Venezuelans can only use the state-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro, to pay for passport fees starting next week, the country’s vice president Delcy Rodriguez said in a press conference Friday, Oct. 5.

Ahead of Petro’s official “launch” in November, Rodriguez confirmed that as of Monday, Oct. 8, fees for all passport applications will only be payable in Petro, and will cost an increased amount: 2 petros for a new passport and 1 petro for an extension.

The average monthly minimum wage in Venezuela, Bloomberg reports, is four times less than the cost of the raised passport fee. 

“In the case of Venezuelans who are abroad, until the first day of November the cost will be $200 for issuance and $100 for extensions,” Rodriguez stated, according to leading Latin American newspaper El Universal.

Venezuela has sought to combat the side-effects of rampant inflation and a failing economy by embracing the use of cryptocurrency to circumvent capital controls.

As Cointelegraph reported, Petro, President Nicolas Maduro’s purported solution to the country’s economic crisis, has consistently courted controversy, with accusations last week claiming its developers copied the whitepaper of altcoin Dash.

Along with the passport fees shake-up, Rodriguez also announced the formation of a dedicated migration police force, ostensibly designed “to preserve citizen security and migratory control.”

Bloomberg notes that around 5,000 citizens flee Venezuela each day.

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The regulatory clampdown on cryptocurrency exchanges in China has been noted as a key factor in the sensational growth of Binance in 2018.

Launched in the middle of 2017, the rate of growth that Binance has experienced, both in terms of trading volume and capitalization has attracted a lot of attention within the cryptocurrency environment. In just a few months, the exchange grew from just a newcomer to one of the leading crypto exchanges in the world.

Even though the company started in 2017, its founder & CEO Changpeng Zhao has always been a major player within the crypto ecosystem and other related industries. Zhao founded Fusion Systems in 2005 in Shanghai, a company that specialized in building high-frequency systems for brokers. Down the road in 2013, he became the third member of the Blockchain.info cryptocurrency wallet team. Zhao also had a brief stint at OKCoin, where he worked as a CTO.

Despite his experience and expertise, Zhao notes that the force behind Binance comes from innovation that was born out of a supposedly adverse circumstance, speaking to the South China Morning Post. The ban in China motivated Zhao and the entire Binance team to expand everywhere else, hence the subsequent growth that has established the company as a leader in the industry.

In September 2017, China shut down the activities of all domestic crypto exchanges. This move forced Binance to move its headquarters and servers to Tokyo. This kept the establishment outside the regions where the Chinese regulations could affect its activities.

Binance then embarked on its systematic expansion exercise, which saw the company encroach into other markets, including Singapore and Taiwan.

Zhao elaborates that while Chinese operators of cryptocurrency exchanges scrambled to keep up with new regulations on the mainland, Binance found the perfect opportunity to capture new regions and establish itself. This is a move that has proven to be rewarding, based on visible evidence.

Binance claims to have over 10 million users across the globe who engage in trading digital tokens. From transaction fees alone, the company claims to have generated a profit of $350 million between January and June 2018.

The expansion philosophy of Binance necessitates the nomadic lifestyle of Zhao, who is known by his constant travels across different parts of the world. During the past month alone, Zhao said he has visited eight countries which includes Switzerland and South Korea to hire new staff, attend industry events and forge deals. He has not traveled back to mainland China since the cryptocurrency crackdown a year ago, he said.

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Poloniex, the exchange Circle has been working to revive since acquiring it in February, announced in a blog that it will eliminate its margin and lending products for U.S. customers by year’s end and delist three altcoins. The company noted it is removing the margin and lending products in the U.S. to ensure the exchange complies with regulatory requirements, although it did not specify what requirements.

As of Oct. 10 at 12:00 ET, the exchange will delist GNO (Gnosis), AMP (Synereo) and EXP (Expanse). Customers will be able to close out all trades and withdraw balances for these assets up until Nov. 9 at 12:00 ET. Market caps on Oct. 4 were $23,992,956 for Gnosis, $,137,016 for Synereo and $3,125,636 for Expanse, according to coinmarketcap.com.

Customers Urged To Withdraw Funds
After Nov. 9 at 12:00, Poloniex will not be able to process withdrawals of affected assets. Holders of the affected assets will have 30 days to withdraw funds. The deadlines could be extended in the event that wallet availability gets interrupted. Contract holders will be notified of such an event via email.

Poloniex will secure delisted funds in cold storage in the event that customers cannot make withdrawals due to reasons beyond its control, such as a network going offline. The funds will be secured for a “reasonable” period so customers can withdraw funds when the network becomes operational.

Poloniex did not announce a final date for removing its margin and lending products for U.S. customers, but said it will provide customers seven days advance notice before removing a market.

Existing loans will remain open and interest will accrue for the previously specified duration.

Circle Seeks to Revive Poloniex
Circle, which acquired Poloniex in February for more than $400 million, has been working to revive the exchange which some considered controversial due to its stagnation and being surpassed by other exchanges. There were also complaints about Poloniex’s customer service posted on Reddit prior to the acquisition.

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MaiCoin, the largest one stop digital asset platform provider in Taiwan, recently launched it’s MAX Exchange. The exchange initially started by offering Taiwan Dollar (TWD) to crypto pairs and it currently lists 16 crypto/TWD pairs. As part of its global aspirations, MAX Exchange has recently launched a total of 51 crypto to crypto pairs which include both USDT and TWDT stablecoin pairs.

MAX Expansion
While TWD fiat trading is only open to citizens of Taiwan, crypto-to-crypto pairs are now available for the global market, requiring MAX users to register with an email address for Level 1 access. According to the exchange website, this provides them with a $15,000 daily withdrawal limit. For users willing to provide a phone number and a selfie with ID verification, this daily withdrawal limit is increased to $150,000.

“What sets MAX Exchange apart from the competition is that customer fiat assets are stored safely and securely with a third party bank trust custodian,” reported the MAX representatives to Cointelegraph. “We are also partnering with mobile phone providers on a solution to allow MAX Exchange users to store their private keys at the semiconductor level on their smartphone so that they are always in control of their own assets”.

In order to develop and support its community ecosystem, MAX Exchange will launch its native token (MAX). 150 million MAX Tokens (30 percent of total supply) will be distributed via a Transaction (TX) Fee Mining model. What differentiates its TX mining model from previous iterations is that MAX incorporates a difficulty feature where mining rewards decrease as more coins are mined to slow down issuance and native tokens are purchased in the open market, the company explains. 

The exchange plans to use 80 percent of its trading fees to purchase MAX tokens on the market as rewards for its makers (40 percent of fees), takers (10 percent of fees), and holders/stakers (30 percent of fees) on the platform. 

MAX users can stake, or lock up, MAX tokens to increase their staking power by up to five times. “An ageing boost component is applied to staked coins. The longer coins are staked, the more their staking power increases”, added the MAX representative.

History of MaiCoin
The MAX Digital Asset Exchange is an extension of the business’ over the counter OTC platform, MaiCoin, which has been in operation since 2014. Combined, MAX and MaiCoin are the largest and longest running digital asset platforms on the Taiwanese market. In an interview with Bloomberg on Jan 30, Alex Liu, the founder and CEO of MaiCoin, said that he targeted continuing expansion of the business throughout Asia to help fill the void left by regulatory uncertainty in China and Korea.

MAX and MaiCoin say they have been first to the market with almost every digital asset traded in Taiwan including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

According to the company, in 2014, MaiCoin and MAX were the first platform to facilitate fiat deposits through thousands of 7-11 and Hi-Life convenience store ATMs and Kiosks nationwide.

In 2015, the business moved into the merchant services industry, launching a series of applications to facilitate point of sale (POS) transactions that helped local businesses more seamlessly accept digital asset payments. 

In 2016, MaiCoin established AMIS Technologies to build Ethereum based enterprise blockchain solutions for the domestic financial industry. Today AMIS is a founding member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) and developer of the Istanbul Byzantine fault tolerant consensus protocol which has been employed as the consensus algorithm in JP Morgan’s Quorum platform. The group continues to build up its enterprise blockchain solutions and is working closely with ITRI, Fubon FHC, Taishin Bank among other major financial institutions.

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Recent research by blockchain-focused company Clovr has revealed that cryptocurrency investing is most popular among millennials earning from $75,000 to $99,999 annually. The survey collected responses from over 1,000 Americans between ages 18 and 80.

Per the survey, men are almost twice as likely as any other generation to invest in digital currencies, with 43 percent of men and 23 percent of women investing in crypto. 47 percent of individuals with an annual income not less than $75,000 annually have invested in digital assets, while less than a quarter of those earning under $25,000 said they can afford to significantly invest in crypto.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly earnings in the second quarter of 2018 for a man between the ages of 25–34 was $857, or over $44,000 annually.

Almost 40 percent of respondents cited peer influence as a main reason for investing in crypto, and over 35 percent have reportedly been lured into the crypto market by the “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO).

The survey found a solid level of awareness of digital currencies, with more than 75 percent of respondents claiming that they “feel” they know what cryptocurrency is, while the remaining 20 percent suppose they “sort of” know what is happening in the crypto field.

In regards to explaining to others what crypto is, 62 percent of the survey participants said they are able to keep up a discussion about cryptocurrencies.

When asked their opinion on investment in crypto, almost 80 percent of respondents answered that they consider investing in crypto as a positive form of risk-taking. The study further states that 1 in 3 think that crypto investment is an innovative option compared with stocks and bonds.

Recent research has found that of all the generations, millennials show the most interest in crypto investing. A survey published in September by research service YouGov Omnibus revealed that half of American millennials are interested in using cryptocurrency.

Another poll by crypto finance company Circle showed that 25 percent of millennials said they are interested in purchasing digital currencies over the next 12 months, which sets them apart from other generations by more than 10 percent.

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A major Chinese university is proposing blockchain technology as a better way to manage web domain names.

According to a patent application published Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Shenzhen Graduate School at Peking University is examining how a "consortium blockchain" can improve security and efficiency in managing top-level domains (TLDs)

While the currently standard internet domain name system is already based on a distributed system, there are "technical problems," the team contends.

For example, the current distribution of root name servers is unevenly around the world. As a result, the filing states:

"Internet users in Asia enjoy a significantly slower domain name resolution speed than users in North America do, and when a root name server in Asia malfunctions, more than 20 million Internet users' requests for domain name resolution will be affected. It also results in a significantly lower reliability in Asian domain name resolution."

As the blockchain "invention" shares data in a "public and immutable way," it says, "trusted agencies and even individuals can access information on blockchain and build a corresponding seed file database to store the mapping relations between the top-level and sub-domain name system."

As a result, all regions can set up domain name servers according to their real-world needs "in order to ensure the speed of internet access without being limited by other institutions."

The proposed system also separates the domain name system into two layers, each corresponding to a sub-domain name system, it goes on. How the sub-domain system is designed is decided by the holder of the TLD. "Therefore," the filing states, "the sub-domain name system can be designed as either centralized system or decentralized system according to the institutions' wishes."

An additional claimed advantage is that, being based on a system of distributed nodes, no "consortium or small group" can control the entire process. While cryptocurrencies are potentially prone to what's called a 51 percent attack (in which an entity that controls more than half of the network can rewrite transactions in their favor), only allowing "trusted" nodes means the proof-of-work mechanism by which miners secure a network "is not required," the filing says.

The team further touts the system as "completely compatible with the existing internet." While a "more concise and efficient consensus mechanism," brings security and reliability, and a layered structure "ensures the efficiency and portability of the system."

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Leading U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that veteran employee Adam White, head of its institutional platform group, is leaving the firm, Bloomberg reported October 4.

Adam White was reportedly Coinbase’s fifth-ever employee, joining “in 2013 when the founders were still working out of a one-bedroom apartment and Bitcoin was trading around $200,” as Bloomberg notes. Prior to his work at Coinbase, he reportedly served in the U.S. Air Force and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.

For his most recent post, White served as Coinbase’s vice president and general manager of the institutional business. As of spring 2018, the exchange has been rolling out a series of products targeted at major institutional clients – including custodian services and an Index Fund – which Coinbase considers could “unlock $10 billion of institutional investor money sitting on the sideline.”   

While White reportedly declined to comment on his departure, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg that:

“While we’re extremely sad to see him go, we’re also confident in that group’s ability to keep executing on the vision that he laid out to be the most trusted venue for institutional investors to trade cryptocurrencies.”

CEO Brian Armstrong gave his comment, saying:

“Over the past five years, Adam helped us build our exchange business into the largest U.S.-based crypto-trading venue, and was integral to growing Coinbase’s global presence and scaling our culture to multiple offices.”

Coinbase announced Oct. 3 that Jonathan Kellner, former chief executive officer of Instinet, is joining as a managing director of the exchange’s institutional business.

There has been a wave of new talent joining the San Francisco-based exchange, which recent reports have suggested could soon be valued at $8 billion. This week, Coinbase announced that Chris Dodds, a member of the board at Charles Schwab, would be joining the exchange’s board.

In late September, the company hired former Fannie Mae General Counsel Brian Brooks as its new Chief Legal Officer; former Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft employee Tim Wagner also joined Coinbase as vice president of engineering this summer.

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