(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).

Tether (USDT), and its ‘parent company’ Bitfinex have been in the eye of a storm for a while now. The most recent episode in this saga was the NYAG investigating Bitfinex. 

Now, in response to the persistent allegations that Tether reserves are underfunded relative to the total tokens outstanding, the company has released a statement claiming that the USDT tokens are fully backed again.

Earlier this year, the NY general counsel opened an investigation against Bitfinex, Tether’s parent company, alleging that the company defrauded its investors by misleading them about Tether’s solvency. Bitfinex’s lawyer in fact released a statement admitting that only 74% of the outstanding USDT tokens were fully backed by reserves. At the time, Tether held $2.1 billion in assets, with 2.8 billion USDT tokens issued on the Omni blockchain.

Tether’s migration to Ethereum caused the issuance of ERC20 Tether to shoot up massively, almost choking ETH’s block capacity, with 2 billion ERC 20 tether having been minted since. Tether’s transparency page shows that the company has over $4.5 billion stablecoins issued against USD, $40 million against EUR and $23 million against Chinese Yuan and the company’s reserves (assets) exceed the liabilities by over $100 million.

A new crypto resource has emerged in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, for Venezuelans interested in learning about Bitcoin Cash and cryptocurrencies. The project, called Bitcoin Cash House, is the brainchild of Roberto Garcia and is sponsored by Bitcoin.com and Sideshift.ai. It exists as a physical location and online initiative, seeking to educate newcomers to the space on the acquisition, storage, and general use of crypto, as well as development and job opportunities.  Bitcoin Cash House teaches people in Venezuela about the benefits of crypto.

Crypto exchange Bittrex is looking to return crypto holdings to customers in sanctioned nations. According to a letter posted on Twitter by ex-user Ziya Sadr, Bittrex is reaching out to former customers who reside in “a country or region” in which the exchange is legally unable to offer services due to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and whose accounts were suspended as a result. A number of restrictions apply for any former customers hoping to secure their funds. Residents of sanctioned nations must create an account at a cryptocurrency exchange that is not in Iran, Syria, Cuba or Crimea or otherwise subject to OFAC sanctions; create a Bittrex support account (using the same email as the original Bittrex account); and fill out a form denoting where to send the funds.

Bakkt has expanded its Bitcoin custody offering to all institutions beyond just supporting those trading on Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures exchange. According to a blog post today, this is because it has now received authorization from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to do so. The first three insitutions to start using this service will be Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, and Tagomi. Bakkt plans to onboard new institutions in the next few weeks.

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 Bitcoin Reformation by Adamant Research

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