Bitcoin moved back over $9,000 earlier on Tuesday alongside signs of an improved risk appetite in the traditional markets. 
Prices rose to a high of $9,010 at 08:05 UTC, but quickly fell back below $8,900, pouring cold water over excitement generated by Monday’s 2.3% bounce from the two-week low of $8,630. 
At press time, the number one cryptocurrency by market value is changing hands near $8,860, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. 
Meanwhile, the futures tied to the S&P 500, Wall Street’s equity index, are reporting over 2% gains Tuesday. Major European equity indexes are flashing green, too, with the U.K.’s FTSE index leading the way with a 1.33% gain, as per Investing.com.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, North America’s oil benchmark, has so far scored a 2.4% gain on the day, while safe havens like gold, Japanese yen and the U.S. dollar are nursing losses. 
Risk sentiment seems to have been buoyed by reports of a potential coronavirus vaccine. U.S.-based biotech company Novavax said on Monday that it is beginning a phase 1 clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Australia. Results are expected in July. 
Bitcoin closely tracked action in the equity markets in March and April before decoupling in the two weeks leading up to the reward halving event on May 11. With halving behind us, the cryptocurrency may again start taking cues from equities. 
As a result, some traders may expect the cryptocurrency to chart a strong break above $9,000 during the day ahead. However, major exchanges like Bitstamp, which is included in the calculation of Bitwise’s “real” bitcoin trading volume figures, have registered low volumes during the last 24 hours. 
That may gloomy news for the bulls, as a low-volume move is often short-lived, according to technical analysis theory. Thus, the sustainability of the recovery toward $9,000 is in question. 
Further, the short-term bias looks to have turned bearish due to cryptocurrency’s recent violation of a two-month bullish trendline.
“The steep upwards trend was broken this weekend, and the BTC price crossed the line which has acted as support several times over the past month. If the downwards price action continues, the lower $8,000 area is an important support zone for the price and should see a lot of buyers coming in,” said a weekly update produced by the cryptocurrency exchange Luno and Arcane Research. 
Adrian Zdunczyk, a chartered market technician and CEO of trading community The BIRB Nest, also cited the $8,100–$8,000 area in a weekly update. Zdunczyk, however, is still bullish for long-term, as are most observers. 
Investors seem to be accumulating coins amid the price drop. On-chain data provided by blockchain intelligence firm IntoTheBlock shows the number of bitcoin addresses holding coins for over a year has reached a new record high of 19.44 million this month, toppling the previous lifetime high of 19.08 million in April. 
Addresses holding bitcoin for more than a yearSource: IntoTheBlockThe metric has been on an upward trajectory for 12 months and is indicative of a strong holding sentiment.
“Record-high long-term holders not only shows the growth of bitcoin’s store-of-value use case, but it also demonstrates the fierce conviction of investors who held tight during the 50% market drop, believing it to be a reliable long-term haven against increasingly unpredictable public markets,” said Jehan Chu, co-founder, and managing partner at Hong Kong-based blockchain investment and trading firm Kenetic Capital.
There’s a general consensus in the investor community that bitcoin is a hedge against the fiscal and monetary imprudence practiced by governments and central banks over the years, and more so, recently in the efforts to combat the coronavirus-led slowdown in the global economy. 
“Investing in tech companies is no longer good enough; investors are now choosing to invest directly in the crypto infrastructure the future will run on,” Chu said.
From a technical analysis standpoint, the overall bias would once more turn bullish if and when prices rise above $10,000. The immediate bearish bias would be invalidated if the risk-on seen in traditional markets powers the cryptocurrency above $9,310.
Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency at the time of writing.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX, has secured a $2.5 million strategic investment led by Polychain Capital with support from Coinbase Ventures.
The investment aims to reinforce the exchange’s efforts to drive cryptocurrency adoption in the country after a major legal victory in March. CoinDCX’s #TryCrypto campaign seeks to bring the total number of crypto users in India to 50 million.
Specifically, the financing aims to bolster CoinDCX’s meetup events, community engagement efforts, educational programs and consumer campaigns, the company said.
“This new strategic investment into CoinDCX is a shot of confidence in our roadmap toward bringing the crypto asset class to a largely untapped Indian market. We look forward to our investors’ continued counsel,” said Sumit Gupta, CEO and co-founder of CoinDCX.
Polychain’s investment is in addition to its participation in a $3 million Series A funding round for the Mumbai-based exchange, which occurred in late March, weeks after a banking ban for cryptocurrency businesses was overturned by the country’s Supreme Court.
Following the lifting of the banking ban in March, CoinDCX has seen a 47% growth in trading volumes and a 150% growth in daily active users. CoinDCX said it was one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges in India to integrate bank account transfers.
“As India continues to close the gap between the crypto economy and the mainstream market, CoinDCX is strongly positioned to become the leading platform that consumers in the country interact with crypto through,” said Shan Aggarwal, head of Coinbase Ventures.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Binance is forced to “technically” support last week’s hard fork of the Steem blockchain, according to the crypto exchange’s CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
In a statement on the company’s official blog Sunday, CZ said that, while the exchange is “very much against zeroing other people’s assets on the blockchain,” to not support it would mean that Binance users would not be able to withdraw their steem tokens.
The result of a dispute in the Steem community over the acquisition of SteemIt – the blockchain ecosystem’s biggest and more powerful application – by Tron and Justin Sun, the hard fork was used as a tool to strip 64 dissenters of their token holdings. At the time around $6.3 million-worth of cryptocurrency was grabbed, with one of the affected parties, Dan Hensley, saying he alone had lost around $1 million of the total.
Wiping out people’s token holdings “goes against the very ethos of blockchain and decentralization,” said CZ. The fact that this can happen on a blockchain means it is overly centralized.”
The fork put Binance in a “tricky” situation, he continued. While the exchange would not otherwise support the fork, “if we don’t support it (technically), no users can withdraw any STEEM coins.”
CZ explained that Binance had waited to see how other exchanges reacted to the fork, saying that soon some had enabled the upgrade. He added that users had been demanding support for the fork too.
Reading between the lines, CZ appears to be encouraging users to withdraw their steem tokens, mentioning several times in the post that support that supporting the fork would allow withdrawals – of course, it could allow continued holding or trading too.
“We do not want to block people’s funds. In this case, we should allow users to withdraw their funds, whether we willingly support this hard fork or not,” reads one of his lines.
The issue of the hard fork – launched apparently with the sole purpose of confiscating the holdings of key community members who were unhappy with Justin Sun’s power in the ecosystem and how he was wielding it – followed a previous hard fork that saw some Steem users create a new blockchain called Hive. The new chain copied over all the tokens from Steem, but not those of Sun and some Steem witnesses.
While the tit-for-tat fork may seem to some a fair reprisal, it’s worth noting that Hive’s tokens were effectively a free copy, while original holdings on Steem were obtained through genuine investments.
In the post, CZ notes that crypto advocate and author Andreas Antonopoulos had suggested in a tweet that Steem’s latest fork would likely result in litigation, with supporting exchanges also to be included as defendants.
The Binance CEO said:” I would have thought that [a class-action lawsuit] would go against everything he is preaching. In a decentralized world, anyone should be able to support any fork. Exchanges providing choices for users to get a ‘forked coin’ is no different by definition.”
The Steem saga illustrates that decentralization is not a utopia and that the community must work together “build a healthier decentralized ecosystem,” he concluded.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

The credibility of Craig Wright – the Australian tech entrepreneur who controversially claims to be bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto – has taken another blow.
After a list of bitcoin addresses Wright had provided as being his holdings in an ongoing court case were briefly and “inadvertently” made public by plaintiffs on May 21, 145 of the addresses were used to sign a public message both calling Wright a “fraud” and making it plain that he does not in fact own or control them.
The court case was brought by Ira Kleiman, the brother of Wright’s former business partner, David Kleiman, and seeks half of 1.1 million bitcoin (worth around $9.6 billion) the two allegedly mined in the early days of the cryptocurrency, as well as intellectual property. The case hinges on whether Wright can prove he has the keys to the trove of cryptocurrency.
“Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn’t have the keys used to sign this message. The Lightning Network is a significant achievement. However, we need to continue work on improving on-chain capacity. Unfortunately, the solution is not to just change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force out others. We are all Satoshi”Some of the many addresses in the court filing published on Court Listener are indeed used to sign the message.
The message was first brought to wider attention on Reddit, with the claim that the addresses are for bitcoin mined in 2009 and that have not been moved since.
BitMEX Research tweeted that it had taken “a random sample of 20” of the addresses and found they did not match the holdings of the “dominant” early bitcoin miner in 2009, who many think was Satoshi. The firm’s earlier research on this is to be found here.
Wright had claimed in court that his billions in bitcoin were held for him in so-called Tulip Trusts, but that he could not prove his control of the keys due to attorney-client privilege. He has been accused by the judge of “abusing” client-attorney privilege to withhold documents and “obfuscate” proceedings elsewhere in the case.
Last August, the judge also found Wright had argued in bad faith, perjured himself and admitted false evidence.
In another filing on May 21, the Kleiman team filed an omnibus motion for sanctions against Wright, claiming: “Wright has engaged in a sustained pattern of perjury, forged evidence, misleading filings, and obstruction – this included submission of false evidence which, if not unmasked, could have resulted in Plaintiffs being deprived of their day in court.”
Saying the abuses are “undeniably directed at the singular goal of making it impossible for Plaintiffs to prevail at trial,” defendants seek sanctions and a default judgement against Wright.
If the judge rules in favor of Wright on this matter, Dr. Ami Klin “will testify that he has diagnosed Dr. Wright with Autism Spectrum Disorder with high intellectual skills. Dr. Klin’s testimony will help the jury understand how this disability affects behavior.”
Another of Wright’s experts would testify on whether David Kleiman “had the requisite skills and experience to have written or significantly have contributed to the original Bitcoin software application released in 2009.” The Kleiman team is seeking to block the appearances of the four expert witnesses.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Mining reward halvings are a hot topic in the crypto markets, as they alter a cryptocurrency’s supply and often have a significant impact on prices. 
Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, underwent its third halving on May 11, which reduced the reward per block mined to 6.25 bitcoin from 12.5. Bitcoin offshoots bitcoin cash and bitcoin SV also witnessed halvings in April. 
Next in line is zcash (ZEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency first created in 2016 that uses a proof-of-work (or mining) algorithm and encrypts user information within shielded transactions. Currently, it is the 26th largest cryptocurrency by market value, as per data source CoinMarketCap.
Rewards per block mined on the zcash blockchain – launched and supported by the Electric Coin Company – are scheduled to be cut by 50% from the current 12.5 ZEC to 6.25 ZEC at block 1,046,400 this year.  Zcash’s first ever halving, the block subsidy reduction is expected to happen sometime in November.
High-inflation cryptoWhile ZEC’s supply is capped at 21 million like bitcoin, its inflation rate is significantly higher than other major cryptocurrencies. 
Cryptocurrency inflation ratesSource: ViewBaseAt press time, ZEC’s annualized inflation rate is 28.19% – the highest among major cryptocurrencies, according to data source ViewBase. Meanwhile, bitcoin’s inflation rate is 1.44. 
Zcash’s high inflation rate has long been a cause of concern among the investors and the analyst community. “If ZEC were a country, it’d have the 8th highest inflation rate worldwide at 32%,” popular analyst Josh Olszewick tweeted in December 2019. 
The cryptocurrency was one of the worst-performers in the first nine months of 2019, largely due to its “disproportionate” supply hitting the market, tweeted economist and trader Alex Krüger in September 2019.  ZEC ended 2019 with an 88% decline, while bitcoin achieved gains of over 90%.
These concerns, however, may ease following November’s supply cut.
“After the halving, the inflation rate will effectively get cut in half from its current level, so any concerns about the inflation rate should be alleviated or be considered a non-issue,” said Connor Abendschein, a crypto research analyst at Digital Assets Data. 
Pre-halving price boost?In recent months, the cryptocurrency has been languishing not far above all-time lows against both the U.S. dollar and bitcoin. After November’s halving, though, investors may give up on punishing ZEC for its high inflation rate and cheer the emission cut. 
ZEC/USD and ZEC/BTC chart“The upcoming halving could give Zcash the boost it needs to stay relevant in the high-cap ecosystem,” said Abendschein.
Further, cryptocurrencies, in general, tend to rise ahead of halvings, which are widely considered to be price-bullish events. 
For instance, litecoin, which underwent its last reward halving on Aug. 5, 2019, doubled in the first quarter of last year despite lackluster price action in bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value and price anchor for the broader crypto market. Litecoin, the seventh-largest cryptocurrency, rose another 100% in the second quarter. 
Many observers argue that halvings create supply deficits and thus put upward pressure on prices. The belief mainly stems from the bitcoin market, which witnessed stellar bull markets in the months following its first two halvings in November 2012 and July 2016. 
The narrative has further strengthened due to bitcoin’s rise from $3,867 to $10,000 witnessed in the two months running up to its third halving earlier this month. 
Bitcoin halving a guide?Miner selling encompassed a significant percentage of total volumes in bitcoin ahead of its first halving in late 2012. After the event, a large drop in selling pressure from miners led to a price rally.
As seen in the chart above, potential miner selling pressure as a percent of total volume fell from 135% to 67% at the 2012 halving.
Bitcoin’s price extended its pre-halving bull run by 6% from $12.75 to $13.50 in the two weeks after halving and went on to hit a record high of $260 in April 2013. 
“Some investors are looking at Zcash similarly and its first halving could bring about the largest drop in potential mining sell pressure (as a percent of total volume) compared to future halvings,” Wilson Withiam, research analyst at data provider Messari, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat. 
Goodbye Founder’s RewardAlongside the halving, zcash’s so-called (and not universally popular) Founder’s Reward expires in November to be replaced by a new development fund.
“Zcash was launched in 2016 with a ‘Founder’s Reward’ to be allocated over four years. Of all Zcash mining rewards, 80% was allocated to miners, about 15%  was allocated to a group of people that included investors and founders, and about 5% was available to Electric Coin Co. to fund core support functions,” according to the official blog of the Electric Coin Company.
The new fund, which was approved by the zcash community, will distribute 20% of the network’s mining rewards to infrastructure and marketing development, of which 8% would go into a third party grant program, 7% to the Electric Coin Company and 5% to the Zcash Foundation. The other 80% will go to miners.
Source: Electriccoin.coSo, November looks set to be a major month for zcash and the discussion about the halving’s potential impact on price and non-price metrics is likely to pick up the pace as we move closer to the final quarter of 2019.
So far this year, the cryptocurrency has moved pretty much in line with bitcoin and broader markets. Prices fell from $70 to $20 in the four weeks to mid-March as bitcoin as nosedived amid the coronavirus-led crash in the equity markets. The subsequent 150% price rise in bitcoin pulled up ZEC. The privacy coin recently clocked a high of $50 and was last seen changing hands at $45.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

According to recent data and reports, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption are soaring across Africa.
Cryptocurrency adoption and peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions are on the rise across the African continent. There have been significant advances across Africa for crypto adoption in terms of regulation, trade volume, and reported cryptocurrency ownership.
Currently Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya frequently rank among the top 10 countries for Bitcoin Google searches according to a recent report by Arcane Research and Luno.
The research emphasizes that Africa is, “one of, if not the most promising regions” for cryptocurrency adoption as it exhibits a young and largely underbanked or unbanked population who are often forced to use expensive forms of money remittance.Crypto P2P Trades Surge Across Africa
The report found that South Africa had taken the lead on the continent for having the highest percentage of crypto ownership at 13% followed by Nigeria at 11%. South Africans also rank fifth globally for crypto adopters. 
This week saw a surge in P2P trade activity for South Africa, allowing them to edge out Kenya with nearly $2 million in trade across Paxful and Localbitcoins.
South African’s appear to be reacting to the recent news of financial regulators taking virtual assets more seriously. Regulators in SA recently issued a policy document that asserts that crypto-assets and activities relating to them “can no longer remain outside the regulatory perimeter.”
Paxful in Africa: #BuiltWithBitcoin
Ray Youseff, CEO and Founder of the Paxful peer-to-peer marketplace also commented on the Bitcoin boom in Africa and the need for further education to ensure the people take advantage of this avenue to financial inclusion.
As part of its mission to provide equal access to the financial system, Paxful launched the #BuiltWithBitcoin, a social good initiative with the goal of building 100 schools funded entirely by bitcoin all across emerging markets. Youssef said, “There are 2 schools in Rwanda, and currently building the 3rd one in Machakos County, Kenya.” He added, “Africa is one of the fastest-growing markets in Paxful. We had an education drive focused on universities last year beginning with universities in East and Southern Africa, the initiative has reached over 1000 youths. The education workshops provided key, practical insights to the true use cases of Bitcoin, how to avoid falling prey to bad actors in the crypto-space and served to counter the over-emphasis on Bitcoin speculation.”
Beyond the talking points, how does greater financial inclusion benefit the global economy, and what problems remain in Youssef’s view? He explained, “The flow of wealth and money helps to make the economy more liquid and create more jobs. Providing an equal financial system bolsters this process by providing more participants and more opportunities to them. This often means new and creative ecosystems to help people and solve their problems will emerge which will provide people with jobs and a source of income.”
 
Image via Shutterstock

With bitcoin’s price losing altitude again, small investors appear to be seeking exposure to the top cryptocurrency by market value.
Prices fell by 9.8% last week to register bitcoin’s biggest weekly decline since the second week of March, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. A two-week low of $8,630 was registered early on Monday, with prices last seen at $8,730 – down over 11% from the post-halving high of $9,960 registered on May 18. 
Despite the price drop – or perhaps because of it – the number of addresses holding smaller amounts of bitcoin has continued to rise. 
The number of unique addresses holding at least 0.01 BTC (around $87 at press time) rose to a new high of 8,478,746 on Sunday, according to data provided by blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode.
Meanwhile, the number of addresses holding at least 0.1 BTC (roughly $870) also rose to a lifetime high, reaching 3,053,004 on Friday. Both metrics regained their upward trajectory following the May 11 mining reward halving.
See also: Bitcoin Halving Arrives: Mining Rewards Drop for Third Time in History
“Retail investors are likely in an accumulation phase,” said Ki Young Ju, CEO of blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant. 
The dip demand may be associated with the bullish narrative that bitcoin could repeat history by charting a solid price rally over the next 12 months. The cryptocurrency witnessed a 30% pullback in the four weeks following its second reward halving on July 9, 2016. However, the decline was erased in the subsequent months and prices rallied to record highs by March 2016.
Prominent trading firms are also retaining a constructive outlook on the cryptocurrency. “The price pullback was expected and the long-term bias remains bullish. We would accumulate if prices drop to the $6,000-$8,000 range,” said Darius Sit, co-founder and managing director at Singapore-based QCP capital.
That said, the growth in the number of small addresses does not necessarily all represent new individual investors. This is because a single user can hold cryptocurrency in multiple addresses. 
Exchanges and custodial services also tend to hold bitcoins in multiple addresses. “Wallet management systems of virtual asset service providers have become more complex and granular. Their wallet clusters include more small wallets for security, etc.,” said Ju. 
As such, it is difficult to gauge exactly how much of the small address growth has been driven by new investor participation. 
Even if small investor participation is increasing, it is unlikely to have a big impact on prices, as the market is still dominated by large players, popularly known as “whales.” The number of addresses holding at least 10,000 BTC and 1,000 BTC have declined over the last two weeks, according to Glassnode data.
Moreover, options market activity suggests a deeper price drop could be in the offing in the near-term. “Traders are buying out-of-the-money puts,” said Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank. 
A put option represents a bearish bet on the cryptocurrency, while a call option represents a bullish bet. An out-of-the-money put option has a strike price that is lower than the market price of the underlying asset. 
Thomas expects bitcoin to move toward the $8,000–$8,200 range in the short-term. That looks likely, as per the charts, as the cryptocurrency has breached a trendline rising from March lows. 
Daily chartBitcoin fell by 5% on Monday, violating the support of the 2.5-month-long bullish trendline marked. The breakdown is backed by deeper bars on the MACD histogram, a sign of strengthening bearish momentum. 
“However, the relative strength index is neutral (going sideways),” Yuriy Mazur, head of data analytics at cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, told CoinDesk, while adding that, “there is no clear understanding where BTC will go currently. It may either retrace back to $6,500 or reach $10,000. We may get a clear indication of the further direction in the nearest days.”
Also read: Innovation Cycles, Crypto Venture Funds and Institutional Investors
The immediate bearish case would weaken if prices rise above Sunday’s high of $9,310 on the back of strong volumes. That said, a convincing move above $10,000 may be needed to restore the bullish trend. 
“After the halving took place, there were practically no buyers for Bitcoin, but in the range of $9,900–$10,000, a zone of hard technical resistance formed, that is very difficult to overcome under the current conditions,” said Mazur. 
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, also known as Jingdong, has successfully launched two enterprise-level applications, including blockchain-based smart contracts, and the protection of commercially confidential information.
 
 
These two applications were launched on JD’s independently-developed proprietary blockchain, JD Chain. The JD Chain blockchain framework was made open sourced around a year ago, five months after the company launched the JD Blockchain Open Platform enabling companies to use JD’s platform using pre-built APIs. The blockchain protocol has been opened up to allow enterprises to built custom solutions.
 
The two enterprise-level blockchain applications have been applied to industries such as supply chain, human resources, leasing, and around ten other industries. The blockchain smart contracts have been used for over 1 million transactions involving contracts, and the company expects the number to grow to hundreds of millions in the near future. 
 
The JD.com blockchain-based smart contract platform offers a one-stop service for high flexibility in signature management, framework management, contract management, contract framework, and online judicial services. The platform aims to cover most online business scenarios involving contracts and to offer governments and enterprises to be able to digitize these processes. 
 
In April, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China recently made it clear that the scope of its new infrastructure includes technologies such as blockchain, 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies to upgrade the traditional infrastructure. Following the direction offered from the NDRC, JD.com is moving towards building a secure, efficient, and credible blockchain ecosystem to set the standard for the industry.
 
The e-commerce giant believes that blockchain technology has a huge potential to enhance supply chain transparency to ensure the quality and authenticity of their purchases. JD.com has already deployed its blockchain technology on over 50,000 products ranging from across over 700 brands.
 
Chinese institutions join China’s national blockchain committee
 
The Chinese central government has put together a national blockchain committee to work on setting industry standards. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued a notice on April 13 of the “Public Notice on the Formation of a National Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology Standardization Technical Committee.”
 
Other committee members include executives from well-known Chinese institutions, including Baidu, Tencent, Huawei, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, amongst others. 
 
China to build ‘digital central bank’ infrastructure
 
China’s Central Bank, People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is planning to look into building a digital central bank infrastructure to improve the standards of financial services in the country.
 
On May 18, the Chinese Central Bank’s 2020 video conference on scientific and technological work was held in Beijing. The meeting focused on the technological achievements made in 2019, an in-depth analysis of the current situation and challenges, and the upcoming key plans for 2020.
 
A three-year FinTech development plan was set out for the country in August 2019, and 2020 has entered its second year. The development of blockchain, the internet of things (IoT), big data, and other innovative business models will also be expected to drive the digital transformation of the financial industry and promoting financial technology in the country.
 
China has also taken an ambitious step to “maintain its leading position in digital currency technology,” as it remains the central bank’s current top focus. According to Zhongtai Securities, the People’s Bank of China expects to be in the world’s leading position in digital currency development, as it continues to strive for efficient research and development, as well as technical testing of digital assets.
 
 
Image via Shutterstock

Telegram has thrown in the towel in its court battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and will no longer be fighting the ban on its blockchain token project.
In a filing on Friday (see bottom), the messaging app provider said it was withdrawing its appeal over a previous court decision that backed the SEC in prohibiting the issuance of “gram” tokens to investors both in and out of the U.S.
The new document filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit states: “The parties in the above-referenced case have filed a stipulation withdrawing this appeal pursuant to Local Rule 42.1.”
The rule means that the parties have filed an agreement for dismissal of the case without prejudice. As such, the case is over for now, but not necessarily forever.
Telegram raise $1.7 billion in a private token sale in early 2018 to develop a blockchain named the Telegram Open Network, or TON. The project was halted by the SEC for violating U.S. securities law in October, weeks before its scheduled launch.
After six months of written arguments from both sides and one hearing in the Southern District court of New York, Judge Kevin Castel supported the initial preliminary injunction barring Telegram from issuing tokens to investors, on March 24. Telegram moved immediately to appeal, but that effort died with Friday’s filing.
On May 12, Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov announced in a blog post that Telegram would no longer be developing TON. The post marked Durov’s first ever public statement about the project, which was being developed largely in secret.
Gram investors have now been given two options: either take back 72% of their investment in TON, according to the previously agreed contract amendment; or to loan the money to Telegram for one year, with a promise to get 110% in April 2021. U.S. investors have been given only the first option.
Some investors told CoinDesk they had already received their refunds, while others said they had taken the loan route. However, a number have been unhappy with the outcome and said they are considering suing Telegram. No filed lawsuit has been made public so far.
The TON project may not be completely dead, however. Earlier this month, a group of professional validators launched a forked version of the blockchain, named Free TON, with the technical support of TON Labs, a startup that previously helped Telegram with the project.
See the full court filing below:
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Over the past week, the comments of a counter-terrorism think tank Director have indicated that ISIS has been using cryptocurrency platforms to conceal donations and bypass financial security measures and could be hoarding close to 300 million in Bitcoin.
The Think Tank expert initially made the revelation after identifying an increase in advertising for BTC donations. However, a recent report from Chainalysis suggests that there is no evidence of ISIS’s 300million BTC war-chest and they are not impressed with the mainstream media’s conflation of the Director’s comments. 
The articles reporting the supposed war-chest took their lead from the comments of Hans-Jakob Schindler, Director of the CEP (the Counter Extremism Project, a specialist think tank tracking the trend of terrorism financing), who revealed that since 2017, the authorities have been searching for the terror group’s mission war chest and it is feared that it may have been converted into cryptocurrency to be used at a later date.
Schindler said, “I’m wondering if from 2017-2020 there has been $300M that we have not found and that’s why I’m thinking this might have been one of the ways it might have been used.”
The thought of a notorious extremist group like ISIS being funded by anonymous crypto and Bitcoin fits right into many people’s conceptions of the main use for digital assets: to fund terror and buy contraband.
However, as Chainalysis has revealed in a recent report, there just is no evidence beyond Schindler’s guesstimation and there is no evidence among his think tanks research either to make the 300 million BTC war chest claim. In fact, there is nothing really to suggest that ISIS has any bitcoin at all.
Chainalysis Busts ISIS BTC War-Chest Myth
As mainstream media headlines blew up with the sensation ISIS crypto-fund story, Chainalysis decided to publish a fact-checking blog on May 20, accusing the media of sensationalizing out of context comments.
The report reads, “This week, stories circulated that Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the think tank the Counter Extremism Project, said that authorities have searched for ISIS’s missing war chest since 2017 and that he is wondering if the $300 million has not been found because cryptocurrency “might have been one of the ways it might have been used… This would be an ideal storage mechanism until it is needed. If done right, it would be unfindable and unseizable for most governments.”
According to the analysis firm, most of the terror financing ever conducted via bitcoin has never even raised more than $10,000.
Chainalysis asserts, “Schindler’s theory is highly unlikely,” further explaining that if ISIS had funneled oil procced into Bitcoin, “trading volume of regional exchanges and money service businesses would have reflected this flow of funds.”
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are not necessarily the ideal storage mechanisms for illicit funds. While digital assets have a reputation for being untraceable, in comparison to cash they are “inherently transparent”, every transaction is recorded and publicly visible in the decentralized ledger.
 
Image via Shutterstock