1)Blockstream’s Liquid Network goes live

Blockstream, the core development team currently behind Bitcoin, announced in a post yesterday that their sidechain, Liquid Network — ”the world’s first production Bitcoin sidechain,” is now live. The sidechain promises to facilitate “faster bitcoin transactions between businesses and individuals, while enabling extended functionality,” Blockstream CSO Samson Mow wrote. Among the functionalities they listed were the introduction of a native asset Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) for transfers that can be settled within two minutes, Issued Assets for tokenizing traditional assets, and Confidential Transaction technology to enhance the privacy of L-BTC and Issued Asset transactions.

2) CipherTrace says crypto-theft damage to hit over $1 billion this year

AML, blockchain forensics and enforcement solutions company CipherTrace released a report saying that the amount lost to cryptocurrency thefts globally will be exceeding $1 billion in 2018, citing “a three-fold increase in cryptocurrency thefts during the first half of 2018 compared with the entire year of 2017.” The report lists the $530 million Coincheck hack and the $195 million BitGrail heist as the most notable incidents contributing to the overall amount. The report also states that between 2009 and 2018, 380,155 of the bitcoins sent to cryptocurrency exchanges directly came from criminal sources, worth around $2.5 billion as of release.

3) Vitalik Buterin disputes Nouriel Roubini’s accusations, discloses ETH holdings and net worth

Yesterday, American economist Nouriel Roubini, famous for predicting the 2008 market crash, accused Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin of a “criminal pre-mining sale/scam that created Ether.” In a Tweet, Roubini alleged that Buterin and ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin “stole 75% of the Ether supply and became instant ‘billionaires’ of fake wealth.” Buterin rebutted in a series of comments, saying he “never personally held more than ~0.9% of all ETH” and his “net worth never came close to $1b.” Buterin added that he never had 900k ETH, as some suggest, and that the Ethereum Foundation itself only ever had around 3 million ETH, of which only around 660,000 remain after development expenditures.

4) Blockchain startup QMC is building an “immortal Piratebay”

A blockchain startup named Quality Magnet Coin (QMC) claims to be building a blockchain-based torrent application so it cannot be taken down, unlike traditional torrent sites like The Pirate Bay. “Never need to look for a working torrent site again,” they wrote. “Never have your torrents censored.” The website says the platform offers an ad-free experience, and will pay uploaders with tokens.

5) Cryptocurrency exchange YoBit blatantly Tweets about pump schedule

Despite pump and dump schemes being illegal, cryptocurrency exchange YoBit tweeted that they will be pumping random coins today. “YoBit Pump in 22 hrs,” they wrote along with a link to a timer for the pump. “We will buy one random coin for 1 btc every 1–2 mins 10 times (total buy amount — 10 btc).”

1) Blockstream Announcement

2) CipherTrace Report

3) Tweet

4) Website

5) Tweet