Are you sick of breeding digital cats on your computer? Would you rather create CryptoKitties on the go? If so, HTC thinks it has the phone for you—the Exodus 1, the company’s first “blockchain phone,” which is expected to ship in December.
It’s not every day that you get career advice from a billionaire.
On October 16, 2018, Civil Media, a company designing a cryptocurrency that would enable readers to vote on whether newsrooms can submit stories to its publishing platform, announced the conclusion of its token sale (aka “initial coin offering” or “ICO”). After a monthlong push, Civil fell far short of its $8 million soft target for the ICO, attracting just $1.4 million from supporters.
Ripple’s Swell conference—now underway this week in a swank San Francisco event space—fits the established pattern of blockchain and cryptocurrency events. Celebrities provide the glitz and the glamour, and the crypto companies finance the parties.
This isn’t the “flippening” we’ve been waiting for—the day when ether finally surpasses bitcoin’s market capitalization. Bitcoin remains at the top of the crypto charts, but for the first time since early January, there’s a new No. 2 in town. Its name is XRP.
As crypto crumbles, Dogecoin rises.
Arianna Simpson is founder and managing director of Autonomous Partners, a digital-asset investment fund backed by Cohen Private Ventures and Union Square Ventures. She is one of the most influential, forward-thinking investors in the virtual-asset sector. She was an early employee at BitGo, and before that worked for Facebook.
The general counsel of one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency companies has departed her post. Ripple confirmed to Quartz that Brynly Llyr is no longer with the payment and remittance network. Per Llyr’s LinkedIn profile, she had served as Ripple’s general counsel since November 2016, and before that held senior legal roles at PayPal and eBay. The news of departure was reported first in Quartz’s Private Key newsletter.
It has been one of those days in the global cryptocurrency market, with prices tumbling across the board.
Line Corporation, a Japanese messaging app company whose shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the NYSE, on Friday announced the launch of its own blockchain network (Link chain) and cryptocurrency (Link). The $11 billion company has the built-in customer base that most digital currency startups can only dream about. By some estimates, it boasts nearly 200 million users—and it didn’t even conduct an ICO.
After a steep fall in late July and early August, the price of bitcoin has recovered recently, rising by some 15% in the past few weeks to above $7,000. Amid the many ups and downs in crypto markets—more downs than ups, these days—some people are eager to call the upturn the start of something bigger.
The price charts resemble battlefields, with red arrows raining down relentlessly. Since the start of the year, the price of bitcoin has fallen by more than 50%, cutting more than $100 billion from its market capitalization. At the time of writing, Satoshi’s digital gold trades for around $6,400 per coin, a far cry from the $100,000 that some analysts predicted at the beginning of the year.
