1) Dedicated office to coordinate federal applications of blockchain technology.
Rep. Darren Soto, a Democrat representing Florida’s 9th district has sponsored a bill to establish an office within the Department of Commerce to coordinate all non-defense related deployment and activities related to blockchain technology within the Federal Government. He has been actively supporting cryptocurrency by accepting his campaign donations in crypto and is also in favor of blockchain technology.
2) Ripple community may force a White House statement on the recent SEC lawsuit.
The petition named “We the People ask the federal government to deem XRP, the virtual currency,” filed on the White House. We the People website has now crossed 10,000 signatures. This was created by the Obama administration if the petition gets 100,000 signatures within 30 days there will be an official White House response.
3) Bitcoin hits all-time high on its 12th Birthday.
On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network was created when Nakamoto mined the starting block of the chain, known as the genesis block. Embedded in the Coinbase of this block was the text “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. This note references a headline published by The Times and has been interpreted as both a timestamp and a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking. After 12 years on the same day, Bitcoin breaks down another milestone at $34,000.
4) Ether trades above $800 after February 2018.
The native currency of the Ethereum network hit a nearly three-year high of $890. Ether’s this growth coincides with increasing institutional interest in the cryptocurrency and the upcoming launch of ETH futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on February 8, 2020.
5) Bittrex delists privacy coins.
In a blog Bittrex has announced removal of following markets on January 15, 2021, 23:00 UTC.
- BTC-XMR, ETH-XMR, USDT-XMR
- BTC-ZEC, ETH-ZEC, USDT-ZEC, USD-ZEC
- BTC-DASH, ETH-DASH, USDT-DASH, USD-DASH
After the removal of the markets, Bittrex will provide its users up to 30 days to withdraw any delisted tokens, but this withdrawal period may be shortened. Dash responded in a tweet
From a technical standpoint, Dash’s privacy functionality is no greater than Bitcoin’s, making the label of “privacy coin” a misnomer for Dash. We have reached out to @BittrexExchange to request a meeting with their compliance team. Hopefully, this will be rectified soon.