This morning, William Shatner took to Twitter and said something strange and inscrutable to his 2.52 million followers. That’s typical. What’s less typical is that his subject was cryptocurrency. And he dropped the name of one of bitcoin’s earliest adopters and most fervent evangelists, Charlie Shrem. In a tweet peppered with emojis, the Star Trek actor (and I hate to reduce him to that description because it fails to reflect how great he was as the villain in a latter-era Columbo, not to mention singer, author, screenwriter, director, celebrity pitchman, and horse breeder) tweeted: So @coindesk – 👍🏻 & 😘 is a thank you I do here for liking a…
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Former SEC Enforcer Tells SWELL Crowd XRP Is Not a Security
Michael Didiuk says XRP doesn’t meet Howey Test criteria
Ripple announced plenty of good news at its crypto orgy SWELL the last two days, including the long-awaited launch of XRapid, the international remittance protocol that uses XRP. Crypto investors were generally pleased with what they heard and saw with the price of XRP essentially doubling in the week leading up to the gathering. But at least some thoughtful observers were waiting for a more fundamental question to be definitively addressed: Is XRP a security? Two different threads on XRPChat used the “800 lbs. gorilla” metaphor to discuss what was on everyone’s mind—whether the SEC would a) declare XRP a commodity, as it essentially has done with bitcoin and Ethereum,…
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Circle buys Poloniex, confirming Modern Consensus scoop
What the Circle/Poloniex deal means to us
On February 2, Modern Consensus broke the story that mobile pay startup Circle would be acquiring Poloniex. It was a big scoop, the kind that can put an upstart publication like Modern Consensus on the map. Twitter immediately lit up with talk of the deal and questions about how our little publication had broken such an important story. Predictably, some of that speculation immediately turned first to skepticism and then to outright insults. Ari Paul, the CIO of Block Tower Capital, first tweeted the story to his 95,000 followers. And then he immediately posted a cloying, virtue-signaling apology: I just posted a link to an article asserting that Circle was acquiring Poloniex. Someone helpfully…
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Travel startup Winding Tree raises $15 million in ICO
Looking to disrupt near duopoly with help from prominent partners
Travel startup Winding Tree has raised approximately $15 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) that was supported by many travel providers, including Lufthansa and some hotel chains. Winding Tree is seeking to build a new open data infrastructure for the online travel industry, which has been growing as people from newly wealthy countries join the ranks of those traveling for pleasure and business. Yet the booming global $1.2 trillion travel business, which has joined all others in moving online, remains stubbornly stuck in the area of mediated transactions. It’s rare (and difficult) for consumers to purchase hotel rooms and airline tickets directly from the providers of same with the…
