Blockchain Bites: Coinbase’s Untraditional Investor Day and the Ethereum-EOS Arms Race in Latin America

Coinbase when one pleases host its first investor day, New York State prosecutors won a jurisdictional dispute involving Bitfinex and a protocol arms racetrack is unfolding in Latin America. Here’s the story:

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Not Your Habitual Investor Day
On the same day Reuters reported Coinbase is looking to go public, the exchange scheduled its first-ever investor day, for Aug. 14. Investor epoches can often signal a planned direct listing, Jamie McGurk, a former operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has suggested. “This will not be a traditional investor day, but rather an opportunity to hear our perspective on the cryptoeconomy and learn about Coinbase’s task in the ecosystem,” said Coinbase spokesperson Daniel Harrison.

Employment Kerfuffle
Former Tron Foundation employees are defying a court order allowing the  foundation to settle a lawsuit through arbitration, rather than in court. The initial grouse centers around allegations of wrongful termination and hostile work practices at BitTorrent, a file-sharing service acquired by the Tron Underpinning.

Appeal Denied
Bitfinex will have to face allegations from New York State prosecutors that it spent $850 million in client and corporate funds and tried to cover this hole with funds from the combined tether stablecoin, according to a ruling by the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division on Thursday. The exchange’s parent iFinex initially sought the prosecutors didn’t have jurisdiction over the Hong Kong-headquartered firm, which the appeals court rejected. The court also removed the argument that tether was neither a commodity nor a security.

Canaan Shakeup
Three Canaan Creative directors were offed from the company’s business registry, prompting speculation of a power grab. For months an internal power struggle between co-founders Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu has wracked the Nasdaq-listed concentrated, which has been suffering growing competition and reduced profits following the Bitcoin network’s programmatic halving. 

Ethereum v. EOS
Ethereum and EOSIO are campaign fighting it out over enterprise blockchain business across Latin America. The square up pits ConsenSys in one corner and LatamLink in the other, a calculate backed by the Inter-American Development Bank, over which decentralized protocol will win the arms race.

Venezuela’s Real Use Case
After airdropping cryptocurrency to 60,000 users in Venezuela, an AirTM survey swops a snapshot of how crypto is actually used in the economically troubled nation.

Venezuela is often a proving ground for do-gooding crypto enterprises and protocols. Payments network Dash, for one, famously made headway in the nation beset by hyperinflation. 

AirTM distributed about $300,000 worth of crypto to Venezuelans, and while only 57% of recipients engaged with the funds, many were skilled to successfully use the donations to buy food and medicines. Others began treating the AirTM platform as a personal bank. 

The bigger exact likeness is coming into focus: Crypto only becomes a viable alternative to traditional financial systems if there is rich infrastructure to support it. “If Venezuela offers an example of bitcoin usage, then it appears there is user demand for bitcoin-friendly aids provided by a regular fintech company,” CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen reports.

Balance Sheet Contractions. Bullish for Bitcoin?
As the U.S. Federal Hesitancy begins to unwind its balance sheet, contracting $88 billion to $6.97 trillion (-1.5%) in the week ending July 8, some crypto witnesses are saying this could have negative consequences for bitcoin’s price. That’s because in recent months bitcoin has been categorically correlated with traditional assets, which have rallied on the back of the Fed’s balance sheet expansion. But that’s far from the consensus intention. “Zooming into the details of the Fed’s balance sheet reveals the reduction has been primarily driven by a drop in demand for danger liquidity measures, a sign the coronavirus-induced stress in the financial system has eased,” CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole writes. 

Blockchain Credentials, Not Credentialism
Blockchain certification can verify expertise and experience, making transferring schools and changing assignments easier. But certificate proliferation may be a bigger problem, argues Stephanie Hurder, a CoinDesk columnist and founding economist at Prysm Team. “Non-degree credentials, such as badges and certificates, in particular are rapidly multiplying because they can now be digitally transmitted and guaranteed at a minimal cost,” she writes.

Inequality, Social Chaos, Bankruptcy Rallies
From the “Robinhood Snap out of it” to the most profit-disconnected stock market in history, these are the most interesting ideas from FinTwit last month.