05/01/2018 - A new UN program uses Coinhive to ask users to donate CPU power for crypto mining, Japan’s FSA looking to reduce the use of private cryptocurrencies

                                              

Billionaire  Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm "Founders Fund" is looking to back a  cryptocurrency trading startup; the startup, Tagomi Systems, intends to  bring expertise in electronic trading from Wall Street to the bitcoin  market; this comes as more are considering the notion of Bitcoin gaining  more widespread adoption - Link                

Vitalik  releases partial proof-of-concept for Ethereum 'Sharding' tech ;  sharding means that Ethereum can be scaled more efficiently; this means  each node does not need to process every transaction - Link                

Cryptocurrency  tracker CoinMarketCap releases the company’s first mobile app for  tracking cryptocurrency prices; the service rose to fame during last  year’s meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies; CoinMarketCap’s website now  attracts more traffic than Bloomberg or the Wall Street Journal - Link                

AirSwap  trading platform goes live with promise to power a ”new system of  trade”, with decentralized token trading, cross-device functionality,  available in 8 languages, featuring 24 tokens and able to embed on any  website; AirSwap uses a peer-to-peer trading system when used in a  browser - Link                

Cryptocurrency  exchange Coinbase hires Hunter Meghart, former director of equity  trades at Barclays investment bank; this comes as Coinbase’s valuation  recently reached $8B after the acquisition of earn.com; moreover, it  follows efforts by Coinbase to ramp up the recruitment of skilled  employees - Link                

The  decentralized cryptocurrency market OpenBazaar is gearing up for a  ”radical redesign”; this redesign is reportedly seeing OpenBazaar shift  its efforts from almost solely Bitcoin, which was the case int he past,  to more coins like Zcash and Bitcoin Cash; furthermore, OpenBazaar is  looking to revamp its desktop website and launch mobile apps (one from  iOS and one for Android) - Link               

Coinbase  releases open-source Bitcoin Cash ”CashAddr” library for Ruby; this  came in the form of a GitHub post; it provides a utility for converting  between base58 and CashAddr Bitcoin Cash addresses - Link                

Some  cryptocurrency exchanges will be required to provide Belarusian  authorities with customer data, according to an upcoming cryptocurrency  decree; this comes as part of a revision to the nation’s Decree on the  Development of Digital Economy; however, it appears only companies in  the country’s High-Tech Park will be affected - Link                

Iran  bans Telegram after claiming the application has been used to encourage  ”armed uprisings”; this follows a similar ban in Russia; instead,  domestic alternatives to Telegram such as ”Soroush” are being promoted  by Iranian officials; this comes as Telegram recently closed a second  funding round for its ICO - Link                

Barclays’  CEO Jes Staley says that the company does not have any immediate plans  to move into cryptocurrency trading; this came at the company’s annual  general meeting; moreover, the statement comes at a time when more  investment banks are beginning to explore the potential of  cryptocurrency trading - Link

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