Lead follow or get outta the way

Your daily newsletter for June 7, 2019

Leadership

"It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.”

- Nelson Mandela

1st week of June, cleared! Enjoy your well deserved break, folks. Read this newsletter first though! 😄

Today in history (1993), singer Prince celebrated his birthday by changing his name to a symbol. 🤯

In today's newsletter, we will be covering Facebook having about 100 people working on its crypto project, margin lenders on crypto exchange Poloniex recently losing ~$13.5 million due to a flash crash and an MIT professor coming out to say that blockchain is not as secure as its purported to be. Today, we will also be covering Tron (TRX) in our weekly deep dive! Also today in our 'Blockchain term of the day' section, we have another well put together infographic done by cryptocurrency index building and trading automation software, Panda Analytics! So don't forget to check that out below too!

Please don't forget to answer the polls down below too! It's a great way for us to interact with you all and hear what you have to say. 💭 Happy reading! 📚

Just a normal day 💤

In the last 24 hours, total market capitalization rose slightly from ~$250 billion to ~$255 billion, with most coins seeing small gains in the ~1-3% range.

BTC is currently trading at ~$7,990, creeping back slowly to that $8,000 mark, up ~1.7% over yesterday. It is currently challenging its 21-day EMA line. RSI level on the daily chart is currently at ~52.

Things are gettin' serious 😲

According to a recent report by CNBC, there are now about 100 people known to be working on the Facebook's crypto project via profiles on professional networking platform LinkedIn. The site also shows that Facebook still has over 40 openings available in the team’s business unit. 😲

According to the advertisements, the goal of Facebook's crypto project is to provide a public service centered on accessibility to "help billions of people with access to things they don’t have now" like "healthcare, equitable financial services, or new ways to save or share information”. 😄

The head of Facebook’s blockchain-based project, David Marcus, previously served on the board of crypto exchange Coinbase and also worked as the president of PayPal.

It was also reported by crypto news source Cointelegraph, that Facebook may relinquish control of its cryptocurrency governance to third parties, in order to provide a degree of decentralization. Smart move, Facebook. 👍

House of cards 🃏

According to an official blog post, margin lenders on crypto exchange Poloniex recently lost ~$13.5 million due to a flash crash. 💸

A severe price crash in the Clams (CLAM) market led to margin loans losses totaling ~1,800 Bitcoin (BTC), which ended up affecting ~0.4% of all users and resulted in the reduction of all active BTC loans by ~16.202%. 🤯

Explaining what caused it all, Poloniex said that "the velocity of the crash and the lack of liquidity in the CLAM market made it impossible for all of the automatic liquidations of CLAM margin positions to process as they normally would in a liquid market. In addition, a significant amount of the total loan value was collateralized in CLAM, so both the borrowers’ positions and their collateral lost most of their value simultaneously.”

The exchange subsequently froze all of the defaulted borrowers’ accounts and will keep them frozen until the borrowers repay their loans. Poloniex also claims that it will return the funds to affected lenders as soon as it recovers the lost money.

Madness 🤪

Stuart Madnick, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management and the Founding Director of the Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan research consortium, has come out to say via an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, that blockchains are not as secure as they are purported to be. 🤔

His study analyzed 72 cases of publicly reported security breaches in blockchain systems between 2011 and 2018, used that information to create a taxonomy of blockchain vulnerabilities, namely transparency, distributed control and anonymity, which are blockchain tech’s purported key advantages. ✍️

According to Madnick, transparency enables people to view the software and verify that there are no flaws, but also lets ill-intentioned persons to easily access and explore it to uncover flaws not yet observed by others.

Distributed control means that there is no central “on” or “off” switches like in traditional centralized systems. This meant when an attack is discovered on a blockchain system, it is purportedly impossible to turn off.

Madnick also said that with regard to anonymity, "it makes it popular for illegal transactions, such as ransomware payments". 🤦‍♂️

Blockchain term of the day 🤓 - Tokens vs Coins

Crypto deep dive: Tron

Cryptocurrency: TRX
Market Capitalization Rank: 11th (~$2.28 billion)
Consensus Algorithm: Proof-of-Stake (PoS) - several voted nodes deployed by global users themselves, cooperate to accomplish consensus calculations.

What it's about ⚙️

Tron was established in September 2017 by its current CEO Justin Sun.
It strives to build the future of a truly decentralized internet and global free content entertainment system that utilizes blockchain technology.
The protocol enables developers to create smart contracts and decentralized applications, freely publish, own, and store data and other content.
According to the TRON Foundation, the ecosystem surrounding this network specializes in offering massive scalability and consistent reliability capable of processing transactions at a high rate via high-throughput computing.

Why people love it 😘

Content producers can create free and uncontrolled content, without restrictions on characters, images, audio or video can be created on the TRX blockchain.
Since the TRX blockchain is essentially a network of peers between content creators and consumers without the middleman, content creators are empowered and more incentivized to produce better content.
Strong Chinese backing. Some backers include Bitmain, CEO of Kuaidi Dache Weixing Chen, Chair of Lifan Industry Yin Minshan and CEO of Ofo Wei Dai.
Tron recently acquired the file sharing software provide BitTorrent for $140 million, effectively boosting their user base by 100 million users.

Why people doubt it 🤔

Tron was criticized for plagiarizing the Filecoin and IFPS whitepapers for its own whitepaper. Sun attributed the lack of citation to translation issues from volunteers. This set TRX off on the wrong foot.
Tron has been known to be huge on marketing. While this has been good at creating awareness, some argue it's to the point where it's over-marketed.
Although the number of TRX addresses has been increasing, the number of transactions on the TRX blockchain has been decreasing. This could signal that people are using TRX tokens more as a speculative tool rather than to help run the TRX blockchain.

Other news 📰

Block.one, the company that built the EOS blockchain, is currently undergoing an equity buyback to bring on more strategic investors. 🤑
Kodak has launched a blockchain-enabled document management system, Kodak Services for Business. 🗄️
Jason Leung, global head of Cumberland, the cryptocurrency-focused unit of Chicago-based trading giant DRW, is leaving the firm. 👋

Crypto calendar 📅

16 May - U.S. SEC's decision on the NYSE Arca and Bitwise Asset Management's Bitcoin ETF application (decision has been delayed)

19 Aug - U.S. SEC's initial decision on the VanEck, SolidX and the Cboe BZX Exchange Bitcoin ETF application

TBA - ICE's Bakkt Bitcoin Daily Futures Contract updated launch timeline

Catch the CoinMarketCap team at these community events! 🤝

8-11 Jul - RISE Conference 2019 (Hong Kong)
10-11 Jul - Barcelona Trading Conference (Barcelona, Spain)

Poll of the Day

How much do you agree with this statement: "I am a fan of crypto margin trading."💭

Why or why not? What are your plans for the weekend? Share with me in the polls! 😆

What you said

"How much do you agree with this statement: "I believe that by the end of 2020, we will see iPhones and Androids pre-installed with crypto wallets before they are sold.""

The average vote was a 7.9.

"Why or why not?"

Apple is becoming will want to compete with Samsung - They can't afford to lose out. 💪

i think yes.. crypto wallets apart from storing crypto assets will also see lot of adoption for example identity, logins, access to utility, etc... so we should be seeing crypto native wallets preinstalled on iOS & Android very soon. - I believe you're referring to blockchain here. If so, I would have to agree with you. I think that it will permeate many facets of our daily lives - Identity solutions would be huge IMO. 🤔

"birds of a feather flock together" - lol, apt. 😂

Not if but when. - It's already happening. What interesting times we live in. We're gonna see cash get phased out. 🔮

Pre-installation will pair down the marketplace and allow for controlled promotion and growth of the sector. - Perhaps not controlled growth. 🤔

I hope it is so. I need a new phone and have been shopping for a crypto friendly device. - There are already a few on the market! E.g. Exodus 1, Finney. ☺️

Even though it's new to me bitcoin/crypto is going up a lot. - This is only the beginning! 😉

Sure! Let's trust Chinese manufacturers to make our crypto wallets. - Lol the sarcasm is strong w this one. 😂

Samsung has stayed its next phone will have storage fir crypto keys and I saw something from Apple stating their next phone is going to have some crypto ability - Yup, it's becoming a reality! 👍

Many users will have crypto by then. They will want to access them on their phone. If they can’t, these companies will lose out to their competition. - Agreed.

It's a given and the only way to go!!! - It's the natural progression. Just look at WeChat in China! 😲

The popularity of digital currency is constantly on the increase. - Agreed. It only makes sense. Digitization or currencies can open up a ton of previously untapped markets.

Because is the money evolution - Yup!

Nobody will have such a high trust to buy pre-programmed wallets, neither will I. - I mean, you don't have to keep in them large amounts of funds. It's logical not to do so as well.

I think 2020 it’s to early. Although eventually they will. - I think it's possible~

Androids already are - iPhones are next (:

Inevitable - Can't stop won't stop. 😛

The cryptocurrency is an unstoppable phenomenon.😆 - Hell yaasss

The fear of being left behind! - I guess everyone is susceptible to a little FOMO. 😆

At&t accepts payments in bitcoin now. It only makes sense that they get into crypto wallets in order for the payments to run smoothly. Pretty soon evryone else will follow suit. The mass adoption has begun! - The revolution has begun. ✊

Not only smartphones but I can see it being integrated into smart TV's, Fridges, Cars and anything else where you are likely to need to pay for something. If not by the end of 2020 certainly in the next 5 years. - Yes that's not-too-farfetched a possibility as well. I believe that it's going to be very very widespread.

Very useful for non technical individuals to adopt crypto’s. - That is true! If it was already made available/ preloaded in phone wallets, it's helping newer folks take that first step. 👣

God I hope not. Phones are intrusive enough and already come with preloaded crap. I wouldn't trust a wallet that I didn't choose with my own research. - This is true too unfortunately. They would be able to learn about our spending habits and mine more of our data.

Blockchain and digital assets are here to stay. Having things sycronized is forthcoming. - Soon, all we would need when we go out will just be our mobile phones. It's already happening in China.

Thank you all for reading! Catch you back here again next week for your daily dose of crypto news! 💙