Freakerz NEWSCAST 📮 27-09-2019

📮 27-09-2019

📈 MarketCap: $215 B

📊 24h Mcap %: -4.36%

⚠️ Bitcoin Dom: 67.2%

Active Coins: 2,614
24h Vol %: 9.82%
24h Vol: $56 B

1. Using blockchain technology has helped consumer goods giant Unilever save money in ad reconciliation, said Luis Di Como, firm’s executive vice-president for global media. The consumer packaged goods giant said there was no leakage in its media investments made as part of the pilot project. Unilever has been collaborating with computing giant IBM on the project in question for the past 18 months. It is estimated that Unilever saved two to three percent using the blockchain platform.

2. The number of nodes on the Bitcoin Lightning Network has risen above 10,000 for the first time. Nodes are the computers who help to keep the network running. The Lightning Network is a decentralized system for instant and high-volume BTC micropayments—with payments as low as 1 satoshi (worth $0.0001). Bitcoin on chain transactions, can take an hour to be confirmed. It's regarded as one of the key ways Bitcoin will be able to scale to support millions of payments and users per day.

3. Global messaging app Telegram announced a coding competition for building smart contracts for the Telegram Open Network (TON) Blockchain. The primary part of the competition is the task to build one or more smart contracts, using the tools provided in the TON Blockchain distribution, as described in the attached TON Contest document. The two other optional tasks include improvements suggestions for TON Virtual Machine and FunC and TON Blockchain bug bounty contest, the company said.

4. The central bank of Venezuela is running internal tests to determine whether it can add cryptocurrencies, specifically bitcoin and ether, to its international reserves, according to a report by Bloomberg. The test came at the request of Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the state-owned oil and natural gas company. PDVSA is looking to have the Venezuelan central bank pay the company's suppliers on its behalf using the bitcoin and ether it has obtained.

5. At a cryptocurrency compliance summit in New York hosted by Solidus Labs, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce spoke about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) views on cryptocurrencies. Peirce states that she views digital assets as "transaction mechanisms" and that she believes store of value is an important function of these assets. "Store of value, I think, is a really important function. I do think that we’ll see as technology changes, that they become much more the money of the internet," Peirce said.

6. Neo, a decentralized open source blockchain application platform, announced that it became the first-ever blockchain member of Microsoft’s .NET Foundation. The platform stated that during the .NET Conference 2019 Neo “joined the .NET Foundation, the Microsoft-created, globally leading open-source foundation,” Based on their shared open-source heritage, NEO and the .NET Foundation will further empower millions of developers to build the foundation for next-gen Internet.

7. ShapeShift, CEO and Founder Erik Voorhees said that while crypto-users and the entire community dismiss the requirement of identification through personal information, “the government wants financial institutions to basically spy on people for them.” He further speculated that fiat currency will be permanently “gone in the next 20 years.” In such a case, the government will try to create new fiat digital currencies, but will maintain the same amount of control like today’s financial system.

8. CEO of Morgan Creek Capital, Mark Yusko, is not confident on the trade talks between the US and China resuming next month. Mark still favors Bitcoin over any kind of economic recovery based on bilateral cooperation. He also talks about the dropping price of bitcoin, saying that “Buy it. The daily price of Bitcoin doesn’t matter, its been alive for ten years. In ever year other than 2015 it has made a higher low and market cap has grown every single year.”

9. Ripple says it’s targeting a trillion-dollar innovation that international remittance rival Swift is leaving off the table. The company’s XRP-powered xRapid could help financial institutions and companies bring as much as $10 trillion back home to domestic bank accounts. If xRapid can achieve global liquidity, companies will be able to send money around the world in an instant without having to hold pools of money in various bank accounts around the world.

10. Russia is looking into taxing cryptocurrency mining in a way, similar to how it taxes treasure findings or acquired properties, A new report submitted by the Association of Banks of Russia proposed taxation on mined cryptocurrencies, using the analogy of finding a treasure which is taxable. This would help regulators treat crypto as “treasure” or “finding,” and help them tax it within their existing legal framework. Since the miner is creating a digital asset, the act may be deemed as “finding of the treasure,” making them the legal owner.

11. Dutch bank ING’s chief economist has said “fully fledged” digital currencies will developed by central banks in just two to three years. Mark Cliffemight argued that the Facebook-led Libra cryptocurrency project is putting pressure on monetary authorities. With Libra slated for launch in 2020, central banks “would have” to make a move in that timeline. Addressing the benefits for central banks, Cliffemight explained that a digital currency would allow banks to replace physical cash.