Telegram Passport Waiting for Gram, Only Trademark is Missing
Telegram Passport service, which was launched at the end of July, will reveal its main function after Gram cryptocurrency’s appearance. With it, users will be able to pass identification in order to buy or sell coins. In the future, it will be possible to pay with Gram for various services and content that will appear in the system.
Currently, Telegram Group Inc., owned by Pavel Durov, is suing Lantah LLC from Florida, U.S. because of the rights to the Gram trademark, under which the latter one has announced its release of the cryptocurrency. Telegram still has a chance to win the rights to issue the token under this name. The decision on Telegram's application for the Gram trademark will be made no earlier than August 28.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
1. Since Telegram itself is an anonymous application, Passport utility will be the only way to verify the identity of financial services that will be connected to the system.
2. The transactions’ participants will be identified, so the project team can avoid accusations of financing terrorism and money laundering.
3. Due to all these problems with the trademark registration, Telegram cannot yet unveil the bigger purpose of the new passport services.
SEC Postpones Decision on VanEck ETF
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has extended the decision-making period for the application to launch Bitcoin-ETF, filed jointly by New York companies VanEck and SolidX.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
1. Such instruments attract institutional investors to the market. Major players joining the game increases the liquidity of the market, makes it more stable and mature.
2. Experts agree that the new investment tool will have a very positive impact on the crypto-exchange industry and bring it to a fundamentally new level. Bitcoin will significantly increase in price if such exchange funds receive a green light.
3. At the same time, news about prolonging the decision period for Bitcoin-ETF VanEck and SolidX almost immediately affected the cost of bitcoin and pulled down whole top-100 cryptos
4. Earlier, a source in the SEC, who wished to remain anonymous, made it clear that the agency was interested in approving this application.
Bitmain Estimated Low at $15 Billion
Bitmain, the world's largest manufacturer of hardware for cryptocurrency mining, successfully completed a pre-Initial Public Offering (IPO) funding round. This resulted in total capitalization of Bitmain of $15 billion. The main shareholders were Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent, Japanese Softbank and technology giant Uber. Opinions in the crypto community regarding the pre-IPO Bitmain are ambiguous. Some experts believe that the company received an extremely low estimate, fixing one billion dollars of profit in the first quarter.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
1. Bitmain is the world’s largest manufacturer of bitcoin mining hardware or ASICs units. Mining pools of Bitmain account for almost 50% of all computing resources of the bitcoin network.
2. The previous round of financing was led by Sequoia Capital, American hedge fund Coatue and Singapore state investment fund EDBI. The firm also raised $50 million in a series A funding round.
Opera Adds Crypto Wallet to Desktop Browser
Opera developers have opened access to the recently released Android version of Ethereum-wallet through the desktop version of the browser. the decision was made after the company received numerous requests from the browser’s users, the total number of which today is 322 million people. They also stressed that users won’t have to install any extensions to the desktop version of the browser. To use the Ethereum-wallet, you need to connect the browser to the mobile application by scanning the QR-code. In this case, the keys will be safely stored on the phone, and users will have the opportunity to sign transactions with fingerprints.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
1. Last month, Opera developers have built-in the supporting ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards wallet for Ethereum in the mobile browser version for Android.
2. Users no longer have to install specialized extensions to work with cryptocurrencies on their PC. It will be enough to connect the browser to a mobile wallet using the QR-code. The phone can be used to store private keys and manage the wallet. Users of the desktop version of the wallet will only have to put their finger on the phone to sign the transaction and will not have to enter long passwords.
Ukraine Flexes Blockchain Muscles to Strengthen Voting
An experiment on the blockchain-assisted voting has been initiated in Ukraine. The state’s Central Election Commission Head of Service, Alexander Stelmakh’s said that they are using NEM blockchain and 28 nodes for this experiment. NEM Ukraine provided test coins for this purpose. According to his calculations, If real voting is conducted with NEM blockchain, each polling station would generate a $1,227 cost. Stelmakh states: “As for me, this is a small fee for the lifetime preservation of such socially important data”
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
1. Earlier, famous Ukrainian Politician Yulia Tymoshenko said that blockchain needs to be implemented in the state management system. According to her, this would help to lower the level of corruption in the governmental sector and assist Ukraine in becoming the “new Singapore”.
2. Many countries are showing their interest in blockchain-based voting as the method is tamper-proof and transparent, it protects voters’ information and several decentralized nodes store the data.
At 21:00 (GMT+1) total cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at $224,6 billion
Bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) $6368 (-9,48%)
Ethereum (ETH/USD) $364 (-8,67%)
XRP (XRP/USD) $0,34 (-15,13%)
Bitcoin Cash (EXANTE: Bitcoin.Cash) $596 (-14,17%)
EOS (EOS/USD) $5,73 (-17,35%)
Market Dynamics
The trading volume of cryptocurrencies for 24 hours reached $17,13 (+5.79 billion per day)
Mining Profitability
BTC $2,9 for 10 TH/s
ETH $0,29 for 10 MH/s
BCH $0,26 for 1 TH/s
LTC $3,2 for 1 GH/s
DASH $0,10 for 1 GH/s
Ongoing ICOs:
Expected ICOs:
Click here for the full list of ongoing ICOs.
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