China’s steadfast support for DLT is paying dividends, believes Haipo Yang, founder and CEO of Chinese crypto exchange CoinEx. Speaking to CoinDesk at the weekend, he explained this unambiguous approach has helped create a “good environment for blockchain technology,” improving China’s credentials as an innovation hub and leading to the emergence of a vibrant blockchain investment scene.

See also: Why China Is Banning Crypto but Is Bullish on Blockchain

Tencent has gradually increased its exposure to blockchain. At the end of last year, it launched a DLT-powered invoice system and received the green light from the Hong Kong regulator to start work on a blockchain-based virtual bank. It’s also become a member of a new national committee to help set industry standards for blockchain technology, along with several of its competitors.

With blockchain being a state-sanctioned technology in China, and with the infrastructure for a whole host of new services – the BSN – having already launched, it should really come as no surprise that Tencent has opted to set aside potentially billions of dollars for investment in the emerging technology.

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Thailand is teaming up with a blockchain firm to encourage peer-to-peer trading of renewable energy.

Announced on Monday, Thai Digital Energy Development (TDED) – a public-private joint venture – has inked a deal with blockchain energy startup Power Ledger to develop a blockchain-based digital energy business.

The deal, also in collaboration with energy suppliers in Thailand, seeks to develop solutions for peer-to-peer energy trading and environmental commodity trading, Australia-based Power Ledger said in a press release.

Related: Colombia, Deloitte, ConsenSys Sign On to WEF’s ‘Blockchain Bill of Rights’

Ultimately, the partners aim to assist Thailand’s drive to hit a 25% renewable energy target by 2037, as it transitions away from fossil fuels.

“Blockchain-enabled transactive energy solutions including peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading, virtual power plants as well as renewable energy certificates and carbon credits trading will be the key to establishing economically viable renewable energy markets,” said Power Ledger’s co-founder and executive chairman, Jemma Green.

“Our partnership with TDED will allow us to accelerate our efforts to promote distributed digital energy markets in Thailand,” Green added.

See also: Everledger Offers Diamond Industry Blockchain-Based Carbon Offsetting

Related: US Military Is Falling Behind China, Russia in Blockchain Arms Race: IBM, Accenture

The partners will oversee the management of four “clean power” projects from renewable energy provider BCPG Group, which have been included via a sandbox project to encourage uptake of renewable energy by Thailand’s Office of Energy Regulatory Commission.

BCPG is a Bangkok-based firm dealing in solar, wind and geothermal power, with operations in Thailand, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Together with a Thai electrical manufacturer under the Provincial Electricity Authority, it runs the TDED venture.

One of the first projects to come out of the Power Ledger collaboration will focus on energy and carbon management at the 12-megawatt “smart campus” at Chiang Mai University in Thailand’s north.

See also: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

Power Ledger’s “expertise in state-of-the-art technology will help materialize TDED’s goal in the development of digital energy products and services, as well as making clean energy more accessible to people.” said TDED and BCPG president Bundit Sapianchai.

Power Ledger has been working with BCPG in Thailand since 2018 when it launched a peer-to-peer energy trading trial in Bangkok.

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India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX, has secured a $2.5 million strategic investment led by Polychain Capital with support from Coinbase Ventures.

The investment aims to reinforce the exchange’s efforts to drive cryptocurrency adoption in the country after a major legal victory in March. CoinDCX’s #TryCrypto campaign seeks to bring the total number of crypto users in India to 50 million.

Read more: After Court Victory, Indian Exchanges Gear Up for Crypto Trading Surge

Related: Andreessen Horowitz Forecasts Fourth Crypto Bull Cycle

Specifically, the financing aims to bolster CoinDCX’s meetup events, community engagement efforts, educational programs and consumer campaigns, the company said.

“This new strategic investment into CoinDCX is a shot of confidence in our roadmap toward bringing the crypto asset class to a largely untapped Indian market. We look forward to our investors’ continued counsel,” said Sumit Gupta, CEO and co-founder of CoinDCX.

Polychain’s investment is in addition to its participation in a $3 million Series A funding round for the Mumbai-based exchange, which occurred in late March, weeks after a banking ban for cryptocurrency businesses was overturned by the country’s Supreme Court.

Read more: BitGo Now Providing Custody for India’s Largest Crypto Exchange

Related: Accel, Coinbase Join $17M Funding Rounds for Institutional Crypto Trading Firm FalconX

Following the lifting of the banking ban in March, CoinDCX has seen a 47% growth in trading volumes and a 150% growth in daily active users. CoinDCX said it was one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges in India to integrate bank account transfers.

“As India continues to close the gap between the crypto economy and the mainstream market, CoinDCX is strongly positioned to become the leading platform that consumers in the country interact with crypto through,” said Shan Aggarwal, head of Coinbase Ventures.

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Mining reward halvings are a hot topic in the crypto markets, as they alter a cryptocurrency’s supply and often have a significant impact on prices. 

Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, underwent its third halving on May 11, which reduced the reward per block mined to 6.25 bitcoin from 12.5. Bitcoin offshoots bitcoin cash and bitcoin SV also witnessed halvings in April. 

Next in line is zcash (ZEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency first created in 2016 that uses a proof-of-work (or mining) algorithm and encrypts user information within shielded transactions. Currently, it is the 26th largest cryptocurrency by market value, as per data source CoinMarketCap.

Related: As Bitcoin Falls to 2-Week Lows, Small Investors Look to Be Buying

Rewards per block mined on the zcash blockchain – launched and supported by the Electric Coin Company – are scheduled to be cut by 50% from the current 12.5 ZEC to 6.25 ZEC at block 1,046,400 this year.  Zcash’s first ever halving, the block subsidy reduction is expected to happen sometime in November.

High-inflation crypto

While ZEC’s supply is capped at 21 million like bitcoin, its inflation rate is significantly higher than other major cryptocurrencies. 

At press time, ZEC’s annualized inflation rate is 28.19% – the highest among major cryptocurrencies, according to data source ViewBase. Meanwhile, bitcoin’s inflation rate is 1.44. 

Zcash’s high inflation rate has long been a cause of concern among the investors and the analyst community. “If ZEC were a country, it’d have the 8th highest inflation rate worldwide at 32%,” popular analyst Josh Olszewick tweeted in December 2019. 

Related: Bitcoin Drops Over 3% Despite Golden Cross and Bank Calls for More US Stimulus

The cryptocurrency was one of the worst-performers in the first nine months of 2019, largely due to its “disproportionate” supply hitting the market, tweeted economist and trader Alex Krüger in September 2019.  ZEC ended 2019 with an 88% decline, while bitcoin achieved gains of over 90%.

These concerns, however, may ease following November’s supply cut.

“After the halving, the inflation rate will effectively get cut in half from its current level, so any concerns about the inflation rate should be alleviated or be considered a non-issue,” said Connor Abendschein, a crypto research analyst at Digital Assets Data. 

Pre-halving price boost?

In recent months, the cryptocurrency has been languishing not far above all-time lows against both the U.S. dollar and bitcoin. After November’s halving, though, investors may give up on punishing ZEC for its high inflation rate and cheer the emission cut. 

“The upcoming halving could give Zcash the boost it needs to stay relevant in the high-cap ecosystem,” said Abendschein.

Further, cryptocurrencies, in general, tend to rise ahead of halvings, which are widely considered to be price-bullish events. 

For instance, litecoin, which underwent its last reward halving on Aug. 5, 2019, doubled in the first quarter of last year despite lackluster price action in bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value and price anchor for the broader crypto market. Litecoin, the seventh-largest cryptocurrency, rose another 100% in the second quarter. 

Many observers argue that halvings create supply deficits and thus put upward pressure on prices. The belief mainly stems from the bitcoin market, which witnessed stellar bull markets in the months following its first two halvings in November 2012 and July 2016. 

The narrative has further strengthened due to bitcoin’s rise from $3,867 to $10,000 witnessed in the two months running up to its third halving earlier this month. 

Bitcoin halving a guide?

Miner selling encompassed a significant percentage of total volumes in bitcoin ahead of its first halving in late 2012. After the event, a large drop in selling pressure from miners led to a price rally.

As seen in the chart above, potential miner selling pressure as a percent of total volume fell from 135% to 67% at the 2012 halving.

Bitcoin’s price extended its pre-halving bull run by 6% from $12.75 to $13.50 in the two weeks after halving and went on to hit a record high of $260 in April 2013. 

“Some investors are looking at Zcash similarly and its first halving could bring about the largest drop in potential mining sell pressure (as a percent of total volume) compared to future halvings,” Wilson Withiam, research analyst at data provider Messari, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat. 

Goodbye Founder’s Reward

Alongside the halving, zcash’s so-called (and not universally popular) Founder’s Reward expires in November to be replaced by a new development fund.

“Zcash was launched in 2016 with a ‘Founder’s Reward’ to be allocated over four years. Of all Zcash mining rewards, 80% was allocated to miners, about 15%  was allocated to a group of people that included investors and founders, and about 5% was available to Electric Coin Co. to fund core support functions,” according to the official blog of the Electric Coin Company.

The new fund, which was approved by the zcash community, will distribute 20% of the network’s mining rewards to infrastructure and marketing development, of which 8% would go into a third party grant program, 7% to the Electric Coin Company and 5% to the Zcash Foundation. The other 80% will go to miners.

So, November looks set to be a major month for zcash and the discussion about the halving’s potential impact on price and non-price metrics is likely to pick up the pace as we move closer to the final quarter of 2019.

So far this year, the cryptocurrency has moved pretty much in line with bitcoin and broader markets. Prices fell from $70 to $20 in the four weeks to mid-March as bitcoin as nosedived amid the coronavirus-led crash in the equity markets. The subsequent 150% price rise in bitcoin pulled up ZEC. The privacy coin recently clocked a high of $50 and was last seen changing hands at $45.

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The credibility of Craig Wright – the Australian tech entrepreneur who controversially claims to be bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto – has taken another blow.

After a list of bitcoin addresses Wright had provided as being his holdings in an ongoing court case were briefly and “inadvertently” made public by plaintiffs on May 21, 145 of the addresses were used to sign a public message both calling Wright a “fraud” and making it plain that he does not in fact own or control them.

The court case was brought by Ira Kleiman, the brother of Wright’s former business partner, David Kleiman, and seeks half of 1.1 million bitcoin (worth around $9.6 billion) the two allegedly mined in the early days of the cryptocurrency, as well as intellectual property. The case hinges on whether Wright can prove he has the keys to the trove of cryptocurrency.

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While the list of addresses was quickly resealed by the Kleiman legal team, it still exists on Court Listener and looks to have provided a means for another individual to identify a number of addresses they in fact hold the keys to. That, in turn, enabled them to sign a message with the bitcoin keys. It reads:

“Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn’t have the keys used to sign this message. The Lightning Network is a significant achievement. However, we need to continue work on improving on-chain capacity. Unfortunately, the solution is not to just change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force out others. We are all Satoshi”

Some of the many addresses in the court filing published on Court Listener are indeed used to sign the message.

The message was first brought to wider attention on Reddit, with the claim that the addresses are for bitcoin mined in 2009 and that have not been moved since.

Related: Judge ‘Puzzled’ by Craig Wright’s Objections to Producing Evidence of Over 1.1M Bitcoin

BitMEX Research tweeted that it had taken “a random sample of 20” of the addresses and found they did not match the holdings of the “dominant” early bitcoin miner in 2009, who many think was Satoshi. The firm’s earlier research on this is to be found here.

Wright had claimed in court that his billions in bitcoin were held for him in so-called Tulip Trusts, but that he could not prove his control of the keys due to attorney-client privilege. He has been accused by the judge of “abusing” client-attorney privilege to withhold documents and “obfuscate” proceedings elsewhere in the case.

Last August, the judge also found Wright had argued in bad faith, perjured himself and admitted false evidence.

In another filing on May 21, the Kleiman team filed an omnibus motion for sanctions against Wright, claiming: “Wright has engaged in a sustained pattern of perjury, forged evidence, misleading filings, and obstruction – this included submission of false evidence which, if not unmasked, could have resulted in Plaintiffs being deprived of their day in court.”

Saying the abuses are “undeniably directed at the singular goal of making it impossible for Plaintiffs to prevail at trial,” defendants seek sanctions and a default judgement against Wright.

Wright for his part is hoping to bring new expert witnesses into court, one of whom is said to be a “licensed clinical psychologist who has studied Autism Spectrum Disorder.”

If the judge rules in favor of Wright on this matter, Dr. Ami Klin “will testify that he has diagnosed Dr. Wright with Autism Spectrum Disorder with high intellectual skills. Dr. Klin’s testimony will help the jury understand how this disability affects behavior.”

Another of Wright’s experts would testify on whether David Kleiman “had the requisite skills and experience to have written or significantly have contributed to the original Bitcoin software application released in 2009.” The Kleiman team is seeking to block the appearances of the four expert witnesses.

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With bitcoin’s price losing altitude again, small investors appear to be seeking exposure to the top cryptocurrency by market value.

Prices fell by 9.8% last week to register bitcoin’s biggest weekly decline since the second week of March, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. A two-week low of $8,630 was registered early on Monday, with prices last seen at $8,730 – down over 11% from the post-halving high of $9,960 registered on May 18. 

Despite the price drop – or perhaps because of it – the number of addresses holding smaller amounts of bitcoin has continued to rise. 

Related: Market Wrap: Traders ‘Buy the Dip’ as Bitcoin Hovers at $9,000

The number of unique addresses holding at least 0.01 BTC (around $87 at press time) rose to a new high of 8,478,746 on Sunday, according to data provided by blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode.

Meanwhile, the number of addresses holding at least 0.1 BTC (roughly $870) also rose to a lifetime high, reaching 3,053,004 on Friday. Both metrics regained their upward trajectory following the May 11 mining reward halving.

See also: Bitcoin Halving Arrives: Mining Rewards Drop for Third Time in History

“Retail investors are likely in an accumulation phase,” said Ki Young Ju, CEO of blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant. 

Related: Bitcoin Drops Over 3% Despite Golden Cross and Bank Calls for More US Stimulus

The dip demand may be associated with the bullish narrative that bitcoin could repeat history by charting a solid price rally over the next 12 months. The cryptocurrency witnessed a 30% pullback in the four weeks following its second reward halving on July 9, 2016. However, the decline was erased in the subsequent months and prices rallied to record highs by March 2016.

Prominent trading firms are also retaining a constructive outlook on the cryptocurrency. “The price pullback was expected and the long-term bias remains bullish. We would accumulate if prices drop to the $6,000-$8,000 range,” said Darius Sit, co-founder and managing director at Singapore-based QCP capital.

That said, the growth in the number of small addresses does not necessarily all represent new individual investors. This is because a single user can hold cryptocurrency in multiple addresses. 

Exchanges and custodial services also tend to hold bitcoins in multiple addresses. “Wallet management systems of virtual asset service providers have become more complex and granular. Their wallet clusters include more small wallets for security, etc.,” said Ju. 

As such, it is difficult to gauge exactly how much of the small address growth has been driven by new investor participation. 

Even if small investor participation is increasing, it is unlikely to have a big impact on prices, as the market is still dominated by large players, popularly known as “whales.” The number of addresses holding at least 10,000 BTC and 1,000 BTC have declined over the last two weeks, according to Glassnode data.

Moreover, options market activity suggests a deeper price drop could be in the offing in the near-term. “Traders are buying out-of-the-money puts,” said Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank. 

A put option represents a bearish bet on the cryptocurrency, while a call option represents a bullish bet. An out-of-the-money put option has a strike price that is lower than the market price of the underlying asset. 

Thomas expects bitcoin to move toward the $8,000–$8,200 range in the short-term. That looks likely, as per the charts, as the cryptocurrency has breached a trendline rising from March lows. 

Daily chart

Bitcoin fell by 5% on Monday, violating the support of the 2.5-month-long bullish trendline marked. The breakdown is backed by deeper bars on the MACD histogram, a sign of strengthening bearish momentum. 

“However, the relative strength index is neutral (going sideways),” Yuriy Mazur, head of data analytics at cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, told CoinDesk, while adding that, “there is no clear understanding where BTC will go currently. It may either retrace back to $6,500 or reach $10,000. We may get a clear indication of the further direction in the nearest days.”

Also read: Innovation Cycles, Crypto Venture Funds and Institutional Investors

The immediate bearish case would weaken if prices rise above Sunday’s high of $9,310 on the back of strong volumes. That said, a convincing move above $10,000 may be needed to restore the bullish trend. 

“After the halving took place, there were practically no buyers for Bitcoin, but in the range of $9,900–$10,000, a zone of hard technical resistance formed, that is very difficult to overcome under the current conditions,” said Mazur. 

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Telegram has thrown in the towel in its court battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and will no longer be fighting the ban on its blockchain token project.

In a filing on Friday (see bottom), the messaging app provider said it was withdrawing its appeal over a previous court decision that backed the SEC in prohibiting the issuance of “gram” tokens to investors both in and out of the U.S.

The new document filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit states: “The parties in the above-referenced case have filed a stipulation withdrawing this appeal pursuant to Local Rule 42.1.”

Related: Kin Foundation Publishes First Transparency Report Amid SEC Court Fight

The rule means that the parties have filed an agreement for dismissal of the case without prejudice. As such, the case is over for now, but not necessarily forever.

Telegram raise $1.7 billion in a private token sale in early 2018 to develop a blockchain named the Telegram Open Network, or TON. The project was halted by the SEC for violating U.S. securities law in October, weeks before its scheduled launch.

Also read: Kin Foundation Publishes First Transparency Report Amid SEC Court Fight

After six months of written arguments from both sides and one hearing in the Southern District court of New York, Judge Kevin Castel supported the initial preliminary injunction barring Telegram from issuing tokens to investors, on March 24. Telegram moved immediately to appeal, but that effort died with Friday’s filing.

Related: Russia Considering Draconian Rules for Illegal Crypto Operations

See a discussion of Telegram case during CoinDesk’s Consensus: Distributed online conference here:

On May 12, Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov announced in a blog post that Telegram would no longer be developing TON. The post marked Durov’s first ever public statement about the project, which was being developed largely in secret.

Gram investors have now been given two options: either take back 72% of their investment in TON, according to the previously agreed contract amendment; or to loan the money to Telegram for one year, with a promise to get 110% in April 2021. U.S. investors have been given only the first option.

See also: A Former Coinbase Lawyer Is About to Become Acting Head of US Bank Regulator

Some investors told CoinDesk they had already received their refunds, while others said they had taken the loan route. However, a number have been unhappy with the outcome and said they are considering suing Telegram. No filed lawsuit has been made public so far.

The TON project may not be completely dead, however. Earlier this month, a group of professional validators launched a forked version of the blockchain, named Free TON, with the technical support of TON Labs, a startup that previously helped Telegram with the project.

See the full court filing below:

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Binance is forced to “technically” support last week’s hard fork of the Steem blockchain, according to the crypto exchange’s CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.

In a statement on the company’s official blog Sunday, CZ said that, while the exchange is “very much against zeroing other people’s assets on the blockchain,” to not support it would mean that Binance users would not be able to withdraw their steem tokens.

The result of a dispute in the Steem community over the acquisition of SteemIt – the blockchain ecosystem’s biggest and more powerful application – by Tron and Justin Sun, the hard fork was used as a tool to strip 64 dissenters of their token holdings. At the time around $6.3 million-worth of cryptocurrency was grabbed, with one of the affected parties, Dan Hensley, saying he alone had lost around $1 million of the total.

Related: Binance, Eosfinex Join EOSDT Stablecoin Governance Board

Wiping out people’s token holdings “goes against the very ethos of blockchain and decentralization,” said CZ. The fact that this can happen on a blockchain means it is overly centralized.”

The fork put Binance in a “tricky” situation, he continued. While the exchange would not otherwise support the fork, “if we don’t support it (technically), no users can withdraw any STEEM coins.”

CZ explained that Binance had waited to see how other exchanges reacted to the fork, saying that soon some had enabled the upgrade. He added that users had been demanding support for the fork too.

Reading between the lines, CZ appears to be encouraging users to withdraw their steem tokens, mentioning several times in the post that support that supporting the fork would allow withdrawals – of course, it could allow continued holding or trading too.

Related: Caught Up in Steem Squabble, Bittrex to Return Tokens Diverted in Hard Fork

“We do not want to block people’s funds. In this case, we should allow users to withdraw their funds, whether we willingly support this hard fork or not,” reads one of his lines.

The issue of the hard fork – launched apparently with the sole purpose of confiscating the holdings of key community members who were unhappy with Justin Sun’s power in the ecosystem and how he was wielding it – followed a previous hard fork that saw some Steem users create a new blockchain called Hive. The new chain copied over all the tokens from Steem, but not those of Sun and some Steem witnesses.

While the tit-for-tat fork may seem to some a fair reprisal, it’s worth noting that Hive’s tokens were effectively a free copy, while original holdings on Steem were obtained through genuine investments.

In the post, CZ notes that crypto advocate and author Andreas Antonopoulos had suggested in a tweet that Steem’s latest fork would likely result in litigation, with supporting exchanges also to be included as defendants.

The Binance CEO said:” I would have thought that [a class-action lawsuit] would go against everything he is preaching. In a decentralized world, anyone should be able to support any fork. Exchanges providing choices for users to get a ‘forked coin’ is no different by definition.”

The Steem saga illustrates that decentralization is not a utopia and that the community must work together “build a healthier decentralized ecosystem,” he concluded.

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The Louisiana State Senate is about to consider a bill to regulate and license virtual currency businesses.

Sponsored by state Rep. Mark Wright (R-77), HB701 sailed through the state House of Representatives with unanimous approval, and is being referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Consumer Protection and International Affairs.

If passed, the legislation would establish Louisiana’s first crypto licensing regime.

Related: New Jersey Lawmaker Wants to Create a Crypto License

Crypto businesses would have to apply with the state’s Office of Financial Institutions (OFI), fork over executives’ fingerprints, subject their “experience, character and general fitness” to investigation – and perhaps the business premises as well – and pay a nonrefundable registration fee, among other requirements.

Registrants licensed by states with comparable regimes would not need a Louisiana license under the bill. Individuals dealing with less than $35,000 annually would only need to register with OFI. 

OFI projected charging a $2,000 application fee and $1,000 for annual renewal. Louisiana’s budget gurus estimated the bill would cost the agency nearly $150,000 in its first year and about $1.3 million over five as OFI ramped up enforcement. 

Bill sponsor Rep. Wright first called upon the OFI to study virtual currency regulation in 2019, according to The Advocate. During that session, he also introduced a different crypto licensing bill.

Related: Luxembourg Passes Bill to Give Blockchain Securities Legal Status

That bill died in the House committee.

Source law

Andrew Hinkes, a lawyer with Carlton Fields, said the 2020 bill appears to derive from the Virtual Currency Business Act (VCBA), a licensure regime by the non-partisan Uniform Law Commission (ULC). 

ULC drafts model laws meant to bring statutory uniformity across state lines. California, Oklahoma and Hawaii are all considering versions of the VCBA, he said.

See also: The Uniform Law Commission Has Given States a Clear Path to Approach Bitcoin

“Sometimes the [ULC] model is released and everybody says, ‘Oh, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,’ and everybody goes out and passes it in their own state legislature,” he said. “Sometimes they release a law and everybody looks at it and says, ‘Yeah, not interested.’”

The 23-page bill Wright bill has ‘significant’ differences from the ULC’s 50+ page VCBA. Hinkes said it does not include reporting requirements, enforcement mechanisms, compliance programs and consumer protections that the VCBA put forth.

Rep. Wright did not immediately return a request for comment.

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After the most recent halving of the Bitcoin block subsidy, data analysis illustrates pattern that many large bitcoin mining operations have shut down, at least for the time being.

News ‘Diet’

Laszlo Hanyecz has the honor of conducting the first commercial Bitcoin transaction: trading 10,000 bitcoin for about $30 worth of pizza.

Ten years later, those bitcoin would be worth $91 million. He apparently has no regrets. “It was a really interesting system but nobody’s using it,” Hanyecz said. “If nobody’s using it, it doesn’t matter if I have it all.” 

You’re reading Blockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here. Blockchain Bites will publish next on Tuesday, May 26. Happy Memorial Day to our U.S. readers.

Related: 10 Years After Laszlo Hanyecz Bought Pizza With 10K Bitcoin, He Has No Regrets

This one transaction, conducted about a year after Bitcoin’s inception, was the proof-of-concept necessary for a whole emergent economy to blossom. Ten years – to the day – later Bitcoin is looked at as a legitimate hedge against the Fed, a means of payment and a veritable worldview. 

While Hanyecz has said if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else, today we recognize his sacrifice and experiment. 

Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day!

Top Shelf

Iranian Crypto Mining
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has ordered the the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), energy department and information and communication technology ministries to draft a renewed national strategy for the crypto mining industry. The news comes days after the Iranian parliament published a bill proposing to apply the country’s strict foreign exchange and currency smuggling regulation to cryptocurrencies. It’s unclear why the nation’s crypto policies are being revisited, though some speculate its to prevent value from escaping the nation’s borders.  

Related: Blockchain Bites: Satoshi’s Sword of Damocles

Tough Drafts
Harsh new rules making many uses of digital assets punishable with fines or prison might soon become law in Russia. Two draft bills setting out how Russia should regulate cryptocurrencies were sent to the country’s parliament, the State Duma, earlier this week. The first of which would prohibit the issuance and transaction of digital currencies in the nation, while the second would impose new sanctions for the illegal use of digital assets. The draft bills have not been finalized, according a high ranking official at the Duma.

Quarterly Loss
Canaan has reported a net loss of $5.6 million and shrinking cash reserves for the first quarter of 2020. Revenues are up 44% quarter over quarter after the firm slashed prices, but it also incurred $9.3 million and $5.9 million expenses in cost of goods sold and R&D, respectively. Canaan’s next generation miners will hit shelves next quarter, though the firm has not provided a business outlook citing the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-Bitcoin halving.

Libra-like Stablecoin
Top Chinese political advisers have proposed a regional digital currency to facilitate regional trade that would be backed by four major Asian currencies including the Japanese yen, Korean won, Hong Kong dollar and the yuan, with the People’s Bank of China leading the proposed effort. The basket of underlying collateral would be weighted based on its nation’s economy, resembling the original vision for Facebook’s libra.

Next of Kin

• The kin cryptocurrency may leave its own fork of Stellar for the Solana blockchain. “The fork of Stellar enabled Kin to reach millions of consumers, but we knew it would not be a long-term solution,” a draft Kin Improvement Proposal reads. “Stellar has five-second block times, so irrespective of network load, a consumer could be seeing five-second latency on their transactions – not what we would deem a great consumer experience.” The draft proposal claims switching to Solana would lead to an 84% reduction in kin’s latency.
• The Kin Foundation published a transparency report Thursday, laying out its structure and operations, in a partnership with Messari and its disclosure database. Notably, 28 million users have acquired kin in the last three years across more than 50 different apps, and are spending 300 million kin per day, the report claims. The foundation’s tokens are vested at a rate of 20% per year.

Blockchain Bill of Rights
The World Economic Forum revealed a “blockchain bill of rights,” to protect a crypto user’s right to “manage consent of data stored in third-party systems, port data between interoperable systems” and “revoke consent for future data collection.” Called the Presidio Principles, the document includes signatories from the Government of Colombia, Deloitte, ConsenSys, Electric Coin Company, CoinShares and the United Nations’ World Food Program, just to name a few. 

Breadcrumbs…
Anchorage now has six executives in its C-suite, hiring a head of finance and head of sales with experience in both tech and Wall Street. With the new hires, this will be the first time the custodian has employees with “this deep of a bench” running the sales and finance sides of the business, President Diogo Mónica said. “It’s pretty obvious that Anchorage has larger ambitions than its current set of services,” he said. “I think you can start following the breadcrumbs.”

ADAM Hires Blockinger
ADAM, a 15-member crypto trade group, hired Jeffrey Blockinger, a former hedge fund legal chief, as its first chief executive. The agency write codes of conduct for the industry. “I look forward to expanding our leadership role in shaping the future of the digital assets markets by building consensus for the entire industry,” Blockinger said in a statement. (The Block)

Hack Track
Whale Alert has tracked 28.3 bitcoin ($260,000) stolen in a Bitfinex hack four years ago moving to an unknown wallet. (Decrypt)

Crypto Travels
Travala, a crypto travel booking platform, has been merged with Binance’s TravelbyBit, which also provides travel services. The merged company aims to provide offerings for 2 million hotels and 600 airlines. (The Block)

Weekend Reads

Crypto ‘Gray’ Markets Could Be Unintended Consequence of FATF Travel Rule
The Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “Travel Rule,” an attempt to extend prescriptive banking regulations to the crypto market, may lead to a bifurcation of the market. “We are going to see white crypto; we are going to see gray crypto. And those different forms of crypto will most likely trade at different prices,” said Bakkt President Adam White at Consensus: Distributed. Other commenters noted that the rule could lead to increased use of privacy coins and regulatory arbitrage between nations that choose to turn a blind eye on exchanges ignoring this global standard.

Finance and the Real Economy Can’t Stay Out of Sync Forever
Jill Carlson, co-founder of the Open Money Initiative, argues that the imbalance between stock prices, spurred by Federal stimuli, and record-levels of unemployment will rectify sooner than later. “[W]hen I look at the impacts of COVID-19, I see as much slowing down or creaking to a halt as I see speeding up. Our way of life has slowed. Economic time has stopped. For now, financial time has carried on. But there is good reason to think that may slow soon, too, as we realize our spendthrift habits don’t always serve us well,” she said. 

The Breakdown

‘Dismantle the Euro to Save Europe’ Feat. Tuomas Malinen
Tuomas Malinen, CEO of GnS Economics, a macroeconomic advisory firm, joins NLW to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic is putting pressure on the legitimacy of the European Union and the euro. 

Who Won #CryptoTwitter?

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Binance is trying its hand at decentralized stablecoin governance.

The exchange joined the distributed oversight team that approves contracts and code changes on Equilibrium, a DeFi outfit behind the EOSDT stablecoin. EOSDT contracts hold nearly $10 million in collateral according to the Equilibrium website.

Announced Friday, Binance now has oversight power over new EOSDT smart contracts. As a party to Equilibrium’s multisignature hierarchy, Binance will grant – or conceivably withhold – its approval to all contracts prior to release.

Related: CZ’s Twitter Feed Swayed New CoinMarketCap Ranking That Put Binance on Top

That authority had been exclusive to block producers EOS Nation and EOS Cannon. Now, it also includes Binance and fellow newcomer eosfinex, the decentralized exchange developed by Bitfinex.

“You can also consider it as establishing a four-eyes principle for Equilibrium’s EOSDT,” Equilibrium CEO Alex Melikhov told CoinDesk. For any one transaction to take effect, at least two parties must first give their okay.

Read more: EOSDT Now Has $17.5M in Insurance That Pays Out Automatically

In doing so, Melikhov said the four give EOSDT updates the weight of their reputation. 

Related: Binance Quashes Upbit Hackers’ Attempt to Launder Stolen Funds

“Instead of a single owner who can potentially do whatever they want there is a group of reputable and known ecosystem participants who bid their reputation on the integrity/relevance of these updates,” he said.

That involves more than just rubber stamping public proposals. According to Melikhov, Equilibrium will give a “detailed audit report” to the four before release. They will also conduct their own independent reviews, he said.

“So eventually the community and users can be 100% sure that the smart contract owner cannot deploy malicious code or simply transfer funds out,” he said.

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• Binance Invests in Regulated Indonesian Crypto Exchange
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The kin cryptocurrency is exploring a move from its own fork of Stellar to the Solana blockchain. 

To recap, the mobile app company Kik ran a $98 million initial coin offering (ICO) for kin in 2017, which was made on the Ethereum blockchain. Then the company said that it would use Ethereum for security and Stellar for transactions. Then it forked Stellar and ran its own chain. Now that’s proving to be inadequate so the cryptocurrency will port over to Solana in a matter of months, pending adequate support from app developers in the Kin ecosystem.

“The fork of Stellar enabled Kin to reach millions of consumers, but we knew it would not be a long-term solution,” a draft Kin Improvement Proposal shared with CoinDesk reads. “Stellar has five-second block times, so irrespective of network load, a consumer could be seeing five-second latency on their transactions – not what we would deem a great consumer experience.”

Related: Kin Foundation Publishes First Transparency Report Amid SEC Court Fight

Read more: Goodbye Ethereum: Kik Plans to Move Its ICO Tokens to Stellar

Solana is a high-throughput blockchain that relies on a concept called optimistic concurrency control, which assumes that transactions generally don’t conflict with each other. The project describes several other key features of its technology on Medium.

“Kin is one the best ways to show what Solana is capable of,” Anatoly Yakovenko of the Solana Foundation told CoinDesk. “We expect to see other projects looking for speed and raw horsepower to migrate to Solana as well.”

The Kin Improvement Proposal says the move would enable an 84% reduction in latency. “Solana is measured to have approximately 60,000 transactions per second, with 400ms block times,” it says. 

Related: Stellar Enterprise Fund Invests $5M in Crypto App Abra Ahead of Blockchain Integration

The Solana Foundation would actually pay the Kin Foundation for making this move, however, awarding it with up to 1% of the supply of SOL (roughly $6 million at today’s prices), with 0.1% unlocking for each new 1 million active users that join over a 24-month period. 

Next steps

The next step will be for Solana to make a presentation to kin developers about the process for switching chains. If enough developers agree to make the move, Solana staff will largely facilitate it and the process should be complete in a matter of months. 

“It is ultimately up to the developers in the Kin ecosystem to decide if they want to migrate to Solana; however, we know that speed and throughput are two key issues within this community, and those happen to be two areas where Solana shines brightest,” Yakovenko wrote. 

Read more: Solana Blockchain Adds Korean Stablecoin Terra for Better Payments

Based on the Kin Improvement Proposal, the Solana Foundation will start tracking progress on Jan. 7, 2021. 

“Few projects in the blockchain space have shown an ability to grow a user base as fast as Kin has,” Gokal wrote. “We expect to see a myriad of use cases that come out of the Kin ecosystem within the near future that perfectly exemplify Solana’s leading performance.”

Why now?

“What has happened over the last year, but mostly has been accelerated in the last six months, is the kin ecosystem has been growing like crazy,” Tanner Philp, head of corporate development at Kik, told CoinDesk.

Kin has seen a dramatic uptick in its core metric – monthly active spenders – over the course of the coronavirus quarantine period, Philp said.

In early March, there were approximately 1.5 million people who had spent kin in the prior 30 days. On April 20, the growth spike peaked at 4.4 million. The numbers have trended down somewhat since then but it’s still running at about 3.5 million, a significant gain over prior numbers.

Read more: Kin Foundation Publishes First Transparency Report Amid SEC Court Fight

Kin has been integrated into 57 different applications, but usage is dominated by a few popular ones, including apps for sharing media and making funny, shareable shorts. 

Kik, the company that still oversees kin, began investigating new blockchains to pursue eight months ago in anticipation of the need to get to something faster, Philp said. 

The key use for kin is payments, and that was what Solana was always designed to accelerate. 

“Solana is one of the solutions, if not the only solution, that scales transaction times down into sub-second territory – the type of experience you’d demand for any mainstream application, such as Kin,” Yakovenko wrote.

Kik believes its Stellar fork has room for several more months, though pending developments could shorten that runway.

“What we’re getting close to is rolling out the new wallet for kin that Kik Inc. is working on, to connect the ecosystem, and that’s where you’ll start to see some more vibrancy within the ecosystem,” Philp said. 

New features

The wallet will make it simple to move kin earned in one app over to others. The company isn’t committing to a timeline but that wallet could appear in late Q3, Philp said. 

When that happens, if users start moving tokens around between apps, it will become important to add metadata to transactions showing which application drove the spend. That data helps apps get properly credited by the Kin Rewards Engine. Stellar does not support a large enough amount of data to make its metadata features useful.

Read more: Blockchain Gaming, Messaging Apps See User Growth Amid Coronavirus Lockdowns

Kin was founded out of the company that formerly ran the Kik mobile app. The vision for the cryptocurrency was to create a way for people using mobile and web-based products to have a marketplace of value, but one where that value could be very tiny, for trade in items like digital stickers and access to small games.

Companies are rewarded for building out the kin ecosystem with daily emissions from the Kin Rewards Engine, which shares out its vast trove of undistributed kin to developers who are driving transactions. 

“Kin started out with getting a lot of users using it across a lot of different apps,” Philp said. “Now it’s about getting people to spend larger amounts, and by that we mean going from fractions of pennies to pennies spent.”

Related Stories

• Judge Approved Blockchain Association’s Brief in Kik Case Despite SEC Objections
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Related: Why Kyber Network Tokens Tripled to $100M Despite the Coronavirus Recession

“Any asset minted on Ethereum by RenVM is a 1:1 backed ERC-20. This means that if you have 1 renBTC (an ERC-20), you can always redeem it for 1 BTC. It’s a direct supply peg. renBTC isn’t a synthetic, it doesn’t rely on a liquidation mechanism, and it’s not the price of Bitcoin on Ethereum. It is a one to one representation of Bitcoin on Ethereum that can be redeemed for BTC at any time, in any amount.”

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The latest implementation of bitcoin (BTC) on the Ethereum blockchain quietly went live this week.

There are 1.24 renBTC live on the Ethereum mainnet now, according to Etherscan. Three sources with knowledge of the project have confirmed this is the Ren smart contract, live ahead of its launch announcement.

However, there’s no way yet for members of the public to mint additional bitcoin-on-ethereum using Ren, the CEO of the company behind the project told CoinDesk in an email.

Related: Colombia, Deloitte, ConsenSys Sign On to WEF’s ‘Blockchain Bill of Rights’

“While the smart contracts have been deployed on Ethereum, RenVM itself is not actually on mainnet. This is because RenVM is a distinct network separate to Ethereum. The final mainnet subzero version of RenVM won’t be deployed until later,” Taiyang Zhang wrote. Those minted so far have been made as part of internal tests.

RenBTC becomes the latest in a rash of products built to expose bitcoin-backed assets to the benefits of Ethereum’s various decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.

Here’s a succinct description of the system from a Medium post by the company’s CTO, Loong Wang:

“Any asset minted on Ethereum by RenVM is a 1:1 backed ERC-20. This means that if you have 1 renBTC (an ERC-20), you can always redeem it for 1 BTC. It’s a direct supply peg. renBTC isn’t a synthetic, it doesn’t rely on a liquidation mechanism, and it’s not the price of Bitcoin on Ethereum. It is a one to one representation of Bitcoin on Ethereum that can be redeemed for BTC at any time, in any amount.”

Related: Why Kyber Network Tokens Tripled to $100M Despite the Coronavirus Recession

Kain Warwick of Synthetix tweeted Wednesday that he was the first person to hold a full bitcoin in renBTC.

The contracts for the three new tokens are already published in Ren’s documentation. There are also already 1.12 renZEC minted and a negligible amount of renBCH.

Ren is a project that grew out of the $30 million initial coin offering (ICO) for the Republic Protocol, originally envisioned as a way to run dark pools – privacy-preserving trading venues where the order book is kept secret. According to Crunchbase, its backers included Polychain Capital and FBG Capital.

Read more: Into the Dark Pool: $30 Million ICO Could Pave Way for Huge Crypto Trades

But, in a recent issue of The Defiant newsletter, Wang explained his firm’s pivot away from dark pools. 

The big trades were on chains that weren’t Ethereum, he said. “ETH had a lot of liquidity, but it was predominantly Bitcoin and USDT. So we would had to leverage things like atomic swaps, and they’re just too painful,” Wang told The Defiant’s Cami Russo. “And so we kind of turned around to say, well, we need to solve this interoperability problem before large liquidity is actually truly accessible in this space.”

According to a promotional release sent to CoinDesk, the RenVM was slated to go live May 27. 

The RenVM is a way to hold a cryptocurrency in a multi-signature wallet controlled by nodes in the RenVM and mint a representation of that asset as an ERC-20 token for use on Ethereum. Unlike other projects, RenVM is bringing more than bitcoin to Ethereum (see bitcoin cash (BCH) and zcach (ZEC) above), with other assets to follow.

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China-based bitcoin miner manufacturer Canaan has reported a net loss of $5.6 million for Q1 2020, even though it had cut down the prices for its hardware by more than half in an effort to sell more machines.

In an earnings report released on Friday, the firm said it made $9.4 million in revenue for the first three months this year with a growth of 44.6% compared to the same period last year. But it also incurred $9.3 million and $5.9 million expenses in cost of goods sold and R&D, respectively.

For that revenue, Canaan sold 0.9 million terahashes per second (TH/s) of Bitcoin computing power, which accounts for less than 1% of the network’s current total.

Related: Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops by 6% in First Adjustment After Halving

That means Canaan had cut down the prices for its mining hardware sold in the first three months by more than 50% to just $10 per TH/s, reflecting an overall slowdown of the buying interest into mining hardware amid Bitcoin’s halving event and the COVID-19 pandemic that has disrupted global logistics.

For context, Canaan booked a revenue of $66.5 million in 2019 with 2.9 million TH/s of Bitcoin computing power sold, meaning the average prices was around $22 per TH/s last year. Other major manufacturers have also taken a similar price cut strategy over the past a few months.

“The overall market situation since December last year until January had not been too good. So the unit price per TH/s was indeed lower,” Zhang Nangeng, CEO and chairman of Canaan, said in an earning call on Friday. “And the logistics in mainland China had basically stopped around the Chinese new year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So even though bitcoin’s price was a higher point in February and early March, the pandemic largely affected our sales.”

The filing also shows that as of March 31, Canaan had cash and cash equivalents of $37 million, compared to $71 million as of the end of last year.

Related: The Last Word on Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption

“The decrease was mainly due to higher short-term investments as the Company invested RMB173.4 million (US$24.5 million) in short-term investments as of March 31, 2020,” Canaan said in the report.

Zhang said the firm has partnered China-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation – in addition to its existing supply chain partnership with Samsung and TSMC – to roll out bitcoin mining equipment with 14-nm chips and expects to be able to ship in larger quantity in Q2.

But the firm declines to issue a business outlook for Q2 2020 citing the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainties after Bitcoin’s halving gives itself “very limited visibility on the potential impacts to its business and the markets in which it operates.”

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The token economy just gained an organized structure for collaborating with world leaders. 

The World Economic Forum revealed its Presidio Principles on Friday, a “blockchain bill of rights,” according to the nonprofit focused on fostering diplomacy and international business partnerships. The document includes signatories from the Government of Colombia, Deloitte Consulting LLP, ConsenSys, Electronic Coin Company, CoinShares and the United Nations’ World Food Program, just to name a few. 

“We supported the creation of the Presidio Principles – as well as guidelines and design principles for public institutions – because we wanted to ensure that progress can continue rapidly and responsibly, ensuring that basic characteristics like security and data privacy are secured for our citizens,” Victor Munoz, Colombia’s presidential advisor on economic affairs and digital transformation, said in a press statement. 

Related: RenBTC Quietly Goes Live in Latest Bid to Bring Bitcoin Into Ethereum

Read more: Why the World Economic Forum Is Creating a Blockchain ‘Bill of Rights’

The principles include a user’s right to “manage consent of data stored in third-party systems, port data between interoperable systems” and “revoke consent for future data collection.”

Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin encouraged crypto startups to become signatories and join the WEF’s open dialogue. In a press statement, he said he hopes “all builders of Ethereum-based projects – and across the blockchain landscape – will sign on to demonstrate their commitment to the users of their systems and applications.”

Indeed, Aya Miyaguchi of the Ethereum Foundation was involved. Greg Medcraft of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Delia Ferreira Rubio of Transparency International also contributed to the project.

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has ordered the government to draw up a renewed national approach for the emerging crypto industry.

Chairing Iran’s economic coordination headquarters – a seminar for the national economic strategy – earlier this week, Rouhani told officials from the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), energy department and information and communication technology ministries that they needed to devise a new national strategy for crypto mining, including regulation and mining revenue, Iranian news site ArzDigital reported Wednesday.

The news comes barely two days after the Iranian parliament published a bill proposing to apply the country’s strict foreign exchange and currency smuggling regulation to cryptocurrencies. The new parliamentary law would also require crypto exchanges operating in the country to first register with the CBI – possibly in a move to try and prevent too much capital leaving the country.

Related: First Mover: Bitcoin Just Got Easier to Mine, but for How Long?

Penalties for smuggling in Iran can include fines and imprisonment.

Just months ago, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump raised concerns that Iranians were using digital assets in order to circumvent sanctions.

See also: Iran Issues License for Nation’s Biggest Bitcoin Mining Operation

Iran was one of the first countries to officially recognize cryptocurrency mining as a legitimate industry back in July 2019. The government now issues mining licenses, giving companies the right to mine and then sell off any digital assets produced. An industry report in January said Iran had issued over 1,000 such licenses in its first six months.

Related: Iran Moves to Restrict Crypto Exchanges Under ‘Currency Smuggling’ Laws

Iran currently has a 4% share in bitcoin’s total hashrate, according to the Bitcoin Mining Map, more than double what it was at the beginning of September 2019.

It’s unclear why Rouhani wants Iranian officials to revisit bitcoin mining regulation. With the clampdown on value leaving the country, in the form of cryptocurrencies, it’s possible the President wants to ensure miners, too, aren’t taking their money away from the government’s clutches.

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Bitcoin fell for a second day, extending a downdraft triggered by Wednesday’s revelation that a member of the cryptocurrency community from the blockchain’s earliest days in 2009 had moved a long-dormant cache of coins. 

As of 20:30 UTC (4:30 p.m. ET), bitcoin (BTC) was trading at $9,044, a loss of 5.6% over 24 hours. 

Bitcoin remains well below its 10-day and 50-day technical indicator moving averages — a signal of bearish sentiment. 

Related: Bitcoin Drops Over 3% Despite Golden Cross and Bank Calls for More US Stimulus

At 14:00 UTC (10 a.m. ET) the world’s oldest cryptocurrency began experiencing high selling volume on exchanges including Coinbase, dropping bitcoin below $9,000 for the first time since May 13.

While the market appears to have turned bearish, Rupert Douglas, head of institutional sales at asset management firm Koine, said he planned to “‘buy the dip” — a popular phrase for accumulating an asset when prices drop in the belief that they’ll soon start going up again. 

“In a way I was hoping for this,” Douglas said in an email. “I’m a buyer at $9,000, as this is shaking out the weak longs before taking it higher.” 

Read more: What I Learned the First Time I Lost a Million Dollars

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Rebounds to $9,500 After Scary Sell-Off

Volatility in the notoriously fickle bitcoin market has declined since collapsing in March, when the devastating economic toll from the coronavirus started to become clear.   

“I wouldn’t call this a dump,” Darius Sit, managing partner at crypto quantitative fund QCP Capital, told CoinDesk via a Telegram message. “It’s nowhere near statistically significant.”  

The price drop could take a toll on the profitability of bitcoin miners, already hurting from a revenue cut following last week’s rewards halving. The miners have had to rely more on transaction fees to maintain revenue. 

Fortunately, fees are up post-halving, said Marc Fleury, CEO of digital asset brokerage Two Prime. 

“Transaction fees associated with moving bitcoin around have increased from 60 cents to upwards of $5, providing some income for the miners,” he said. 

Read More: Why Kyber Network Tokens Tripled to $100M Despite Coronavirus

Fleury said many bitcoin miners are counting on a price increase to stay profitable. “This has historically happened in the past two halvings, within a span of 18 months,“ said Fluery. “It will take some time for the market to adjust.”

Other markets

Digital assets on CoinDesk’s big board are in the red Thursday. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether (ETH), lost 5.6% in 24 hours as of 20:30 UTC (4:30 p.m. ET). 

The biggest losers in 24-hour trading were cardano (ADA) slipping 7.6%, iota (IOTA) losing 6.5% and neo (NEO) down by 6.1%. All price changes were as of 20:30 UTC (4:30 p.m. ET) Thursday.

In the commodities sector, oil is trading up 1.4%, with the price of a barrel of crude at $33 at press time. Oil has experienced a wild ride in 2020, up 101% the past month yet still down 44% for the year to date. 

Gold is in the red today, with the yellow metal falling 1.2% to $1,725 at the close of New York trading. 

Read More: Genesis Trading Buys Crypto Custodian Vo1t in Bid to Become Prime Broker

In the U.S. the S&P 500 fell less than 1% on the day, but still up over 2% since Monday despite U.S. jobless claims coming in at over 2.4 million for the past week, the seventh weekly increase. 

U.S. Treasury bonds slipped Thursday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were down most on the two-year bond, falling 5.6%.

In Asia, the Nikkei 225 index ended its trading day down less than a percentage point on losses in the real estate and transportation sectors. Trading of Europe’s largest public companies by market cap on the FTSE Eurotop 100 index was also down less than a percent, dragged down due to continued coronavirus uncertainty. 

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