News 23.03. – 29.03.20

Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin may be the only asset to be traded in a few weeks
51 days until BTC halving – it could save failing markets
Monex: We will reward our shareholders in the BTC
Bitcoin’s market capitalization could reach up to $ 2 trillion
Groundbreaking BTC-ETH Swap Proposal Floated by Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin
Cardano Releases Hydra Solution to Accelerate Micropayments
U.S. Court Supports SEC and Blocks Telegram from Issuing Its Gram Tokens
Anonymous Bitcoin SV Miners Capture 55% of the Network Hashrate
The difficulty of bitcoin mining has decreased
Bitcoin Hashrate fell 45% from the highest level this year
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson claims that Wikipedia censors him
Ripple donated $ 200,000 to fight coronavirus
Tether mints an additional 120 million USDT, which raises concerns about USD coverage
Thailand’s largest bank investigates the benefits of RippleNet

Cryptocurrency exchages, Banks

Regulations, State digital currencies

Blockchain, Technology

The difficulty of bitcoin mining has decreased

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty, an indicator of competition among bitcoin miners, has seen the second-largest decline in the network’s history. The difficulty has dropped by around 16% to ~13.90 trillion on March 26, as compared to 16.55 trillion in the previous cycle recorded on March 9. The difficulty is designed to adjust itself every 2,016 blocks or about two weeks.

This is the largest drop ever since bitcoin miners started using ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips to mine the cryptocurrency in early 2013. The largest-ever drop took place in November 2011 when bitcoin’s mining difficulty declined by about 18%. The third-largest drop in the difficulty happened in December 2018.

U.S. Court Supports SEC and Blocks Telegram from Issuing Its Gram Tokens

The court said that since Telegram was planning to sell its TON tokens in the secondary markets, they shall be categorized as unregistered securities under the Howey Test. The plan for the issuance of Telegram‘s Gram tokens has hit yet another roadblock recently. Upon special request by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a U.S. Court has asked the messaging platform Telegram to refrain from its token issuance process scheduled next month.

On Tuesday, March 24, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel, of the Southern District of New York, said that SEC has a plausible accusation of Telegram selling unregistered securities. Besides, the judge also mentioned that Telegram’s $1.7 TON token sale resembles a structure that maximizes purchasers’ profit upon sale. In an official statement by the judge, he wrote:

“The Court finds that the SEC has shown a substantial likelihood of success in proving that the contracts and understandings at issue, including the sale of 2.9 billion Grams to 175 purchasers in exchange for $1.7 billion, are part of a larger scheme to distribute those Grams into a secondary public market, which would be supported by Telegram’s ongoing efforts”.

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Bitcoin may be the only asset to be traded in a few weeks

News media around the world has been reporting that a shutdown of stock markets may be on the table. The New York Stock Exchange is already planning to move to all-electronic trading next week. [Other countries have been mulling over the proposal. However, it is risky—in the Philippines, for example, a shutdown of the national stock exchange led to a 24% plunge this past Thursday. However, the situation would also be remarkable. Never before has there been a massive shutdown of stock exchanges globally. That would effectively leave only the cryptocurrency market standing, which never sleeps.

The cryptocurrency market can’t ever be shut down, which means it might find itself in the strange position of being one of the few active markets in a few weeks. Such an idea seemed unthinkable just a month ago.

In a few weeks, Bitcoin may be one of the last assets still trading.
— Dan Hedl (@danheld) March 21, 2020

Jack Ma appeals to join forces against coronavirus, sending out millions of masks and tests

Billionaire entrepreneur and Alibaba founder Jack Ma has a message for the world: get together to fight the coronavirus. As social media channels remain awash in conflicting data, finger pointing and skepticism over reports and statistics coming out of China, where the coronavirus originated, the Chinese tech titan is kicking mega-philanthropy into high gear by sending lifesaving equipment to countries around the world.

Ma, who stepped down as the chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2019 after 20 years of leading the company since its inception in 1999, transforming it into an entertainment and cloud computing behemoth, has started shipping Covid-19 supply kits. The Jack Ma Foundation has already delivered supplies to hard-hit Italy and Spain.

Arriving today from Shanghai to Zaragoza, Spain – the first donation shipment containing 500,000 face masks & other medical equipment to support the battle in Spain against the coronavirus. Thanks to all who made this happen. Together we can win! #estevirusloparamosentretodos pic.twitter.com/NUZGr07KWf
— Jack Ma Foundation (@foundation_ma) March 17, 2020

Thailand’s largest bank investigates the benefits of RippleNet

In a recent interview, Arthit Sriumporn, the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Commercial Banking at Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), which is Thailand’s largest bank by total assets, talked about the benefits SCB has enjoyed by being part of RippleNet, Ripple’s global payments network.

An article in Bangkok Post said that the Global Digital Report 2019 “put Thailand top in the global rankings of internet banking service access, at 74% of the population, followed by Sweden (71%) and Turkey (68%).” As for crypto ownership, this report said that “Thailand ranked second with 9.9% of internet users owning cryptocurrency, behind only South Africa at 10.7%, while Indonesia was third at 9.5%.”

The US government passes a bill to promote the economy, including digital wallets and the digital dollar

Amid contentious debate over the massive stimulus package in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats in the United States House of Representatives look to implement the digital dollar to streamline payments to U.S. citizens outside of the traditional financial system.

A draft of the legislation circulating as of March 23 proposes the creation of digital wallets for U.S. citizens to be maintained by the Federal Reserve within a section entitled “Direct Stimulus Payments for Families.” The section envisions $2,000 monthly payments to every adult earning less than $75,000 a year, at which points the payments taper off. These payments would last until the economy recovers. More details.