2017 was the year cryptocurrency speculation went mainstream, which is something many bitcoiners have been yearning to happen for years. But going mainstream means that the market is no longer dominated by cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and until Wall Street steps in, we’re simply going to have to accept that mainstream speculators with little knowledge of cryptocurrencies are in charge of the market.

Also read: Absurd Profits from Zclassic a.k.a. Bitcoin Private

A Wall Between Investor and the Unimaginably Stupid
If you’re a cryptocurrency old-timer, things that annoy you will become popular for reasons that seem unimaginably stupid. If you were a musician in 2012 and competing for the #1 spot on YouTube, it didn’t matter if you were the best singer in the world if your competition was “Oppa Gangnam Style”. In the same way, it won’t matter if your cryptocurrency is the most sophisticated and decentralized in the world, if the market doesn’t value those characteristics.


Trading Tip Column, `The Wall´ – Did Ripple Almost Dethrone Bitcoin "Using This One Simple Trick"?

The “Gangnam Style” Era of Crypto
To explain what I mean, I’ve analyzed the percentage gains of each of the top 27 coins by market cap since 2017. One thing that is clear to me is that the cryptocurrency characteristic the market favored more than anything else in 2017 was not so much decentralization, technological soundness or real world usage, but rather the dollar digit bracket the coin belonged to; in this case, sub-cent unit prices.

Trading Tip Column, `The Wall´ – Did Ripple Really Dethrone Bitcoin "Using This One Simple Trick"?

Of course, the unit price of a coin is a totally senseless basis for making investment choices on. Any cryptocurrency–even Bitcoin–could have been a sub-cent item, if Satoshi chose the final cap to be 21 quadrillion instead of 21 million. In that case, the unit price of a bitcoin (price per each whole bitcoin) would be $0.00001697 right now instead of $16,790 but the total market cap would still have been $284 billion. Everything would be the same, except that everyone would have a million times more bitcoin–and the unit price would be cheaper.

Since bitcoins (as well as many other cryptocurrencies) are divisible down to 10^8 satoshis (smaller units), it doesn’t really matter what the supply is, as long as there’s enough “particles” of the currency to go around for the economic use cases imagined to function properly. The number itself is not important. But it does directly effect the unit prices, which apparently has an enormous impact of the investment choices of mainstream investors. As stupid as it may seem, I contend that apart from what’s outlined in this great summary, the perceived “cheapness” of Ripple’s XRP (100 billion supply) is one of the reasons why it overtook Bitcoin as the largest cryptocurrency in the world by implied market cap this week.


The reason why we look at market caps when we compare coins is because that’s how we compare the values of a cryptocurrency as a whole rather than just looking at the unit prices, which we know, as illustrated before, to be completely arbitrary and therefore not a good measure of anything. To visualize this is in the clearest way possible, we can normalize the supply for different altcoins to see what the prices really would look like if they all had the same supply. This is how they would compare (as of 5 Jan 2017):

Trading Tip Column, `The Wall´ – Did Ripple Really Dethrone Bitcoin "Using This One Simple Trick"?Another interesting aspect to look at is how many units of each altcoin you need to hold to own the equivalent of 1 bitcoin of that coin:

Trading Tip Column, `The Wall´ – Did Ripple Really Dethrone Bitcoin "Using This One Simple Trick"?

In these tables, I’m using the “fully diluted market cap” (max supply) as a basis for the normalization. The currencies for which the max supply is unknown such as Ethereum, I’ve used the Y2050 estimations given by Onchainfx(*). The calculation I’ve used for the  normalization table is as follows:

‘Vaporware’ is a term that’s tossed about loosely, often against cryptocurrency projects that have no clear use case. It’s an easy accusation to make given that many crypto projects are still at the development stage, and haven’t had a chance to prove themselves. This year’s vaporware could be next year’s ethereum – or at least so the investors hope. While a vast number of cryptocurrencies are derided as vaporware, the following four attract this jibe more than most.

Also read: People Selling ‘Fully Verified’ Crypto-Exchange Accounts On the Rise

Catching the Vapors
Vaporware has been defined as “software or hardware that has been advertised but is not yet available to buy, either because it is only a concept or because it is still being written or designed”. That definition applies to 90% of all ICOs right now, which are either still tallying up their ether or hunting down devs capable of bringing their six-page white paper to life. It will be months or even years before we discover which projects proved their worth, and which were wearing the emperor’s new clothes: ”blockchain” dressed up as innovation.

Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of Vaporware

The vaporware meme gained traction in November after Nate Murray published a graphic describing the top 100 cryptocurrencies in four words or less. In it, Veritaseum was labeled as vaporware, though there are coins much higher on the list that arguably warrant that epithet like Kin, a billion dollar token with zero uses at present. The following projects have every chance of success. To their detractors, though, they’re little more than software in search of a solution – and unbuilt software at that.

Tron
Tron founder Justin Sun is a rising star, listed in Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 and CEO of a company that’s risen from nothing to attain a $13 billion valuation in under six months. Tron has been one of 2018’s biggest success stories, despite the year being barely a week old. The token soared into the cryptocurrency top 10 after its market cap quadrupled in a day and a half. On January 5, Tron commanded a $16 billion market cap: not bad for a company that has no product whatsoever. Not everyone is a fan though, including Monero’s Riccardo Spagni.

Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of Vaporware

The outspoken developer of the darknet’s favorite privacy coin conceded, however, that he bought Tron in December, explaining “just because I can identify scams doesn’t mean I’m averse to making money.” Critics have called Tron “the $14 billion whitepaper with no product” and the project seems to borrow heavily from LBRY, which launched last May.



The Tron roadmap looks like this:

Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of Vaporware

Provided those TRX tokens keeping pumping for the next nine years though, everything should be just fine.

Verge
Verge appeared on Nate Murray’s cryptocurrency list as “privacy dogecoin”. Given that the coin started life as a doge fork known as dogecoin dark, that figures. Verge has come a long way since then in fairness, but has that journey taken it forwards or sideways? XVG is meant to be a privacy coin. The trouble is, it doesn’t appear to be very good at that. News.Bitcoin.com recently reported on a website which claims to expose IP addresses used in verge transactions.

Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of VaporwareThe verge community bitterly dispute the accuracy of the site in question, although with no word from Verge themselves, the matter remains unresolved. The operator of the site is adamant that the data is accurate, and also reports that only 2% of verge addresses use Tor, despite anonymous deep web transactions being XVG’s USP. One writer scathingly opined that “Verge fails to offer real privacy and is indistinguishable from a scam”.

The Verge team are currently working on something called the Wraith Protocol, which supporters are prone to referencing in hushed tones. It’s “a technology that allows the user to seamlessly switch between public and private ledgers on the Verge Blockchain”, which sounds like the sort of functionality that’s been built into coins like Zencash for some time. Whether the Wraith Protocol proves to be the savior of privacy coins remains to be seen. Either way, it’s immaterial, since the majority of the verge community are only interested in using verge to speculate on the price of verge.

Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of Vaporware

Cardano
Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of VaporwareWith a $25 billion market cap, Cardano is cryptocurrency top five royalty. The project will form “a decentralised platform that will allow complex programmable transfers of value in a secure and scalable fashion” which could describe most crypto platforms. What’s so different about Cardano? Apparently it “differentiates itself by being designed from the ‘ground up’ to deliver a secure and sustainable blockchain that can protect user privacy whilst allowing for regulation,” which doesn’t help a lot. Also “Cardano aims to be a mature blockchain”, which is something that surely only time can apply.

Vaporware or not, decentralized cryptocurrency purists aren’t convinced by Cardano’s assertions that “full anonymity can be counterproductive, as can complete lack of regulatory oversight. The project’s founders aim to find “the right mix of individual privacy protection and provision for regulatory control”. One person who’s certainly not a fan is Dan Larimer. The Bitshares, EOS, and Steem founder is rustled by the fact that the Cardano white paper doesn’t cite his own dPOS work. He seethes:

Cardano’s Ouroboros algorithm is not mathematically secure due to bad assumptions regarding the relationship between stake and individual-judgment being distributed by the pareto principle. Furthemore, their algorithm is not “new” but a less secure slower variation of the DPOS algorithm I originally introduced in April 2014.
Larimer has his own platforms to protect, of course, so was never going to smile kindly on a competitor. Still, $24 billion for a decentralized anything seems like a lot of money for a product that exists only as a whole lot of documentation, one section of which is named Haddock.

XRP
Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of VaporwareRipple is a fully functioning company and one of the longest established players in the cryptocurrency space. It’s still working on building up those all-important banking partnerships, but at least it has a service to offer. But what about XRP, its centralized cryptocurrency without a purpose? Ripple claims to have signed up over 100 banks, but the trouble is none of them seem to be using XRP tokens for money transfer.

The NYT quotes Blocktower Capital’s Ari Paul as saying: ““I’m not aware of banks using or planning to use the XRP token at the scale of tens of billions of dollars necessary to support XRP’s valuation.” One Mexican financial company has committed to using XRP so far. And that’s it. Still, like all of the cryptocurrencies on this list, ripple has enriched its early adopters, and for investors who are sitting comfortably in profit, that’s reason enough for its existence.

Four Cryptocurrencies That Meet the Definition of VaporwareTo be fair to the likes of Tron and Cardano, any new cryptocurrency that shoots into the top 10 is liable to be labeled vaporware until proven otherwise. And it’s not as if these are the only coins rocketing in value: altcoins across the board, from the tiniest microcaps to the largest unicorns, are currently in the green. Even Kekcoin, a meme coin for frog worshippers, is up 68% on Cryptopia this week. Then again, with a total supply of just 11 million, Kekcoin can boast one attribute that none of the tokens on this list have – digital scarcity.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received yet another request to approve Wall Street bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This time, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) wishes to list five new ETFs, so-called leveraged and inverse funds which increase risk and reward.

Also read: African Central Banks Urged to Ditch Dollar and Buy Bitcoin

Wall Street Wants Bitcoin ETFs with Twice the Risk/Reward

Wall Street Goes Short, Gets Bear, with Proposed Risky Bitcoin ETFs
The trope for years has been bitcoin’s volatility, risk, is too great for the sober adults of professional finance to be bothered. That myth was thoroughly smashed on 4 January 2018 when the NYSE Arca filed a fifty page request with the SEC. Wall Street wants Direxion Asset Management’s five ETFs, known as leveraged or inverse funds. The proposed funds up the risk level by twice, in either direction, and are short term investments. They’re easily some of the riskiest funds put forward.

ETFs are prized because they’re traded like stocks with the muscle of mutual funds. The SEC has yet to approve bitcoin ETFs, and applications for rule-changes are stacking up. Some estimates have requests for the cryptocurrency to be formally listed at nearly a dozen. This year enthusiasts will learn the financial product’s fate, most experts believe.

Direxion is presently asking five funds be listed: Direxion Daily Bitcoin Bear 1X Shares, Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1.25X Bull Shares, Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1.5X Bull Shares, Direxion Daily Bitcoin 2X Bull Shares, and Direxion Daily Bitcoin 2X Bear Shares. If approved they’d trade on the NYSE’s Arca market. Investors could see their returns as much as double; they could also see losses compound in the other direction just as fast.

Wall Street Wants Bitcoin ETFs with Twice the Risk

Twice as Fast in Either Direction
The funds aren’t necessarily tethered to bitcoin’s spot price, but are instead a way to track bitcoin futures on markets such as those created by NYSE rivals Cboe and CME, with “investment results (before fees and expenses) that correlate positively to either 125%, 150%, or 200% the daily return of the target benchmark,” according to the filing.Wall Street Wants Bitcoin ETFs with Twice the Risk

That assumes a bull market, but, again, losses are multiplied as well which logically means these are for short term investing (longer options are available). ETFs would bring even more mainstreaming to bitcoin with regard to the broader investment community.

It’s a curious move, but the risks are sure to attract investment. One would assume the natural bitcoin price spikes would be enough for adrenaline junkies. But there is still widespread skepticism and worry about actually owning and holding bitcoin among Wall Street types. Nevertheless, such short-term volatility is something many traders value. Indeed the filing insists the Direxion ETFs “enhance competition among market participants, to the benefit of investors and the marketplace.”

The South Korean authorities will start inspecting major banks for their compliance with cryptocurrency regulations on Monday. This move follows the regulators’ recent announcement prohibiting the use of virtual bank accounts for anonymous trading.

Also read: Russian Regulators Draft Law to Restrict Crypto Mining, Payments, and Token Sales

Inspecting 6 Major Banks
Korean Government Starts Inspecting Major Banks for Crypto Regulation ComplianceThe South Korean Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), under the Financial Services Commission (FSC), and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said on Sunday, January 7, that they will jointly inspect 6 major banks for compliance of cryptocurrency regulation.

The inspection will take place between January 8 and 11. Woori Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank, Nonghyup Bank, Korea Development Bank (KDB), and Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) will be inspected.

This move follows the government’s clampdown on the use of virtual accounts for anonymous trading at the end of last month, as news.Bitcoin.com previously reported. Financial News described:

The FIU and FSS will check whether banks have properly implemented their anti-money laundering obligations to operate virtual accounts…The FIU has imposed more than 40 checklists on suspicious transactions, stipulating virtual currency as a ‘high risk’ transaction.
The Korea Herald commented, “It is rare for the two organizations to conduct a joint survey, a move that industry watchers viewed as beyond a watch on anti-money laundering measures by the banks and ultimately intended to cool the overheated market.”

Real-Name System Expected Around Jan 20
Korean Government Starts Inspecting Major Banks for Crypto Regulation ComplianceLast week, the FSS revealed that the amount of fiat deposits at crypto exchanges as of December 12 last year amounted to 2.067 trillion won [~USD$1.95 billion]. Furthermore, 111 virtual bank accounts were detected at the six aforementioned banks at the end of December, the news outlet detailed.

In an effort to end anonymous trading, the government has prohibited banks and crypto exchanges from both issuing new virtual accounts and adding new members to existing ones, as news.Bitcoin.com previously explained.

The government is developing a real-name identification system which is expected to be introduced around January 20. Joongang Daily elaborated:

The real name confirmation service that banks are building by the end of this month is a method of allowing deposits and withdrawals only when the account of the trader who is identified and the account of [the trader at] the virtual currency exchange are the same.

t looks as if Silicon Valley and Wall Street are coming together just to see who can shower cryptocurrency ventures with more money.

Also Read: Strong Cryptocurrency CFD Volumes Bring Record Revenues for Plus 500

Blocktower Capital Crypto Hedge Fund
Cryptocurrency Hedge Fund Headed by Ex-Goldman Sachs VP Raises $140 MillionBlocktower Capital is a cryptocurrency hedge fund headed by former Goldman Sachs vice president Matthew Goetz. The new venture was only launched in August 2017 and has already said to have raised about $140 million.

Investors in Blocktower reportedly include family offices and other entities such as venture capital firms such as Union Square Ventures LLC and Andreessen Horowitz.

Some of the raised funds were apparently redirected towards boosting the company’s staff, now estimated to sport eight executives. On Thursday Blocktower issued a statement that it hired Michael Bucella, who was also with Goldman Sachs since 2008. Bucella’s last role at the bank was related to multi-asset sales in Canada, where he headed strategic partnerships and business development.

Alpha Potential Is Abundant
Cryptocurrency Hedge Fund Headed by Ex-Goldman Sachs VP Raises $140 MillionOn its sparse website Blocktower Capital’s only description of its investment strategy, goals or operation is “bringing professional trading and portfolio management to an emerging digital asset class.” There is no mention of what cryptocurrencies they will focus on for trading, as well as whether they will invest in ICO tokens or stocks of any ‘blockchain’ companies.

However, CEO Goetz, described what is the opportunity the fund can capitalize on: “It’s a wildly inefficient market where alpha potential is abundant — more than anything we’ve seen in our careers. We think it’s a rare opportunity for investors. It’s not often there’s a new capital market being born in front of you.”

This sentiment appears to be shared among more and more investors in both the finance and the venture capital worlds. A few notable examples include legendary value investor Bill Miller who now holds half of his hedge fund in bitcoin, TechCrunch and CrunchFund founder Michael Arrington‘s $100 million XRP hedge fund, billionaire investor Michael Novogratz and most recently Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

Redditor moodyrocket is coming to terms with having his “life savings” wiped out this week, after $34,000 of crypto was stolen from his newly acquired Nano Ledger hardware wallet. The device was compromised, not due to any flaws in its design, but thanks to a man in the middle attack that saw the reseller insert their own recovery seed. The buyer then unwittingly began using the wallet, unaware that the default seed they were using had not been randomly assigned by the manufacturer. He explained:

I have not used my Ledger in a week, today I decide to check the value of my XRP, Litecoin and Dash only to discover that all of them showed up as zero and had been transferred somewhere else yesterday all around the same time at 7:30pm. I am not sure how this is possible as I have not access my Ledger in a week.
The victim was initially confused as to how the attack could have been successfully pulled off, before eventually twigging that the Ebay seller must have tampered with the device. After sharing his story on Reddit, Ledger reached out to moodyrocket and encouraged him to report the crime to “bring the eBay seller to justice”.

Man Has Cryptocurrency Stolen from Hardware Wallet Supplied by a Reseller
The fraudulent documentation that came with the wallet.
An Elaborate Hoax
The odds of the British-based victim getting his cryptocurrency back are remote, but his loss can at least be the community’s gain. The widespread attention the tale has received serves to highlight the dangers to anyone considering purchasing a hardware wallet from a third party. Auction sites, unaffiliated vendors, and merchants who have no formal partnership with wallet manufacturers should all be avoided.

Man Has Cryptocurrency Stolen from Hardware Wallet Supplied by a Reseller
This sheet should not come with your Ledger wallet.
The vast majority of resellers stocking wallets such as Ledgers and Trezors have no intention of meddling with the devices. But it only takes one unscrupulous entity to interfere with a wallet and pass it on to the unsuspecting buyer. The Ebay seller who duped moodyrocket had gone to great lengths to orchestrate the scam. The seed is meant to be generated by the device, but this purchase came with “scratch off” paper that revealed the seed.

Despite the security of hardware devices themselves, the weakest link is always the people using them. Even a raft of anti-theft tech can’t atone for human error. Had the victim reset the device and created a new seed he would have been fine. When presented with convincingly forged documentation, though, he naturally felt safe in sticking with the default seed. Purchasing hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer may take longer and cost more, but the alternatives just aren’t worth it.

Would you feel comfortable buying a hardware wallet from a third party? Let us know in the comments section below.

The South Korean Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), under the Financial Services Commission (FSC), and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said on Sunday, January 7, that they will jointly inspect 6 major banks for compliance of cryptocurrency regulation.

The inspection will take place between January 8 and 11. Woori Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank, Nonghyup Bank, Korea Development Bank (KDB), and Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) will be inspected.

This move follows the government’s clampdown on the use of virtual accounts for anonymous trading at the end of last month, as news.Bitcoin.com previously reported. Financial News described:

The FIU and FSS will check whether banks have properly implemented their anti-money laundering obligations to operate virtual accounts…The FIU has imposed more than 40 checklists on suspicious transactions, stipulating virtual currency as a ‘high risk’ transaction.
The Korea Herald commented, “It is rare for the two organizations to conduct a joint survey, a move that industry watchers viewed as beyond a watch on anti-money laundering measures by the banks and ultimately intended to cool the overheated market.”

Real-Name System Expected Around Jan 20
Korean Government Starts Inspecting Major Banks for Crypto Regulation ComplianceLast week, the FSS revealed that the amount of fiat deposits at crypto exchanges as of December 12 last year amounted to 2.067 trillion won [~USD$1.95 billion]. Furthermore, 111 virtual bank accounts were detected at the six aforementioned banks at the end of December, the news outlet detailed.

In an effort to end anonymous trading, the government has prohibited banks and crypto exchanges from both issuing new virtual accounts and adding new members to existing ones, as news.Bitcoin.com previously explained.

The government is developing a real-name identification system which is expected to be introduced around January 20. Joongang Daily elaborated:

The real name confirmation service that banks are building by the end of this month is a method of allowing deposits and withdrawals only when the account of the trader who is identified and the account of [the trader at] the virtual currency exchange are the same.