Today on Altcoins This Week we discuss Cardano’s founders latest comments, Tether’s reserves apparently verified and much more.
Cardano Tweet Gives Hope to Battered Hodlers
After a painful few weeks for Altcoins, a tweet from one of the founders of Cardano gave a much-needed boost to morale this week. Charles Hoskinson, who is also one of the founders of Ethereum, tweeted that “after the next wave of regulation, Wall Street will be showing up to the party with their locked up capital.” Hoskinson promised that tens of trillions of dollars will enter the crypto space eventually.
Wall Street has been grappling with how to regulate crypto exchanges since permitting Bitcoin futures trading in December. However, a series of hacks and some stringent regulations by global regulators have sent the markets into a tailspin. Not all of Hoskinson’s followers were convinced by the Cardano boss’s optimism, with one remarking, “yeah, now let’s get ADA up over $.15\!”.
Akon To Launch A Currency For His Own Mini-State
It’s not every day that the leader of a country gives you 2000 acres of land, so it is perhaps understandable that American rapper, Akon, was delighted the gift from the President of Senegal. Akon, who is of Senegalese descent, promptly announced that the land, which he calls Akon Crypto City, would exclusively use the Akoin, a new crypto that he will launch within the next two weeks.
The rapper, whose hits include “Lonely” and “Smack That”, said that “blockchain and crypto could be the savior for Africa”, and he plans to deliver a futuristic city on the donated land, which he likened to Wakanda, the fictional city from the recent movie hit, Black Panther. But don’t expect Akon to swap the recording studio for a life devoted to solving the scalability trilemma: asked in more detail about the tech behind the Akoin, the rapper admitted that he would “let the geeks figure it out.”
Tether’s Reserves Apparently Confirmed
There was a reprieve of sorts this week for supporters of Tether, after a difficult six months in which the digital currency has been suspected of playing a large part in alleged Bitcoin price manipulation. A law firm co-founded by a former Director General of the FBI has, according to Tether and Bitfinex Chief Counsel Stuart Hoegner, had access to accounts which confirm that a dollar is held in reserve for every Tether coin minted, a claim made by Tether since its inception.
This has been the subject of much speculation, with one leading security expert accusing the company of using Tether to “effectively counterfeit hundreds of millions of dollars of perceived value.” While the statement from Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, the law firm with access to the accounts, is nothing like the professional audit that the Altcoin has promised, it may satisfy some of its critics. Tether is closely associated with Bitfinex, one of the crypto exchanges under investigation by regulators in the United States.
EOS Orders Block Producers to Freeze 27 Accounts
EOS has ordered its Block Producers to freeze transactions involving 27 accounts, but has not, so far, given any reason for the decision. The order was issued by ECAF Interim Emergency Arbitrator, Sam Sapoznick on a private Telegram group, but was later leaked on Twitter.
EOS hasn’t been far from the headlines since its year long ICO concluded on the 1st of June. A bumpy Mainnet launch was followed with news that Block Producers, the democratically elected “miners” of the EOS ecosystem, had overridden an earlier order from ECAF to freeze accounts. With governance of cryptocurrencies a lively topic of debate, EOS has set the bar high, with over $4 billion raised in its ICO and a complex voting process. It remains to be seen if any further information will surface on the reasons behind this latest order to freeze accounts, or, indeed, if the Block Producers will follow the order this time.
Price Analysis: Another Bad Week For Altcoins
Ether showed signs of recovery in the early part of this week, climbing from $494 on Monday to $540 by Wednesday. But the upturn was short-lived, with sub\-$500 prices returning on Friday and a further low of $429 on Sunday. Ripple followed a similar path, opening at just above $0.50 and maintaining its price before sliding to $0.48 on Friday and then $0.45 on Sunday. After opening at $850, Bitcoin Cash exchanged for over $910 by Tuesday and looked steady until it too crashed at the weekend, first to $750 on Friday and then to $680 on Sunday. EOS saw 30% of its value wiped out between Monday and Sunday, starting the week at $10.50 and ending at $7.23 by Sunday. Litecoin fared no better, opening at $95 and moving towards the $100 mark before crashing to $75 by Sunday.
More security concerns following the hacking of Bithumb and the news at the weekend that Japanese regulators had posted improvement orders to six exchanges suspected of leaky security protocols. To check current prices click here.
