Episode 207: Libra Faces Opposition, Coinbase and more rate cryptos, and yet another huge scam.

This week the team talks about cryptocurrency news regarding Libra, scams and more.  

Rapid Fire IKEA just allowed an invoice to be paid via the Ethereum blockchain (This was a stablecoin of some kind) BlockOne was fined 24M by the SEC. Siacoin only had to pay 225k CEO of Beaxy Exchange disappears, looks like they're insolvent. (Crypto Exchanges Creating a Token Rating System) Coinbase Blog - "Introducing the Crypto Rating Council" Create system that rates tokens on how close they are to a security "Although the U.S SEC has issued helpful guidance... Analysis requires fact-intensive analysis by knowledgeable experts Analysis is difficult, expensive, and will lead to judgement calls & disagreements So Coinbase brought together industry leaders, securities law experts to create "a scalable, points-based rating system centered around a set of several dozen, yes / no factual questions." Question derived directly from SEC guidance and case law They say they focused on "objective, repeatable, fact-driven questions" Council Members Anchorage Part of the Libra association Basically a crypto vault were transactions are validated by Quorum No usernames/passwords/phonenumbers nothing a hacker could use or get "clients whitelist devices held by their employees, who use the Anchorage app to submit transactions. You’d propose selling $10 million worth of Bitcoin or transferring it to someone else as payment, and a minimum of two-thirds of your designated co-workers would need to concur to form a quorum that approves the transfer." Also uses behavioral analysis, biometric signals, network signals. Its human AI mix Bittrex Circle Coinbase DRW Cumberland Genesis Grayscale Investments Kraken Scores range between 1 and 5 (5 being most like a security) Expected to change over time, and open to feedback Crypto Rating Council Bitcoin - 1.0 Absence of a marketed token sale & marketing efforts decentralized development and usage Anonymity of the Project Team Litecoin, Monero Ethereum - 2.0 Current functionality of the platform Absence of investment-like language or marketing Decentralized development and usage Zcash EOS - 3.75 Absence of investment-like language or marketing Current functionality of the platform Raised funds in excess of what would reasonably be necessary for development of the platform Decentraland, Hedera Hashgraph, Loom Network, Stellar, Tezos XRP - 4.0 Usage of securities-like language Sale of tokens or token interests prior to the existence of token utility Marketing of the token suggesting an opportunity to earn profits Decentralized development and usage CEO of Ripple has said its pretty clear XRP is not a security Ohio is no longer accepting BitPay (Libra Update, Thing Looking....Not Great) We know there's been tons of official opposition Federal Reserve, Treasury Department House and Senate banking Committes, EU antitrust officials, Indian and Chinese officials, and French straight out said they'd stop it WSJ Report Tuesday that Visa, Mastercard, and “other financial partners that signed on to help build and maintain the Libra payments network” are now reconsidering whether they should remain involved. Apparently FB been asking them to help and show support, and they are declining "Their reluctance has Facebook scrambling to keep Libra on track." Prior August reporting said Libra partners were wary that pushing Libra would "attract broader regulatory scrutiny of their activities" Lo and behold, DOJ requested Visa, Mastercard, Stripe & PayPal to provide a "complete overview of their money-laundering compliance programs and how Libra will fit into them.” Here's the rub None of the 28 association members have committed beyond nonbinding letters The $10 million that FB asked for each member for development? No one has paid it Multiple flanks FB facing heat from DOJ opening an antitrust investgation. Also the FTC and multiple states, like multiple Led by NY AG, but Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, NC, Ohio, Tennessee, and DC involved Federal investigation getting cooperation from Snapchat Legal team for years kept a dossier of "ways that the company felt FB was trying to thwart competition" The tile of the documents....Project Voldemort Allege things like Instagram effectively barred users from linking to their Snapchat profiles in their bios. Also that Snapchat content was prevented from trending on the platform Supressed search results of snap-related searches But apparently FTC has contacted "dozens of tech executives and app developers” Investigators also looking into Onavo VPN FB bought in 2013 Later pressured into shutting it down amid reports it was sucking up lots of data about user app usage Its apparently this data that clued them in on WhatsApp posing a potential threat, and pushing them to buy it They were also using Onavo to monitor how people used Snapchat, how many snaps a day they sent THAT'S A SCAM Fair Win Story What is fair win? Well shit I might as well let them tell you word for word - Blockchain + gambling, blockchain + game, establish industry standard interface, 70% income anti-subsidy investor players. So this is being listed as a $150M Ponzi Scheme. Posted about on medium by Philippe Castonguay First red flag - the team consisted of a famous piano player (Dang Thai Son) and an instagram influencer's (Jessica Vu) pictures. Dude found typos and bugs all over the contract. He also found that the contract had been drained for 2600 ETH once on 7/27 with an old exploit. He then finds an exploit where you can essentially swap out an invite code and steal ETH from depositors to the contract. They got a group together to decide what to do and exposed the scam last week. And of course as soon as they announced the problem, team drained the accounts.