Hey everyone,

In my Weekly Crypto Overview, I will assemble the important news of the last week and make a summary of it. This way you will have one place to go for all the significant events that happened the week before in crypto. I hope you enjoy it and that it saves you a lot of time searching for all the news. I know not everyone has the privilege to be full-time in crypto, so I hope this is a solution for many of you.

So let’s dig in… What kept the crypto world at hands last week?

Tether Has Fiat Funds to Back Stablecoin

UK Crypto Taxes

Vitalik Plays for Santa

Coinbase moved $5 Billon

Coinbase New Listings

Lawmakers look to change SEC’s 72-year-old securities definition to exclude cryptocurrencies

Tether Has Fiat Funds to Back Stablecoin

Tether has been a continuous topic of discussion in 2018. In one of my earlier weeklys, I shared the news that Deltec Bank & Trust Ltd. confirmed that Tether Limited has the funds to back themselves up. This week a new report showed up. Bloomberg released their article “Crypto-Mystery Suggest Tether Has the Billions it Promised.”

Bloomberg stated that it had seen documents from September 2017 suggesting that Tether had $452.9 million in accounts at Noble Bank, Puerto Rico, and Bank of Montreal. At the end of that month, the firm had 435 million USDT in circulation.

The story continues..

UK Crypto Taxes

In a lot of countries, there is still a lot of confusion about how to tax cryptocurrencies. Last week the UK Crypto Taxes became a lot clearer as the UK tax agency released a comprehensive explanation of how it sees crypto assets and how individuals may be taxed on their holdings.

You can read their report over here.

Vitalik Plays for Santa

Christmas came early for three blockchain startups thanks to Vitalik Claus. Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, donated $300,000 in cryptocurrency ($ETH) to three blockchain startups. The three projects receiving the 1,000 ETH grants are Prysmatic Labs, ChainSafe Systems and Sigma Prime.

Coinbase Moved $5 Billion

Coinbase is moving to significantly expand the number of digital assets listed on its platform — a process that has led to a radical rethinking of how the startup safeguards billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.

To this end, Coinbase moved retail traders’ crypto assets — worth some $5 billion — into its upgraded storage model last week. According to the company, that migration included 5 percent of all Bitcoin, 8 percent of all Ethereum, and 25 percent of all the Litecoin in circulation, respectively.

Phillip Martin, Coinbase’s head of security, told CoinDesk that the migration process took roughly four months to plan.

Regulators and auditors were involved at every stage… One of the biggest things we were worried about is that we don’t move the market with this event, which is why we went to such lengths to coordinate with regulators and manage media speculation around the movements.

You can read Coindesk’s full article over here.

Coinbase New Listings

Coinbase adds support for GNT and DAI and they will initially be available for Coinbase Pro users in the US (excluding NY), the UK, EU, Canada, Singapore and Australia. MKR and ZIL will not be available to customers in the US, but will be tradable in the UK, EU, Canada, Singapore and Australia on Coinbase Pro.

You can read the full details in Coinbase’s article here.

Lawmakers look to change SEC’s 72-year-old securities definition to exclude cryptocurrencies

Two congressmen are introducing a bill Thursday that would exclude digital currencies from the decades-old definition of a security. The legal definition might seem like an insignificant change, but it has become a heated issue for those in the industry who say the law is outdated for a digital asset class.

The “Token Taxonomy Act” — a bipartisan effort by Reps. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio and Darren Soto, D-Fla. — defines a “digital token” and clarifies that securities laws would not apply to cryptocurrencies once they become a fully functioning network.

This is interesting for sure. I will be following it closely. You can read CNBC’s full article over here.

I want to thank all of you for reading this article and spreading the word. This new world we are in keeps evolving, and there is a place for everyone that wants to be a part of it. See you next week.

Cheers,

Khilone