CryptoAM: Robinhood gets richer, Bitcoin comes in 13th, and the SEC backs Howeycoin.
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Good morning everyone, Alex here. It’s shaping up to be another gorgeous day in Seattle. The skies are blue and the tickers are green. I have some new fancy graphics for you thanks to the input of one of our dedicated readers.
4 things you need to know:
One: Robinhood raised $363 million in a series D funding round to build out its crypto platform. Robinhood expects to offer cryptocurrency trading to customers in all fifty states by the end of the calendar year. Co-CEO Baiju Bhatt said he expects the platform to, “be either the largest or one of the largest crypto platforms out there”.
Remember, Robinhood’s app does not let it’s users deposit or withdraw cryptocurrencies, all buys and sells are done within the app without the user dealing with any addresses.
My take: This is great news. Who cares if people can’t deposit or withdraw crypto. If you want to do that, there are plenty of existing options out there for you. Robinhood is the right platform for most retail investors who want to invest in crypto. It will keep people who aren’t too knowledgeable away from the scams and complexities of crypto.
Two: The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance released version 1.0 of a set of common technical specifications. The EEA, which is made up of over 30 firms including Microsoft, JP Morgan, and ConsenSys, has released the Enterprise Ethereum Client Specification 1.0. This is a common set of technical standards that will aid in the development of enterprise applications on Ethereum.
My thoughts: I hope that Ethereum solves some of its scalability issues before corporations lose interest. Everything is fast moving in crypto, except the blockchains that were not built to handle the traffic they are receiving.
Three: Coinbase’s venture fund made it’s first investment in Compound. Compound let’s users borrow and lend ERC-20 tokens. Unlike traditional loans, users do not have to wait for loans to mature on Compound to withdraw their money.
Implications: Instead of simply letting your tokens sit on an exchange or in a wallet, you can now earn interest on your investment by lending out those tokens. You will also be able to easily short tokens by borrowing tokens, selling them on an exchange, and then buying back the tokens at a lower price.
Bigshots: In addition to Coinbase Ventures, Compound also received investment from Andreesen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, and Bain Capital.
Read the Article or the Whitepaper…
Four: The Chinese Government has ranked Ethereum as the number one blockchain. The Chinese Government released a ranking of the top 26 blockchains based on technology, application, and innovation. Notably absent are any tokens and test nets. Bitcoin came in thirteenth place, just ahead of Verge and Waves.
China has had a notably complex relationship with crypto. It will be interesting to see if government approval of certain projects will affect where capital is invested.
What I’m reading today:
The SEC launched a fake ICO website yesterday which sells “Howeycoins”. The site offers a number of shadily worded discounts for various investment tiers. Any attempt to purchase the tokens results in users being rerouted to an SEC informational page that warns investors not to fall for too good to be true scams. It even has a whitepaper, which in this case can be taken literally, as it’s just a blank pdf. I have to say this was pretty funny as far as content put out by the SEC goes.
Blockstack just launched app.co, an app store for decentralized apps. Sometimes it can be hard among all the whitepaper ICOs to know what you can actually use blockchain for. This site is a pretty neat way to browse a wide variety of decentralized games, apps, and services.
You may have heard of Augur, you may have not. Basically, it’s a prediction market based on Ethereum. I would highly recommend a google if you trust me when I say its super cool. I found an interesting twitter thread by one of the developers chronicling the difficulty of their endeavor. It’s an interesting read. Click the tweet to read the full thread.
I don’t think people understand how complicated something like @AugurProject actually is or how challenging an engineering effort it is to build on #ethereum. Here’s an explanation
May 11, 2018Upcoming
Augur will be deployed to the Ethereum main net on July 9th.
Another comic? Why not.
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