Newsflash: VeChain presents its prototype in front of BMW, Monero fork goes live while Bitconnect lawsuits combine into one
Today’s markets were relatively quiet, as BTC remained stagnant and alts either slightly pumped or went into retractions from yesterday’s moves. That of course doesn’t mean that the news cycle did the same; on the contrary, we saw several interesting headlines pop up today. So stick around and have a quick gander at the day’s biggest scoops:
- VeChain presents its prototype in front of BMW
VeChain visited BMW offices today and present their technology prototype in front of top BMW managers in the Ready Go programme. Ready Go is an advanced leadership program run by the Board of Directors at BMW Foundation and is presided by Dr. Michael Schaefer. BMW Foundation’s main goals are promoting responsible leadership and inspiring leaders worldwide to work towards a peaceful, just and sustainable future, and VeChain’s presence in the event implies that BMW higher-ups are at least interested in finding out more about the project. We’ll see if this results in any advanced co-operation in the future.
- Monero fork goes live
Monero has officially completed its much-expected hard fork. The network upgrade happened on block 1,685,555 with a full community consensus (MineXMR.com mining pool was responsible for mining the mentioned block). Monero network members are required to upgrade their software to the latest version (0.13 Beryllium Bullet) to use the newly-created XMR chain and failure to upgrade will leave the user transacting on the old chain. Users are already reporting satisfactory results, as Redditor SamsungGalaxyPlayer suggests that the transactions are now being confirmed with a fee of 0.00004648 XMR. In USD, that’s about $0.004648, or a 98% reduction when compared to the fees on the previous chain.
- Ethereum development is as strong as ever
After seeing some negative price action lately and facing a wave of naysayers predicting doom scenarios for it, Ethereum had reasons to be boastful today. Namely, a Reddit post revealed that even with all the FUD around it, Ethereum is currently the 5th fastest growing open-source project on GitHub. These numbers are, of course, inflated by the huge amount of projects that have decided to use Ethereum’s smart contracts to branch off and initiate their own blockchain/ERC20 based enterprises. In fact one of major Ethereum-based projects called CyberMiles launched its mainnet today, confirming that market’s biggest altcoin has no intention of letting that title go.
- Bitconnect lawsuits combine into one
The now defunct lending platform Bitconnect has been facing several class-action lawsuits aimed primarily at its owners and promoters. These lawsuits have recently been merged into a single legal effort that will be handled by the Silver Miller law firm. This new lawsuit behemoth gives an overview of what Bitconnect was and how it operated and cites 22 different legal violations that were committed by various individuals who took part in the creation and promotion of the platform. The consolidated lawsuit calls for a jury trial and seeks rescission of the investments made by the plaintiffs. It also looks for compensatory damages for the plaintiffs. A lawyer speaking for the Silver Miller firm confirmed that “the ideal outcome is that all of the money is returned to the investors in BitConnect.”
- Ledger records impressive sales numbers
One of the biggest cryptocurrency hardware wallet-producing companies Ledger revealed recently that they’ve managed to sell over 1.3 million units, as of this month. The company did so in the face of some strong competition in Trezor and KeepKey and these numbers suggest that its Ledger Nano S product is likely the world’s most popular (and most owned) hardware wallet. CEO Eric Larchevêque suggested that a combination of several factors is to “blame” for the ever-growing popularity of hardware wallets:
“Hardware wallets are convenient, affordable, portable and backed up by a paper wallet allowing easy recovery in case of loss. This is why hardware wallets are booming in popularity and becoming the new standard bearer for crypto security.”
