The CFTC tapped Heath Tarbert as incoming chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), replacing current chairman and “Crypto Dad” J. Christopher Giancarlo. The announcement was made yesterday during a Senate confirmation hearing.
The CFTC is tasked with regulating derivatives, digital assets, and over-the-counter trades. The regulatory authority has taken a light-handed approach towards the cryptocurrency industry under outgoing chair Giancarlo.
“During my time of service, it has been a priority to transform the CFTC into a 21st Century regulator for today’s digital markets. With Dr. Tarbert’s confirmation, I know the agency is in safe hands to continue this transition,” said Giancarlo in a statement regarding the succession.
Prior to this designation, Tarbert served a short stint as Acting Under Secretary for International Affairs, beginning April 16, 2019. Before that Tarbert served as Assistant Secretary for International Markets for two years, to which he was confirmed by a vote of 87-8, showing a high degree of bipartisan support.
Politico previously reported Tarbert would likely succeed Giancarlo as chief derivatives regulator.
Tarbert is a member of the Financial Stability Board, the international body established after the financial crisis to monitor global markets, and serves on its steering committee, according to his Treasury Department biography.
Giancarlo has committed to stay on as chairman until July 15, 2019, as Tarbert completes his current Treasury obligations.
J. Christopher Giancarlo image via CoinDesk archives
In 2018 alone more than $1 Billion of crypto was stolen. Most people’s funds were stolen in hacks and scams. Others could not reach their crypto, because they lost their private keys or recovery phrases.
One thing all the cases have in common is poor private key management.
What are private keys and recovery phrases? And how should you protect yourself from losing your funds? Bear with us while we try to explain it in a simple way.
What Is a Private Key?
A private key is the most important information in crypto. Without your private key, you cannot access your crypto. You can compare it with the PIN of your debit card.
If you have forgotten your PIN or if you have lost your bank card, you can call your bank. Then they will send you a new PIN or a new bank card, and you will regain access to your money.
The big difference in the crypto world is that there is no bank or other central organization that can help you recover your funds.
So if you lose your private key, there is no one that can help you to regain access to your funds. If you lose your private key, you cannot call anyone for help, and you will lose your coins forever.
What Is a Recovery Phrase or Recovery Seed?
A recovery phrase is used by crypto wallets like Ledger Nano and Trezor. These phrases or seeds usually contain between 12-24 words.
Compared to a private key a recovery phrase is easier to read for humans. But more importantly, is that the use of recovery phrases enables crypto wallets to store multiple private keys with one recovery phrase.
For example, you have a Ledger Wallet with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum on it. Each coin has its own private key. You do not have to save all those private keys because by making a backup of your Ledger Wallet, you make a backup of all private keys on the Ledger Wallet.
Ways to store your crypto:
Exchanges
This is the riskiest way to store your crypto because your funds are in the hands of a third party. The exchange or custodian is holding your crypto in their wallets. So they control your private keys or recovery phrases of these wallets.
There are countless stories about exchanges being hacked and losing funds of their clients. It is ok to have some of your funds on an exchange for trading purposes. Longtime holdings should never be stored on an exchange because you are not the owner of your keys.
Software Wallets
These wallets like Jaxx, Electrum, and Exodus can be downloaded for free. They enable their users to receive, send and store different types of cryptocurrencies.
Software wallets generate private keys. And you can easily make a backup of a software wallet by saving the recovery phrase offline. This means that with a software wallet you are the owner of your (private) keys.
The risks associated with software wallets are solved by hardware wallets like the Trezor and Ledger. The big advantage is that these wallets are secure stand-alone devices that are not connected to the internet.
Recovery phrases are used to back up the private keys stored on the devices. Owning a hardware wallet is a great step in securing your crypto because you are storing your private keys offline. The big risk here is the loss of the recovery phase.
So you did all the right things. You went online, did your research, ordered a hardware wallet, and you are ready to set it up. After a while, you are done, and you are left with a surprise.
You realize that the device itself is not the most important thing. No! The most important thing right now is the piece of paper with your recovery phrase written on it.
All this effort and eventually your early retirement is dependent on a piece of paper? No way!
The CRYPTOTAG
CRYPTOTAG closes the last line of defense with its premium backup system that enables people around the world to truly be their own bank by immortalizing their recovery phrases in titanium.
The CRYPTOTAG handles extreme circumstances like no other. Temperatures up to 3050 °F / 1.668 °C, corrosion and extreme pressure are no problem. Extreme tests have been carried out on the product, and the 6mm thick Titanium is literally bulletproof.
The Amsterdam based team has been testing different engraving methods and have developed a full backup system. During the development, they have been influenced by goldsmiths, metal workers, the aviation industry and old engraving techniques.
These influences are visible in the components included such as the hammer, punching letters, anvil and the use of titanium.
American major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has barred British right-wing pundit Milo Yiannopoulos from its platform, Yiannopoulos stated in a Gab post on May 3.
Yiannopoulos is a well-known political commentator and public speaker, espousing controversial far-right views and describing himself as a “cultural libertarian”. Previously, Yiannopoulos used to be an editor for syndicated American news and opinion website Breitbart News.
Yiannopoulos’ account on Coinbase was reportedly closed within three minutes:
Screenshot of Yiannopoulos Gab post. Source: Gab
Yiannopoulos was previously banned by social media and networking platforms Facebook, as well as its subsidiary Instagram, and Twitter, according to the Guardian. A Facebook spokesperson reportedly told the Guardian that “we’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”
In January, Coinbase reportedly terminated the personal merchant account of Gab founder Andrew Torba. A possible reason why it is hard for Gab to obtain a payment processor is purportedly its reputation for being the social network for people banned from mainstream platforms for hate speech.
Moreover, last April Coinbase blocked the account of WikiLeaks Shop, the merchandise arm of international anonymous publishing non-profit WikiLeaks, due to terms of service violations. Last December, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks and international exile, urged donors to contribute to the online publication by using cryptocurrencies in order to skirt the financial ‘blockade’ by national governments.
On March 16, 2019, the price of IOTA (IOTA) reached a high of nearly $0.32. It has been on a gradual downtrend since. Here is the price outlook for the period of Mar 16 through Mar 18:
Our analysis of IOTA on Mar 13 predicted that price would increase and result in a breakout above resistance. Our prediction was validated the following day. According to today’s analysis, we predict that IOTA will likely continue trading within a downward facing channel. This means gradual losses for the foreseeable future. Highs within the channel may still be experienced; however, they are expected to grow successively lower over time. In the case of a breakout or breakdown, we assess that a breakout is more likely—which means the possibility of a reversal and rapid price increases.
In the past few years, we are facing a new phenomenon that brings significant changes to the financial transaction system. If at first we make money transfers through bank services, we can now do it personally through our own hands. The world is now in the grip. To just make a transaction, we don’t need to move one step. The new system developed in this decade provides enormous convenience for conducting digital transactions. for payment instruments now using digital tokens or coins. this fact has become a very serious conversation throughout the world both in the private life of the community and in international forums. How not, this new system does not even require more fiat money as a means of payment……
In the world of cryptocurrencies, the Spring of 2019 is starting to resemble the best of times and the worst of times. Should holders of cyber-money such as Bitcoin or Ethereum be cheered by the modest price rally that came in with the New Year, by the announcement in early March that Samsung is to launch a cryptocurrency wallet and by the news that a gold-backed cryptocurrency will be unveiled shortly? Or should they focus on the negative publicity arising from a cyber-money fraud in Sweden and on the news that Mexico’s central bank has imposed an effective ban on financial institutions in that country offering cryptocurrency services? How can a trader put together a reliable cryptocurrencies forecast? What is the outlook for cryptocurrencies 2019…..
Per the announcement, the changes aim to increase liquidity, enhance price discovery and ensure smoother price movements. The changes include a new fee structure, reportedly designed to increase liquidity, updated order maximums, new order increment sizes, the turning off of stop market orders and added market order protection points.
According to the post, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Prime — the firm’s institutional trading platform — will cease their support for stop market orders. The announcement further explains that all stop orders must now be submitted as limit orders and include a limit price.
On the other hand, the market protection points that will be introduced both to Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Pro users will amount to 10 percent for all market orders. The statement explains that market orders that move the price more than 10 percent will stop executing and return a partial fill.
Lastly, the post warns the exchange’s user base that the platform will be offline on March 22 from 6:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. PDT.
The changes were met with some skepticism and negativity from the crypto community on social media. Economist and trader Alex Krüger complained on Twitter about “Coinbase Pro raising fees for smaller clients by 33% while lowering fees for larger clients.” The same user also further commented that “in a rational world, most Coinbase users would now move to Binance.”
In the same Twitter thread, Krüger also questioned Coinbase’s decision to disable stop market orders, claiming that stop-limit orders sometimes fail to execute because of slippage, suggesting using far off limits on limit orders as a workaround. Still, Krüger also admitted that those changes should lead to increased liquidity and trading activity.
Another crypto trader on Twitter suggested that the new fee structure is seemingly targeting new users entering the cryptocurrency space, concluding:
“Pretty random day to hike all the fees up, Coinbase anticipating a new bull run perhaps?”
As Cointelegraph recently reported, Coinbase Pro announced support for altcoin Stellar Lumens (XLM).
Just yesterday news broke that publicly traded U.S.-based company Riot Blockchain has filed with the Securities and Exchanges Commission to launch a new regulated cryptocurrency exchange, called RiotX, in the U.S. by the end of Q2 2019.
Chineseinsurance giant Ping An has partnered with Ethereum (ETH)-based decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) startup SingularityNET. The latter company announced the collaboration in a press release published on Medium on March 14.
Per the release, the collaboration will at first focus on Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Computer Vision (CV) and model training. SingularityNET notes that the scope of the partnership is expected to expand to multiple industries and initiatives in the future.
The announcement has been made shortly after SingularityNET officially launched a beta version of its Ethereum-based decentralized marketplace on Thursday, Feb. 28. In January last year, the company also announced a partnership with agriculture-focused blockchain startup Hara at the World Web Forum.
Ping An is reportedly the world’s most valuable insurance company, it serves 170 million customers, and ranked tenth in the Forbes Global 2000 list of world’s largest public companies. As Cointelegraph reported in November last year, Ping An and the Sanya municipal government also signed a strategic cooperation agreement for “Smart City” construction involving blockchain.
The press release notes that Ping An’s “One Minute Clinics” for medical consultations, which are unstaffed and use AI, are already in use in eight Chinese cities.
During the same month, Cointelegraph also reported that Ping An’s banking subsidiary Ping An Bank will launch a boutique bank using blockchain, cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT) tech.
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