Crypto News Update, August 18

Crypto New Update, August 18

Hi guys, this is the first time I do such a news update. I plan to do them every 2-3 days. I read Cointelegraph, Coindesk and several other crypto media. In news update, I talk about the the things that drew my attention.

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#1 Blockchain helped to find traces of glyphosate

I am sure that you've heard about the lawsuit in the US, when the big chem company was fined by $300 million in favor of a defendant who got cancer allegedly because of his use of the company's product to kill weeds.

The article from Cointelegraph (https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-used-to-trace-deadly-chemical-linked-to-289-mln-monsanto-cancer-lawsuit) tells that ZEGO, a company in food testing, has used blockchain to trace compounds in foods and the blockchains are actually starting to help identify glyphosate in foods.

This is an extremely great development and I am sure that it clearly shows that our future is decentrlized and blockchainfied. Notwithstanding the hype, or anti-hype for that matter, the blockchains start to deliver huge benefits to societies around the world.

Frighteningly, the article states that we actually don't know about the levels of glyphosate present in our foods since producers just don't for it. This is kinda scary. I am not sure but I think that in the US more and more people die from cancer, as compared to other less hard-to-fight causes of death, like driving under influence. I mean, people are getting smarter.

If it turns out that blockchains have helped producers and eliminate glyphosate from their produce in a fast an effective manner, this can take a serious inroad into the cancer-caused mortality rate.

#2 Blockchain and elections

Cointelegraph reports (https://cointelegraph.com/news/russian-independent-electoral-watchdog-to-pilot-blockchain-for-voting-system) that a Russian electoral observer is looking into piloting a blockchain-powered electoral control system. A couple of weeks ago, Cointelegraph reported on Ukraine's effort to start using blockchain in elections.

These two countries are pretty far from an embodiement of democracy, but they are gradually moving to implementing the blockchains, which would mean that it would be extremely hard to tamper the elections results. As of now, Russia's elections are not seens as fair and democratic at all.

Perhaps, the authorities of both countries believe in their strong positions and they are not afraid of moving onto blockchains. But, I would expect more and more people taking part in the elections and voting agains the ruling coalitions with blockchains bringing more transparency and trust into the elections. So, ultimately - in a couple of decades - blockchains will significantly improve the quality and transparency of the election processes which are currently extremely opaque.

And it's not only "fringe" countries, but the Western democracies are starting to show interest in blockchains as an underlying tech for elections. As an example, the federal elections in West Virginia this year will allow military personnel basing overseas to use a blockchain-powered app to cast their votes. The facial recognition will be used to prevent any misuse.

As we can see, blockchains are starting to "inject themselves" into election systems worldwide. Perhaps, in not-so-far future, we all will vote via blockchain-based apps in an easy and secure manner, which might help both developing and developed nations attract more voters to participate and assure the highest level of protection against tampering.

Clearly, future starts to look more and more decentralized and blockhainified.

#3 More and more people trade cryptocurrencies every day

Clearly, this is good news for all stakeholders who track changes in the crypto universe. According to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Coinbase was signing up 50,000 new users per day in 2017 (https://cointelegraph.com/news/brian-armstrong-coinbase-signed-up-50-000-users-per-day-in-2017), and that's some stellar growth here.

Notably, the Wall Street is being like "meh…" and a bit "yaki", but no so much anymore. Why are they being so "un-cooperative"? What's their main concern?

Maybe, they don't want to entangle into some shady business since regulations haven't arrived yet. Maybe, they don't want to help kick off a rival to business as usual. And what's more business-as-usual, hah?

No, seriously, in the post above, I've covered elections being blockchain-ifed, in Russia…

Wall Street is being totally frigid to crypto because they sense that blockchains are going to replace them. Maybe.

Cointelegraph covers people from a big Wall-Steet corp saying that crypto exchanges' revenues will top $4 billion in 2018 (https://cointelegraph.com/news/ibm-applies-for-blockchain-patent-to-ensure-transaction-compliance-via-nodes-data), which would that they've effectively doubled since 2017. We are not sitting at the big boys' table yet, but we are starting to cover for a seat there. And where there's coveting, there's a way forward.

Remarkably, Coinbase is starting to seem more and more Amazon/Apple/Google in this market with Wall Street dragging its feet. Analysts say that once Coinbase has been installed as the king of the hill, squeezing it even a bit will be hard. Today, a whopping 50 percent of the transactions go through the company. That's textbook for monopoly, folks. That's like building blockchains without computers, or going on dates to museums. That's meh-decentralization.

So, what I garner from all of this is that we are still growing and any teams that want to do decentralized crypto exchanges, or hybrid, or pointbalk-in-your-face centralized ones, might be able to find big opportunities for growth.

Should Coinbase falter, for some reasons, like Enron did, the market will be up for grabs, for whoever's on that market. But if it doesn't falter, and I am not saying that there're any signs that it should, we're in for some serious Google-ing in this half-a-trillio-dollar niche.

#4 Blockchains and Brexit

The UK is going to complete the Brexit in 2019. There are two scenarious: one with the deal and one without the deal. The deal might end up having various levels of detalization, while the no-deal option will result in lots of turbulence.

The two main consequences are the following:

a. The blockchain companies who operate in UK will need to set up subsidiaries in EU, so that they are not locked out of the EU
b. The UK can roll out much more favorable regulations for startups there, as compared to what EU laws might stipulate

UK's been a strong economic leader for centuries, and although being a hindrance for many, the Brexit isn't the end of the world.

Personally, I believe in autonomy and independence of the local formation. I understand that when countries come together, they can enable the free flow of goods, services and people, which can be beneficial to the "union". However, let's make it clear, UK has never been a very problematic country, economically speaking. So, these boons might not make up for all the problems the union might bring to the nation.

I am not sure whether UK-based fintech players will suffer a lot, but they will surely need to spend a lot more money on compliance and subsidiaries, which will push some of them into bankruptcy.

This will result in the hallowing-out of the UK innovations sector, which will entail a long-term negative impact on the economy overall. Provided that you believe that innovation is what nations need, because Dmitry Medevedev, then Russia's President, was activley saying to people that Russia needed more agriculture workers in 2010, and innovation was basically "fluff". Innovation is not "fluff", and UK might hurt from the Brexit, a lot.

#5 Security tokens will save crypto markets

Leigh Cuen from Coindesk writes (https://www.coindesk.com/can-security-tokens-save-crypto-from-the-bear-market-blues/) that security tokens are to save us. But, maybe we should first ask ourselves whether we need to be saved?

We've kinda always known that the Bitcoin charts have a pattern. I think that everybody was seeing the drop to 5K with the subsequent growth much much higher than 20K. So, perhaps, we don't need being saved, but we just need to move on with our own crypto projects.

For instance, I work as an ICO copywriter. I write articles for projects on Medium. I have friends who do blockhains dev. We all provide services in this market and often get paid in crypto. Whenever I get a big payment, I just fix it in USDT and move on with my life.

Thus, we don't need to have exorbitantly high growth rates all the time in order to just do our jobs. Also, no markets can grow without any "breahers". The charts do breathe, irrespective of the asset.

And there's nothing new or wondrous about the advent of the security tokens. I think that many analysts, including me, have been seeing the future move into security tokens. It's totally logical and there's nothing surpising here.

So, it's hard for me to understand just how security tokens might save us all and from what…

And, TBH, I am not sure that it's heathy and sit and pine for BTC to get to 100K. If it gets there, good. If it doesn't, so what. People should be doing their projects instead of fixating on the local chart breaths.

#6 Blockchains and porn

I think that it's OK to say that blockchain and porn's "marriage has been made in haevens". Porn loves anonymity and blockchain's all about it. A recent article on Coindesk (link - https://www.coindesk.com/pornhub-subsidiary-to-reward-viewers-with-crypto-tokens/) drew my attention to this niche. Turns it, people get excited here about cryptocurrencies, pumping up chances of new startups to succeed.

I work an an ICO copywriter and, personally, fix all the remuneations in USDT. I am not a trader. However, I am on the lookout for cool projects too. I've paid attention to a couple of projects in tokenization and supply chains.

Now, I am thinking that porn can have some appeal.

There's a big player here, called Vice Industry Token, VIT (link to the site). The LinkedIn page for a SMM rep Cadice looks legit (link). I actually wrote to her because I am thinking about writing up a review on them.

So, VIT is starting to inject itself into major adult entertainment outlets (first, Playboy (https://www.coindesk.com/playboy-tv-to-accept-crypto-payments-for-exclusive-adult-content/), then Stormy Daniels (https://www.coindesk.com/porn-star-stormy-daniels-adds-crypto-rewards-to-official-website/), and now Tube8 (https://www.coindesk.com/pornhub-subsidiary-to-reward-viewers-with-crypto-tokens/)).

This token can be used within these sites for the usual use cases that we'd expect from tokens: paying tips to entertainers, getting rewards for writing comments and other in-platform actions, using tokens to access premium services.

By now, I hope, the argument "both BTC and ETH can be used for these very purposes, so any token purporting to do this thing is surely an outright scam ICO" has subsided with folks in our realm recognizing that ETH is like gold or silver in bullions or whatever. You don't "crack away a piece of the bullion" to pay for groceries.

Since that argument is out, the idea is that whoever moves first gets to win from, well, the first-mover advantage. And VIT seems to be that proverbial first-mover. This means that there might be a strong case for investing it. I dunno. I am not a market analyst, I am a copywriter. But I think that I can invest, like, 0.1% of my net assets into it and just let it go, for 10 years.

If it's the real first mover, there's a strong chance that it'll move forward for a long time. Think FAMGA.

A great thing about VIT is that advertisers can communicate/airdrop/incentivize in various ways a very targeted target audience, which other might be very unwilling to contact. VIT might be poised to circulate across the suite of top adult ent sites, thus stiching together the target audinece with the complete "oustide world" anonymity and ability to communite with these folks without knowing their names.

This makes porn-blockchain-crypto-nomics an interesting thing to follow.