TL;DR: Welcome to In Case You Missed It (ICYMI), a daily crypto news update. TRON buys Steemit platform. Bitcoin Cash commons funding proposals heat up with Flipstarter idea. Influencer Anthony Pompliano (Pomp) used Twitter follower bots. US Office of the Director of National Intelligence sponsors dollar collapse research. Libra could shift to be a US-backed stablecoin. Grayscale releases Ethereum primer, and Cryptophyl adds fiat options for buying SLP tokens.

TRON Buys Steemit Platform

Steemitans and Twitterers, after four beautiful years, I have sold Steemit to @justinsuntron. AMA tomorrow at 9am PT. https://t.co/ZlCKRZbq3L https://t.co/XOCjyjd0TQ — Ned Scott (@realNedScott) February 14, 2020

Steemit, the blockchain-based blogging platform with its own token Steem, has been sold to Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of TRON, according to Steem co-founder Ned Scott. While the move was first promoted as a partnership that would bring Steem apps and its token to the TRON network, Scott explained to his followers, “Steemitans and Twitterers, after four beautiful years, I have sold Steemit to @justinsuntron.” Steemit is the last company Sun and TRON have acquired this year, after having bought BitTorrent, the sharing protocol company, Poloniex, a cryptocurrency exchange, and DLive, a streaming platform.

Flipstarter: BCH Voluntary Funding of the Commons

A group of volunteers (Tobias Ruck, emergent_reasons, imaginary_username, @Dagur, Jonathan Silverblood, Leandro DiMarco, and @Sploit) came together to create Flipstarter, a way to voluntarily fund the commons for Bitcoin Cash-related projects. Their first live test will be by way of partnering with EatBCH, and they hope to publish a small scale proposal soon. The key difference between Flipstarter and typical donations is a trustless and non-custodial assurance contract. The team also promises to publish everything in at least English and Chinese. Boiled down, Flipstarter is basically the old Bitcoin project Lighthouse and its AnyoneCanPay transaction feature reimagined for Bitcoin Cash.

Anthony Pompliano Ran Follow-for-Follow Bots on Twitter

Some people asked me how I know Pomp ran follow/unfollow bots. He ran it from April 2017 (17k followers) until December 2018 (170k followers). Source: https://t.co/BV3NGHptwz pic.twitter.com/zZ3z7AEiid — Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) February 14, 2020

Cryptocurrency journalist Larry Cermak referred to the suspension Anthony Pompliano experienced with his Twitter account recently, saying Pomp was running bots to game the network for followers. Cermak pointed to a Twitter statistics site called SocialBlade that showed great variance in the number of daily and total followed users for Pompliano. According to Cermak, Pomp “ran it from April 2017 (17k followers) until December 2018 (170k followers).” In some interviews, Pompliano previously admitted he did follow and unfollow users, but claimed he did it manually without any bot assistance.

US Office of the Director of National Intelligence Sponsoring Dollar Collapse Research

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the institution in charge of coordinating the country’s intelligence community, is sponsoring research to find out what would be the impact of the dollar losing its importance as the leading world currency. The job listing states: “the U.S. should prepare for scenarios that threaten to undermine the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and determine how those scenarios could be overcome, protecting our status in the global economy.” The proposal calls to employ any and “all available information as well as recent breakthroughs” to assess such an outcome.

Libra Could Shift to a US Dollar-Backed Stablecoin

Scoop. The Libra Association is weighing a shift to a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin https://t.co/uX3oH93dAK — Frank Chaparro (@fintechfrank) February 14, 2020

Libra, the cryptocurrency project led by Facebook, could mutate to be a US-based stablecoin. The Libra Association, the group of companies backing this initiative, could change the current model based on a basket of currencies to a simpler, US-centric stablecoin. This could help to dissipate the concerns and backslash Libra has faced from the US Congress and also from several regulators all over the world. However, the innovative part of the Libra would essentially be lost, as there are already several US pegged stablecoins on the market already.

Grayscale Releases Ethereum Primer

#Ethereum seeks to be the leading smart contract-compatible digital currency platform. How does the Ethereum protocol and $ETH make it happen?

Learn more in our Building Blocks report: https://t.co/15tVCXApNI pic.twitter.com/PYxPWJyxHm — Grayscale (@GrayscaleInvest) February 14, 2020

Grayscale, a cryptocurrency investments firm, released a primer on the functions and characteristics of Ethereum, the first smart contract-enabled crypto. “Ethereum is a global, open-source blockchain platform for decentralized applications (dApps), powered by smart contracts and embedded with a native digital currency, ether (ETH),” the company noted. The cryptocurrency primer, launched as a part of a “Building Blocks” series, can now be downloaded from their site.

Cryptophyl Adds New Fiat Support

We've added EUR and GBP support to Cryptophyl. You can now buy SLP tokens with any supported bank account (SEPA or Faster Payments) 🥳 Further, US customers can now purchase tokens using Credit and Debit Cards 🤠 Read more: https://t.co/mRK6kITkPf#Winning #BCH — Cryptophyl (@cryptophyl) February 14, 2020

Cryptophyl, the SLP token exchange, added more fiat options for purchasing tokens on their platform. Now, users of the exchange will be able to buy any SLP coin available with SEPA (for European customers) or UK Faster Payments (for UK based customers) paying a 1% fee. Furthermore, customers in the US can now purchase tokens with credit or debit cards, a feature not available before, with a 3.99% fee. All of these new buying options are now available on their “Fiat Buy” page.

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