Top Five Stories from The Last Week
Bitcoin Surges Past $5,700 in Hours: Experts Explain Factors of Overnight Rally What happened? Over several hours on May 3, the price of bitcoin spiked from around $5,300 to over $5,700 in major markets, allowing the crypto market to gain more than $7 billion in a single day. Why did this happen? After bitcoin's price surge this week, Cointelegraph took some expert opinions that could explain how the top crypto hit its highest peak of the past six months. Read more here. WSJ: Facebook Seeks Reported $1 Billion for FB Coin Amid Talks With Visa, MasterCard What is this all about? Social media giant Facebook is seeking investments worth $1 billion for its rumored cryptocurrency stablecoin, and is talking to major payment networks Visa and MasterCard about potential support, along with payment processor First Data Corp. What are the rumors based on? The project, known as FB Coin, has already been rumored for about a year, with various options for its form, including an option for payments on a combination of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. The interest in a fiat-centric FB Coin has come from within cryptocurrency circles, specifically in the form of VC investment mogul Tim Draper. Read more here. Vitalik Buterin Tweets ETH Development Proposals After Elon Musk's 'Ethereum' Tweet Bait What is this all about? Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur and Tesla CEO, and Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin engaged in a relatively one-sided Twitter discussion this week after Musk tweeted one word: "Ethereum." What did Buterin responde? In response, Buterin extended an invitation for Musk to attend Ethereum's DevCoin in October, laying out a five-point list of his top picks for the network's development: the creation of a "globally accessible financial system, including payments, store of value [...] insurance," as well as a disintermediated ETH-powered digital identity infrastructure. He also proposed the creation of registries and certificates that would be digitally signed, certified and even revoked on-chain. Read more here. Microsoft Releases Blockchain Manager App What is this all about? Microsoft announced its fully managed Azure Blockchain Service in a press release on May 2. What is this for? The new blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform will purportedly allow users to build blockchain applications on preconfigured networks and "simplifies the formation, management, and governance of consortium blockchain networks," according to Microsoft's head of corporate communications, Frank Shaw. Details here. Singapore Regulator Recognizes Potential of Blockchain for Cross-Border Payments What happened? Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said that blockchain has potential for cross-border payments, but the agency "does not see much" in retail bank digital currencies. How does he see the further development? "The next wave of central bank blockchain projects can make further progress by bringing technology exploration together with policy questions about the future of cross-border payments," he said. Details here. Prefer video instead of text? Check out our latest Hodler's Digest | | | | |