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Must-reads for August 30, 2018: Ethereum’s Lubin talks Tether, EU considers regulations, and more

Here are the crypto stories you should be watching today

Ethereum cofounder defends Tether against manipulation accusations (Yahoo Finance)
Tether is often accused of being printed without assets to back and then used as a tool to manipulate bitcoin price. Joe Lubin, who now runs Brooklyn-based Consensys, isn’t a Tether skeptic. “Based on our analysis, which involves just talking to a bunch of people in the space, we do believe that tethers are backed 1 to 1 by U.S. dollars in bank accounts. But it’s still not 100 percent solid in terms of a story from my perspective. I expect may other price-stable tokens will arise and take it place. MakerDAO’s dai is doing incredibly well. It’s a mechanism that maintains price stability. Circle’s CENTRE price stable token is going to be a profound project that will be a more decentralized version. And with respect to market manipulations, I’m not sure that market manipulations are related to Tether directly, if they do exist. It has been an unregulated market set of exchanges that enable big players to do what they want to do. We don’t really trade. We just build software. But ideally, we’ll get a little better regulation of those centralized exchanges, at least, and we’ll see less sloshing around in price,” he said to Yahoo Finance’s Dan Roberts and Myles Udland. Watch the full interview in the link above.

 

Yahoo Finance Integrates Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin Trading (CoinTelegraph)
Speaking of Yahoo Finance, it’s now possible to trade a few cryptos directly on their site. We’re not sure what trading platform is powering it because trading options haven’t appeared for us yet. However, when it happens, we might let you know.

 

Ethereum’s Next Upgrade Could Be the $29 Billion Blockchain’s Biggest Test Yet (CoinDesk)
Speaking of Ethereum, October’s “Constantinople” upgrade is on the horizon. “If no action is taken, the difficulty bomb will push ethereum into what is known as the ‘ice age,’ a period wherein the difficulty is so high that transactions can no longer be processed, making the blockchain unusable. Because delaying the difficulty bomb also impacts ether inflation (the time it takes to mine blocks is directly correlated to the quantity of ether distributed on the platform), ethereum is under pressure to upgrade its code before the bomb hits. But, at present, a path forward remains unclear,” writes CoinDesk’s Rachel Rose O’Leary.

 

The EU Is Taking Another Look at Regulating Crypto (Bloomberg)
“Finance ministers from the European Union’s 28 member states will discuss a host of challenges posed by the growing popularity of digital assets and whether rules should be tightened, according to a draft note prepared for a Sept. 7 meeting in Vienna that was seen by Bloomberg News. They include a general lack of transparency and also crypto’s potential to be misused for money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing.”

 

Bitcoin recovers above $7,000 as key South Korean exchange comes back online (CNBC)
For a brief stint, bitcoins were changing hands above the $7,000 mark. It could have been because Bithumb went back online. It didn’t last long.

 

Bitcoin Accepted [Everyw]here: Square Wins Patent for Cryptocurrency Payment Network (CCN)
Square’s patent to allow merchants to accept crypto and convert it immediately to fiat has been approved by the USPTO. Soon, Alice can indeed buy coffee from Bob with bitcoin, though for her not to wait 10 minutes for the transaction to be processed, it will have to be converted to fiat first.

 

Kenya’s first Blockchain cryptocurrency to be launched (Daily Nation)
“Kenya is set to launch its first Blockchain cryptocurrency known as tmxglobalcoin.com coin. Its developers believe that this technology will save the logistic business in Africa from the problems experienced in the import or export sector such as price hikes caused by value chain in the sector,” writes Hillary Kimuyu of Kenya’s Daily Nation.

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Lawrence Lewitinn, CFA was the founding editor in chief of Modern Consensus. Disclosure: Lewitinn owns no cryptocurrencies in his portfolio.