Joe Weisenthal, the executive editor of news for Bloomberg Digital, said that blockchains are essentially inefficient and that “Bitcoin is for making transactions The Man is against.” The Man The comments come from Bloomberg’s Markets newsletter, which Weisenthal reproduced in a tweet on Oct. 17. He elaborated that transactions would not be possible without individuals willing to pay fiat money for Bitcoin (BTC), with blockchains being “inherently inefficient, computationally costly systems,” which only have value when using them for transactions. Weisenthal urged regulators and lawmakers to consider if it is really reasonable to pour money into the system and to …

Has the crypto industry developed any type of solution for such transactions? Crypto auctions, algorithmic trading and over-the-counter (OTC) desks are designed to transfer large amounts of crypto. In cases when you want to trade your crypto assets directly, without splitting them into parts and calculating fees, the daily auction held by Gemini — a U.S.-based, regulated crypto exchange — is a popular way to do that. Orders are currently available for five major currencies — Bitcoin, Ether, Zcash, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Another solution is to use trading bots to automate the process of splitting transactions. For instance, TradeSanta …

Ripple’s investment arm Xpring has invested into cryptocurrency wallet BRD to enable users to hold, purchase, sell and spend XRP tokens through the wallet. Xpring announced the development in an Oct. 11 blog post, noting that BRD — a mobile cryptocurrency wallet, with a reported user base of 2.5 million — will build on the Xpring platform to support and integrate XRP. Large user base and geography By selecting BRD, Xpring ostensibly focused on the wallet’s large user base and territorial coverage of 170 countries, as well as the company’s healthy growth in key metrics such as transaction volume. The …

OmiseGo, a finance-oriented scaling network for Ethereum (ETH), has become a member of Universal Protocol Alliance, a coalition of blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused firms. Targeting financial services and tax collection In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Oct. 8, the startup revealed that it will incorporate the Universal Protocol Platform UPT utility token into its payment processing technology. By doing so, OmiseGo intends to let stakeholders to use UP stablecoins for financial services and tax collection, as well as collect transaction fees. Dan Schatt, co-founder of the Universal Protocol Alliance, said that OmiseGo’s technology “will help support the mass adoption …

Cloud-based instant messaging service Telegram has released the terms of use for its native cryptocurrency wallet Grams Wallet. In the Oct. 8 publication, Telegram said the conditions apply whether as a standalone application or as incorporated into the Telegram Messenger application. Here are five key takeaways: 1. Taxes, regulation In the statement, Telegram emphasized that the Grams Wallet should not be used in jurisdictions where its services are prohibited by any applicable law, regulation or rule, including embargoes, sanctioned countries and sanctioned individuals. Telegram also stressed that its customers are responsible for determining what taxes apply to use of Gram …

Decentralized applications’ (DApps) transaction volume and user activity have slumped in the third quarter of 2019, a new study shows. DApp.com — an analytics platform for DApps built on Ethereum, EOS, Steem, Tron, TomoChain, IOST and Blockstack — revealed its recent findings in a news release shared with Cointelegraph on Oct. 7. An overall market assessment showed that DApps built on the six aforementioned blockchains reported a total transaction volume of $2.03 billion in Q3, down 40% compared with Q2. Only 36% of the DApp users from Q2 used DApps at least once in Q3, which also indicates a notable …

Major United States-based crypto exchange and wallet service provider Coinbase has announced that it will increase trading fees again on its professional platform Coinbase Pro. Maker fees for trades under $10K surge over 200% Starting from Oct. 7, Coinbase Pro will adopt a new fee structure that will cause its maker trading fees for low tier — $10,000 and below — to surge as high as 233%, according to the update posted on Oct. 3. Following another surge in March 2019, Coinbase Pro currently charges all accounts trading under $100,000 with a 0.15% maker fee and a 0.25% taker fee. …

Earlier in September, Cointelegraph reported that Israeli cybersecurity startup GK8 had raised $4 million to finance its offline cryptocurrency transaction solution. The company developed a cold wallet with “hot wallet functionalities” that is completely shielded from online hackers because it does not require an internet connection. Apart from creating additional security layers, offline transactions could, in theory, enable complete censorship resistance for cryptocurrencies. Being able to sign, send, validate, receive and record value transfers without the internet might also be the key to ensuring global cryptocurrency adoption. To this end, there are some startups working on mesh networks (commonly called …

Major cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay has entered a partnership with Ripple’s investment arm Xpring to support payments with XRP. The development was announced in an Oct. 2 press release, revealing that now businesses can accept the third-largest digital currency XRP for payments via BitPay’s cross-border payments platform. As part of the cooperation, BitPay is also integrating its BitPay Wallet with Xpring’s developer platform. In a separate announcement, Xpring added that global companies are now able to accept XRP through BitPay without the need for integration and enhancements. Earlier today, Cointelegraph reported that web monetization platform Coil began supporting XRP payments …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) startup InstaDApp has secured $2.4 million in a seed round from an array of strategic investors, including Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital. New funding InstaDApp is the developer of a mediator smart wallet layer between the user interface and protocols that purportedly simplifies the cost of conducting financial transactions. According to an Oct. 1 blog post, other investors included Robot Ventures and venture capital company IDEO Colab. The startup claims that its protocol launch saw a substantial growth, with the value locked in their smart contracts increasing by a factor of nine, from $4 million to more …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) developer Rusty Russel has published the full disclosure of the network’s vulnerability discovered in August, accompanied by a solution. Russel pointed out that the vulnerability appeared while opening funding channels. The described process does not require that receivers check if a transaction is the one promised by the funder in terms of amounts and the actual scriptpubkey. Scriptpubkey is an output transaction script that requires specific conditions to be observed for a receiver to spend their Bitcoins. The file explains: “A lightning node accepting a channel must check that the funding transaction output does indeed …

The number of Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) nodes has reached 10,000 for the first time, according to real-time LN statistics site 1ML. According to 1ML, the number of nodes on the LN has grown by 3.17% over the past 30 days to reach a record high of 10,003 network nodes at press time. At the same time, the number of nodes with active channels is 5,975 out of total of 36,246 channels at press time, with just a 0.34% growth over the past month. The LN is a second-layer blockchain protocol designed to provide high-speed transactions for Bitcoin, wherein …