Daily TL;DR - February 2nd (Your One Stop Daily News)

DAILY TL;DR W/ CHESLINK
JANUARY 29TH – FEBRUARY 2ND
February 2nd

1. BTC NEWS
2. IN OTHER NEWS

MARKETCAP ANALYSIS
Recap from 11/20
Market Cap: $243,311,416,536
24h Vol: $7,403,167,283
BTC Dominance: 56.2%

As of 12/31
Market Cap: $592,941,301,681
24h Vol: $33,207,433,786
BTC Dominance: 38.0%

As of 1/8
Market Cap: $743,509,110,252
24h Vol: $49,897,768,988
BTC Dominance: 34.2%

As of 1/15
Market Cap: $644,874,662,903
24h Vol: $38,996,461,258
BTC Dominance: 34.4%

As of 1/22
Market Cap: $508,289,748,517
24h Vol: $30,645,248,592
BTC Dominance: 35.0%

As of 1/24
Market Cap: $537,183,052,350
24h Vol: $28,587,095,263
BTC Dominance: 34.5%

As of 1/29
Market Cap: $569,531,115,703
24h Vol: $21,957,402,021
BTC Dominance: 33.4% As of 1/31
Market Cap: $508,132,588,040
24h Vol: $26,999,399,577
BTC Dominance: 33.5%

As of 2/2
Market Cap: $411,747,566,079
24h Vol: $39,848,959,974
BTC Dominance: 35.4%

BTC NEWS

Four Best Bitcoin Casino Bonuses
• http://www.finsmes.com/2018/02/four-best-bitcoin-casino-bonuses.html

1. Welcome package
   Bitcoin casinos are not big in giving rewards for just signing up with a casino as is the case with thousands of regular gambling destinations. Also, if the gamer deposits point five Bitcoin in a casino that offers a two hundred percent match, they will receive a reward of one BTC. This will leave them with one point five BTC to gamble with. Some casinos will have the offer set at a specific BTC amount. The reward given is not affected by the amount of BTC the gamer deposits into their account. This offer can only be claimed by new gamblers.
   Some of the gambling destinations that have lucrative bitcoin welcome offers include:
   • Bitcoin Casino – one hundred and fifty percent match of up to one BTC
   • Mbit Casino – two hundred percent match of up to point zero Bitcoin
   • Bit Casino – One hundred and fifteen match promo of up to one Bitcoin
   • 7Bit Casino – One hundred percent match promo that can go as high as point seven five Bitcoin. Seventy-five freebies are offered in the package
   • Oshi Casino – one hundred percent match reward that can go as high as two BTC, with two hundred free spins attached.Some of these rewards require the use of bonus codes to be accessed.Therefore, gamblers should ensure they look around for the codes to enjoy the bonuses.
2. Reload bonus
   It does share some similarities with the deposit bonus in that it awards in the form of a match promotion. All the gamer has to do is make the deposit and have their money matched. The bonus can be accompanied by free spins as is the case with the welcome bonus.
3. Loyalty bonus
   Most industries do their best to recognize clients that have stuck by them for a long time, and BTC gambling destinations were quick to adopt the practice. The casino keeps tabs on how loyal one is with the help of loyalty points. These points are earned every time a gamer deposits with the casino or places wagers. The points accumulated can be used to exchange for free play, BTC, or moving up the VIP system. One thing is for sure with these points; they come with higher placement in the tier system of a casino.
4. High spenders club
   Casinos have been known to offer the best of services to gamers who spend a lot of money in their establishments, and BTC casinos have joined in this culture. Labeled the VIP club in most casinos, these clubs come with offerings that lie anywhere between ten percent to one hundred and twenty-five percent match promotions. One could also get a personal account manager and personalized promos.

Where’s the Bottom?
• http://blocktribune.com/bitcoin-meltdown-continues-investors-ask-wheres-floor/

The highest price seen was $9,516.09 on the Binance exchange at 4:48 pm yesterday. Binance saw $468,054,000 of bitcoin change hands.

The lowest price seen was $7,540.00 on GDAX’s exchange at 7:54 am today. GDAX’s 24 hour volume was $539,393,000.

The average price on the surveyed exchanges, as weighed by volume, was $8,746.83.
Volatility was nearly average, with the BlockTribune Volatility Index coming in at 50.6. A higher number indicates greater price volatility with 50 describing an average day.

Lightning Network Reaches 1000 Mainnet Channels
• https://www.techtimes.news/lightning-network-reaches-1000-mainnet-payment-channels/

Earlier this week, the number of open LN payment channels reached 1,000 for the first time. This marked yet another historic checkpoint for the development and adoption of this nascent technology, which many developers could be one of several long-term solutions to Bitcoin’s network congestion, which has reduced the most prominent cryptocurrency’s utility for small-value transactions and led many companies — including payment processor Stripe — to abandon support for Bitcoin payments.

Although Lightning Network software is still firmly in the alpha testing phase, enthusiastic users have nevertheless begun setting up LN nodes on the Bitcoin mainnet and opening payment channels with one another. As of the time of writing, there were already 419 nodes running LN software on the mainnet, up from fewer than 30 on Jan. 17.

For reference, Bitcoin Cash — the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap — has 1,171 active nodes (excluding duplicate and non-listening clients), less than three times more that of the alpha-stage LN.

Bitcoin Still Good to Go
• https://www.techtimes.news/cryptos-positive-story-remains-intact-wall-street-strategist-undeterred-by-bitcoin-price-decline/

“It has been a terrible few weeks but the fundamental positive story for crypto remains intact,” CNBC cites him as saying in the report, distributed late Thursday night just hours after the Bitcoin price declined below $8,000 for the first time since November.

He told clients not to panic, reminding them that throughout Bitcoin’s history, sell-offs have been generally been followed by significant rallies within a relatively short period of time. Based on this data, he said that it is worth the risk for investors to add to their positions, even if the market continues to decline.

“Past sell-offs were followed by rallies of ~150% within 84 days,” Lee said. “In other words, we think the risk/reward at these levels warrants adding here, even if there is additional downside.”

Other large-cap coins, meanwhile, have a similarly-bullish future. He forecast that Ethereum, which is currently trading at $943, should more than double to $1,900 by the end of the year, while NEO and Ethereum Classic could reach $250 and $60, respectively.

Bitcoin Arbitrage Over
• https://btcmanager.com/bitcoin-arbitrage-markets-evaporating-2017-versus-2018/

The fastest decline in crypto prices have taken place in South Korea. Which is actually fairly surprising as they are finally allowed to begin trading as of January 31. However, this is likely the dip that occurs prior to all major bull rallies, finalizing our bear raid for the prior month. With prices in South Korea for BTC and other cryptocurrencies falling at a rate even greater than when compared to international markets. Bitcoin used to trade at a 51 percent premium on Korean exchanges. However, the most recent crash has sent prices of BTC along with altcoins back in line with those of international markets across the world. This was the first time prices have been similar across the different world markets for BTC. South Koreans have grown accustomed to paying a premium for BTC.

Arbitrage exists where there is the most turmoil. South Korea is no longer having turmoil regarding their exchanges, so the arbitrage opportunity disappeared. When South Korea was worried about banning crypto entirely the highest Kimchi Premium existed. This was not coincidental. When Zimbabwe had a major uprising in 2017 the price of bitcoin was 50 percent higher on local exchanges and within the country than on international markets. When individuals stop trusting their governments the value of cryptocurrency skyrockets. Currently, the populations of the world have faith in governments that if they were people, would not be given loans at a bank. Yet, because they are governments in trillions of dollars in debt, other governments and banks continue to provide liquidity.

Indian Crypto Ban FUD
• http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bitcoin-price-value-latest-india-ban-trading-south-korea-regulation-us-uk-rules-a8191566.html

“The government does not consider cryptocurrencies legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate use of these cryptoassets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system,” Mr Jaitley told parliament in his annual budget speech.

The ambiguous statement was reported in a range of media as a suggestion that India could ban the use of cryptocurrencies because they were illegal. But it seems that in fact Mr Jaitley was only suggesting the country would look to ban the use of cryptocurrency for illegal activity, at least according to major digital currency companies in India.

New regulations are expected to arrive after the G20 meeting in March, when many of the world's most powerful finance ministers meet. France, Germany and other countries have suggested they'll bring new proposals to that discussion, and attempt to institute them at an international level.

IN OTHER NEWS

Lunyr Launches Open Beta
• https://news.bitcoin.com/pr-lunyr-blockchain-based-knowledge-sharing-platform-launches-open-beta/

“In the early stages, Lunyr will serve as the go-to resource for reliable, easy-to-read and unbiased information about current and upcoming crypto projects. Once we grow a solid community of readers, we will aim to expand into other domains of knowledge including but not limited to innovative, bleeding edge topics in Finance, Law, Investment, Science, and Technology.”

After the Open Beta, Lunyr articles will begin showing up in search engines globally including Google, Baidu, Bing, and Yahoo. Lunyr is currently developing multiple language support (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Russian, etc.) to achieve its goal of becoming a global censorship-resistant, decentralized knowledge base.

Russian Free Crypto Zone
• https://sputniknews.com/business/201802021061311417-blockchain-russians-free-crypto-zone/

The idea to launch the FreeZone project, which is essentially focused on creating a limit-free territory for a wealth of cryptocurrency operations, first occurred to entrepreneur Evgeny Mukhin back in June 2017, and just a month later, the legal entity was registered, according to the white paper, published on the company’s official website.

"Nikolay [Nikolay Batalin, President, co-founder] and I had an idea to launch an ICO campaign to raise funds for creating a financial infrastructure in the cryptomarket (bank, payment system, universal trading platform, and investment bank). We conducted a lot of research, scrupulously examined different countries’ legislation, talked to international lawyers but we failed to find a country where we could legally host an ICO campaign with no risks. At that point an idea occurred to us to build the first ever free crypto economic zone with unique conditions for block chain development and launching cryptoprojects."

The FreeZone is currently negotiating with 12 countries, rapidly progressing in the field. Mukhin said they are set to sign a free crypto zone agreement with one of these any time soon.

The company board has projected an investment return of 147% in 2019-2020, and by 2022 the FreeZone token’s value is expected to grow 80-fold.

NSA Infiltrated Crypto Channels?
• https://www.investopedia.com/news/did-nsa-infiltrate-cryptocurrencies-0/

Recent news that the National Security Administration (NSA) may have successfully launched investigations into "Tor, I2P, and VPN," with an additional pending request for projects focused on cryptocurrencies, is likely to go over poorly with the cryptocurrency community.

A photograph posted on the popular 4chan message board appears to show a memo from the U.S. Army Cyber Protection Brigade, dated August 21, 2017, according to bitcoin.com. The document suggests the U.S. Army teamed up with the NSA to conduct investigations into Tor, I2P, and VPN, three tools used to encrypt and obfuscate everything from data to the location of users.

A grainy photo of the alleged letter was shared on 4chan, fueling speculation and conspiracy theories online.

What’s Up with Parity?
• http://blocktribune.com/parity-technologies-still-seeks-answers-160-million-eth-lock/

Parity Technologies, the developer of multi-sig wallets for bitcoin and ethereum, is still seeking a solution to recover frozen ethers accidentally locked-up last year.

Polkadot raised $150 million in an ICO last year and is currently having to deal with $98 million-worth of its ether funds being locked up. Web3 Foundation spokesperson Ashley Tyson said in a report that due to the lock-up, plans to deploy bounties designed to fix code weaknesses and grant programs to spur development have been scrapped. She admitted that, at best, plans had to be “massively scaled back.”

Philippine SEC Crypto Regulations
• https://news.bitcoin.com/106900-2/

Commissioner Aquino stated that The Philippines has sought to keep “an open mind” regarding cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technology (DLT), alluding to the potential reduction in fees that virtual currency adoption could offer the approximately 10 million Philippine workers living abroad who are estimated to remit nearly $25 billion USD home each year.

Commissioner Aquino indicated that The Philippines’ SEC is engaging with U.S. and Australian counterparts to develop the regulations. The commissioner has emphasized the protection of investors being the principal mandate of the SEC, stating “We want to come up with our own set of regulations. You have to be extra careful how investors in this new space are protected.”

Although the commissioner conceded that the legislation is currently in the “drafting stage,” he expressed his expectation that the regulatory framework will be developed “within the year.”

Ethereum Price Predictions 2018
• http://www.ibtimes.com/ethereum-2018-price-predictions-experts-forecast-ether-q1-value-2648606

In a survey of more than one dozen finance experts conducted by International Business Times from Jan. 25-30 the average Ethereum price prediction for the first quarter of 2018 placed the cryptocurrency’s expected value at about $1,500.
The most bullish estimate is 200% growth.
The most bearish estimate was roughly a 90% drop.

6 Use Cases for Request Network
• http://tkcryptos.com/request-network-6-use-cases-request-network/

Use case 1 : Invoicing and Online payments with the Request Network
Use case 2: Automation of jobs: Accounting, Audit, Expenses
Use case 3: Business logic and trade Laws: Government Tax
Use case 4: Simplification of commercial tools: Factoring, Escrow
Use case 5 : Transparency of institutions.
Use case 6: IOT and Smart Contracts.

Aeterinity Updates
• https://blog.aeternity.com/state-of-development-week-of-jan-22nd-2018-debc063093f4

We began implementing our Naming System, which we plan to include in one of our upcoming releases. You can read about it here: https://github.com/aeternity/protocol/blob/master/AENS.md

We began work on our Governance specification: https://github.com/aeternity/protocol/blob/gov/GOVERNANCE.md The specification is currently work in progress and you are welcome to leave your comments in the corresponding pull request: https://github.com/aeternity/protocol/pull/20

We continue to make great progress on our smart contracts language. Our plan is to be able to compile our first contract in next few weeks.

Streamr – Building the World’s Leading Data Marketplace
• https://blog.streamr.com/2018/02/how-we-plan-to-build-the-worlds-leading-data-marketplace-in-2018/

There are four pieces of technology that Streamr is built upon. The first two – the Engine and Editor – are fully operational. The Engine is there to refine real-time information and automate actions around its use. The Editor is a visual programming tool to help make it easier to take that data and turn it into something even more interesting. These two components currently run on a centralised version of the Streamr Network.

The Marketplace and the decentralised Network are what’s still to come. We’re going to be talking about the Network in March at an event in London. It’s here that we’ll showcase what it will take to go from our current cloud-based infrastructure to a decentralised version as mapped out in our whitepaper.

Well, there’s little point building a marketplace that functions on a technical level if there aren’t buyers and sellers to populate it. That’s what our COO, Risto Karjalainen, is currently working on. We’ve been at invitation-only meetings such as SAP’s IoT accelerator event in Berlin over the last month, and privately, all C level members of the Streamr team have been meeting with dozens of companies large and small. What most of these companies want from us now is more in-depth technical help in order to create functioning demos and use cases. This takes resources such as devs and people with experience in forging partnerships. We recognised this need a few months ago, which is why we started hiring and looking of ways to expand. Of course, onboarding can slow project development as current team members spend their time training new staff. However, we may have found a neat solution. As I mentioned in Transmission #3, we should have more news on that in several weeks from now.