Word On The Street

There’s a new Robinhood in town

Commission-free crypto trading. That business model has been wildly successful for Robinhood, with the company last valued at a mouthwatering $5.6 billion.

That being said, the company will face stiff competition from Voyager, an Uber-backed startup that plans on providing a similar platform to the public this October following the completion of their beta testing.

Robinhood has a first mover advantage

But, they’ll need to expand their crypto support beyond 5 assets before Voyager voyages over their regulatory moat and offers trading pairs for as many as fifteen tokens. Failure to do so puts their market share at jeopardy.

How to cash in fee-free: Robinhood charges interest on account holdings and premium subscriptions, while Voyager looks to shoot below the belt by providing lower prices than what is offered on centralized exchanges.

So, we ask you: is this an early warning sign for commission-based companies? With Voyager entering the niche, we wonder if other companies will follow and whether that will squeeze fee-based platforms. Or will they go the Coinbase route and slap a fee-based model onto institutional grade services?

Be Brave and wary of phishing

Yesterday’s casual hump day mayhem on Google Chrome’s web store highlighted the perks of using Brave Browser. What happened? Chrome temporary delisted MetaMask, opening up the floor for cronies to rotate in phishing software.

So, what are Brave’s perks? The browser uses its own extension service. Meaning: their MetaMask support isn’t fazed by impromptu removals of extensions from sites such as Chrome’s store. That kept Brave users out of harm’s way, whereas regular MetaMask users who rely upon Chrome were at the very least at risk of downloading the corrupted software.

It’s like Binance’s desktop application: everything you need is already there. Meshing in a more elaborate comparison, using Brave Browser is also akin to remaining inside the reef in the Disney film Moana… venture beyond and you *might* have a bad time.

Here, let me audit that for you

Embrace debate: Does Bitmain only account for 4% of Bitcoin’s hash rate? That’s the rough figure obtained after plugging the numbers that Jihan Wu’s mining monopoly quoted in their hashrate disclosure post. Indirectly, this suggests that all reports on Bitmain’s overwhelming dominance on the network were Fake News.

So folks are understandably scratching their chins. One way to check their claims is through a third party audit, and a volunteer has already offered to perform the heavy lifting via Bryan Bishop. The ball is in your court, Jihan.

Bitmain’s disclosures are a step forward for the ecosystem, though an audit that combines quality technical expertise with forensic accounting would put any doubters to rest… or cause an uproar if Bitmain is caught in a lie.