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PALESTINIAN AID: The Trump administration is looking into whether blockchain technology can provide solutions to the longstanding Israel-Palestine conflict. No, really. The administration has been working with crypto startup Orbs to determine if blockchain can be used to more efficiently transfer aid to the region, co-founder Netta Korin told CoinDesk. White House advisor and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner ran the sessions in Bahrain. There were no Palestinians present at the meeting. Full story
DOWN AND OUT: Crypto exchange Coinbase suffered a brief outage Wednesday afternoon, with customers unable to access its website, mobile apps or API during a period of “degraded performance.” At the same time (though likely unrelated), bitcoin’s price fell nearly $1,800, stabilizing around $12,000. The price tanked again on Thursday, and has now fallen to below $11,000 as of press time. Full story
DIFFICULTY INCREASE: Mining bitcoin is harder now than it has ever been before. Data from BTC.com shows that bitcoin mining difficulty has reached a new record high above 7.93 trillion. That’s a seven percent jump from the 7.45 trillion record set during the recent two-week adjustment cycle, which was the highest since October 2018. On average, miners on the world’s first blockchain have been performing calculations at an average 56.77 quintillion hashes per second (EH/s) over the last 14 days to compete for mining rewards. Full story
GEMINI IN CHICAGO: Gemini is growing its team and expanding to Chicago as part of a push to upgrade and modify its technology. The exchange announced Thursday that it had brought on five new engineers, who used to be part of rival Coinbase’s engineering team, with experience in working on matching engines and other markets tools. While the new team will focus on supporting Gemini’s core products, part of their mandate will be to work on institutional-focused tools and tech. Full story
SINGAPORE HACK: Singapore-based Bitrue lost some $4.2 million in a hack on Thursday, the exchange announced. The attackers were able to successfully steal 9.3 million XRP (worth around $4.01 million) and 2.5 million ADA (worth $232,000) and distribute the assets to different exchanges. “A hacker exploited a vulnerability in our Risk Control team’s 2nd review process to access the personal funds of about 90 Bitrue users,” the exchange said, though it assured customers that “this situation is under control.” Bitrue intends to make its customers whole, according to its announcement. Full story
EXCHANGE SHUTDOWN: Indian crypto exchange Koinex is shutting down due to a de facto central bank ban on financial services for crypto companies. The Reserve Bank of India’s decree that banks cannot work with crypto startups is being challenged before the nation’s supreme court, but it is unclear how the case will end. “We have consistently been facing denials in payment services from payment gateways, bank account closures and blocking of transactions for trading of digital assets,” Koinex wrote. It follows Zebpay, which shut down last fall. Full story |
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LEAPS AND FALLS: Bitcoin is witnessing a technical correction, having nearly doubled in value in the previous 17 days. While the intraday charts are favoring a deeper pullback to levels below $11,000, the long-term prospects remain bright. As a result, corrections could be short-lived and Wednesday's high of $13,880 could again come into play if the price breaks above a bearish channel seen on the hourly chart. Full story |
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| MISSING EXCHANGE: Ireland-based crypto exchange Bitsane appears to have pulled off an exit scam, disappearing last week with thousands in users’ cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and XRP. The exchange has some 246,000 registered users as of last month, and some of these customers reported seeing issues in May. While most customers appear to have held a few thousand dollars in the exchange, one anonymous customer told Forbes that they held more than $150,000. Bitsane appears to have been a popular exchange for holding or exchanging the XRP cryptocurrency, with Ripple listing it as a platform customers could use until recently. |
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Can blockchain solve Israel-Palestine?