This Week In Crypto
bitcoin suffered a major correction this week, dropping as low as around 7800 USD according to coinmarketcap.com. It is speculated that this drop in price was triggered by a multitude of factors, including Google’s upcoming ban of all cryptocurrency related advertisements on Google’s own websites as well as any websites using their advertising platform. Google is not the first major internet advertiser to ban cryptocurrency related advertisements, as Facebook banned them in January this year.
Google plans to adopt these changes to its financial services advertising policy starting on June 18th. The ban will affect “Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice)” according to this support page. () This means that, for example, a Google search for “bitcoin” would no longer return an advertisement to trade the coin.
Electroneum has just been listed on major cryptocurrency exchange Kucoin. Kucoin is one of the top cryptocurrency exchanges in asia. This represents a huge leap for the coin, as previously the coin could only be found on exchanges Cryptopia and QRYPTOS. This move will make the Britain-based coin available to a more global audience.
The recently released Electroneum mobile miner has had its coin payout increased several times in order to attract more users, and an email from the Electroneum founder states that over 100 thousand downloads of the mobile app were recorded last week. According to a blog post on the Electroneum website, () the app is expected to earn the average user a few USD per month by running in the background. Currently, the mobile miner is only available for android phones, however the blog post claims that an iOS version of the app is completed and awaiting approval. At the time of writing, there are 64,219 active mobile miners on the Electroneum blockchain.
The House Financial Committee held a hearing on “Examining the Cryptocurrencies and ICO Markets” on March 14th 2018. This is the first time US congress has held a hearing addressing ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings.) Witnesses at the hearing include Mike Lempres, Chief Legal and Risk Officer of Coinbase, Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Coin Center, Chris Brummer, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and Robert Rosenblum, a Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.
A central topic of the hearing was attempting to distinguish between major cryptocurrencies and ICOs. On this topic, Valkenburgh states “The fundamental innovation of bitcoin is digital scarcity. That digital scarcity can then be employed by innovative people for a variety of innovative purposes. A token that is scarce and transferable from person to person can be used just like money, just as any good throughout history from gold to seashells.” This hearing was simply intended to be an opportunity to educate congress, and was not intended to be seen as an attempt to regulate cryptocurrencies, however it does mean that legislation could potentially be on the horizon for US based blockchain companies.
