- Bitcoin wallet giving away $125 million to encourage mass adoption
Blockchain wallet, one of the most popular wallet projects in the world, has initiated a giveaway of $125 million worth of XLM to encourage mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency.
The wallet currently offers $25 worth of Stellar Lumens (XLM) to the first five million people who apply for the waiting list. This giveaway is a result of Blockchain partnering with the Stellar Lumens foundation. Blockchain explains that they went with XLM due to its scaling capabilities being better than those of other more popular currencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
“[Stellar’s] token, XLM, enables quick, low cost, worldwide transactions, even when millions of people are using it at once. We’re excited to add an entirely new way for users to get their first crypto… By growing the Blockchain community, we can help more people own and control their financial future,” said Blockchain’s CEO Peter Smith.
To become a part of the giveaway, one needs to download the Blockchain wallet client first. There is one tricky part about this entire project: those who participate are required to perform a full KYC verification.
The project claims that this is done to ensure the entire giveaway is scam-free and legitimate. Some community members disagree, claiming that selling your personal information for $25 isn’t exactly worth it. The entire initiative is expected to see much higher adoption in developing countries of the world. The whole story of KYC and AML verification goes in the opposite direction of the original idea behind cryptocurrencies and this is not how you build a new financial system, it is rather a cheap trick conceived and utilized by the centralized actors of the incumbent system.
- Poloniex to offer its customers pre-trading on Bitcoin Cash hard fork tokens
This Wednesday night Poloniex started offering pre-fork trading on the two coins that will come as a result of the upcoming BCH hard fork. The coins in question are BCHABC and BCHSV and this will be the first time that Poloniex engaged in the practice of pre-fork trading.
Poloniex explained why they decided to introduce this strategy into their business:
“We’re doing this to empower customers to demonstrate their support for one coin over the other through trading activity. Poloniex will also support trading markets for both tokens after the hard fork.”
The exchange will remain neutral throughout the post-fork process as well, giving both chains an equal opportunity to establish themselves as new leaders of the BCH community.
Pre-fork trading has been made available for USDC/BCHSV and USDC/BCHABC as well as matching Bitcoin trading pairs. Customers will also be able to convert their BCH into an equivalent amount of BCHABC and BCHSV and vice versa if they wish to withdraw funds, but will not be able to withdraw BCHABC and BCHSV ahead of the fork.
The pre-trading will last until November 15th, when the actual fork is scheduled to happen.
- Venezuela launches a Petro savings plan as Bitcoin trading in the country reaches ATH
The country of Venezuela announced what is called a “Comprehensive National Cryptoasset Plan,” a plan which will initially make 4 million petros available for purchase for its citizens.
Venezuelan citizens are able to purchase petro with their fiat currency and thus invest in a crypto savings fund of sorts which will be verified by a certificate.
The plan can be accessed through an online platform called “Platforma Patria” and around 18 million Venezuelans with legitimate ID cards can already purchase their savings plans there. The minimum amount of petros that can be purchased is 0.01, which is currently valued at around 39 sovereign bolivars.
“The savings method includes quarterly amortizations and a final payment that can be executed between 90, 180 or up to 270 days, a scheme that allows to safeguard the value of the investment,“ explains Venezuela’s vice president of the economy, Tareck El Aissami.
The announcement comes at a moment when Venezuelan population’s interest in crypto is reaching its peak levels. LongHash reported recently that there were more than 1000 BTC traded during the last week on the Venezuelan subsidiary of the popular peer-to-peer exchange LocalBitcoins.
Venezuela now trades over 1000 BTC per week on LocalBitcoins
This is their highest BTC trading volume of all time pic.twitter.com/qq0DNgsxc9
— LongHash (@longhashdata) November 8, 2018
- EU Parliament passes blockchain resolution
EU parliament has shown their intent to regulate the cryptocurrency space by introducing a new resolution called “Distributed ledger technologies and blockchains: building trust with disintermediation”.
The resolution was designed to “empower and protect EU citizens and startups in respect to centralized banking, data protection including the ‘right to be forgotten’ and to serve as non-imposing and transparent rules under which a blockchain industry can flourish.”
The resolution was pushed by the Greek MEP Eva Kaili who cited the inefficiency of the European banking sector as one of the main reasons why she was supportive of it.
The resolution makes the following recommendations:
- For member States to establish non-profit “innovation hubs” to promote research, education and training among their citizens
- The introduction of blockchain courses and curricula among universities
- For the Commission and ECB to identify dangers for the public and incorporate cryptocurrencies into the European payment system.
- To develop technical standards for Distributed Ledger Technologies
- Conduct a clear analysis of legal enforceability of smart contracts among EU member States
- Decentralize the storage of EU citizens’ data in preventing the misuse of data
- Decentralize infrastructure to ensure no monopolies are held, for instance the storage of nodes and servers
- Use blockchain for tracking EU funding to achieve greater accountability
- Evaluate blockchain-based e-voting systems as a use case for the EU
- The creation of funding opportunities from the EIB, EIF and EFSI 2.0
- The creation of an Observatory for the Monitoring of ICOs and clarification of utility tokens and security tokens as unique asses classes
- For any regulations on blockchain to remove barriers and founded on principles of technology neutral and business model-neutral
The full resolution document can be found here.
