Hodler’s Digest, June 3–9: Top Stories, Price Movements, Quotes and FUD of the Week

Published at: June 9, 2019

Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Mt. Gox’s Karpeles: “Press Rumors About My Blockchain Plans Are False”

Mark Karpeles, the former CEO of long-defunct Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, denied press claims this week that he is returning to blockchain. Karpeles said that his activities with Tristan Technologies will not involve the cryptocurrency sector, as previously reported, and that the firm is not a startup and not related to blockchain. In comments to Cointelegraph, Karpeles said that he wasn’t “sure how this got reported wrong” and that his main goal is to “try to bring back Japan near the top of the IT industry.” A judge acquitted Karpeles of embezzlement in March and is currently appealing a lesser conviction of data manipulation, all in relation to the hack of Mt. Gox.

SEC Sues Kik for Conducting Allegedly Unregistered $100 Million ICO in 2017

Canadian startup Kik has been sued by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an unregistered $100 million token offering. According to the SEC’s complaint, the commission alleged that Kik’s digital token sale was not compliant with U.S. securities laws, as it had not registered the offering with the proper authorities. The SEC’s complaint comes right after Kik’s recent announcement that the company is launching a $5 million crypto initiative to fund a lawsuit against the SEC, with a campaign called DefendCrypto. Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a press release that, by conducting its kin token sale, Kik “deprived investors of information to which they were legally entitled and prevented investors from making informed investment decisions.”

Tron’s Justin Sun Wins eBay Charity Auction in $4.57M Bid to Lunch With Warren Buffett

Justin Sun, Tron founder and CEO, has won an eBay charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett, renowned investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. In order to win the lunch, which Buffett has participated in for 20 years, Sun allegedly bid a record-breaking $4,567,888. The winner will be able to bring along seven friends to a New York steakhouse, and all proceeds from the auction go to San Francisco-based nonprofit Glide Foundation. Sun wrote in a statement that the bid was a key priority for the Tron and BitTorrent team. Buffett has long been known for his negative stance on cryptocurrencies, although he has made positive comments in regard to blockchain.

LocalBitcoins Confirms Removal of Local Cash Trades

Global peer-to-peer (p2p) crypto exchange LocalBitcoins officially confirmed this week the removal of trading in local fiat currencies. The Finland-based exchange had previously removed the cash trading option on June 1 with no announcement, which caused some outrage in the crypto community. In an official statement this week, the exchange noted that its liabilities are determined by the Act on Detecting and Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, which requires them to follow certain regulations. The move comes on the heels of the news that LocalBitcoins will soon become monitored by the Financial Supervisory Authority of Finland, as the Finnish government passed new legislation for crypto assets earlier this year.

Report: Facebook to Announce Cryptocurrency Project This Month

Social media giant Facebook will reportedly announce its cryptocurrency project this month, and employees will be allowed to take part of their salary in the coin. According to unnamed sources, the white paper for the coin will be released on June 18. As well, Laura McCracken, Facebook’s head of financial services and payment partnerships for Northern Europe, said in an interview this week that the stablecoin would not only involve a U.S. dollar peg. Other media reports this week have noted that there are now 100 people known to be working on the crypto project via profiles on professional networking platform LinkedIn.

Winners and Losers

This week in the markets, bitcoin is below $8,000, trading at around $7,933, ether is at $245 and XRP at $0.41. Total market cap is about $253 billion.

The top three altcoin gainers of the week are posscoin, bitcoin 2 and hempcoin. The top three altcoin losers of the week are bzedge, pandemia and quantis network.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“The unwillingness to allow more competitors to offer geared ETFs seems to be another example of denying or curtailing access to a product that would be useful to some investors.”

Hester Peirce, commissioner at the SEC

“What a difference it would have made a decade ago if blockchain technology on a private distributed ledger accessible to regulators had been the informational foundation of Wall Street’s derivatives exposures.”

J. Christopher Giancarlo, United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman

“I don’t think I’m a Neanderthal, which is what I’ve been called when I’ve said I didn’t want to own bitcoin.”

Stanley Druckenmiller, American billionaire investor

“I don’t recommend bitcoin in either direction because I don’t really care for it in terms of an asset, but I do care for it as a signalling mechanism that I think was a tip-off to this bounce in gold.”

Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at financial planning and wealth advisory firm Bleakley Advisory Group

"My love for Japan has not changed. Japan used to be engineering superpower in terms of its PCs but right now, taking the cloud for example, it's the U.S. that dominates. But I still believe in the potential Japan has and I would like to develop that.”

Mark Karpeles, former CEO of the now-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox

“The lack of financial inclusion is not a ‘bug’ of the traditional financial system. It's a direct result of the regulatory architecture and the intermediaries policies.”

Andreas Antonopoulos, well-known bitcoin educator and crypto commentator

"I do not know what bitcoin is.”

Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil

FUD of the Week

Report: Polish Exchange Shuts Down and Disappears With Customers Funds

Coinroom, a Polish cryptocurrency exchange, has reportedly shut down its operations and disappeared with customer funds. While the total amount lost has not been disclosed, some users said that they had up to 60,000 zloty (around $15,790) in their accounts. Before ending its operations, Coinroom reportedly asked customers in an email to withdraw their money in one day, while in reality, customers have said that they were unable to get all of their money in this final withdrawal. A spokesperson for the district prosecutor's office in Warsaw said that proceedings had been initiated against Coinroom for unregistered crypto payment services.

New Malware Campaign Spreads Trojans Through Clone Crypto Trading Website

According to Twitter user and malware researcher Fumik0_, a new website is spreading cryptocurrency malware. The aforementioned site reportedly imitates the website for Cryptohopper, a site where users can program tools to perform automatic cryptocurrency trading. After a user goes on the site, which displays the logo of Cryptohopper in an attempt to trick the user, it automatically downloads a setup.exe installer that will infect the computer once it runs. The installer infects the computer with an information-stealing Trojan, which then also installs two other Qulab Trojans for mining and clipboard hijacking deployed once every minute to collect data.

Report: Nearly $10 Million in XRP Stolen in GateHub Hack

Cryptocurrency wallet service GateHub said this week that hackers compromised almost 100 XRP Ledger wallets, resulting in the loss of around $10 million. In a statement, GateHub said that it was notified by community members of the loss of funds, following which it discovered increased application programming interface (API) calls coming from a small number of IP addresses. While one of those who warned GateHub about the breach reported that almost 13,100,000 XRP ($5.37 million) had already been laundered through exchanges and mixer services, GateHub has stated that the investigation is still ongoing.