Bitcoin and cryptocurrency roundup: 19 January 2018
What happened today?
It's an exciting time for cryptocurrency in South Korea, especially if you're one of the officials facing allegations of insider trading or one of the protesters on the street.
Elsewhere several coins are minting significant partnerships, Visa gently snubs bitcoin, an interesting coin passes an interesting test and we take a look inside the biggest ICO in history.
1. Insider trading, protests, petitions and cryptocurrency
Bitcoin News reports that several South Korean officials dumped their crypto holdings right before dumping cold water on the market. One protest and 250,000 petition signatures later and a seemingly-chastened regulatory body has banned its state employees from crypto trading.
2. New partnerships on the loose
MedBloc is taking a big bite out of the dental industry, with a blockchain-powered dental examination centre set to open in March 2018.
And in China VeChain has inked what might conservatively be called a big deal with the disruptive Fanghuwang.
3. Visa says no to bitcoin
In a show of brutal honesty, Visa chief executive Alfred Kelly said that bitcoin is "honestly somewhat of a speculative commodity".
He followed this revelation up by saying that no, Visa won't be accepting bitcoin, as Finder reports from the USA.
4. 300 million dollars here, zero dollars there
Not-so-secret society Maker DAO has an ancient duty, passed down to them quite recently with the creation of the Dai stablecoin. Their job is to keep the price DAI pegged to the US dollar.
Even as the MKR smart contracts dumped about US$300 million from the MKR market cap in 10 minutes flat, DAI stayed steady as a rock at US$1. Right now is a fantastic time to see this convoluted economic system in action.
5. A look inside the largest-ever ICO
Some previous ICOs have made headlines by raking in over US$100 million in crypocurrency. Now a new ICO from Telegram is expecting to walk on faces with a US$1.2 billion ICO, all raised in real US dollars.
What's their secret? Firstly it plans to use its own technology to facilitate the ICO. Secondly Telegram is kind of a big deal.
Take a look inside previously leaked documents and see the new developments.
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