Smart Bitcoin

Libra: we will continue to work successfully without PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard

David Marcus, CEO of the blockchain direction of Facebook, is sure that despite the departure of seven key partners from the Libra Association - PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, eBay, Mercado Pago, and Booking - the project will continue to develop successfully. And those who left Libra now will return sometime after the launch.

Also, Marcus emphasized that the above-mentioned companies will continue to provide their services to the project, even without being members of the association - leaving does not mean breaking the cooperation. As an example, CEO Libra indicated the possibility of issuing cards for the Calibra payment system by Visa and Mastercard.

Marcus stressed that the main reason for the partners to leave the project, in his opinion, is no pressure from the US financial regulators, but the reluctance to take part in the launch of the cryptocurrency, which in itself implies serious responsibility to shareholders.

Recall, it became known earlier that 1,500 companies are already applying for Libra's retired partners, 180 of which fully meet Facebook’s selection criteria.

Alipay promised to block all transactions related to Bitcoin trading

The payment unit of the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has promised to block all payments related to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

On Thursday, Alipay once again outlined its negative attitude to cryptocurrencies on Twitter, emphasizing that it closely monitors over-the-counter trading and will suppress activities carried out in violation of existing rules.

“If it is discovered that any transaction is related to Bitcoin or other virtual currency, Alipay will immediately suspend all relevant payment services,” the company said.

The day before, the Binance exchange confirmed that its users from China can make deposits through Alipay for peer-to-peer trading while noting that it does not have a direct agreement with the payment platform.

Binance launched its new service as part of a plan to increase competitiveness in the Chinese market. Currently, traders are invited to exchange yuan for Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT. In the future, Binance intends to expand the service to other countries.

Last July, Alipay successfully tested a blockchain-based payment system.

⚡️October launch is confirmed!

Original investors received emails from the Telegram core team.
Key items:

1. Following a successful initial testing period, TON is planned to be launched in late October.
2. Investors are provided with the TON Key Generation Software: https://generator.ton.org
3. Investors will have to provide Telegram with the public key to receive their Grams by October 16th. This key will be confirmed using credentials provided in the Token Purchase Agreement.
4. The entire source code of TON is available at https://github.com/ton-blockchain/ton.
5. Investors have to select validators. Neither Telegram nor the TON Foundation will serve as validators post-launch.

We will follow up with the additional analysis.

​​Gram wallet became available in test mode

According to Telegram info, the Gram wallet appeared in the alpha version of Telegram for iOS for developers. Users shared wallet screenshots online:

When creating a wallet, you must provide 24 words that will be used to restore access to the wallet, even if you forget your password or lose access to your account.

So far, Telegram has functionality for creating and deleting a wallet, as well as the ability to receive and send tokens. The address of your wallet can be shared, including through a QR code.

In early September, Telegram posted an open-access test version of TON. Anyone could test the platform. By agreement with investors, the platform should earn in full mode by October 31, otherwise, Telegram will have to return the invested funds.

In March 2018, during the ICO, Pavel and Nikolai Durov raised $ 850 million for the development of TON. In total, investors invested $ 1.7 billion in the project. Among the investors are Qiwi co-founder Sergey Solonin and Wimm-Bill-Dann co-founder David Yakobashvili.

TON is an ecosystem on the blockchain with its own services, applications, and site analogs. An important part of TON should be the payment system for the Gram currency.

Ethereum takes the lead in the number of commissions collected

For the first time in history, the number of commissions collected on the Ethereum network over a 24-hour period exceeded the bitcoin indicator, Trustnodes draws attention.

According to the Messari portal, Ethereum miners raised $ 207,000 from user fees and bitcoin miners $ 180,000. The median commission was $ 0.16 and $ 0.20, respectively.

As you can see in the image above, other networks are many times inferior to the leaders. $ 915 commissions were paid on the Litecoin blockchain, and $ 156 on Bitcoin Cash. Their resources are not in great demand by users, while Bitcoin and Ethereum are close to the limit, processing on average 1 MB for 10 minutes each.

Ethereum is trying to increase its manufacturing capabilities by 25% by voting miners. One of the largest miners, Ethermine, says it focuses on 10 million units of gas, while now the value is 8.7 million compared to the recent 8 million.

The increase in the limit is slow in part due to the fact that some miners, for example, F2Pool, periodically vote either for an increase or for a decrease. “Most likely they are using the default settings in the Parity client,” said an Ethermine spokesperson. “Parity targets 8 million by default, but starts voting for 10 million when the blocks are full.”

Ethermine themselves admit that they used to use standard settings too until they were pressed by the public. Thus, smaller miners can use the same settings without worrying about changing them.

Along with the computing capabilities of the network, commissions are also growing. According to EthGasStation, the cost of an ordinary ETH transaction is now around $ 0.14. Token-based transactions cost twice as much, and interaction with a smart contract can cost $ 1-2 depending on the type.

The main culprit, however, is not Tether, which is actively transferring its USDT tokens from the Bitcoin blockchain to the Ethereum blockchain, but a kind of gambling application.

The upcoming hard fork Istanbul brings with it certain improvements in the calculation of gas and the necessary space per gas unit and will contribute to a further increase in the limit. The Ethereum test network is expected to be activated in October.

Okex Korea delists anonymous cryptocurrencies

Today, the South Korean division of the Okex cryptocurrency exchange on its official website announced the massive delisting of trading pairs with anonymous cryptocurrencies from its platform due to their non-compliance with the requirements of the Financial Anti-Money Laundering Development Group (FATF).

“Under the article” includes:

-Monero
-Dash
-Zcash
-Horizen
-Super Bitcoin

Users are required to withdraw the aforementioned coins from their accounts on the exchange by December 10.

The main reason: the nature of private cryptocurrencies does not meet the FATF requirements for the transfer of user information in the interaction of cryptocurrency platforms, approved earlier.

Many analysts now do not rule out that soon many other cryptocurrency exchanges will follow the example of Okex Korea.

Cosmos token has been growing continuously since September 5 and has already risen in price by 70%

Cosmos token has risen 70% in the past week. Since September 5, the cost of altcoin has increased from $ 1.93 to $ 3.20. Coin trading volumes during this time doubled. About this writes RBC Crypto.

On Friday, September 13, the average market price of the Cosmos token reached $ 3.20. Over the past day alone, the cost of altcoin has increased by 19%, and since September 5, by almost 70%. At the same time, trading volumes increased by 105% and now amount to $ 234 million.

The asset is on the 21st place in the list of the largest digital money by capitalization with an indicator of $ 610 million. The coin is presented on many popular exchanges, such as Binance, OKEx, Huobi Global and others. However, most of the altcoin transactions currently take place on the Chinese trading platform Hotbit.

On September 12, Cosmos was added to the list of Canadian cryptocurrency broker Voyager Digital. However, this was unlike