The volatility of crypto makes it impractical to use as an everyday transactional currency. Until the markets mature and price levels out, the only hope of mass adoption lies in the foundation of a viable “stable coin”, or a cryptocurreny pegged to a stable asset like the U.S. dollar. Many believe that the emergence of a strong stable crypto will herald an exodus from fiat into the world of internet money.

Currently there are more than 8 coins vying for this position on CoinMarketCap.com. They all have slightly different constitutions and proposed uses. Here are three of the most popular, and what makes them distinct.

1. True USD - An ERC-20 token pegged to USD. TUSD is a product of TrustToken, a platform which will eventually have tokens pegged to other assets like bonds and real estate. TUSD does not currently have many trading pairs, but it can be bought with BTC on Binance, Bittrex, Upbit and others.

2. Dai - From decentralized autonomous organization MakerDao, Dai is pegged to USD but backed by Ethereum. It runs on the ETH blockchain as a smart contract and is therefore public and transparent. Dai is not yet available on major exchanges, but can be found on Bibox and Hitbtc.

3. Havven - (Nomin) Also a decentralized organization, Havven is a blockchain whereby stable coins called Nomin are transacted. Havven is still speculative as it hasn't been tested on exchanges yet. Buy on Kucoin or Gate.io.

For now, coins like Tether and True USD are mainly used are safe-haven during Bitcoin corrections, though it should be noted that trading any crypto this way comes with risks. None of these products are perfect, they all have flaws, questionable origins, or over-complicated whitepapers. In some ways it has become a race for the prize. One thing is certain: any semblance of mainstream adoption relies heavily on the promise of a stable, fast, secure, and available medium.

Popular exchange Gemini announced a major new hire today -  New York Stock Exchange's Chief Information Officer, Robert Cornish.

“Rob is a tremendous addition to our team. He will ensure that Gemini continues to deliver the best platform experience to our customers as possible and set the standards of excellence for the cryptocurrency industry as a whole. Rob is globally recognized for his abilities in leading high-performing engineering teams, his expertise in exchange and matching-engine architecture, and running high-throughput platforms that are both secure and resilient” said co-founder Tyler Winklevoss.

Gemini founders the "Winklevoss Twins" best known for suing Mark Zuckerberg claiming he stole their idea (and got a settlement for it) have aggressively been pursuing the goal of running a company in the unregulated cryptocurrency space that still functions with approval from the government - even if it's not needed, yet.

It's an idea that makes a lot of sense if regulations are coming - imagine what they may be, function that way, and when it happens they won't need to change anything.

Most expect any government regulation regarding cryptocurrencies will likely sound a lot like the current rules for the stock market, which is why hiring Wall Street pro's could be a very smart long-term move.

Despite the 2018 bear markets, “institutional money”, a generic term to denote big banks, governments, and corporations, has slowly been making its way into the crypto industry. Although it may be difficult to see on a chart, here are several large companies exploring new patents in blockchain related tech as of July 2018.

Mastercard International
Blockchain powered payment card verification system.

Alibaba Group
Adjusting account balance on a blockchain.

Cisco Technology Inc.
Decentralized asset tracking for supply chain and inventory management.

Fujitsu Limited
Secure data sharing in a distributed network.

General Electric Company
Distributed manufacturing history.

Moog, Inc.
“Outer Space Digital Logistics System”: Traceable manufactured parts, 3Dprinting.

Sony Corp
Digital rights management.

Walmart Stores Inc.
Access to locked spaces using cryptographic keys.
Medical records stored on a blockchain, and obtaining them from a wearable device
Registration-Based User-Interface Architecture
Payment sharing system for vendors

International Business Machines Corporation
Shelf-life management for food products
“Blockchain Gaming”
Verifying news on a blockchain.

This is only a small sample of current blockchain applications. Also, It’s important to note that
these are only patents; they don’t necessarily prove development. However, it is evidence that
businesses are placing bets, or at least hedging, on a future of blockchain.

Being called the "J5" for short - America, the U.K., Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands are teaming up to form an International Task Force called "Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement" with the goal of sharing intelligence to track down tax cheaters.

Their specific targets - tax evidaders using offshore accounts, and cryptocurrencies.

"The unique thing about the J5 is the operational collaboration between five countries on tackling professional enablers that facilitate offshore tax crime, cybercrime and the threat of cryptocurrencies to tax administrations, as well as making best use of internationally available data and technology.” said Hans van der Vlist, General Director of FIOD.

More news on this will come "late 2018" according to a press release from the IRS.

Full information can be found at http://www.irs.gov/J5

“The premiere was a success!” said Dieter Müller, head of communications for the city of Zug, Switzersland, which is one of the more affluent cities in the country.  The city just wrapped up their first test run of a new voting system that relies entirely on blockchain technology!

Feedback from those involved has been overwhelmingly positive - "Almost all participants found it easy to vote digitally" says local news outlet Swissinfo.

The factors they evaluated to determinate if it was a success include voter privacy & secrecy, and that votes were both verifiable, and unchangeable.

While this pilot program was just a 'test' with a non-binding vote, Swiss officials believe the ability for someone to have a digital identity secured by blockchain technology could eventually help citizens streamline many other aspects of how they interact with the government - from filing taxes to paying traffic and parking tickets.

Keeping with a common theme among true blockchain evangelists, the City of Zug has also committed to sharing their code and keeping it open source, saying:

"We believe that this technology should not belong to a single company. We will build the e-voting platform 'Open Source' so that people can understand what the technology is and how it works. We want to encourage more people to develop blockchain-based applications for governments worldwide."

There's a similar program also entering a test phase in the United States, specifically West Virginia.  The program there will begin with US Military personal currently overseas, allowing them to vote in their states Senate election remotely. They believe there are some major advantages to both the voter and the state, and that the ability to vote digitally and securely will one day replace mailing absentee ballots to citizens currently outside of the country.

All of this brings up an interesting possibility - the masses are likely to be introduced to blockchain technology first though something besides cryptocurrency.  But naturally, once the public sees how it improves one area of life, seeing the benefits cryptocurrencies offers over older traditional financial systems also becomes more apparent.

While most of the crypto markets have seen declining prices recently, Binance Coin (BNB) has been on a steady uptrend.

Many attribute this to the high standard upheld by the exchange; Binance.com is proving itself to be a responsible and discerning marketplace. Each coin undergoes a selective process to determine listing eligibility.

Others claim the growth is due to Binance’s new decentralized sister exchange, soon to be released in 2018 and also using BNB as a medium. Huobi Pro’s HADAX has seen significant increase in volume and number of listed coins, and there’s no reason to believe that Binance Chain will be any different.

While many investors and traders are anxiously awaiting the rollout, there will be a few major differences between Binance Chain and Binance’s main platform.

More coins: The Binance crew will have much less, if any, control over what coins get listed. This is the nature of a DEX. “Most likely anybody can list any coin” founder CZ stated in an interview with Bloomberg.

While this sounds like a bonus to crypto enthusiasts, it’s important to remember that CZ and Binance currently choose to list only projects they believe have integrity. So the decentralized counterpart may be lacking in quality tokens compared to what you are used to.

Slower, with higher fees: According to CZ, the DEX will require much more processing power. At least until significant improvements in tech, expect a snail’s pace and heavy cost.

Less customer support: By nature, decentralized exchanges are automated. While Binance.com is known for superb customer support, be prepared to handle your own issues when using Chain.

In general, DEX’s are made to be community-run, open-source marketplaces. They are meant to work outside the control of a central authority. This means they can’t be shut down or otherwise censored. While Binance Chain will likely be more user-friendly than other DEXs like IDEX or EtherDelta, don’t expect the same quality experience as their flagship.

However, since decentralized exchanges operate through a peer-to-peer blockchain, you can rest easier knowing that your assets are distributed among thousands of nodes instead of sitting in a central location. All thanks to the security of cryptography.

The Sichuan province of China has been called the "Bitcoin mining capitol" of the country - and it's just been hit with harsh weather, heavy rains - followed by major flooding.

Initial reports out of the region are claiming losses of "tens of thousands" of mining rigs, worth millions in hardware and even more in lost mining fees.

According to Chinese news outlet Jinse (link)...

"[Translated] Recently, continuous storms hit Sichuan Mianyang, Guangyuan, Chengdu, Aba, Meishan and other places, causing floods. The collapse of the mountains and the rapid rise of the river have caused local hydropower and communication facilities to suffer from various degrees of damage. At the same time, in areas such as Sichuan and Aba, which are rich in electricity and electricity, these areas have become a centralized area for cryptocurrency mines. In the flood, some mines were not spared, and tens of thousands of mining machines were flooded. Inundation, heavy losses."

The good news is, the loss on mining power hasn't had a measureable effect on the Bitcoin network overall - there has been no noticeable decline in transaction confirmation speeds or hash rates.

It is estimated up to 70% of Bitcoin miners are located in China, where low cost coal and hydraulic power gives miners a large cost advantage.

Just announced today, the good news is - the ability to exchange between fiat cash and cryptocurrency is finally coming to the top exchange, Binance.com

The bad news is... just for those in Uganda, for now.

While Binance.com is hands down the current exchange of choice for cryptocurrency traders, anyone's who's used it has dealt with the hassle of cashing out - you can't!  All you can do is send your crypto to an exchange that does.

So why just Uganda?  Binance, to their credit has a track record of not expanding to offer more than they can deliver.  In past articles (link) we've talked about them temporarily stopping new users from joining, so the site wouldn't become slow to their existing members. When they expanded their network capibilities, they allowed people to join again.

Uganda is likely being chosen for a similar reason - a small market to work out the kinks, basically a beta test so all the bugs are worked out before they're dealing with top global fiat currencies like USD and high demand.

To get people to participate they're even offering members in Uganda a month with no trading fees, and giving out over 10,000 of their official exchange coin 'BNB' as rewards.

You can read their full announcement here.

Give Crypto outlines their mission as "Our mission is to financially empower people by distributing cryptocurrency globally."

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong further describes the orginization's goal:

“We will raise funds from cryptocurrency holders, and distribute small payments to people in need around the world — all using cryptocurrency. Initial recipients will be people living in emerging markets, especially those going through financial crisis"

The organization has just been announced, and Armstrong says it will begin by them traveling and choosing recipients in person, before launching a wider-reaching plan.

Now here's how helping the poor, and ushering in mass adoption could happen together:

In underdeveloped nations, they never had telephone land-lines, but surprisingly - they have cellphones.

Their technology skipped a generation.  It was too expensive for a phone company to come and lay thousands of miles of wires for little profit.  But setting up cell phone towers is much less expensive, companies saw profit potential, so that's exactly what happened.

Here's how creative they've already been with what they have, using other digital assets. In underdeveloped nations where cell phones function only on "pre-paid" minutes, want a gallon of milk?  You can pay for that by transferring 30 minutes of your pre-paid cell phone time from your account, to the sellers.

The prepaid cell phone minutes are traded and exchanged like they were cash - now imagine how easy to understand cryptocurrency will be to these people!

While we often focus on 'whales' making big buys and sells - but don't underestimate the effect millions of people transacting small amounts could have on cryptocurrency markets.

Armstrong's goal for the charity is to have it overseeing over $1 Billion in cryptocurrency distribution to those in need, within just 2 years.

Learn more at GiveCrypto.org