Summary: Venture capital continues to flow into the cryptocurrency space. Firms race to create USD pegged currencies in the hope these will be "stable". Wall St banks are finding creative ways to get involved, while Australian banks continue to experiment with private blockchains. Mining competition heats up with new efficient ASIC miners.

News Recap

Decentralized cloud startup Dfinity has raised $102 million to further its work in developing an "internet computer”. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz's new a16z Crypto branch and Polychain Capital lead the funding round for the Switzerland-based project Andreessen Horowitz have also invested $15m in listed cryptocurrency Maker (MKR). This currency operates as a DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) and is used to support the stablecoin DAI. Crypto exchange Huobi has become the largest shareholder of a public firm listed in Hong Kong, inching a step closer to a possible back-door listing. Coinbase is reportedly exploring a bitcoin ETF in partnership with Blackrock, one of the world’s largest passive asset managers with 6tn under management. Bitcoin Gold, a fork of Bitcoin, is at risk of being delisted from Bittrex after the recent 51% attack which saw the exchange lose 12,372 BTG. Shapeshift , the anonymous crypto conversion service, has decided to do away with the “anonymous” and require customers to undergo KYC. Andreas Antonopoulos commented that “any centralized entity will be pushed in that direction, which is why LN, atomic swaps and Decentralized Exchanges are the only way to resist surveillance economics” Gemini has launched a USD backed stablecoin to compete with Tether. The difference being this one is fully regulated ERC20 token built on Ethereum, with issuance managed by Gemini. The Ethereum-based token is approved by NY Department of Financial Services, the dollars are held in FDIC-insured State Street account and it’s audited by multiple third-parties at various times. Citigroup is said to be planning a move into cryptocurrency through the issuance of digital asset receipts. Shortly after the news sources close to Morgan Stanley revealed they may be preparing to offer swap trading in Bitcoin for clients.This follows news earlier about Goldman Sachs exploration of crypto. Research by the World Economic Forum has found that Blockchain could fill much of the $1.5 trillion supply-demand gap in global trade finance. Mt Gox trustee has opened up claims for rehabilitation to corporate creditors. They will have until Oct 22 to provide proof that they held funds on the exchange prior to infamous 2014 hack which saw the exchange lose 744,000 BTC. Australian bank Westpac has developed a proof of concept that puts procurement and inventory management on a blockchain. This follows last months blockchain bond issuance for the World Bank led by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Xiong'An (Grandshores) Blockchain Fund, the $1bn fund from Hangzhou China, has revealed planed to launch a Japanese yen pegged stablecoin. The New York attorney general’s office has released a report following a monthslong investigation into cryptocurrency exchanges. They have concluded that most exchanges lack appropriate safeguards and vulnerable to exploitation by market manipulators. New York University (NYU) has begun offering students a major in blockchain technology. The program will reportedly be provided by the NYU Stern School of Business, which was also a pioneer in offering undergraduate courses in cryptocurrencies. Trezor, the manufacturer of the popular bitcoin hardware wallet, has begun testing integration of cryptocurrency exchange services. At this stage it is centralised providers like Changlly, however in the future they hope to include decentralised exchanges and atomic swaps. Bitcoin Core has released an update following the recent detection of a vulnerability in the software. The update fixes a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability and an inflation bug. Bitfury have released a new generation of miners with a power efficiency up to 55 mW/GH and a hashrate up to 120 GH/s Ebang have released a new generation of miners, The higher-end model Ebit E11++ can achieve a power consumption of 45J/TH at 44TH/s while the lower-end E11 base model offers a hashrate of 30TH/s at 65J/TH.

Market Snapshot

Firm market across the board with outperformance of high beta memecoins like Dogecoin and Ripple.

Putting the recent move in XRP into perspective. The first major idiosyncratic move in an altcoin since January. Prior to this it looked like they were all headed to 0. What does this mean? Volatility could be about to pick up