In today’s edition of Bitcoin in Brief we cover stories that show how Houbi is nearing a possible backdoor listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, why Elon Musk is still impressed by the quality of cryptocurrency scambots on Twitter, and an Italian football club bought with crypto.
Also Read: Binance, Okex, Huobi and Upbit Back New Stablecoin, Terra
Huobi Nears Backdoor Listing
Huobi Global has issued a joint announcement with Pantronics Holdings (HKEX: 1611), a firm listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, about the acquisition of shares in the public company by the cryptocurrency exchange operator. Huobi is now the majority shareholder in Pantronics, which it can use to perform a backdoor listing for itself. This means that the cryptocurrency exchange now has the option of becoming a public company without having to go through an IPO, giving it the credibility that such a status holds among traditional investors and an ability to raise funds by selling stocks, options or bonds. The companies have not responded to questions about the deal yet, and investors are probably interested to know if the companies have approached HKEX management to see if they won’t raise difficulties in such a process.
Musk Still Loves Scambots
The founder of Tesla and Spacex, Elon Musk, seems to still be impressed by Twitter scambots – algorithms that automatically reply to messages by high profile accounts with false promises of giveaways. Back in July he sounded like he wanted to offer the programmers behind them a job, tweeting: “I want to know who is running the Etherium (sic) scambots! Mad skillz …”. He’s apparently so impressed with their performance, he’s now joked, “At this point, I want ETH even if it is a scam.”
At this point, I want ETH even if it is a scam
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2018
Italian Football Club Bought With Crypto
Cryptocurrency trading companies, ICO projects and others in the ecosystem have been using sports sponsorships deals to reach a mass audience for a while now. And the latest example of this comes from Italy, where according to local media, a football team was bought with digital tokens. UAE-based Heritage Sports Holdings reportedly paid with Quantocoin (QTC) for 25% of the shares of Rimini F.C., an Italian association football club founded in 1912 that plays in Serie C. If the name of the token sounds familiar, a Quantocoin ICO investor was also behind the recent decision by Gibraltar United F.C. to pay its players with crypto.
Mycrypto Raises $4 Million in Series A Funding
Mycrypto, the client-side tool for generating ETH wallets created by Myetherwallet founder Taylor Monahan, has announced today it raised $4 million in a Series A round of funding led by Polychain Capital. Additional investors include Shapeshift, Boost VC Fund 3 LP, Mainframe’s Mick Hagen, Chance Du (Coefficient Ventures), Ausum Blockchain Fund LP, early Dropbox employee Albert Ni and Earn Co-Founder Lily Liu (4T Global LLC). “We believe today one of the major bottlenecks to cryptocurrency adoption is the lack of an easy-to-use interface for average people. Mycrypto is led by hardcore cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and is well-positioned to onboard the next one hundred million cryptocurrency users,” said Olaf Carlson-Wee, Founder and CEO of Polychain Capital.
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The Chinese government has recently begun another crackdown on cryptocurrency investors. And the latest stage in this effort is focused on the country’s big three internet giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (commonly referred to together as BAT). The Baidu search engine, known as China’s Google, has reportedly closed a number of its popular crypto chat rooms, including “Digital Currency Bar” and “Virtual Currency Bar,” only explaining that this was done “in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies.” Alibaba’s Ant Financial announced it will restrict or ban Alipay accounts if they would take part in cryptocurrency trades. Tencent stated it will monitor its Wechat network in real-time to block crypto trading using the app.
Hackers have allegedly stolen clients’ personal details from the Brazilian crypto investment firm Atlas Quantum. While no funds were reported lost, the data of 264,000 people was compromised. CEO Rodrigo Marques issued a statement, explaining that: “We believe that an unauthorized party has gained information about our customers’ names, e-mails, phones, and balances. All other data, such as passwords, is encrypted and secure. There was no access to the funds in our custody. We are conducting an investigation, supported by our information security team, in addition to authorities. The entire database and information were sealed the moment we heard about it. We emphasize that we are constantly monitoring all activities within our environment. Some features of the platform have been temporarily disabled as a precaution to ensure the safety of our customers against possible fraud attempts. We are working to restore it as soon as possible.”
Tulsi Gabbard, the American congresswoman from the Democratic Party serving as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district, is the latest politician revealed to have made an investment in cryptocurrencies. She bought both ETH and LTC in December 2017 according to her latest Financial Disclosure Report to the Clerk of the House of the Representatives. The disclosure doesn’t reveal her current cryptfolio but the initial investment, at least, was somewhere between $2,000 and $30,000 USD.
Virtual Crypto Technologies Ltd (OTCQB: VRCP), an Israel-based developer of cryptocurrency point-of-sales systems, has announced that it’s signed an Exclusive Distribution Agreement with a third party company, Virtual Crypto SA Ltd, to begin selling its products in the Southern African Region. The distributor has committed to acquiring both hardware and software solutions from the developer which will receive ongoing royalties and support fees. Territories in the deal include South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Botswana, Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, and Swaziland.
The altcoin markets bleeding red was the big story on Tuesday. Sentiment in crypto community forums all around the web turned very dark as panic set in. With cryptocurrencies such as Iota, BNB, and Vechain nursing 20% losses in a single day – 25% in the case of the latter – the market was looking very ugly indeed. The total value of the cryptocurrency market has dropped to $194 billion at the time of publication, with BTC dominance reaching 53.5%. Just three cryptocurrencies in the top 100 were showing signs of green at the time, and predictably they were all stablecoins.
On Thursday it was reported that security researchers claimed they successfully sent signed transactions with John McAfee’s “unhackable” Bitfi wallet. And someone had even been able to demonstrate root control of the device by installing the classic video game Doom on it. McAfee reacted by twitting: “A video played on your Bitfi wallet has nothing to do with the safety of your funds. This is amateur hour, not a hack! Any device with a computer and screen can be used to play games. I should start watching my YouTube videos on Bitfi wallet.” He later added: “Laughing so hard I can barely catch my breath. “Hackers” play Doom, play videos, root the device, play music on the BitFi wallet. We dont charge extra for those facilities. No-one has taken the coins from our pre-loaded wallet. No one will. Isn’t this what matters?”
An interesting story we covered on Saturday: you can now buy fancy hairspray with bitcoin. R+Co, the beauty collective founded by stylists Howard McLaren, Thom Priano, and Garren, has begun incorporating BTC and BCH payments into its business model, women’s style magazine The Cut revealed. R+Co’s president Dan Langer said: “Blockchain technology is going to be one of the future disruptors in the beauty industry. It will allow consumers the ability to leverage their data and purchase behavior in all kinds of new shopping ways… from reviews to rewards to product benefits. In order to stay at the forefront of this emerging thinking we wanted to integrate components of it while still in its early stages – like paying with Bitcoin – and learn with it as it evolves.”
Popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced it is launching a brand new educational resource portal in an open beta. Binance Academy is defined as an open access learning hub supported by the venue’s team. “Our aim is to provide a one-stop-shop for blockchain and crypto learning resources, open to anyone and for the benefit of all,” they explain. Current topics include Blockchain, Coins & Tokens, Binance, Security, and Trading, and many more are said to be in the pipeline. Binance says it will be adding more and more learning resources to the Academy week after week, the plans for this are said to be ready but they also look to adapt based on community feedback and submissions.
Cash App, the BTC buying and selling service by the payment processing firm Square, has announced on social media that the feature is now available for American users in all fifty states. Back in November, 2017 this functionality was only available to select individuals for experimentation. But by February there were only four states left where residents were not able to access the crypto service on Square’s Cash App due to harsher cryptocurrency regulations, which included Hawaii, New York, Wyoming, and Georgia.