1) Sidechains and ICO’s could be coming to Bitcoin

With a sidechain created by RSK (rootstock), Bitcoin will now have the ability to host the new fundraising mechanism of Initial Coin Offerings. The smart contracts are written in the same dominant language as ethereum — Solidity. The network is fueled by a bitcoin-pegged cryptocurrency dubbed “smart bitcoin,” or SBTC. The technology is still in beta, but Temco’s CEO Scott Yoon and head of business development Joey Cho said they believe bitcoin will soon attract a greater number of blockchain projects and one day have “the same function like ethereum.”

2) Venezuela Mandates Passport Fees Must Be Paid Petro

Venezuelans can only use the state-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro, to pay for passport fees starting next week. The average monthly minimum wage in Venezuela, Bloomberg reports, is four times less than the cost of the raised passport fee. Bloomberg notes that around 5,000 citizens flee Venezuela each day.

3) New Bitcoin Concept Suggests Block Size Can Be Increased Without Hard Fork

Blockstream co-founder and Bitcoin protocol developer, Mark Friedenbach, proposed a new method (Forward Block) for scaling that claims to be able to increase “settlement transaction volume to 3584x current levels” and improve censorship resistance via sharding. The so-called “soft-fork” alternation implies a strengthening of consensus rules where old nodes “still see the chain advance.” The research also represents a definition of “forwards compatible soft-fork,” for which non-upgraded nodes still receive and process all transactions.

4) Cryptocurrency finance company Circle aquires equity crowdfunding platform and broker-dealer SeedInvest

SeedInvest was founded in 2012 as a startup investing platform and has since raised capital for 220 firms through more than 240,000 investors. The average investment per company through SeedInvest is said to be $500,000, while the largest investment was $2,000,000. If approved by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Circle will be able to expand SeedInvest’s offerings to support cryptocurrencies, including fiat stablecoins and issuing and offering tokenized securities.

5) Gemini Announces the World’s First Regulated Stable Coin (GUSD)

Gemini Exchange announced a new token called the GEMINI Dollar, an ERC20 token build on the Ethereum blockchain — representing an actual US Dollar. Once a verified Gemini user purchases the Gemini Dollar, the user is free to move it to any address he or she wishes on the public Ethereum network. Many claim this to be revolutionary as it is the first time the USD lives on the Ethereum network as a tokenized asset.

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