Today in crypto, top professors started building a coin to beat bitcoin, Joe Lubin joined ErisX and BitPay showed $1 billion in transactions from last year. USD Coin also passed its third audit and big investors showed continued hesitancy toward the crypto space.
Crypto Insider also dove into decentralized energy, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) coins and MimbleWimble's Grin and Beam.
Catch the news:
Is The MIT-Backed Unit-e Better Than Bitcoin?
Distributed Technology Research (DTR), a new non-profit group, has set out to create a digital coin that solves the major issues seen in bitcoin. DTR is comprised of top university professors from MIT, Standford and others, with support from hedge fund giant Pantera Capital.
The new coin, Unite-e, will aim for scalability and transaction times comparable to that of Visa, without compromising the asset's decentralization and true blockchain roots.
Ethereum Co-Founder Joe Lubin Joins Board Of Crypto Futures Platform ErisX
Amidst planning its launch, the ErisX crypto exchange has picked up two key players. ConsenSys founder (and ethereum co-founder) Joe Lubin and entrepreneur Cris Conde have jumped on ErisX' board.
Upon launch, ErisX will offer bitcoin futures trading with its sights set on ethereum and litecoin futures trading in the coming days.
BitPay Says It Processed Over $1 Billion In Crypto Payments Last Year
Crypto payment system BitPay recently revealed its transaction totals from 2018, showing more than $1 billion in transactions.
According to a BusinessWire release, BitPay Co-founder and CEO Stephan Pair explained, “[t]o process over a $1 Billion for a second year in a row despite Bitcoin’s large price drop shows that Bitcoin is being used to solve real pain points around the world.”
BitPay also saw growth on the business-to-business (B2B) side, growing by 255% comparative to 2017.
Circle Releases Third Audit Report Of Stablecoin USDC's Dollar Reserves
Stablecoins picked up steam last fall as many new stablecoin projects entered news headlines. An important question, however, concerns each project's fiat currency reserves. According to Circle's statement yesterday, its USD Coin (USDC) has passed its third audit inspection.
At the end of 2018, December 31 showed 251,211,148 USDC tokens, with $251,211,209 of backed USD, as Circle stated based on the audit report. (The extra $61 was kept in USD reserve.)
Winklevoss Capital: Investors Are ‘Thoughtfully Dipping their Toes into Crypto,’ Not Taking the Plunge
Winklevoss Capital partner Sterling Witzke recently interviewed with CoinTelegraph, making several interesting statements on mainstream crypto interest.
Witzke posited the last crypto bull run caused misconceptions regarding the rate of new technology interest and adoption.
“Because the end of 2017 was so crazy, people tend to think the space moves at lightning speed [..] At the level of underlying [tech] development it [often] does [...] but I think it takes a while for institutions to get comfortable. There needs to be better custody, healthy debt and credit markets to get [them] really excited. So I don’t think 2019 will necessarily be the year,” Witzke said.
Witzke mentioned she has seen interested parties hesitantly test the waters of crypto, but the areas of regulation and security still appear to be troubling.
Originally posted on Crypto Insider : https://cryptoinsider.com/daily-crypto-roundup-1-17-2019/