Crypto Market Update (29 May 2018)

Bitcoin Global News (BGN)

May 29, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire

General Market Outlook

It looks like there could be a reversal in the downtrend starting as Bitcoin, Ethereum and many altcoins are showing strong positive percent growth in the past 24 hours. As many as 10 or more of the top 100 coins are up over 10%. Bitcoin is nearing $7,500 for +2.5% and Ethereum is just over $550 for +4.5.%

Major Headlines

Bithumb stops trading in 11 countries

The company exchange was forced to make these changes in order to comply with global anti-money laundering norms by blocking all transactions of residents in jurisdictions belonging to the Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCT) blacklist - North Korea, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Vanuatu and Yemen. The 11 NCCT countries are seen by the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as nations that have taken insufficient measures to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the international financial system. Bithumb has strengthened its own anti-money laundering policies by implementing the recommendations of authorities from the South Korean government and the Korea Blockchain Association.

State of Alabama sends cease and desist to 3 ICOs

The state filed the order on ExtraBit, LEV and Platinum. They regard the ICO tokens as securities, which deal with much stricter regulatory standards for advertisement. Regarding ExtraBit, the Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) points that the firm has been illegally soliciting Alabama residents with “unregistered securities” offerings after it advertised its token sale on the website of WSFA, an NBC-affiliated TV station licensed in the state capital, Montgomery. Further, these companies makes promises of profits with "materially misleading" statements to defraud or deceive investors. Extrabit's white paper claims that, since the firm generates its profits mainly from mining bitcoin, zcash and monero, it promises a 185 percent return on investment every quarter for investors who maintain a positive balance in their EXB wallet. Texas and New Jersey are the only other two states in the U.S. that have taken similar actions.

Intel Patents new data storage method

Intel has developed a new way to verify transactions on a distributed ledger. In a patent filing released last Thursday, the company outlines a method by which it would partition and update distributed ledgers automatically, with a processor able to independently verify that new blocks are valid and able to be attached to the ledger. This is in contrast to the conventional mining method advanced by blockchains like bitcoin, that rely on a network of competing nodes to verify and record transactions in exchange for rewards. The patent also notes a downside to DLT technology: "Distributed ledgers have inherent scalability issues. When all of the validators in a DLS must have a copy of all transactions, all of the transactions must be broadcast to all of the validators. These broadcasted transactions create a very large number of network messages."

Top 5 Gainers

LatiumX (LATX) +115.02% at $0.083959

BelugaPay (BBI) +60.12% at $0.520934

Silent Notary (SNTR) +54.74% at $0.000228

Hero (HERO) +49.47% at $0.503734

XYO Network (XYO) +37.23% at $0.004688

Top 5 Losers

FuturXe (FXE) -69.36% at $0.000147

Rhenium (XRH) -35.91% at $0.158144

Plancoin (PLAN) -35.71% at $0.165350

Titanium BAR (TBAR) -32.98% at $0.104108

Docademic (MTC) -20.77% at $0.288141