(We are super excited to be participating in conferences in Singapore and NYC this coming week. Aditya and Brian will be representing Qume at The Capital and Blockshow in Singapore. Jasmina and Shreyas will be attending Consensus Invest in New York City. Be sure to look out for them in case any of you are at either of these places, or just drop in a line here and we will make the connect).

Bitcoin’s next block reward halving is just about 6 months away. Post-halving, Bitcoin’s inflation is expected to drop below that of USD and EUR for the first time. 

As mining rewards are expected to drop by 50%, inefficient and part-time miners with relatively high-cost of mining are expected to be driven out of business barring a substantial price increase in the run up to the halving event. While the jury is still out whether the drop in daily bitcoin supply has been priced in or not, analysis of miners’ and whales’ on-chain activity shows significant hoarding of bitcoins.

The divergence between the blue line and the orange line in the chart below highlights the widening time lag between new BTC generation and their first spend. This behavior suggests that whales and miners expect an upwards price movement before the halving event. 

Moreover, with BCH’s reward halving set to happen before BTC’s, we can expect a meaningful chunk of miners on the BCH network to defect to the BTC network to possibly exploit the higher profitability on the BTC network before halving. This migration of miners could lead to a significant drop in hash power on BCH network and increase the likelihood of a 51% attack on BCH chain.

Also, Qume ran a promotion with TUSD (@Trusttoken) for a giveaway of $100 in BTC and $100 in TUSD. This truly took twitter by storm. In case you have been thinking about opening an account on Qume, now would be a good time! 

Australian detectives have arrested a 38-year-old man as part of an investigation into an unregistered cryptocurrency exchange. Authorities also seized a cryptocurrency ATM from a shopping mall in nearby Braybrook, which according to Google Maps is approximately 8 kilometres away from Cairnlea. The investigation began in June after the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), a government financial intelligence agency tasked with monitoring transactions, provided intelligence regarding reports of scam activity linked to the ATM.

Electronics producer HTC and cryptocurrency exchange Binance today announced a new version of HTC’s “cryptophone”, the Exodus 1 - Binance Edition.  The HTC Exodus 1 - Binance Edition is essentially an update to the original Exodus 1 and its cheaper followup, the Exodus 1s—a smartphone that comes with crypto-friendly features including an integrated blockchain wallet, support for dapps, and the capability to run its own full Bitcoin node. The collaboration also means the Exodus 1 - Binance Edition gets integrated support for Binance’s decentralized exchange, Binance DEX.

A Canadian bank, which banned its clients from buying Bitcoin (BTC), could now become the first in the country to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. RBC is the largest bank in Canada by market capitalization, with $661 billion CAD ($499 billion) in assets under management. According to The Logic, the bank is entertaining the possibility for the exchange to function both for investments and allowing clients to make purchases online and in brick-and-mortar stores. The news follows a previous report that Canada’s central bank wanted to use digital currency in order to better track consumer spending habits.

More than six months after the China National Development and Reform Commission proposed to categorize bitcoin mining as an industry to be phased out from the country, it appears the agency has now scrapped that plan. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), a top-level economic planning agency under China’s State Council, published a finalized new Catalog for Guiding Industry Restructuring on Wednesday that will take effect from Jan 1, 2020. In the final version, which will replace the current one published in 2011, the agency has removed bitcoin mining or other virtual currency mining activities from the initially proposed category of industries that should be eliminated from China. Description related to virtual currency or bitcoin mining can’t be found in the finalized catalog.

The Invention of Money by John Lanchester

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