Today's News is Brought to You By

To receive daily news, research, analysis, education, and more directly to your inbox everyday for FREE, subscribe here.

  <div style="color:#ffffff;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#60e1c1;padding-top:3px;padding-bottom:3px;padding-right:10px;padding-left:10px">OPINION</div>
  <p id="subjectLine" style="font-size:0px;color:#FFFFFF">So long 1,000x</p>
  <h2 style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:20px;color:#000000;margin-bottom:15px">Vitalik Buterin Says No More Opportunity for 1,000x Growth</h2>
  <img alt="EU" id="image" src="https://www.trustnodes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/buterin.png" width="100%"><br/>
  <h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">NO 1,000X</h4>
  <ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
    <li>Vitalik Buterin recently spoke with Bloomberg to discuss cryptocurrencies and used it as an attempt to humble investors</li>
    <li>The Ethereum founder shared that cryptocurrencies reached their peak in terms of hype in December 2017 and said that we will not likely see anything similar to that time because crypto is no longer novel</li>
    <li>Investors come to crypto to strike rich, but according to Buterin, we will not see any moon shots like last December</li>
  </ul>
  <p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px">Buterin told Bloomberg:</p>
  <p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;background-color:#8CEFD6;padding-top:6px;padding-bottom:6px;padding-left:12px;padding-right:12px;text-align:center;line-height:24px">
    <i style="color:#000">&#x201C;The blockchain space is getting to the point where there&#x2019;s a ceiling in sight. If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn&#x2019;t an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore.&#x201D;</i>
  </p>
  <h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">HYPE TO REAL USE</h4>
  <ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
    <li>Vitalik emphasized that the community must shift from promoting the potential of blockchain to driving real world use cases</li>
    <li>In the past, Buterin has admitted that the price of Ethereum and all cryptocurrencies is too steep for how little they are actually impacting the world</li>
    <li>It all starts at the protocol level, developers are making improvements like Sharding and Plasma to make the network more usable</li>
    <li>Next, developers need to create applications that run on the network that consumers want</li>
  </ul>
  <p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px">Buterin also said in the interview:</p>
  <p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;background-color:#8CEFD6;padding-top:6px;padding-bottom:6px;padding-left:12px;padding-right:12px;text-align:center;line-height:24px">
    <i style="color:#000">&#x201C;Go from just people being interested to real applications of real economic activity that strategy [promoting the blockchain to the broader consumer base]is getting close to hitting a dead end.&#x201D;</i>
  </p>
  <a href="https://unbankd.co/2018/09/10/vitalik-buterin-says-no-more-opportunity-for-1000x-growth/"><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8f54dbeb4acc00986a80dfdc/images/2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png" width="120" alt="2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png"><br/></a>
  <hr style="margin-top:30px;margin-bottom:30px;color:#919090;background-color:#919090;height:1px;border:none">
  <div style="color:#ffffff;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#60e1c1;padding-top:3px;padding-bottom:3px;padding-right:10px;padding-left:10px">REGULATION</div>
  <h2 style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:20px;color:#000000;margin-bottom:15px">U.S. SEC Orders Bitcoin and Ether ETNs to Suspend Trading</h2>
  <h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">TRACKER ONE</h4>
  <ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
    <li>Bitcoin Tracker One and Ether Tracker One are exchange-traded notes that follow the movements of Bitcoin and Ethereum</li>
    <li>Bitcoin Tracker One first launched in 2015 by Swedish company XBT Provider and has since been offering a way for retail investors to get exposure to the cryptocurrency market through a traditional brokerage account</li>
    <li>Just recently, Bitcoin Tracker One began quoting in U.S. dollars after it was listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange in an attempt to attract U.S. investors</li>
  </ul>
  <h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">TEMPORARY SUSPENSION</h4>
  <ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
    <li>Yesterday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) <a href="https://www.sec.gov/litigation/suspensions/2018/34-84063.pdf">issued</a> an order to suspend the trading of Bitcoin Tracker One (CXBTF) and Ether Tracker One (CETHF)</li>
    <li>Per the terms of the order, the SEC halted trading because of confusion among investors</li>
    <li>It seems the SEC feared that investors were mistaking the Swedish exchange-traded notes (ETN) for exchange-traded funds (ETF), which have important differences though they are very similar</li>
    <li>For now, the temporary suspension will last until September 20th, 2018 as regulators sort out necessary actions that need to be made</li>
  </ul>
  <h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">RATTLES THE MARKETS</h4>
  <ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
    <li>Following the announcement, the markets saw a volatile downward swing that caused Bitcoin to fall from $6,389 to $6,238 in a 45-minute span</li>
  </ul>
  <p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px">What&apos;s the difference between an ETN and an ETF? Click <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0213/etf-or-etn-whats-the-difference.aspx">here.</a>
</p>
<a href="https://unbankd.co/2018/09/10/u-s-sec-orders-bitcoin-and-ether-etns-to-suspend-trading/"><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8f54dbeb4acc00986a80dfdc/images/2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png" width="120" alt="2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png"><br/></a>
<hr style="margin-top:30px;margin-bottom:30px;color:#919090;background-color:#919090;height:1px;border:none">
<div style="color:#ffffff;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#60e1c1;padding-top:3px;padding-bottom:3px;padding-right:10px;padding-left:10px">INSTITUTION</div>
<h2 style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:20px;color:#000000;margin-bottom:15px">Citigroup to Offer Crypto IOUs to Offer Widespread Exposure</h2>
<h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">IOU RUMORS</h4>
<ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
  <li>According to unnamed sources of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/citigroup-exploring-crypto-digital-asset-receipt-2018-9?IR=T">Business Insider</a>, multinational bank Citigroup is developing a product to give investors yet another way to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies</li>
  <li>Allegedly, the way it would work is that the cryptocurrencies would be held by a custodian and Citigroup would then provide a certificate claiming that an investor has ownership of that digital asset</li>
  <li>Through this, Citigroup hopes to ease the process of buying cryptocurrencies by taking the storage and possession component out of the picture</li>
</ul>
<h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">THE DOWNFALLS</h4>
<ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
  <li>Yes this could be a solution to bring more institutional money into the market, however, there are downfalls</li>
  <li>One downfall is that you will never truly own the cryptocurrencies you buy using this method since Citigroup will hold all of the digital assets and only provide you with a receipt to that asset</li>
  <li>Another downfall is that if banks don&apos;t act transparently (their track record tells all here), banks could sell more IOUs than the actual cryptocurrencies they hold</li>
  <li>With blockchain technology, however, this problem can be overcome using the public ledger to provide transparency</li>
</ul>
<p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px">Still, despite the lack of details about the rumors, some are excited about the new offering with Twitter user <a href="https://twitter.com/iamjosephyoung">@iamjosephyoung</a> commenting:</p>
<p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;background-color:#8CEFD6;padding-top:6px;padding-bottom:6px;padding-left:12px;padding-right:12px;text-align:center;line-height:24px">
  <i style="color:#000">&quot;Improvement in institutional infrastructure (Coinbase, Goldman, Citigroup) is crucial to bring in massive sums of capital to crypto.&quot;</i>
</p>
<a href="https://unbankd.co/2018/09/10/citigroup-to-offer-crypto-ious-to-offer-widespread-exposure/"><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8f54dbeb4acc00986a80dfdc/images/2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png" width="120" alt="2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png"><br/></a>
<hr style="margin-top:30px;margin-bottom:30px;color:#919090;background-color:#919090;height:1px;border:none">
<div style="color:#ffffff;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#60e1c1;padding-top:3px;padding-bottom:3px;padding-right:10px;padding-left:10px">INTERNATIONAL</div>
<h2 style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:20px;color:#000000;margin-bottom:15px">New Reports Claim China&apos;s People are Still Trading Crypto Despite Ban</h2>
<h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">WHAT BAN?</h4>
<ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
  <li>According to local media outlet <a href="https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2163194/despite-tighter-scrutiny-crypto-trading-frenzy-proving-hard-douse">South China Morning Post</a>, cryptocurrency traders are still finding ways to reach the markets despite the country-wide blanket ban on the industry put in place almost one year ago</li>
  <li>At the time, China accounted for almost 90% of all trading volume in the crypto markets and the markets saw a devasting blow after the government announced the ban</li>
  <li>Now, it&apos;s being reported that cryptocurrency traders are using a combination of Tether (USDT) and VPNs to fly under the radar</li>
</ul>
<h4 style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px">UNDER THE RADAR</h4>
<ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
  <li>According to reports, traders are using a VPN to reach exchange platforms registered outside of China</li>
  <li>Then, using the exchange as an intermediary, two individuals can swap fiat currency to Tether (USDT) and vice versa</li>
  <li>After this, Chinese traders have the ability to perform crypto-to-crypto trades on exchanges using a VPN</li>
</ul>
<p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px">For now, according to an anonymous source close to an exchange, the Chinese government hasn&apos;t stopped VPNs and it seems Chinese traders will continue to exploit this method to reach the crypto market:</p>
<p style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;background-color:#8CEFD6;padding-top:6px;padding-bottom:6px;padding-left:12px;padding-right:12px;text-align:center;line-height:24px">
  <i style="color:#000">&quot;Chinese regulators definitely have the technical ability to shut down VPNs. However, traditionally it takes numerous conversations with different stakeholders to reach a consensus on configuring a firewall, which lengthens the process.&quot;</i>
</p>
<a href="https://unbankd.co/2018/09/10/new-reports-claim-chinas-people-are-still-trading-crypto-despite-ban/"><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8f54dbeb4acc00986a80dfdc/images/2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png" width="120" alt="2049d22b-0afd-4e5c-bc6c-a00fd0946f5f.png"><br/></a>

<hr style="margin-top:30px;margin-bottom:30px;color:#919090;background-color:#919090;height:1px;border:none">
<div style="color:#ffffff;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:17px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#60e1c1;padding-top:3px;padding-bottom:3px;padding-right:10px;padding-left:10px">BITS</div>
<ul style="font-family:arial;font-size:15px;line-height:25px;padding-left:20px">
  <li>The WeChat messaging app is <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/wechat-now-censoring-bitmain-and-crypto-price-prediction-accounts/">continuing</a> its efforts to block official accounts that involve cryptocurrencies by targeting Bitmain&apos;s official sales channel.
    <br>
    <br>
  </li>
  <li>XMRWallet.com, an open-source, client-side Monero wallet provider, has <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/monero-wallet-provider-releases-web-based-wallet-for-tor-browser">released</a> a new web-based wallet for the Tor web browser.<br>
    <br>
  </li>
  <li>Australia&apos;s New South Wales (NSW) government is <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/australian-state-pilot-puts-drivers-licenses-on-a-blockchain/">turning</a> to blockchain for a state-wide test of its driver license digitization program scheduled for November.
  </li>
</ul>