As reported yesterday, the SEC has issued dozens of subpoenas to companies involved with ICOs. TZero, a high-profile $250 million token sale launched by Overstock Founder Patrick Byrne, is among the projects under investigation. The share price of Overstock.com dropped 10 percent on the news.
News
SEC investigates Overstock token sale, shares slide
(Reuters, by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss)
"The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Overstock.com Inc's (OSTK.O) sale of cryptocurrency to investors, the online retailer said in a filing on Thursday, sending it shares lower by as much as 10 percent."
"Already, a handful of bitcoin-seeking luxury real estate listings have popped up around the country, and experts predict the digital currency could grow to be a viable means of home buying."
Binance reduces 50% of BTC withdrawal fee
#Binance is happy to announce a 50% reduction in $BTC withdrawal fees. Effective immediately, BTC withdrawal fees are only 0.0005 BTC!
— binance (@binance_2017) March 1, 2018
Commentary
The bullish case for Bitcoin (part 4 of 4)
(Medium, by Vijay Boyapati)
"Although the common criticisms of Bitcoin found in the media and economics profession are misplaced and based on a flawed understanding of money, there are real and significant risks to investing in Bitcoin. It would be prudent for a prospective Bitcoin investor to understand and weigh these risks before considering an investment in Bitcoin."
The SEC's uneven cryptocurrency crackdown
(Bloomberg, by Stephen Gandel)
"Yet Reg A+ deals don't seem to be a better bet than ICOs. In fact, they seem worse so far. Of the 10 Reg A+ deals that have been launched in a little over the past two years, only one has gone up in price. The rest have all lost value, some as much as 75 percent. And it's a market that contains some questionable operators."
An apocalytic Paul Tudor Jones warns the Fed is about to lose control
(Zerohedge)
"In a striking interview with Goldman's Allison Nathan, legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones argues that US inflation is set to accelerate sharply, making bonds a very poor investment, and that the Fed must act swiftly to tackle financial bubbles created by prolonged monetary easing."
"To match the new environment of constant, low-grade volatility in both prices and supply, producers and consumers of oil may need to re-evaluate assumptions and continuously adjust their strategies."
Technical
Ethereum's smart contracts are full of holes
(MIT Technology Review, by Mike Orcutt)
"Technologists are just beginning to figure out how to design them so they can be relied on not to lose people’s money, and—as a new survey of Ethereum smart contracts illustrates—security researchers are only now coming to terms with what a smart contract vulnerability even looks like."
Blockchain technology with Andreas M. Antonopoulos (Part 1)
(Case-Podcast)
"In the first episode of a two-part interview, Stefan Tilkov talks to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency expert Andreas M. Antonopoulos about the Bitcoin system’s technical foundation and architecture. Andreas addresses common questions about Bitcoin’s usefulness, scalability, and energy consumption."
23,000 HTTPS certificates axed after CEO emails private keys
(arstechnica, by Dan Goodin)
"When Rowley asked for proof the certificates were compromised, the Trustico CEO emailed the private keys of 23,000 certificates, according to an account posted to a Mozilla security policy forum. The report produced a collective gasp among many security practitioners who said it demonstrated a shockingly cavalier treatment of the digital certificates that form one of the most basic foundations of website security."
"Configuration data was placed in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket by the business analytics software firm Birst, according to security researchers at UpGuard. On January 15th, UpGuard detected the unsecured bucket—which contained IP addresses, administrative credentials, passwords, and private keys."
Lightning developer Alex Bosworth comments on centralized tokens
Centralized tokens are like creating unsigned paper IOUs. Their value hinges on arbitrary factors. Will they be honored in the future? Will more be issued? Even if traded through a perfectly p2p network, centrality brings systemic risk. This is decentralization’s role in value.
— Alex Bosworth ☇ (@alexbosworth) March 1, 2018
Updates
Monero made an announcement to clearly define Core Team's role and responsibilities. Monero Blog
Decred graphic shows public dev activity for February across selected software repos on Github.
A brief snapshot of #Decred's public dev activity for Feb across selected software repos on @github.
— Decred (@decredproject) March 1, 2018
242 active PRs, 230 commits, 27,147 additions, and 13,960 deletions in total spread across 5-7 devs per $DCR repo.
When 2018 roadmap? Yesterday! https://t.co/4JbjmK4BU7 pic.twitter.com/GNUYMueRsH
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