Over the last few weeks, Bitcoin’s (BTC) second-layer scaling protocol, called the Lightning Network (LN), has gained a lot of traction, steadily proving to become a viable solution to BTC’s infamous scalability problem and even potential competitor to American payments giant Visa. Thanks to the community-driven Twitter experiment called “the Lightning Torch,” the LN has now been co-signed by Jack Dorsey, who says that integrating the protocol on Square’s popular Cash App is a question of “when, not if.” On top of raising awareness, the social media campaign has also shown what the LN technology is ready to offer in …

This week, a number of banks shed light on their respective crypto-related projects, following the recent expansion of JPMorgan Chase into the field. IBM was the big mover. A joint announcement by IBM and Stellar (XMR) said that as many as six global banks might issue their own stablecoins on IBM’s blockchain-powered payments network, dubbed “Blockchain World Wire” (BWW). The question now is whether this marks a turning point for cryptocurrency’s use, or if it merely continues the experiments that have marked the early stages of digital money. While quite a few financial institutions seem ready to go blockchain and …

This week, at least two seperate bugs related to Monero (XMR) were reported by crypto community members. The first one allegedly lead to a Ledger hardware wallet user losing around 1,680 XMR (nearly $80,000, as of press time) of his funds after making a transaction. The other vulnerability allowed hackers to make fake XMR deposits to cryptocurrency exchanges. Anonymity above all: What is Monero and how it works Monero is a cryptocurrency with an additional focus on anonymity. It was launched in April 2014, when Bitcointalk.org user thankful_for_today forked the codebase of Bytecoin into the name BitMonero. To create the …

Last week, Coinbase announced that it had acquired Neutrino, a blockchain intelligence startup, which at first seemed like a regular purchase for the ever-growing United States cryptocurrency exchange. However, soon the crypto community learned that Neurino’s key staff are directly affiliated with Hacking Team, a controversial information technology outfit that sells offensive surveillance capabilities to governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations across the world. A hashtag #DeleteCoinbase has been launched as a result, prompting users to cut ties with the platform. However, some clients have since reported that they are struggling to delete their accounts. Coinbase has confirmed that they …

The article was updated on Feb. 20 to include a new comment. On Feb. 14, United States banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase announced its own cryptocurrency. Significantly, it is the first time a major U.S. bank has tapped into digital assets for direct use in business operations. It is fair to say that move comes unexpectedly for JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, is famous within the crypto community for his anti-Bitcoin (BTC) remarks. Here are the main outtakes from reports and comments about the new virtual currency, dubbed “JPM Coin.” JPM Coin aims to increase settlement efficiency, initially within three …

For the second week, QuadrigaCX’s crisis remains one of the hottest topics in the crypto world. After the CEO of the Canadian exchange, 30-year-old Geral Cotten, suddenly died, the exchange has allegedly lost access to its cold wallets, where as much as 190 million Canadian dollars ($145 million) in digital assets were stored. The firm has since managed to obtain creditor protection in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, which has granted it with a 30-day stay of proceedings under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) — which will end on March 7 — to search for the missing funds. According …

Disclaimer: this article was updated on Feb. 6 to include the results of the hearing at Nova Scotia Supreme Court, where QuadrigaCX’s CCAA application was reviewed. Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX is in hot water: Following the sudden death of its 30-year-old founder, Gerald Cotten, the exchange has allegedly lost access to its cold wallets, where most of the funds were stored. Now, the exchange has taken to court to avoid the collapse, but some community members suggest that QuadrigaCX’s cold wallets never existed. QuadrigaCX has been granted an order for creditor protection in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. Justice Michael …

This week, the EOS blockchain protocol angered decentralization proponents yet another time. Specifically, Starteos, one of EOS’ officially sanctioned Block Producers (BPs), appeared to publically offer its token holders financial rewards in return for their votes. Starteos’ vote-buying tendencies seem to fall in line with previous scandals centring around EOS: This year, the blockchain protocol reversed previously confirmed transactions and started an internal investigation after Huobi, its other BP, was accused of running a corruption scheme, among other things. Brief introduction to EOS and its key features EOS.io is a blockchain-powered smart contracts protocol for the development, hosting and execution …

It has been more than a week since the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain was split into two during the fateful hard fork. Two opposing sides clashed over the future of BCH as an asset, and it is time to see where both parties stand, now that the dust has finally started to settle. Conservatives secured the victory, but the cost was high As described in an earlier Cointelegraph article, Bitcoin ABC (BCH ABC, where ABC stands for Adjustable Blocksize Cap) is spearheaded by the likes of Roger Ver, renowned BCH advocate, and Jihan Wu, co-founder of Bitmain, an extremely powerful …

Last week, OKEx exchange faced negative publicity and accusations of marketing manipulation after adjusting Bitcoin Cash (BCH) futures settlements during the notorious hard fork. On November 20, the exchange responded to those allegations, essentially defending its decision and promising to provide evidence if the case goes to court. Curiously, it is at least the third time this year that OKEx has shown strange price volatility on their exchange. Brief introduction to OKEx, major crypto futures trading player OKEx was founded in 2017 as an international arm of the no longer operating Chinese exchange OKCoin. According to data from CoinMarketCap, it …

Recently, Blockchain protocol EOS became subject of a new scandal: its governance model was exposed, as evidence suggesting that some confirmed transactions were reversed surfaced on Reddit. Crypto community was alarmed by the company’s attitude toward decentralization, which, however, is not the EOS’ top priority. According to co-founder Daniel Larimer, EOS team prefers to focus on “anti-censorship and robustness against being shut down.” What is EOS and how it works? EOS.io is a blockchain-powered smart contracts protocol for the development, hosting, and execution of decentralized applications (dApps). It was launched in June 2018 as open-source software, while first test nets …

On October 24, Revain, a service for collecting customer reviews, released a full-scale working 1.0 version of its Ethereum-based platform. As the project team reported to Cointelegraph, the 1.0 version is completely blockchain-based, containing a verification system and artificial intelligence (AI), among many of its other new features. “Users can see all of the reviews written in the blockchain on a special page,” reads the official press release. The Revain platform was launched in order to change the process of collecting reviews from customers, by means of blockchain technology. The service is aimed to help new projects and startups obtain …