Katherine Ross covers the Bithumb exchange hack, John McAfee backing away from ICO promotions over SEC pressure, and Ladislav Messer, a Czech Wikipedia editor who obsessively maintains the Bitcoin page. Goldman Sachs signals institutional interest in crypto.
Feeling down about the wild price swings in the crypto market? Don't do yourself a favor and take a look at the pep talk Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong gave to his staff and then shared on Twitter. Now all should feel right in the world. I'm Katherine Ross from Cointelegraph and this is your weekly Hodler's Digest. Big Hum temporarily suspended all deposits and payments, moving all assets to a cold wallet and will compensate victims of the hack the Korean ministry has since launched the probe into the causes of the bitcoin hack. There was a brief market dip, but Charlie Lee said that that was to be expected. Whenever there is a hack, people get scared and the price drops. Whenever there's some bad news like an exchange hack, the prices drop like 5%. 5% is a lot in the stock market world, but it's nothing new in the crypto space. Bitcoin bounced back from $6.5K to over 6.7. CNBC's Brian Kelly and Charlie Lee laid out three main reasons for the rec. First, Behem reacted straight away. As soon as the news hit, they acted. Second, they immediately promised to pay back the victims of the hack. Third, the fundamentals are not affected. After a bank robbery where gold is stolen, it is not the price of gold that is affected. The same is true of bitcoin going forward. Quick action in response to a hack seems to be the key for exchanges. Have you ever heard about this word blockchain? I'm sure you did. At the height of the bitcoin frenzy, blockchain became a buzzword. Companies tried to use it to boost their market value. Entertainment companies bragged about ties to blockchain while Tobago businesses got into crypto mining. Every kind of business, it seems, now has tulip growing facilities. Cut and pasting the term blockchain is cheap. The result is a brief uptick in the market value and then a dip when the market realizes the company has added nothing of substance to their profile. Using buzzwords to benefit your stock price is nothing new. During the tech bubble, companies saw their value skyrocket, then crashed after adding dotcom to their names. It became so common that companies actually rallied after dropping the suffix. In many ways, blockchain is like a young Matthew McConaughey too sexy to be taken seriously. Older Matthew McConaughey is slightly less sexy, but he is taken more seriously as an actor. Think True Detective or Dallas Buyers Club. Okay, Interstellar sucked, but you get the point. Blockchain needs to be the older Matthew. People need to be bored with it because it works so well. It needs to become part of the era. Everyday infrastructure, not a digital gold rush. Blockchain is a revolution that won't be televised because immutable ledgers are McConaughey with his shirt on boring. 2018 has been a busy year for Schiller in Chief John McAfee. He announced the 2020 presidential run his own fiat currency backed by crypto, and he revealed that he charges $105,000 per tweet to promote ICOs. But alas, no more. John fought the law and the law won. John McAfee tweeted that he will no longer work with ICOs or promote them due to alleged threats from the SEC. If you doubt his claims, it might not be advisable to show up at his house for several reasons. The SEC did not comment on the McAfee case but has increased regulatory scrutiny in the crypto space. The SEC commissioner criticized ICOs, saying that the crypto space has been full of troubling developments that we've seen at the SEC and especially the ICO space. Will you vote for McAfee in 2020? Leave your comments below. Big institutions are warming up to crypto. Sort of. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein says bitcoin is not for him, but that's ok. I've learned over the years that there's a lot of things that work out pretty well that I don't love. Blankfein linked the evolution of paper money with the rise of crypto. Paper money, like bitcoin, doesn't have intrinsic value, yet it somehow became the main form of money. Blankfein poses the why couldn't you have a consensus currency? According to Goldman's CEO, it is too arrogant to argue that crypto won't be adopted on a large scale just because people are uncomfortable or unfamiliar. Goldman Sachs has been skeptical about crypto. In 2014, they argued Bitcoin wasn't a currency. In 2017, it backed down and was rumored to be opening its own cryptocurrency trading list. In 2018, the Goldman bag Circle app launched a new feature that makes it easier for newbies to enter the crypto market. Crypto, it seems, is making progress. In the past, big institutions like Goldman shook their heads in incomprehension. Now they nod their heads in incomprehension. Meet Ladislav Messer, aka Bitcoin Grandpa, a 57 year old computer programmer from the Czech Republic, is the single most prolific contributor to to Bitcoin's Wikipedia page. He spends two hours a day editing and maintaining crypto articles on the site. He is providing a valuable service. The Czech Republic loves bitcoin. It is home to the first Bitcoin mining pool and Alza AKA the Czech Amazon which accepts bitcoin. Having lived through the Soviet Union, Ladislav is no stranger to misinformation and censorship so it's important for him that people have access to good info. I don't want any censorship. I hate it. Certainly Masseur fights a daily battle with anti bitcoiners who vandalize the page and think crypto is a scam. He has even been accused of being Satoshi himself despite being deleted several times. Masseur has contributed over 1000 edits to the article. He has no regrets about not investing in Bitcoin at $2 back in 2012. He is risk averse and just wants to pay off his mortgage so guys don't get down or out of the market. For every McAfee there is a lotta slab like to go for a walk with bitcoin grandpa like subscribe and huddle and he'll get you some pie as well. Cointelegraph like subscribe and hod. Sam.
