Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is taking heat from Bitcoin belivers for compairing it to the early, and now forgotten music P2P sharing program "Napster". 

Speaking to Bloomberg in Singapore, Garlinghouse said:

"Some may look back at Bitcoin and say that it is the Napster of digital assets. What I mean by that is that Napster was the first to digitize music and demonstrate that you can do a lot of cool things with that.

But ultimately they were circumventing trademark laws, they were circumventing royalty payments and then government stepped in and Napster wasn’t successful. But Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora were successful.

I think what you will find is that maybe the next generation of digital assets will end up solving some of the problems that Bitcoin set out to solve."

It's an interesting battle as Bitcoin faces criticism around issues of scaling - leaving some questioning Bitcoin's long-term usefulness as a currency, and Ripple faces criticism for lack of decentralization, one of Bitcoin's main components.

First off let me say - nobody here is angry at John Oliver.  We get it - it's a comedy show. I'd say at best 'a bit disappointed' is the general response when the topic came up in our morning meeting and we played it for those who missed it last night.

But since it's what the cryptocurrency world is buzzing about today, let's take a deeper look just for fun.

As I journalist, this did indeed have the signs of a bit of hit piece. While I can’t say John Oliver was technically wrong about anything, or lying - there are a couple red flags. Some strange and deliberate choices his producers and writers made.

Look at the only people they chose to show on the pro-cryptocurrency side. Some dumb sounding guy bragging about making millions, Carlos from Bitconnect, and Brock from EOS sounding insane at the end babbling about his wedding at Burning Man on stage.

They chose those people - in an industry literally full of genius engineers, scientists, coders. Honest and good people too - but they chose the most ridiculous ones they could.

What I wish they didn't leave out is - the people they showed are mocked inside the cryptocurrency world as well! We make fun of these people too!  I feel like someone unfamiliar with cryptocurrency would watch this and think these people are embraced as our leaders or at least accepted here - they definitely are not.

To top it off,  the one person they cut to and say gave an ‘accurate explanation’ - they made sure still looked stupid in some ridiculous bitcoin costume.

I talk to and interview people in the cryptocurrency world for a living - I do not come accross people like the ones John Oliver showed very often.  It took a deliberate effort to select this batch of of idiots to feature.  Sure, maybe just because they’re the funniest.

But still - could have shown a few of the idiots in crypto, then maybe a couple of the many sane and frankly brilliant people in this space.  Once again, not angry - just would have been nice, and a more accurate overview for his viewers.

The bulls are back! For the first time in 3 days - all coins in the top 100 are in the green.

Financial analysts were watching for one key factor that could have sent things falling further - the market dipping below their previous recent lows hit on Feb 6th, which would have put Bitcoin in the $7400's.

But thankfully, that never happened - the market found bottom around $8500, giving the green light to the bulls, Bitcoin has risen to $9,402 at time of publishing this article and altcoins are joining in the recovery as well.

$36 billion has been added to the overall market cap in the last 24hrs, a sign that unless any unexpected bad news pops up, recovery is now in full swing!

About 3 weeks ago we covered the "Bitcoiin" ICO that actor Steven Seagal was promoting (read that article here).

Now, the New Jersey Bureau of Securities has issued them a cease and desist order.

The celebrity endorsement itself may have also been illegal, citing a previous SEC directive that any celebrity endorsement of an ICO should disclose the nature, scope, and amount of compensation paid to the celebrity. 

The statement from the NJ Bureau of Securities reads:

“The Bitcoiin Websites do not disclose what expertise, if any, Steven Seagal has to ensure that the Bitcoiin investments are appropriate and in compliance with federal and state securities laws. Additionally, there are no disclosures as to the nature, scope, and amount of compensation paid by Bitcoiin in exchange for Steven Seagal’s promotion of the Bitcoiin investments.”

While there are no new announcements posted in direct response to the cease and desist, an older post from when Bitcoiin first started receiving criticism titled 'PRESS RELEASE: TO CLARIFY SOME FACTS AND RESPONSE ON ALLEGATIONS' says:

"...we are not an MLM company or any Pyramid Scheme or Scamming people, all of these allegations are false and just an attempt to discourage people from becoming a part of the Bitcoiin2Gen, Crypto-Currencies, and Crypto-economies."

Unfortunately, even if everything they say is true - that leaves plenty of red flags.  The site owners are remaining anonymous (remember Bitconnect?) and they're promoting an Ethereum based ERC20 token but named it after a misspelling of Bitcoin - which appears to be a bold attempt to confuse people new to cryptocurrency.

It's been a rough day in cryptocurrency. There's nothing here worthy of panic, but still, you're probably wondering the reasons behind today's dip, so let's dive in.

First - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is asking exchanges to register with them, as exchanges.

“If a platform offers trading of digital assets that are securities and operates as an ‘exchange,’ as defined by the federal securities laws, then the platform must register with the SEC as a national securities exchange or be exempt from registration.” the SEC said in a statement today.

Their concern is that when people hear the word "exchange" they associate it with the stock exchange, and all the rules and regulations that come with it. Not even the big ones currently are registered as such.  For example, Coinbase operates by getting money transmission licenses state by state, and Gemini is licensed where it resides, with the New York State Department.

Secondly - fears of a Binance hack. There's two options being debated at time of publishing.  Some saying Binance's API was exploited (this allows for people using other programs, or trading bots, to interact with Binance to facilitate the trades).

Binance however points to a phishing site with a URL that looks very close to the real thing - meaning nothing was hacked, some people were just tricked.

According to Binance founder CZ, the crooks won't get away with it either way, tweeting;

"We have localized the irregular trades, they will be reversed.  All funds are safe, thanks to the fast alarm.  Please learn to secure your accounts against phishing."

Third - Mt Gox comes to haunt us again. For those new to crypto, it was an exchange site that ended up a huge mess with a lot of stolen bitcoin (the full story is much longer, that's the basics).

The bankruptcy trustee for Mt Gox came out today and put some fear into the market, that a lot of the Bitcoin they're sitting on will be sold soon in order to begin paying off their creditors. They're still holding $1.9 Billion worth, and says they plan to offload them soon.

So, it's just one of those days.  While any 1 of these probably wouldn't have a huge effect on the market, all 3 at once has made today a rough ride.

Bitcoin mining costs by country. Image: EliteFixtures

EliteFixtures has released a study (link) using the average electricity costs in each country to show the total power costs to earn 1 bitcoin via mining. 

Their parent company Crescent Electric Supply previously did a study breaking down the costs by US state, which can be seen here.