![](https://uploads.goodbits.io/uploads/content_block/image/135224/60db6ffb-b2b6-459e-a142-9be6cf726a60.png)

# Block by Block Weekly Newsletter #15

# News of the Week

[🤯 Coinbase to Become U.S-regulated Blockchain Securities Trading Venue](https://blog.coinbase.com/our-path-to-listing-sec-regulated-crypto-securities-a1724e13bb5a)

Coinbase announced this week that it is on track to operate a regulated broker-dealer pending approval by federal authorities. The approval would allow Coinbase to offer blockchain-based securities on their platform.   
  
This is all being enabled by Coinbases acquisitions of Keystone Capital Corp., Venovate Marketplace, Inc., and Digital Wealth LLC.

[👍 SEC Appoints First Crypto Czar](https://www.coindesk.com/sec-just-appointed-first-ever-crypto-czar/)

Valerie Szczepanik will serve as associate director of the Division of Corporation Finance and senior advisor for digital assets and innovation. According to the SEC, Valerie will "coordinate efforts across all SEC Divisions and Offices regarding the application of U.S. securities laws to emerging digital asset technologies and innovations, including initial coin offerings and cryptocurrencies."

[🤔 Investment Giant Fidelity Issues Crypto Exchange Job Offers](https://cointelegraph.com/news/reports-investment-giant-fidelity-issues-job-offers-for-crypto-exchange-devs)

The firm is looking for a DevOps System Engineer “to help engineer, create and deploy a Digital Asset exchange to both a public and private cloud”. According to another job offer, Fidelity also plans to offer “first-in-class custodian services for Bitcoin and other digital currencies".

[👊 Coinbase Launching in Japan](https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-coming-to-japan-welcomes-fintech-leader-nao-kitazawa-173919de23c8)

Coinbase announced that they will be opening an office in Japan and appointing Nao Kitazwa as the CEO. Nao is the former COO of Money Design and former investment banker at Morgan Stanley Japan.  
  
It's curious that Coinbase is launching in Japan considering rival exchange Kraken [pulled its services](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/cryptocurrency-exchange-kraken-pulls-out-of-japan-citing-costs) from the country in April citing rising costs of business.

[🏦 Circle Aims to Expand Into Regulated Banking](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-06/circle-in-talks-with-u-s-to-become-licensed-bank-trading-venue)

Crypto platform Circle plans to seek a federal banking license to provide more services to its customers. It also intends to pursue registration as a brokerage and trading venue with the SEC so that it can trade in tokens deemed to be securities.  
  
Sounds like Coinbase isn't the only platform aiming to become a 'crypto bank'.

[⛏️ Jihan Wu of Bitmain Considers an IPO](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-07/crypto-s-32-year-old-billionaire-mining-king-is-mulling-an-ipo)

Jihan Wu, co-founder of the worlds largest producer of crypto mining chips, is open to listing Bitmain in Hong Kong or an overseas market with U.S. dollar-denominated shares. The IPO would allow early investors such as Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital a chance to cash out their shares in the company.

[🇲🇹 Binance Opens Bank Account in Malta](https://cointelegraph.com/news/exclusive-world-s-top-crypto-exchange-binance-sets-up-bank-account-in-malta)

After previously announcing plans to move to Malta and offer fiat-to-crypto trading on it's platform, Binance has opened a bank account in the country which brings the company one step closer to realising this goal.   
  
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao hopes that fiat-crypto trading on Binance will launch in Malta within the year.

[😮 R3 is Apparently Running Out of Money](http://fortune.com/2018/06/07/blockchain-firm-r3-is-running-out-of-money-sources-say/)

[R3](https://www.r3.com/) is a blockchain platform being built specifically for enterprise. This week, it has come to light that the startup, who have so far raised $107 million, is running out of money. Employees of the firm have questioned a corporate culture in which executives and consultants splurged on flying to frequent meetings around the world and R3 CEO David Rutters salary has been described as being "outrageous".

[✌️ New York State Department Approves Trading of Privacy-protecting Cryptocurrency](https://coincenter.org/link/the-new-york-state-department-of-financial-services-just-approved-the-trading-of-privacy-protecting-cryptocurrency)

Specifically, Gemini was authorized by the Department of Financial Services to offer trading of Zcash in New York. Read the full press release [here](https://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press/pr1805141.htm).

# Project Updates

[SpankChain Enters Public Beta](https://medium.com/spankchain/spankchain-camsite-launches-into-public-beta-db187bfade32)

SpankChain's Crypto Camsite has now entered public beta and the SpankChain knowledge base has also gone [live](https://help.spankchain.com/hc/en-us).

[0x Development Update #9](https://blog.0xproject.com/development-update-9-may-2018-bd9e89f11899)

Greg Hysen from the 0x Protocol team gives us an overview of all the work the team has been doing during the month of May.

[Monero Lands on Ledger](https://twitter.com/monero/status/1003723134112010242)

You can now store your XMR on Ledger's range of  hardware wallets.

[Trust Platform Announced](https://medium.com/trustplatform/trust-platform-1556dfc1e166)

The creators of Trust Wallet announced their new Trust Platform this week which aims to be an Ethereum ecosystem for any mobile device.

[Totle Public Beta Live on MainNet](https://medium.com/totle/announcing-totle-public-beta-750ffadeddbd)

Totle allows you to buy and sell ERC-20 tokens across multiple decentralized exchanges.

[Kyber Network 2.0](https://twitter.com/loi_luu/status/1005109775481229312?s=21)

Loi Luu outlines some key takeaways from the Kyber Network 2.0 announcements including a new version of KyberSwap and cross-chain trade.

[Polyswarm Beta v0.2 Released](https://medium.com/polyswarm/release-polyswarm-beta-v0-2-75ebb4227a5c)

The update brings offer channels, scalability improvements, improved Arbiter selection and more.

[F2Pool Launches Aion Pool](https://blog.aion.network/f2pool-launches-aion-pool-fd101876038f)

The Aion Network has been added to the list of blockchains that the F2Pool mining pool supports.

[dYdX Launched on Testnet](https://medium.com/dydxderivatives/dydx-launches-on-testnet-38b2812c56e)

The dYdX Margin Trading Protocol is now on the Kovan Testnet.

[Qfellowship Program Open for Applications](https://medium.com/@concourseq/want-to-research-icos-for-the-whole-community-qfellow-season-is-here-8e502b6e42b)

The Qfellowship Program is the backbone of ConcourseQ, the original ICO due diligence community. You can now apply to become a Qfellow (and even get paid for your work)!

[AionNode App Live on Azure](https://blog.aion.network/microsoft-azure-lists-aionnode-a563181b0fbd)

Microsofts Azure Platform now allows you to spin up an AionNode with a click of a button thanks to an app integration on the platform.

[Dether Rebrand and New Website](https://medium.com/dether/say-hello-to-dethers-new-website-26fc11039fdd)

Dether are rebranding their image and have launched their [new website](https://dether.io/) this week.

# Project Spotlight

[The Graph - Scalable Queries for a Decentralized Future](https://thegraph.com/)

The Graph is a protocol for building decentralized applications quickly on Ethereum and IPFS using GraphQL.

[Token Engineering Wiki](http://tokenengineering.net/)

The Token Engineering Wiki aims to create a body of theory, practice, tools and a sense of responsibility collectively as a community in a decentralized, permissionless, open-source fashion that all can contribute to and all can use.

[Open Bazaar - Buy and Sell Freely](https://www.openbazaar.org/)

OpenBazaar is a different way to do online commerce. It’s a peer to peer application that doesn’t require middlemen, which means no fees & no restrictions.

# Crypto Drama & Controversy

[EOS Token Distribution Is Incredibly Centralized](https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/06/03/just-10-addresses-hold-nearly-50-eos-tokens)

EOS justified it's year-long ICO by stating that it was meant to "fairly distribute" tokens to the community. Well, turns out that at least 75 of the top 100 addresses are holding part of 250 million EOS tokens (of a total 1 billion tokens). Block.one (the company that developed the EOS software) holds around 100 million themselves. Click the heading for a further breakdown of the distribution.

[McAfee 2020](https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1003387827395186688?s=21)

Yes, that's right - John McAfee has decided to run for POTUS in 2020. He believes this move will "best service the crypto community by providing a campaign platform for us". Unfortunately, I don't believe he's joking.

# Awesome Tweets

*   [List of Projects Working on state/payment channels](https://twitter.com/arnav_vohra/status/1004470966099968000?s=21)
*   [ETHBuenosAires Interview Thread](https://twitter.com/ethbuenosaires/status/1003693921497690114)
*   [Cross-coin Price Correlation](https://twitter.com/cryptorae/status/1003363846180892672?s=21)
*   [Most Underrated Crypto Teams](https://twitter.com/NTmoney/status/1003219823684440064)
*   [The EOS Mainnet Launch is a Mess](https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1005481866483372033)

# Random Bits

**Blog Posts:**

*   [The 0x Mission and Values](https://blog.0xproject.com/the-0x-mission-and-values-181a58706f9f)
*   [Making Sense of Web 3](https://medium.com/l4-media/making-sense-of-web-3-c1a9e74dcae)
*   [Crafting New Value with Existing Tokens](https://medium.com/@brianubiquik/crafting-new-value-with-existing-tokens-de95fe838fea)
*   [Nature 2.0](https://medium.com/@trentmc0/nature-2-0-27bdf8238071)
*   [Why Stablecoins Matter: Part 1](https://medium.com/makerdao/part-1-why-stablecoins-matter-3b273e1c529e)
*   [Lisk - The Mafia Blockchain](https://medium.com/@kthxbyelol/lisk-the-mafia-blockchain-47248915ae2f)
*   [Ethereum Will Be the Backbone of the New Internet](https://medium.com/loom-network/ethereum-will-be-the-backbone-of-the-new-internet-88718e08124f)
*   [A Crash Course in Behavioral Economics Terms for Cryptocurrencies](https://hackernoon.com/a-crash-course-in-behavioral-economics-terms-for-cryptocurrencies-8b8b910ef487)

**Videos:**

*   [Gavin Wood - The Energy Blockchain](https://youtu.be/iUMZyL5kTwc)

**Misc:**

*   [Gluon Plasma by Leverj](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OHarNOefkU39uch0s3IhyKAbtiyOisvqxOttP91k1Qo/edit#slide=id.p)
*   [Messari Whitepaper](https://messari.io/tcr/whitepaper.pdf)
*   [Token Engineering Wiki](http://tokenengineering.net/)

# Personal Updates

## Website Updates

**New research added to the site:**

*   [Ethereum Will Be the Backbone of the New Internet](https://medium.com/loom-network/ethereum-will-be-the-backbone-of-the-new-internet-88718e08124f)
*   [A Crash Course in Behavioral Economics Terms for Cryptocurrencies](https://hackernoon.com/a-crash-course-in-behavioral-economics-terms-for-cryptocurrencies-8b8b910ef487)
*   [The Emergence of Cryptoeconomic Primitives](https://medium.com/@jacobscott/the-emergence-of-cryptoeconomic-primitives-14ef3300cc10)

**New resources added to the site:**

*   [Dapp.review](https://dapp.review/)
*   [Token Engineering Wiki](http://tokenengineering.net/)

## Feedback

You made it! Thanks for reading. I'd love to get your feedback so please send an email to **info@blockbyblock.io** and I'll be sure to get back to you! :)  

Disclaimer: None of the information outlined in this piece should be taken as investment advice. Please click [here](https://blockbyblock.io/disclaimer) for more information.