For those who live in the northern hemisphere, winter is coming, while in the cryptosphere it’s already here. In Wednesday’s edition of The Daily, we look at the steps ICOs are taking to preserve their capital as they wait for the markets to warm up again, heralding that winter is over.
Also read: Bitstamp to Deploy New Market Surveillance Tool to Fight Price Manipulation
ICOs Offload ETH and Downsize to Survive
Having belatedly realized that the crypto market may have further to drop, and that staying all in ETH could be fatal, tokenized projects have begun cashing out and cutting costs. Some, such as Aragon, have shown prudence in their treasury management, maximizing capital through smart cryptocurrency acquisition and liquidation. This week, the project sold $1.5 million of cryptocurrency, including $1 million of ETH, and has sought sanctuary from market volatility by taking out a 1 million loan of DAI, Maker’s ETH-collateralized stablecoin.
Other tokenized projects have not been so fortunate or astute at balancing their budgets however. In addition to Aragon, over 100,000 in ETH has been sold by ICOs in the past week in a belated attempt to stem diminishing funds. A number of projects have also begun to lay off staff, including Steemit, which is shedding 70 percent of its workforce. In a blog post, Steemit CEO Ned Scott attributed the move to “the weakness of the cryptocurrency market, the fiat returns on our automated selling of STEEM diminishing, and the growing costs of running full Steem nodes.” He added:
I would like to thank all of our employees and contractors for their months and years of dedication and hard work. It is incredibly difficult to part with these great people who I have gotten to know well and respect.
Stably Announces Meta Stablecoin
Stablecoins, representing the promise to pay the bearer a corresponding asset that promises to pay the bearer an agreed amount, are already very meta. Stably’s forthcoming dollar-pegged coin takes this metaness to a new level though. Its new stablecoin will use a basket of stablecoins as its reserve, including its own stableusd (USDS) as well as potential candidates such as USDC, TUSD, GUSD and DAI.
“Our approach to building this basket will be to design a coin with institutional cryptocurrency traders in mind,” explained Stably. “The main advantage of this coin will be diversification of counterparty risk. A user can confidently trade this coin knowing that the risk profile of the coin is diversified with several other stablecoin projects.”
Whether investors are swayed by this argument remains to be seen. In the U.K., meanwhile, London Block Exchange (LBX) and Alphapoint have launched GBPP, the first stablecoin pegged to the pound sterling (GBP).
Bitcoin’s Not Dead and Here’s the Proof
Finally, while cryptocurrency users need no convincing that there’s a lot of life in bitcoin yet, mainstream media aren’t so sure. For years, bitcoiners have directed crypto coroners in the direction of the obituary page that records the number of times BTC has been declared dead. Nic Carter has now assembled a handy flowchart to help set the record straight any time the media declare, for the umpteenth time, that bitcoin is dead.
What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits as featured in The Daily? Let us know in the comments section below.
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from Bitcoin News https://ift.tt/2zq3CUw The Daily: ICOs Hunker Down for Crypto Winter, Meta Stablecoins Are Coming
Bitstamp has announced a partnership with Irisium to launch a market-monitoring platform on the exchange. Irisium, a subsidiary of Swedish stock-exchange technology developer Cinnober, is a market surveillance service provider for traditional exchanges, clearing houses, regulators and trading firms around the world.
Irisium, which is known to be used by other crypto exchanges such as Bitfinex, isn’t the only market surveillance company that is trying to expand from traditional markets into crypto. One of the biggest players in the institutional world, Nasdaq, is pushing hard for its Smarts surveillance platform to be adopted by digital asset exchanges.
China’s Center for Information and Industry Development (CCID), under the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, released its revised crypto project ranking last week. This is the center’s seventh update. The number of crypto projects evaluated remains at 33, unchanged from the previous ranking.
The CCID explained that its evaluation model is continuously optimized based on the recommendations of the project’s working group and expert consultants. The rankings are organized and implemented by the CCID Blockchain Research Institute and a number of organizations such as the CCID Think Tank, under China Electronics and Information Industry Development Institute, and China Software Testing Center.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts can now purchase silverware, timepieces, and fine jewelry with bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin core (BTC) from eight select Birks Group locations in Canada. Birks Group has been providing jewelry services in the Canadian region for more than 100 years with its 28 Maison Birks and Brinkhaus stores. Through the partnership with Bitpay, the Birks Group locations that will accept BCH and BTC are in Vancouver West Hastings, Brinkhaus Calgary, Fairview Mall, Bloor, Yorkdale, Montreal and Calgary. Furthermore, the newly opened Patek Philippe and Graff stores will also be accepting cryptocurrencies in the near future. The company explained during the 
It is difficult to understand the motivation behind Union Bank’s unexpected assault on cryptocurrency-linked accounts. The matter is even more unclear in light of the CBN’s warnings, as neither of them explicitly said that cryptocurrency transactions were illegal. But Ogueke has suggested that commercial banks may have been given carte blanche by the CBN to close customer accounts without explanation, as long as their actions are in accordance with anti-money laundering rules.
Bitcoin Cash development has grown significantly since the hard fork last May, which increased the block size and added new opcodes. One initiative that has made its debut this year is the 
Predictions of tether’s demise may have been exaggerated. Within 24 hours of Binance removing tether’s position as its reference BTC-USD pair in favor of a weighting of stablecoins, Tether has relaunched. In a declaration that it is open for business — namely the business of accepting fiat currency deposits and redeeming them for USDT — Tether has reactivated its platform. This will enable new customers to complete verification and existing ones to purchase tethers directly.
To coincide with the news of the revitalized Tether platform, Bitfinex and Ethfinex have announced the introduction of tether-fiat trading pairs. USDT-USD and EURT-EUR will be available on both exchanges in a move which Bitfinex has glibly described as “continuing [its] heritage of providing a neutral, coin-agnostic platform.” Since the news was announced, the so-called tether premium has 
Coincheck has reinstated deposits and purchases for XRP and FCT. As such, it has now resumed services for all cryptocurrencies that were live at the time of the NEM hack in January, when roughly $530 million of funds were taken from the exchange.
The Bitmex Insurance Fund now holds 18,851 BTC, following the addition of 1,452,6 BTC on Nov. 25. The significant increase pushed the amount of BTC held by the fund from 16,713.4 up to 18,166.
Bhex, an exchange founded by former Huobi Chief Technology Officer James Ju, has 
The Blockchain Technology Foundation, also known as the Commons Foundation, has 
The Commons Foundation also claims that it will develop “the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange” as part of the Golden Goose project.
The Bitpay team has 
The Bitpay team warns that anyone using a Copay app from version 5.0.2 to 5.1.0 should not open it again. Users should first update their affected wallets and then send all funds from affected wallets to new version 5.2.0 wallets. Users should not attempt to move funds to new wallets by importing affected backup phrases, as they should assume that the corresponding private keys may have been compromised.