Increased regulatory scrutiny? Bring it on
say the Crypto Billionaires.
Mike Novogratz and the Winklevii are not bothered
by more regulation... in fact, they welcome
it.
Both parties want to weed out and deter bad
actors in the crypto space.
No one likes a bad actor
The Department of Justice has opened a criminal
probe into whether traders are manipulating
the price of cryptocurrencies.
Federal prosecutors are working with the CFTC,
a financial regulator that oversees derivatives
tied to Bitcoin.
The investigation is focused on illegal practices
that affect prices -- such as spoofing or
wash trades.
Crypto exchanges are beginning to realize
that if they want to go mainstream, they have
to act.
Gemini, run by the Winklevii, hired Nasdaq
last month to oversee surveillance of crypto
on their exchange. They have also urged trading
platforms to work together to form a group
that would self-regulate for the entire industry.
Bitcoin slumped to a six-week low, falling
below 7.5k for the first time since April.
That ’s a 20% drop since its May peak.
Adding to Bitcoin’s woes, the exchange OKEx
suspended withdrawals and fiat trading to
rectify an error that was producing inaccurate
account balances.
Tom Lee predicted a rally, but with increased
regulatory scrutiny, what we have is quite
the opposite.
And now for your Tom Lee of the week with
Tom Lee…
Tom Lee is fast becoming the anti-Buffett.
Whereas Buffett talks FUD, Tom ‘nostradamus’
Lee prefers to make wild predictions that
often don’t work out:
“So as miserable as it feels holding Bitcoin
at $8,000, the move from $8,000 to $25,000
will happen in a handful of days,"
A handful of days may not sound like very
much until you consider the fact that, unlike
Trump, Tom Lee has massive hands.
We celebrated Bitcoin Pizza Day this week.
8 years ago, on May 22nd, 2010, a programmer
paid for two pizzas with Bitcoin.
The first time Bitcoin was used to buy goods,
a historic moment.
The moment is immortalized online in a Bitcointalk.org
forum, where programmer Laszlo Hanyecz confirmed
that he’d bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC
from Papa John’s Pizza in America.
Hanyecz had asked users in the forum to deliver
two pizzas for 10,000 BTC, and eventually,
a teenager named Jeremy Sturdivant, nicknamed
Jercos, accepted Bitcoin and sent Hanyecz
two pizzas from Papa John’s, and the rest,
as they say, is history.
At the time, 1 Bitcoin was worth a fraction
of a cent, meaning Hanyecz’ 10,000 BTC were
worth $41. Today, the original Bitcoin pizzas
would cost you around 80 million dollars.
Hanyecz, a brave pioneer, paved the way and
inspired others.
Because of him, services like PizzaForCoins,
Egifter, and even some restaurants accept
various cryptocurrencies to buy the Italian
delicacy.
Hanyecz made headlines again in February,
by reliving his glory days and buying two
pizzas using the Lightning Network.
Here you can see Laszlo’s family enjoying
Bitcoin Lightning pizzas.
Bitcoin relies on heroic early adopters like
Hanyecz. But don’t be a hungry Hungarian
tonight. No 2 for 1 deal is worth $40 million
dollars.
Google wants to hire Buterin! (allegedly)
The Ethereum co-founder posted a tweet with
a screenshot apparently from a Google recruiter
asking if Google made sense for him right
now.
Buterin quickly deleted the Tweet.
He also included a poll asking if he should
take the job.
The answer was a resounding no, in case you
were wondering.
Google could do with his help at the moment.
They are currently working on two separate
blockchain projects: a “tamper-proof”
auditing system and a cloud operations platform.
As the saying goes, there are 6 million ways
to die, choose one.
Google realizes it only has 2
Vitalik can destroy them from the inside,
or continue destroying them from the outside.
Earlier this year Crypto was deemed Halal
under sharia law.
Now a London mosque is the first in the world
to accept Bitcoin donations
The Mosque in Hackney, London hopes to raise
at least $13,000 in cryptocurrency donations
over Ramadan
Muslims are asked to donate 2.5% of their
wealth during the 30-day festival as part
of zakat, almsgiving.
“We are trying to appeal to a wider audience
with the new money,” said the chairman of
the board of trustees
“It’s big in the Islamic world, and we
have set up a platform for wealthier Muslims
outside our community to support and donate
to our mosque.”
A Blockchain expert who helped advise the
mosque on setting up the bitcoin wallet is
hopeful for the scheme will be a success.
Ramadan Mubarak! to all our Muslim Cointelegraph
fans.
Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Verge has been
hacked... again
The previous hack happened in April. 250,000
Verge were stolen. This time, 35 mln Verge
coins were stolen in a matter of hours
Verge tweeted that their mining pools were
under a DDOS attack on May 21, noting that
they were working to resolve it.
At the time of writing the hack was currently
equal to around $1.4 mln.
Verge’s Twitter account was also compromised
in March, with hackers tweeting about a fraudulent
giveaway of Verge coins.
Critics of the cryptocurrency don’t believe
developers are doing enough to prevent hacks.
Not all doom and gloom though, last month
Verge announced a partnership with Pornhub.
If Verge continues having (cough) performance
issues, investors might move on to a coin
that doesn’t find it so hard to stay up
in the market.
Thanks for watching, like for one high five
from Tom Lee’s massive hands,
like, subscribe, and hodl for two!
