Cayman Island-based fintech startup Caspian has completed an eight-figure ICO ahead of schedule. Its co-founders David Wills and Robert Dykes plan to channel 40 percent of the raised $19.5 million towards research and development. The other 25 and 15 percent would go towards sales & marketing and application support, respectively. The founders have also allocated a considerable sum towards building new partnerships, managing accounts and legal, and miscellaneous administration costs.

Binance just tweeted to announce that it has completed AION mainnet swap. CoinNess.com Market Index: AION, $0.4259, +1.02%.

Joseph Young tweeted and said, "Singaporean government's VC firm Vertex Ventures invested in Binance to assist the world's biggest crypto exchange in launching and operating its first fiat-to-crypto exchange in Asia. Major move by the gov't to really help its local cryptocurrency market grow. Very positive."

Genesis Global Trading, the crypto investment company targeting institutional investors, recently reported that the short interest for Ethereum had substantially declined by September 2018. According to the CEO, Michael Moro, the lending out of ETH and subsequent short selling did not cause the significant price decline.

China's National Computer Network Emergency Coordination Center will sign an agreement with the economic development zone of Changsha to launch the country's first blockchain security tech testing center on October 24th, 2018, providing code review and risk control services, local news reported.

Mobile payments startup Square is making its bitcoin cold storage solution open-source. Alok Menghrajani, a security engineer for the company, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the documentation, code and tools for the company's "Subzero" bitcoin cold storage solution are now publicly available on Github. Menghrajani said Square uses Subzero to hold bitcoin assets on its users' behalf in an offline environment based on a hardware security module (HSM) – the same technology the firm has been using to store encrypted keys for its other payments services.

Luxembourg-based fintech company Tokeny has teamed up with Blocktrade.com to promote compliance in security token trading. Tokeny is a provider of an institutional grade and secure end-to-end platform that handles the lifecycle and issuance management of tokens.

The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the US Federal body that has taken the lead in the regulation of Initial Coin Offerings and in the States has announced that it is taking action to suspend operation of a Nevada-based company by the name of American Retail Group Inc. (ARG) effective from October 22nd. The suspension, which will last until November 2nd, was due to concern that the operation – which operates the Simex cryptocurrency exchange and project funding platform, after acquiring it back in May of this year – was providing inaccurate and inadequate information about its operations.

Justin Sun posted a tweet on Oct 18, saying that he was excited to collabirate with Binance BCF. Binance CEO CZ retweeted that tweet on Oct 22 and said, "Justin proactively approached us and made a very generous donation, $3m USD equivalent. Respect!"

The volatility of the bitcoin price is now nearly as low as shares of tech giant Apple, the world's biggest company by market capitalization, according to new data released by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). The CBOE data showed that bitcoin's 20-day historical volatility has fallen to 31.5%, lower than that of well-established publicly traded companies like Amazon, an e-commerce giant, and Netflix.

As observed by CoinNess.com, statistics by CoinTrendz.com show BTC, ETH and XRP led the Top 3 most mentioned cryptocurrencies on Twitter in the last hour. The full list is as follows: BTC (1,333 mentions), ETH (916), XRP (777), LTC (596), TRX (479), NEO (444), XLM (442), ADA (406), EOS (359), and DCR (357).

Quidax, a European cryptocurrency exchange stated that they are in Nigeria to educate and improve the standards of understanding of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology in Nigeria.

According to Itmedia, Sony Computer Science Lab announced that it has developed a non-contact IC card type "cryptocurrency hardware wallet" using Sony's IC card technology. The hardware wallet is a terminal that manages keys offline, and avoids risks such as hacker network attacks causing assets to flow out. Unlike other hardware wallets that are connected to the PC through USB, the wallet is an IC card type that is easy to carry, and the internal modules are difficult to be parsed or tampered with, making the hardware wallet more secure to generate and store keys. This technology can be used not only for cryptocurrency transactions, but also for various other key management applications, such as blockchain-based personal information management systems.

Japan-based crypto exchange Coincheck released a new version of cryptocurrency trading handbook and service items. The new document shows that the relevant introduction and trading of XMR, REP, ZEC and DASH have been removed. The new version will come into effect on October 29.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) research paper proposes that Hong Kong regulators establish an effective regulatory technology (RegTech) system by incorporating more use cases of AI and big data. The system would include a better, face recognition-enabled KYC process, sentiment monitoring, and identifying corporate relationships. Please click "Read More" for details.

According to Huobi Global's tweet, Huobi Next adopts a community-based voting rules for projects endorsed by professional institutional investors. It added, "It is the first choice for innovative blockchain projects that have great potential."

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Pilipinas is now working closely with the central bank to come up with the rules governing cryptocurrency trading, an SEC official said. The goal is to come up with the final draft covering virtual currency trading and initial coin offering (ICO). SEC Commissioner Ephyro Luis Amatong said that while the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has come up with a circular on virtual currency exchanges, it covers the conversion and transmittal of virtual currencies but not the trading aspect of the transaction similar to a stock exchange.

BitPrime, New Zealand's premier cryptocurrency retailer, has recently listed Kin (KIN), SmartCash (SMART) and Elastos (ELA) in response to customer demand and to grow the availability of cryptocurrencies in New Zealand. Adding these coins to the company's reserves also helps to increase liquidity in the country and foster relationships.

A restaurant in Kenya called Betty's Place has reportedly been accepting cryptocurrencies as payment for its food items such as the "nyama choma", which is a special kind of goat meat barbeque. At present, the restaurant only accepts Bitcoin (BTC) and Dash (DASH) payments.

Citing data from Binance, TRX price experienced plummet and dropped to $0.02364 USDT, which is the lowest level of this week. Now, TRX marks $0.0238 USDT on Binance, with a 24-hour decrease of 2.86%

Herman Gref, the former Russian minister of economics and trade and the current CEO of Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, recently articulated his expectation that cryptocurrency will have a profoundly transformative effect upon society in coming decades. Despite his longer-term outlook, Gref also expressed his belief that cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology still needs up to five years to mature.

Citing statistics from alternative.me, Fear & Greed Index currently reads 24, three units lower than the previous day, indicating the crypto market is in "Extreme Fear". As per the Index, a value of 0 means "Extreme Fear" while a value of 100 represents "Extreme Greed."

The Japanese Financial Services Agency (JFSA) recently hosted its first-ever international cryptocurrency roundtable. The event was entitled "Roundtable on supervisory oversight of crypto-assets — recent developments and challenges going forward." Four main issues were discussed by roundtable participants. Firstly, recent crypto-related technological developments and challenges were discussed. Secondly, the regulators shared their thoughts on the supervision of cryptocurrency trading platforms. The third topic of discussion was about "possible areas of international cooperation", followed by the final topic of "investor protection and market integrity".

CoinNess.com and BiShiJie.com announced a strategic partnership with MMX, the world's leading owners and operators of Internet Top-Level Domains. As the world's third-largest suffix registrar, MMX manages 36 new top-level domains, and will enable Ethereum's Ethereum Name Service (ENS) to be integrated into the its services and soon to launch top-level domain, .luxe. Under the agreement, the  ICANN-approved .luxe extension is open for sales via CoinNess.com and BiShiJie.com Apps for the first time on Oct 30th.

According to the official announcement, Huobi NEXT had officially merged with Huobi Global on September 19, 2018 (UTC), and the original HADAX domain will complete the migration to Huobi Global on October 22 (UTC). After that, Huobi Next voting and the Project Center page can be directly accessed from Huobi Global official website.

Yahoo! Japan Corp, a Japanese internet company originally formed as a joint venture between the American internet company Yahoo! and the Japanese company SoftBank, said that the operation of its cryptocurrency exchange BitARG will be postponed until next spring. Yahoo! Japan originally planned to start operations this fall, and the reason for the delay is that it takes time to carefully consider the changes that have taken place in the industry. The company also pointed out that major companies have entered the cryptocurrency industry, and companies which have gained customers' trust are able to promote the industry. It emphasizes the importance of security, especially for customer and investor protection. In addition, it also acknowledges that it is studying the token economy, but "there is no specific concept about the token economy at present." As reported, Yahoo! Japan has bought a 40% stake in BitARG Exchange Tokyo.

Binance will open trading for DCR/BNB and DCR/BTC trading pairs at 04:00 on October 24, 2018 (UTC). Users can now start depositing DCR in preparation for trading. Decred Listing Fee is 0 BNB.

As of 03:00 (UTC) on October 23, the price of Bitcoin fluctuates around $6,590, trading at $6,590.18 USDT on Binance. The broad market is experiencing a majority downward trend, with only 33 out of Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap rising. The global market cap marks $209.80 billion, while the 24-hour trading volume is $10.68 billion. Major Cryptocurrencies 1. BTC quotes show $6,590.18 USDT on Binance, $6,580.9 on Bitfinex and $6,404 on Coinbase Pro; 2. CoinNess.com Market Index presents quotes for major cryptocurrencies besides BTC as following: ETH marks $205.04 (- 0.12%); BCH marks $447.88 (- 0.18%); ETC marks $10.02 (+ 3.80%); LTC marks $52.42 (- 0.60%); XRP marks $0.453 (- 0.41%). Top 3 Gainers and Losers in Cryptocurrencies 1. Top 3 gainers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: LINK (+ 26.09%), MCO (+ 18.77%), RVN (+ 16.83%) ; 2. Top 3 losers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: NPXS (- 6.15%), ETN (- 6.00%), QTUM (- 5.63%). Top 3 Gainers and Losers in Categories 1. Top 3 gainers among 52 categories: Decentralized transactions (+ 20.79%), Contract tools (+ 8.77%), and Advertising concept (+ 8.70%); 2. Top 3 losers among 52 categories: Vote election (- 5.62%), Game concept (- 2.18%), and Gold chain (- 1.65%). Coins/Exchanges Inflows and Outflows 1. Top 3 capital inflows within the last 24 hours: LTC (+ $101.44 mln), ETC (+ $86.58 mln), DASH (+$50.81 mln); 2. Top 3 capital outflows within the last 24 hours: ETH (- $87.78 mln), BTC (- $35.70 mln), NEO (- $11.15 mln); 3.Net inflows/outflows of exchanges: Binance (+ $7.88 mln), Bitfinex (- $6.39 mln) and Coinbase Pro (+ $1.09 mln).

Elon Musk cast another beam of light on his stance on cryptocurrencies by asking his girlfriend Grimes and another Twitter Handler, @vicentes, in his reply that "Wanna buy some Bitcoin?" Elon Musk is fairly ambiguous with neither his support nor condemnation regarding cryptos. Previously, Boring Company, start-up created by Musk, was said to incorporate cryptocurrency payment to fund its events, but later was proved rumors.

LocalEthereum, one of the largest decentralized peer-to-peer Ethereum marketplaces, now enables users to connect external wallets to their account instead of using a username and password combination, the company announced in a press release on October 22, 2018.

Acquired by CoinNess.com, Vertex Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary to Temasek, announced its plan to join hands with Binance, which results in the inception of Binance Singapore. The capital inflow from Vertex will facilitate Binance to set up a fiat-to-crypto exchange in this geographical pivot point for cryptos in Asia, with an agenda to further business opportunities to other South East Asian countries.

Users of the long-troubled cryptocurrency exchange WEX have begun filing police reports after more than three months of being unable to withdraw major cryptocurrencies or fiat. A WEX trader named Ruslan, who has been encouraging other users to seek an official investigation, said that as many as 35 such reports have been filed thus far online through the website of the Russian Interior Ministry. At least seven such reports have been filed since October, based on confirmation numbers reviewed by CoinDesk and checked against the Interior Ministry's website.

The Digital Transformation Agency is using some of its engagement with agencies around blockchain to work out whether a "better technology alternative" exists instead. The DTA was directed by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to investigate potential applications of blockchain across government in May. At the time, DTA said it had discussed blockchain options with agencies including Home Affairs and ASIC. That number has grown significantly over the past five months.

Despite numerous tribulations, Ukrainians are actively seeking to engage their government regarding cryptocurrency. Their push has not been without rewards as the government has established a working relationship with a blockchain-focused firm. The residents have resorted to cryptocurrency and blockchain to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. Now, even small traders in Kyiv are reported to have added an extra mode of payment—cryptocurrency.

According to the official Twitter account of PIVX, PIVX has partnered with UFC fighter Cris Cyborg to push crypto awareness. CoinNess.com Market Index: PIVX, $1.30, +0.61%.

Jeremy Allaire, Circle CEO, said, "Ultimately there needs to be normalization at the G20 level of critical crypto-related regulatory matters". Allaire said during an interview in London with Reuters. He supports the idea that the bigger economies in the world should work together to regulate cryptocurrency, considering the increase in support from the industry to establish international rules.

With regard to patent rights, Bitmain says that it continues to respect third parties' IP right and take actions accordingly. Based on legal opinions from various jurisdictions, they believe that there isn't and may never be a patent right over AsicBoost. Thus, all miners should be entitled to make their own choice on whether to use AsicBoost technology without anybody having an exclusive right over it. As reported, AsicBoost can help to reduce power consumption by 20%. Bitmain's Antminer S9 has already supported AsicBoost in 2017, but it has not been released because of the patent protection over AsicBoost.

A research, commissioned by Swiss fintech company Crealogix, looked at investment habits across the country, with residents of the capital being the most active in the market by a considerable margin. According to the research, Londoners are, on average, twice as likely to have invested in cryptocurrency than any other region in the UK. The research found that almost one in 10 Londoners have moved more than £100 into crypto in the past 10 years, with the second highest rate of investment seen in Yorkshire and the Humber, where 1 in 15 residents having invested to the same level.

The government of Albania has signaled that it wants to turn the country into a cryptocurrency-friendly jurisdiction in a new pivot to embrace the sector. Edi Rama, Albanian prime minister, described the concept of crypto-friendly innovation as a "shocking novelty". He added the regulatory rethink would form part of the government's effort to open up new markets and create new opportunities for well-paid jobs and qualified people.

Overstock's venture capital subsidiary Medici Ventures has invested in decentralized social network Minds, Inc. (Minds.com), according to a press release. Per the release, Minds has received Series A investment from Medici Ventures, although the investment sum was not revealed. With the investment, Overstock.com founder and CEO Patrick M. Byrne has reportedly become a member of Mind's board of directors.

Crypto.com (MCO), the payment and cryptocurrency platform formerly known as Monaco, announced that it has begun shipping it MCO Visa Cards, a range of prepaid cards that link to its mobile crypto wallet app, to users in Singapore. The card launch comes several weeks after the company announced the addition of XRP to its MCO wallet, which also includes support for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Binance Coin (BNB).

Roger Ver, also known as "Bitcoin Jesus", posted a tweet to compare the inflation rates of multiple national currencies and BCH in 2018. The list shows as follows: Venezuela: 200,000% Argentina: 34% Turkey: 24% Iran: 24% Ethiopia: 12% Nigeria: 11% Philippines: 6.7% Pakistan: 5.1% Mexico: 4.9% Brazil: 4.5% Bitcoin Cash: 4.2%.

Andreas M Antonopoulos, the Author of Mastering Bitcoin and a well-known Bitcoin influencer, cryptocurrencies can disrupt centralized banking and financial institutions. This is because of the "mere fact" that cryptocurrencies exist as an exit system, a "safety vault" and as a "safe haven", he said. Moreover, he said that the increase in Bitcoin's price is not going to be the prominent player in bringing about the change. Whereas, Bitcoin being used by people in order to escape from oppressive governments who are stealing their citizen's money will be a catalyst to bring about the change.

In India, the proposed industrial policy may suggest leveraging of blockchain technology to digitise land records to enable micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to access easy loans against assets or properties, an official said.

A New Jersey-based Italian restaurant is allowing customers to pay using popular cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Litecoin. The establishment situated in Pompton Lakes say the move could help make the business more popular among the younger generation who are most likely to embrace virtual currency payment options.

Champion Shave is set to launch its own currency, going by the name of the Champion Coin, with the initial coin offering (ICO) building up at the end of the month. The pre-ICO is set to start on October 29th, and according to the official announcement. Usain Bolt, Ronaldinho Gaucho and Dominique Wilkins joined forces to launch Champion Shave. The company consequently claims to have sold around 10 million disposable razors since it came to life. Its latest plan, however, is seeing it turn towards the cryptocurrency sector, as it seeks to further expand.

Bitfinex is sending massive quantities of tether tokens back to the vaults. It's notable, then, that a wallet address controlled by Bitfinex has sent 630 million USDT to an address known as the "Tether treasury" in six large transactions over recent days. The first, of 200 million USDT, was sent the morning of Oct 14, when Tether's dollar exchange rate was beginning to hit multi-month lows. The cryptocurrency exchange has overlapping management and owners with Tether Ltd., the company that issues a dollar-linked cryptocurrency of the same name (often abbreviated USDT). Both firms have come under increasing scrutiny following USDT's dramatic break with dollar parity last week, when the exchange rate briefly dropped as low as $0.85 on the Kraken exchange. It has yet to fully recover. CoinNess.com Market Index: USDT, $0.9863, (+0.30%).

Following the earlier removal of references to "cryptocurrency," Russian lawmakers have dropped the term "mining" from a bill to regulate digital assets In addition, the proposed legislation no longer covers the taxation of mining profits, as such matters will fall under the oversight of the Federal Tax Service.

Brave is going to enable tipping to individual users on renowned social networking web platforms like Reddit and Twitter. The web browser is going to make use of its native BAT crypto token to achieve it. The web browser has focused on privacy and security in its releases. Native ad blocking is also one of the popular features of the browser. Furthermore, this functionality will be available to users inside the browser and will let users make micro-transactions. CoinNess.com Market Index: BAT, $0.271(+3.75%).

The National Bank of Canada has announced the successful completion of a pilot program in collaboration with IT firm CGI and blockchain startup Skuchain to use blockchain technology in trade finance.

The Intercontinental Exchange's upcoming cryptocurrency trading platform Bakkt will officially launch on December 12. ICE announced October 22 that Bakkt would begin offering physically settled bitcoin futures contracts in December, marking the first cryptocurrency-related offering provided through the new platform. Bakkt will hold the bitcoins backing the futures contract in the ICE Digital Asset Warehouse, according to the notice.

Gary Goldsholle will work on cryptocurrency and blockchain issues, among other areas. Goldsholle left the SEC on October 12.

Dragon's Den entrepreneur and Irish Presidential candidate, Gavin Duffy, has once again had his identity used by a cryptocurrency scam. Images of Duffy and fake testimonials were used to promote Bitcoin Revolution, a fraudulent automated trading platform.

Canadian cryptocurrency mining company, DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc. has announced its intentions to develop a blockchain-powered global supply chain to track the quality of cannabis. It says it wants to develop the blockchain platform so the cannabis industry can track product and ensure it came from a legal source, enhance product quality, and aid in rapid recalls of defective product.

Factom's team is looking to build a new implementation that may shape the future of stablecoins completely.

Hollywood super star Johnny Deep has recently formed a deal with TaTATU, a cryptocurrency social entertainment platform to develop and produce film and digital content together.

As of 20:00 (UTC) on October 22, the price of Bitcoin has continued its sideways movement, trading at 6389.72 USDT on Binance. The broad market is experiencing a majority downward trend, with only 27 out of Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap dropping. The global market cap marks $208.83 billion, while the 24-hour trading volume is $10.74 billion. Major Cryptocurrencies 1. BTC quotes show $6,499.98 USDT on Binance, $6,558.2 on Bitfinex and $6,393 on Coinbase Pro; 2. CoinNess.com Market Index presents quotes for major cryptocurrencies besides BTC as following: ETH marks $204.62 (- 1.29%); BCH marks $446.19 (- 0.95%); ETC marks $10.00 (+ 2.77%); LTC marks $52.61 (- 1.39%); XRP marks $0.453 (- 1.95%). Top 3 Gainers and Losers in Cryptocurrencies 1. Top 3 gainers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: RVN(+68.9%), VERI (+23.9%), MCO(+18.54%) ; 2. Top 3 losers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: AE (-7.66%), CMT (-6.34%), DCN (-5.83%). a Top 3 Gainers and Losers in Categories 1. Top 3 gainers among 52 categories: Market Prediction(+2.16%), Social Communication (+1.77%), and Payment (+1.07%); 2. Top 3 losers among 52 categories: Anonymous Token (-4.5%), IoT (-4.26 %), and IFO (- 3.93%). Coins/Exchanges Inflows and Outflows 1. Top 3 capital inflows within the last 24 hours: ETC (+ $88.1 mln), LTC (+ $69.95 mln), DASH (+$59.87 mln); 2. Top 3 capital outflows within the last 24 hours: ETH (-$119.78 mln), BTC (-$31.45 mln), NEO (-$10.12 mln); 3.Net inflows/outflows of exchanges: Binance (+$41.1 mln), Bitfinex (- $26.49 mln) and Coinbase Pro (+$4.09 mln).

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today suspended trading in the securities of a company amid questions surrounding its statements about partnering with a claimed SEC-qualified custodian for use with cryptocurrency transactions and a purportedly registered public offering of preferred stock.

Forbes, a publication that writes to over 120 million people across the world, is launching its own cryptocurrency tracking system known as Forbes CryptoMarkets, according to a press release.

The long-awaited Russian draft bill on cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation will let privately held businesses and legal entities "digitize" their shares and store them via blockchain, local media outlet Vedomosti reported Oct 21.

He Yi, Binance co-founder made a statement on Twitter: "We have fire-walled listing team doing rigorous evaluation." She can not determine the listing and delisting.

The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), one of the largest banks in the Middle East, could be about to go live with Ripple's xCurrent payment solution in the coming weeks. CoinNess.com Market Index: XRP, $0.4527,(-1.46%).

Bitmain released the patch just days after braiins, the software development group that operates Slush Pool, revealed that it had verified that Bitmain's Antminer S9 hardware is capable of supporting overt AsicBoost, though the manufacturer had purposely disabled it by default. The group further stated that it would integrate overt AsicBoost support into a future firmware update for Braiins OS, the open-source ASIC mining system it launched in September. AsicBoost is more efficient to implement the technology overtly, and overt usage also has the benefit of not incentivizing miners to produce empty blocks. However, covert AsicBoost has the benefit of making it difficult to identify which miners are using it, which would be attractive to miners who cannot activate it overtly for legal or other reasons. Last year's activation of Segregated Witness (SegWit) on Bitcoin made it much more difficult to use covert AsicBoost effectively. Critics accused Bitmain of employing covert AsicBoost prior to the fork, but the firm denied the allegation and a report from BitMEX Research said that it was "difficult to draw any firm conclusions" from blockchain data.

The Congressional Blockchain Congress was founded by a Democrat and a Republican. It has two Democrats and two Republicans as its co-chairs. A recent study indicated that 60% of eligible voters believed that the same standards for monetary donations with the United States dollar should apply to cryptocurrency. It also shows a remarkable bipartisan consistency in those views, with 63% of self-declared Republicans and 52% of self-declared Democrats agreeing. Both 27% of Republicans and 25% of Democrats would be more inclined to donate to political campaigns if cryptocurrency was something they accepted.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today suspended trading in the securities of a company amid questions surrounding its statements about partnering with a claimed SEC-qualified custodian for use with cryptocurrency transactions and a purportedly registered public offering of preferred stock. Under the federal securities laws, the SEC can suspend trading in a stock for 10 days and generally prohibit a broker-dealer from soliciting investors to buy or sell the stock again until certain reporting requirements are met. "The SEC does not endorse or qualify custodians for cryptocurrency, and investors should use vigilance when considering an investment in an initial coin offering," said Robert A. Cohen, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division's Cyber Unit.

NEO tweeted and announced, "NEO has made another major step towards decentralization! Now, one of the largest telecom service providers in Netherlands, KPN has been officially voted in as a NEO Mainnet consensus node!"

SVPool is open to all public miners on the Bitcoin BCH network. The public BCH mining pool is a personal initiative of nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig S. Wright.

"The probability of a U.S. recession within one year is almost 28 percent, and rises to more than 60 percent over the next two years, JPMorgan's researchers wrote in a note this week. Over the next three years, the odds are higher than 80 percent, according to the note," Bloomberg reported. During a period in which many economists forecast a market crash and a major recession in the next two years, the demand for crypto has increased rapidly. Experts have stated that the abruptly emerging trend of major financial institutions entering the crypto market suggests the demand for crypto from investors in the traditional finance sector has increased rapidly in the past several months.

Jimmy Song just tweeted that "So many people think they can influence Bitcoin by criticizing it. That works in politics and centralized organizations but doesn't work with Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't care and every criticism Bitcoin survives makes it stronger." Bitcoin is anti-fragile to your criticisms.

The Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA), an organization dedicated to determining best practices and standards for blockchain in the transportation/logistics/supply chain marketplace, is pleased to announce that GTG Technology Group has joined the Alliance. GTG Technology Group brings its expertise in transportation management systems (TMS) and Cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) to the Alliance and help develop blockchain-based solutions. Founded in August 2017, BiTA has quickly grown into the largest commercial blockchain alliance in the world, with more than 450 members that collectively generate over $1 trillion in revenue annually.

CoinShares CSO Meltem Demirors tweeted and said, "I understand why security tokens are appealing, but I continue to be skeptical of the trillions of $$$ of 'demand.' Curation and selection will be problematic, just as it was for ICOs."

Revealed at the annual Sibos conference on Monday, the consulting giant Accenture has created an "interoperability node" which it says can house the business logic of different blockchains. According to Accenture, the interoperability node can connect the four major enterprise platforms: Hyperledger Fabric; R3's Corda; Quorum, developed by global bank JPMorgan Chase; and Digital Asset (DA).

As observed by CoinNess.com, statistics by CoinTrendz.com show TRX, BTC and ETH led the Top 3 most mentioned cryptocurrencies on Twitter in the last hour. The full list is as follows: TRX (2,295 mentions), BTC (1,721), ETH (1,046), XRP (723), LTC (625), XLM (562), NEO (441), ADA (419), EOS (369), and BCH (367).

In a report dated Oct. 19, the Securities and Markets Stakeholders Group (SMSG) said that, since transferable crypto assets used in payments (such as bitcoin) are increasingly considered as investments, the related risks are very similar to those seen in the capital markets. It therefore recommends that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) should consider such assets under the EU's MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II) regulations, which came into force in January.

One of Bloomberg's hosts organized a live poll whereby the participants were asked what they thought would be happening in the crypto space within the next 2-5 years. Apparently, 55% of the people were positive that cryptos are headed for a steady rise while 28% thought the digital assets could take a downward direction. Interestingly, 8% thought cryptos are headed for the stars while 9% expected cryptos to disappear within the next 5 years.

SADAD Electronic Payment System B.S.C., a leading Manama-based payment getaway channel in Bahrain, is reportedly signing up for Ripple's xRapid product for remittance servicing and cross-border money transfers.

Ernst & Young's (EY) 26th Entrepreneur of the Year awards ceremony took place in France this year. The regional prize this year was for "Startup of the Year." Eric Larcheveque, the co-founder and CEO of Ledger, won this year's award, and the "Born Global" Award due to the international potential of Ledger.

Bithumb, a global cryptocurrency exchange, holds an event to payback 70% of transaction fees for overseas users as an expression of appreciation for their support and loyalty following the last month. 'Cryptocurrency Transaction Fee payback promotion' holds from October 22 to November 21, 2018 (UTC+9) Korean Standard Time. The event is for the overseas users who have completed transactions over KRW 1 Billion (Approx. $890,000, Bithumb cash standard) and are expecting to get payback 70% for the transaction fees incurred within this period.

Trezor tweeted and said, "After a hard work, we are excited to announce the release of Exchanges to the Trezor Wallet! From now on, you can seamlessly and securely exchange between different cryptocurrencies without ever leaving the Trezor Wallet interface."

To emphasize the importance of attracting institutional investors to the crypto world, the CEO of Binance, CZ, recently tweeted a question to his followers. The question was simple, and it asked what would happen if a fund like Fidelity allocates 5% of its portfolio to crypto space. CZ responded, "Considering the sheer amount that large funds contain, even a small allocation of 5% (around $350 billion) would be able to not only double but almost even triple the market cap of the entire crypto space."

Ravencoin tweeted to say that the mainnet for the protocol asset layer will be released on October 31, 2018. CoinNess.com Market Index: Ravencoin (RVN), $0.0539, +48.17%

Sepior ApS, a leader in threshold cryptography for highly secure online transactions, and the SBI Group, the leading Japanese online financial services firm actively developing cryptocurrency markets in Asia, announced an agreement on Oct 22 to license Sepior's Threshold-Sig Wallet Security technology and to jointly develop a proprietary wallet to secure the on-line contents and transactions on SBI's Virtual Currencies exchange platform, VCTRADE.

Bitmain announced that last night developers released the firmware for the Antminer S9 to enable what is popularly called the "overt AsicBoost" functionality. It also plan to release in one week the firmware to activate this functionality in other BM1387-based models namely the Antminer R4, S9i, S9j, T9 and T9+. This step will increase future effectiveness of several Antminer models and provides the framework for a strong long-term network.

According to Coindesk, Michael J Casey, chairman of the CoinDesk Advisory Board and senior consultant for blockchain research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Digital Money Program, said that stableoins issuers should give token holders enough trust to promise that they can redeem. In order to enable stablecoins to trade consistently, its issuers must actually convince future broad-based token holders that they have sufficient solvency. This level of trust can be difficult to maintain because it involves market psychology, rumors, and herding effects, and this confidence can change significantly over time.

On October 21, rumors around major US-based crypto exchange Kraken surfaced, as traders claimed that they could no longer see the US dollar deposit option on the platform. Jesse Powell, the CEO of Kraken, released a statement on social media that the US dollar deposit and withdrawal option was taken away from users that are not based in the US. Only US dollar bank holders are available to utilize the USD deposit and withdrawal system of Kraken, as it is with every other major exchange in the global market.

[Policy] 1. China requires blockchain-based information service providers to register users using real names, censor postings and store user data; 2. The Thailand Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering allowing asset management companies to launch digital asset funds to meet growing investment demand for digital assets; 3. The chairman of Taiwan FSC said that if the ICO issue involves securities or equity, the FSC will carry out relevant regulatory measures after the end of next June; 4. Bahamas Minister of State Kwasi Thompson said that the government is working to complete a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings and exchanges. [Cryptocurrency] 1. CFI was cleared while the unit price of refund is $0.0389. [Exchange] 1. OKEx: There are scammers posing as OKEx staff to deceive users. [Others] 1. Russian church forced to pay for crypto mininng; 2. Trade.io lost 50 million worth of TIO tokens from cold wallet; 3. Tencent Technology reported that the US hedge fund, Tiger Global, has raised $3.75 billion in funding for its latest venture capital fund.

Bitcoin (BTC) created a key bullish pattern last week, but only a move above $6,800 would put the bulls in a commanding position, according to technical charts. Essentially, it created an inverted hammer candle last week, which is characterized by a long upper shadow – difference between the weekly high of $6,810 and the weekly close of $6,415 – and a small real body represented by the spread between the weekly opening price of $6183 and the closing price of $6,415. The inverted hammer candlestick is considered of bullish reversal if it occurs around the bottom of the downtrend and the upper shadow is two times the size of the real body. Further, the longer the upper shadow, the more likely it is that a reversal will occur. In BTC's case, the candlestick has appeared close to $6,000 - a level where the cryptocurrency has likely carved out a classic bottom. However, the upper shadow is only 1.7 times the real body, meaning the probability of a bullish reversal is low. As a result, the immediate outlook remains neutral and only a move above $6,810 would confirm a bullish breakout. At press time, BTC is changing hands at $6,400 on Bitfinex.

As of 11:00 (UTC) on October 22, Bitcoin price fluctuates at $6,471.94 USDT on Binance. The broad market is experiencing a majority downward trend, with 82 out of Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap dropping. The global market cap marks $208.94 billion, while the 24-hour trading volume is $10.79 billion. Major Cryptocurrencies 1. BTC quotes show $6,464.29 USDT on Binance, $6,587.22 on Bitfinex and $6,399.98 on Coinbase Pro; 2. CoinNess.com Market Index presents quotes for major cryptocurrencies besides BTC as following: ETH marks $204.62 (- 1.29%); BCH marks $446.19 (- 0.95%); ETC marks $10.00 (+ 2.77%); LTC marks $52.61 (- 1.39%); XRP marks $0.453 (- 1.95%). Top 3 Gainers and Losers in Cryptocurrencies 1. Top 3 gainers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: RVN(+ 42.93%), VERI (+ 22.19%), BAT(+ 19.27%) ; 2. Top 3 losers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: DGTX (- 6.96%), DGD (- 5.87%), RDD (- 5.82%). Top 3 Gainers and Losers in Categories 1. Top 3 gainers among 52 categories: Decentralized Transaction (+ 19.7%), Vote election (+ 12.21%), and Bank Card (+ 10.07%); 2. Top 3 losers among 52 categories: supply chain (- 6.31%), Credit investigation (- 3.9 %), and Life service (- 3.69%). Coins/Exchanges Inflows and Outflows 1. Top 3 capital inflows within the last 24 hours: ETC (+ $109.08 mln), DASH (+ $97.49 mln), LTC (+ $86.65 mln); 2. Top 3 capital outflows within the last 24 hours: ETH (- $94.82 mln), BTC (- $19.95 mln), NEO (- $18.95 mln); 3.Net inflows/outflows of exchanges: Binance (+ $22.91 mln), Bitfinex (- $4.75 mln) and Coinbase Pro (+ $2.05 mln).

San Francisco-based smart contract security startup Synthetic Minds has raised $5.5 million for its bid to roll out a technology that analyses blockchain networks for coding bugs. Announcing the news on Monday, Synthetic Minds said the round was backed by blockchain investment firm Pantera Capital and Khosla Ventures, a California-based venture capital firm focusing on internet startups.

According to ResearchAndMarkets.com, the automotive blockchain market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 31.19% during the forecast period, and the market size is projected to grow from USD 0.35 billion in 2020 to USD 5.29 billion by 2030. The automotive blockchain market is dominated by leading technology players such as IBM (US), Microsoft (US), BigchainDB (Germany), Tech Mahindra (India), and carVertical (Estonia). The "Automotive Blockchain Market by Application (Financing, Mobility Solutions, Smart Contract, Supply Chain), Provider (Application & Solution, Middleware, Infrastructure & Protocol), Mobility & Region-Global Forecast to 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Swiss online financial services provider Swissquote announced it had become "the first bank worldwide" to offer purchase and custodial services of ICO tokens for clients in a press release Monday, Oct 22. The bank said it was now no longer necessary for ICO consumers to "understand blockchain." "Combining crowdfunding with the blockchain creates a new form of fundraising," CEO Mark Buerki commented. The service will work via Swissquote users purchasing tokens directly from their online account, with the bank itself holding them in a separate wallet. It remains unknown which further ICOs will be endorsed under the scheme.

Block.one tweeted and said, "Since the launch of the EOS public blockchain, it has been exciting to see a growing ecosystem of blockchain-based applications - BuiltOnEOSIO. Got a project you'd like to share with us? Email us at spotlight@block.one."

According to the announcement of OKEx, in order to optimize the contract trading experience, OKEx plans to adjust the minimum precision of the XRP in the contract transaction at 3:30 p.m (UTC) on October 23, 2018.

Visa has announced new digital identity product details in preparation for a first quarter 2019 launch of Visa B2B Connect. This distributed ledger-based platform is designed to give financial institutions a simple, fast and secure way to process cross border business-to-business payments globally.

Tech Bureau, the operator of Zaif, has signed an agreement to transfer Zaif's business to Fisco Cryptocurrency Exchange (FCCE). Zaif claims that it was hacked on Sept 14, with approximately 7 billion yen ($62 million) stolen. On Sept 20, Fisco Co. Ltd., the parent company of FCCE, announced a plan to provide 5 billion yen to help Tech Bureau compensate its affected users in exchange for the majority of the company's shares. Fisco and Tech Bureau have since been working on a business transfer agreement with a tentative transfer date of Nov 22.

Developer platform GitHub has been down for hours due to data storage issues. According to GitHub's status message board, the issue began around 15 pm on Sunday, Oct 21 (UTC). Some users are facing login errors while others are not able to see their commits. The company acknowledged the issue saying "We're failing over a data storage system in order to restore access to GitHub.com." GitHub also said on the status board that the team is working on migrating the database to get the website up and running.

According to Philippa Maister, the Bahamas is targeting tech companies for investment and hopes attracting pioneering blockchain companies will create jobs, boost financial inclusion and improve its reputation for financial secrecy. "There are real opportunities for data centres, blockchain technology, data protection and security, business incorporation centres and technology corporate headquarters and conferences," says Bahamas Minister of State Kwasi Thompson. Mr Thompson adds that the government is also working to complete a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings and exchanges. "We are focused on diversifying our regulatory and legislative framework to allow for innovations in financial service offerings that are based on blockchain technology," he says.

According to China National Financial and Development Laboratory, legal digital currency can be used for reference, but we should also consider the cost of the blockchain technology. Legal digital model leads to two main problems: one is the status of commercial banks, and the other is the credit creation mechanism. While competing for the monetary dominance of the digital economy era, the success of legal digital currency depends on whether it can solve the problem exists in the traditional infrastructure and operating system.

Yenom developers Shun Usami, Taiki Uchida and Aoi Serikawa have proposed a new wallet scheme for the global Bitcoin Cash network. The proposal called the Deep Link Payment Protocol (DLPP) is a deep link scheme system tethered to a wallet application with a callback URL. The concept is similar to the BIP21, a URI formula that allows users to pay for products by simply clicking a link. In essence, the deep link scheme proposed by the Yenom programmers offers a communications equivalent between the wallet and other applications.