Bitcoin Against the Argentine Peso, Kik Sues SEC, Facebook’s Crypto Woes | Hodler's Digest

Picture this. You're in Berlin. You're walking down the street, you see someone dressed like me and you think, huh, I wonder what they were up to. If you guessed spending three days watching TradingView, seeing Bitcoin's price rise and fall, then you would be correct. I'm Molly Jane and this is your weekly Hodler's Digest. Let's take a look at the latest market updates. The much rumored Facebook Coin is likely to face an uphill battle for adoption given the aging demographics of Facebook's user base. The so called global Coin, which is deemed to launch in 2020, aims to tap into Facebook's 2 billion strong user base to bypass traditional banking networks and revolutionize global payments. However, according to a by crypto research firm Dr. The mass adoption of the new coin might be under question given that Facebook's average user is aging and therefore less likely to embrace blockchain technology. In fact, 55% of Facebook users are currently over 35. Moreover, since 2012, the amount of people in their retirement age on Facebook has doubled. In the US Facebook is no longer the favorite social media platform for teens. According to this reported data, barely half of the US teen population is active on Facebook, while 85% use YouTube in a growing preference towards Snapchat. The demographic characteristic could be an obstacle for Facebook Coin to gain traction as an old audience is on average not familiar with crypto and blockchain. On the other hand, young users tend to lack the financial resources to use the new currency in significant volumes. Despite Bitcoin's high volatility in Argentina, people are increasingly trusting the main cryptocurrency more than their national currency, the Argentinian peso. As reported by the Financial Times last week, Bitcoin had hit an all time high in Argentina, reaching 394,000 pesos per coin, which is even higher than the value it had in 2017 prior to the crypto market crash. The Argentinian economy has long been affected by staggering inflation which brought the local currency to depreciate heavily against the US dollar. Analysts say that further devaluation of the peso is due to the upcoming presidential elections which are scheduled for October this year. In particular concern to investors is the potential return of previous President Christina Kirchner, widely criticized for her unorthodox economic policies. Some experts say that investors are more inclined to trust the current president Mauricio Macri, who obtained a loan from the IMF to fend off the monetary crisis. We reached out to market analyst Carlos Mazlaton and asked him to give US his perspective on the situation. So Carlos, bitcoin and the Argentinian peso have been showing an inverse correlation. While bitcoin is surging, the peso is crashing. What's the reason behind this phenomenon?

No intervention de restado in la flotacion cambia. No intervencion de restado con la politica monetaria. No restriction.

Some analysts see the worsening of the peso as directly connected to the upcoming presidential election. Do you agree with. But can cryptocurrency help the Argentinian economy to recover? That's what venture capitalist and bitcoin bull Tim Draper thinks. Back in March, he even recommended to President Macri that he legalize bitcoin. However, some say the best solution to combat staggering inflation is through adopting stablecoins pegged to the dollar or to other kinds of stable assets such as gold. We talked about this with Alex Melnikop, CEO at stablecoin Focused Firm Equilibrium. So Alex, in theory, could stablecoin technology help Argentina to overcome this inflationary crisis? And if so, how?

National cryptocurrency is not the magic stick which can solve any problem within the country. And the reasons for such kind of volatile volatility and hyperinflation actually lies to more fundamental reasons within the economy itself.

So the Venezuelan government, as we all know, issued the petro, which is a stablecoin pegged to the country's oil reserves in order to fight inflation. But the results were mixed at best. So what went wrong with the petro.

Vinicola is actually the example of attempt to enforce some processes within crypto markets to make some artificial cryptocurrency backed by local governments and backed by some physical assets like oil. And the attempts of a kind they supposed to fail because there is not too much value in this cryptocurrency and in this asset to build up infrastructure. Robust infrastructure where you can prove that this oil is actually backing petrol is rather difficult. It also can hardly be inspected since.

Many criticize stablecoins for just being too centralized as some still depend on traditional financial institutions. Does this mean that stable always means.

Centralized for sure, Stable doesn't always mean centralized. Now there are decentralized model of stablecoins appearing on the market which become solid alternative to tether and centralized models of stablecoins which are backed by physical dollars or even commodities which are sitting on some accounts or some centralized custodies. Let's take the example equilibrium, which is the framework for decentralized stablecoins which we are working on right now. It represents the robust and reliable store of value and decentralized stablecoin on EOS blockchain so that any market participants can can make sure that at every moment each single stablecoin is backed by liquid cryptocurrency sitting on smart contracts.

A new type of cryptocurrency scam has been detected, this time on YouTube, among the most popular platforms for accessing cryptocurrency content. As reported by digital security publication Bleeping, Computer scammers are uploading videos which trick viewers into downloading a non existent software dubbed Bitcoin Generator, claiming that it can multiply bitcoin by following the link in the video description, Gullible users download the program, which is in fact a malware called qlabtrojan. This particularly insidious malware is programmed to steal specific information from computers, including saved credentials and histories, but also specific types of files. After gathering up this data, the Trojan sends them to the scammer through Telegram. The program also hijacks clipboards, which means that the scammer can monitor them for certain data and when it's detected, he can swap it out for different data. According to the researcher, scammers are using this method to have people transfer cryptocurrency into their own accounts. The scam was originally discovered by a researcher known as Frost, who has been following the hackers activities for over two weeks and then reporting them to YouTube. However, each time one of these accounts are taken down, the scammers open up a new one and upload the malware again.

Crypto Soldiers unite. It is time to rise and defend crypto from the evil claws of the sec. You will not lose your life, nor will you need swords for this battle. All you need to do is donate to a noble crowdfunding campaign. The firm behind Canadian messaging app Kik has launched a crypto crowdfunding campaign to support a battle in the courts with the sec over its 2017 ICO. The campaign was announced by Kick founder and CEO Ted Livingston and his lawyer Patrick Gibbs on a podcast this week, the 2019 version of Winston Churchill's We Will Fight Them on the Beaches radio announcement. The hope is that a lawsuit would eventually result in a new Howie test for crypto tokens to determine which ones are a security the official website Defend Crypto allows supporters to contribute in 19 different cryptos, including BTC and even DAI. So far, the conversation's gone like we're a crypto. Most ICOs are securities, prepare to die, or at least face an enforcement action. So Kik is willing to face being Kik'd to the curb as they are fighting the good fight. The firm says they have already spent $5 million in crypto on the case. Big time crypto investor Fred Wilson claims to have donated an undisclosed amount to the cause.

Punishing US Sanctions have led North Korea to launch cyber attacks, according to a senior FBI official. As we have talked about on the show before, Pyongyang is likely behind numerous ransomware campaigns that involve cryptocurrencies. The WannaCry cyber attacks back in 2017 are perhaps the most notorious. 200,000 computers were infected with ransomware in 150 different countries. And now, according to Tonya Ugoretz, the FBI official who spoke on the matter, sanctions are having an economic impact. So cyber operations are mean to make money, whether it's through cryptocurrency, mining or bank theft. Many government institutions were caught flat footed when it came to the rise of crypto, and this extended to the crime that came with it. However, now institutions like the FBI are better equipped to face these types of crimes head on. Aaron Zhou, director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration center under the U.S. director of National Intelligence, said the there is a huge effort in the FBI and also several other entities across government looking at ways to stop malicious activity surrounding cryptocurrency. It is still unclear how successful nation states are in circumventing U.S. sanctions using crypto. Sanctions themselves are not without controversy. It has been argued, for example, that the extreme poverty and economic turmoil in Venezuela is a result of US Sanctions rather than a result of Maduro's failed policies. So is kick the right horse to back or is supporting the DefendCrypto campaign more like kicking a dead horse? Let us know in the comments. And as always, remember to like subscribe and HODL cointelegraph Like subscribe and HODL. Sam.