Crypto prices may be reaching yearly lows, but news in blockchain tech couldn’t be more positive. Large financial firms like Citi are offering new investment options. An ETF may actually get SEC approval. Gemini unveiled a new stable coin. And we’ve seen more growth in crypto industry than ever before. To drive this point home, let’s look at the new roadmap for Ethereum 2.0, according to the announcement released this week.

Beacon chain client - a new sidechain that will link to the mainchain to allow improved scalability. 7 different development teams are researching this new process. Each team is focused on a different coding language.

Aggregate signatures - a method of limiting the bottleneck of on-chain transactions. eWASM - a replacement for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum will likely use what is called a “delayed execution model”. Delaying smart contract execution in theory would mean that shards are responsible for transactions and storing data only. Smart contracts would be transacted in 2nd layer solutions. eWASM will increase transaction throughput.

Rocket Pool - the new version of Proof of Stake which works with Casper, Ethereum’s consensus algorithm.

This detailed info is from Darren Langley, senior developer with Rocket Pool. According to Langley, scalability and new design will be the main features of the next generation of Ethereum.

So while the price of Ethereum my fall to sub-$100 levels, don’t be fooled into thinking this is the end of the worlds 2nd largest blockchain.

With all the talks of regulations coming, and probably soon - this isn't a huge surprise.  The companies that will be effected want to make sure politicians hear their viewpoints before they sign anything into law.

What we know so far is that the lobbying group will be called the "Blockchain Association" and the new organization is backed with funding from Polychain Capital, Coinbase, Circle, Digital Currency Group, and several others.

Speaking to the Washington Post, lawyer for Coinbase Mike Lempres said:

"The Blockchain Association is an effort to get the preeminent companies in the space together know they're hearing from companies that welcome regulation when it's appropriate ... We're not companies looking to game the system, but trying to develop a legal and regulatory system that'll stand the test of time" 

As far as more specifics, I must warn our readers that these details are unconfirmed rumors at this point, from sources unwilling to go on the record yet. When attempting to confirm these rumors I've only received the response of "we cannot confirm or deny" and some have just ignored requests altogether.

But rumored to be heading the group is Kristin Smith, an experienced and connected lobbist and former congressional staffer. Until this week, Smith was with the major lobbist firm Thompson Coburn, but we have confirmed she has left the firm to move on to something else.

Supposedly, before the end of the week we will know the full details following an official
announcement.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that 2018 is shaping up to be biggest growth year for e-commerce to date. Amazon stock is through the roof, several of your friends own Shopify stores, and you actually do buy your pet food online. You are probably have things you need to order from Amazon right now.

And yet, statistics show that the majority of retail purchases still happen in brick and mortar stores. We’re not quite ready to purchase all our clothing and shoes without seeing and trying them on first. Raincheck is a company that began in 2014 to aggregate data between online and offline stores (O2O) and in turn use that information to help the growth of e-commerce. It was a method to track and predict product sales and online product discovery.

With RainToken, they are attempting to take on the issue of loyalty credits. Loyalty credits are the digital points you receive for shopping frequently at the same store, whether it is in airline miles or cash-back programs. While these points often function as a digital currency, there’s no way to transfer or exchange them between businesses. RainToken is a shot at creating a marketplace for these assets through the trade and transfer of Raintokens on the Stellar blockchain.

Loyalty points can credit card schemes will still exist, but Raincheck is hoping to turn the status quo into a decentralized ledger where these points can be swapped for their tokens. While most people are members of a loyalty program, very few actually use or redeem their credits. The idea is that a marketplace for sharing these points will lead to more usage, more loyalty, and more shopping.

These tokens will essentially be smart contracts. The Stellar chain was chosen because of it’s fast speed, low transaction fees, and micro-transaction focus. Stellar upholds strict KYC identification standards and is proven when it comes to security. The Stellar blockchain is purposely simple, as opposed to Ethereum’s flexible and complicated smart contract network.

The public token sale begins in Q4 for this year. Raincheck plans to have a mobile wallet, a cash-back system, and a full ledger completed before 2020. If you are interested in learning more about the platform or the history of Raincheck, visit Raintoken.org

It's a fairly simple idea.  Currently, an ICO faces different rules in each of the 28 nations in the European Union.

European Parliament member Ashley Fox is proposing a process an ICO could go though to verify their legitimacy, once passed they receive an 'ICO passport' that allows them to raise funds from all of those 28 countries.

“What I’m aiming to do is bring transparency to ICO’s, by allowing intermediaries to perform the required due diligence. And the effect of this will be to provide an EU-wide law which will give a passport to the whole market. ICO’s can carry on, but if they don’t fill the [criteria], they won’t benefit. (This new law) will give them a passport to the whole of the EU market, and I also think it increases transparency. Right now you have 28 countries, some have national rules for raising money and some don’t have any rules at all. If you raise money in France, for example, you can only use that money in France.” says Fox.

If it all pans out smoothly, it could be a huge boost to startups taking the ICO route for funding.

But what could go wrong? Well, it would take all 28 nations to agree on the proposal and be willing to honor the 'ICO passports' or the idea is dead in the water, and the specifics of what an ICO would need to do to receive one isn't clearly laid our yet.

However it's important to note no one is proposing that ICO's without this 'passport' cannot fundraise in the EU. ICO's without it will simply conduct business the same way they have been for the last few years - on a country by country basis.

Wrapping up Global Crypto Press' on the ground coverage of this year's Tech Crunch Disrupt in San Francisco we're ending on a big note on the future of cryptocurrency from the CEO of the biggest exchange, at least as far as user base size - Brian Armstrong of Coinbase.

What he sees coming is massive, and he compares it with NASDAQ, envisioning hundreds if not thousands of tokenized digital assets being traded around the clock.

It's a topic he's probably sick of hearing... to be honest, even i'm sick of hearing (or reading) in every cryptocurrency communtiy online - when will Coinbase add new coins, and which will they be?  But this time the answer was a lot more exciting than the 'you'll have to wait and see' that Coinbase usually gives us.

Host of the discussion, Fitz Tepper asked:

"I still feel like... everyone's watching for what you guys at next, like, do you think that's a problem? And how do you move past it to where you can just add 100 and not have the price freak out and not have people watching like that?"

Coinbase's CEO responded with:

"I mean I certainly look forward to a day where we add a new asset to Coinbase and it's a non event and it almost becomes routine and boring." and continued "It will get there... because I think there's going to be, you know, hundreds of on the platform within, you know, years and I think there could be millions someday."

Millions of tokens? To take that literally seems a bit crazy, but tens of thousands? Absolutely possible! But how would we get there? Armstrong believes in the somewhat-near future, a company tokenizing assets and making them available to the public will simply be standard, saying:

"I think in five years, most startups that are created will have some kind of at least tech startups will have some kind of token associated with it, because that's just how you move value around on the internet now.

It makes sense that any company out there who, you know, has a cap table, they should have their own token, every open source project, every charity, potentially every you know, fund or these new types of decentralized organizations, these new types of decentralized apps, they're all going to have their own tokens. And so, you know, we want to be the bridge all over the world where people come and they they take fiat currency and they can get it into these different cryptocurrencies."

Of course, before we can get excited about what may come in the future, first we must deal with the reality of where things stand today.

Until regulators define the rules on dealing with digital tokenized assets, the majority of which fall under the classification of a 'security' and therefore bound to oversight from the SEC - Brian Armstrong, like so many other are forced to keep their dreams on hold.

Decisions made by the SEC over the coming months will decide if these dreams become a reality.

August was a mixed month for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin rose by more than 10% while other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin had double digit losses. Ethereum and Ripple declined by 30% and 20% respectively. YTD, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin have declined by 40%, 60%, 68%, and 83% respectively. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies started the month at $260 billion. 
Last month, the biggest news in the cryptocurrency sector was the decision by the SEC to reject nine Exchange Traded Funds’ (ETF) proposals. This was a highly anticipated news by market participants because it would mean more demand by institutional investors. The SEC rejected the proposals, saying that they exposed investors to a lot of risk. The senior management of the SEC later announced that they would review the decision, which was made by junior staff members.

This month, traders will wait for the senior management’s decision after reviewing the ETFs. If one or more ETFs will be accepted, it could mean a short-term price hike of the cryptocurrencies. However, in the long-term, the decision could mean nothing for the currencies. Good evidence of this is the decision by the CBOE and CME to list Bitcoin futures in December last year. Traders anticipated that this would attract more demand by institutional traders. Instead, most of them placed short bets, which is a major reason why their prices collapsed this year.

Apart from the Bitcoin ETFs, traders will focus on Ethereum. The Ethereum network was created to provide application developers with a safe and reliable platform to build applications. To access the platform, the developers are required to pay using ETH Gas. This has led to the criticism that ETH could become valueless because the developers can continue to use the network without paying. These concerns have been shared by the founder of Ethereum Foundation, Vitalik Buterin. It is also the reason why the price of ETH has remained within a narrow range near the YTD low. Last week, the announcement by CBOE that it would list ETH futures provided no catalyst for the currency.

Traders will also focus on cryptocurrency fraud. In recent weeks, several criminal activities have been reported. Bloomberg reported that Robert Mueller was investigating a former Bitcoin executive who was accused of transferring fraud money using Bitcoin. If he is indicted, it could call for more regulations to prevent money laundering. Another fraud that will be watched is the Bitcoin Dark, a fraudulent cryptocurrency that has seen its price soar by more than 270% in what is being viewed as a pump and dump scheme.

Events play an important role in the cryptocurrencies sector. It is during these events that experts talk about the future of the currencies. Of course, some of the words from these experts are taken with a pinch of salt because they tend to have conflicts of interest. Some other participants are usually well-placed government sources who have a role in regulating the industry. This month, several high-profile events will take place.

On September 6, the Blockchain Conference for Software Engineers will take place in Atlanta. The goal of this event will be to share insights on ways to build quality decentralized apps and infrastructure. On 20th, the Asset Backed Crypto Summit will take place in Lisbon, Portugal. This event will showcase startups that have their crypto projects backed by common asses like gold, silver, and lithium.

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The exchange took place today as part of a wider discussion on the topics of blockchain and banking.

Hosted by TechCrunch Editor-at-large Mike Butcher, the discussion included Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Michael Arrington who is one of the original founders of TechCrunch in 2005 but has since moved on to other ventures, including some in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.

Turns out Arrington and Garlinghouse go way back as well - when TechCrunch sold to AOL, the current Ripple CEO was one of the people inside AOL who helped make the deal happen.

As Editor of Global Crypto Press - i'm all too familiar with what comes next - it's something not only our own team here is split on, but the entire cryptocurrency community. 

On one hand, you have people who see banks turning to blockchain as part of a natural evolution of the technology.  On the other hand, die-hard cryptocurrency enthusiasts who see this tech as a means to an end for corporate controlled banking altogether - and anyone helping bring them into our world is undoubtedly evil.

To my surprise, TechCrunch's Mike Butcher chose this as the first thing to address, asking the Ripple CEO:

"The crypto libertarians to this day rail against ripple and XRP, and anyone who will deal with them... some of them actually literally called you the devil - so, are you?"

Garlinghouse responded:

"Look I think it's interesting place to start in part because I think there are a lot of religious zealots in the crypto space. And I think people believe things in a way that you would kind of describe as religious zealotry, ripple took a contrarian view pretty early in our evolution and said, look, if you want to really revolutionize the way payments work, if you really want to revolutionize the way transactions work in this regard, it's not gonna happen by everybody giving up their existing infrastructure and just switching to something new as much as I am actually a bull on Bitcoin. 

The Bitcoin blockchain is not trying to be one ledger to rule them. All ripple invented, is series of technologies built upon the XRP ledger that allows institutions, banks, and even in some cases governments, to take advantage of these technologies and dramatically accelerate the nature of transactions fully into talking points. But I'm trying to explain the thing I'm getting to is simple. The idea that the people who say that ripple is somehow that your word the devil, it's because we were partnering with the man we decided, if you want to enable an internet of value, got to connect the repositories of value - and the repositories of value are the banks."

Now to be clear, I own no XRP - and wouldn't call myself a fan.  But i'd be lying to say I think Garlinghouse is wrong. 

Just pause for second and honestly consider how ridiculous someone sounds making the case that blockchain is a superior method of both transferring funds and record keeping - and then saying they expect banks not to use it. That's literally everything a bank does, so of course they're keeping up with the latest tech that does it the best.  People expecting anything else are among this childish part of the cryptocurrency world that occasionally makes me cringe - your heart is in the right place, but it's a fantasy.

Point is - Ripple or some other company doing the exact same thing was bound to pop up, and when it did I couldn't have been any less surprised.  If Ripple is evil, it's an evil that would have happened with or without Brad Garlinghouse.

This isn't to say everything the Ripple CEO said had me nodding my head in agreement.

At one point, host Mike Butcher asked Garlinghouse about his 'general view' on Ethereum, in which Garlinghouse responded by pointing out that virtually all of the projects built on it's blockchain so far have proven only to be largely "experimental" and have "solved no real-world problems".

That's a statement I don't take issue with - I take issue with who's saying it. 

A deep look into Ripple's relationships with the banks, and it seems pretty damn experimental too.  When you look at the specifics of when Ripple announces a new relationship with a bank, more often than not you learn that 'experimenting' is exactly what the banks are doing with Ripple.  They're agreeing to try it out, not replace what their doing with any of Ripple's tech, and never by using the actual XRP token.

To understand where Ripple actually stands currently, compared to how they are hyped up by their fans, see what Garlinghouse himself recently told CNBC "You know, by the end of next year (2019), I would certainly hope that we would see you know in the order of... dozens  (of banks using their technology)" - that statement makes Ripple's true position today a bit more clear.

Our coverage of TechCrunch contines through the end of the week, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstong wrapping things up on Friday.

TechCrunch Disrupt, the world’s top technology and startup event, is taking place in San Francisco on September 5-7, 2018. For more information and to tune-in to the livestream, please visit techcrunch.com

The first of 3 days of the annual Tech Crunch Disrupt just wrapped up! Global Crypto Press' team in Silicon Valley was there covering it all - those reports are being produced at this very moment and will be up soon.

But for now, we have obtained the full video of the SEC's Jina Choi appearance at the event - courtesy of our friends at TechCrunch.

TechCrunch Disrupt, the world’s top technology and startup event, is taking place in San Francisco on September 5-7, 2018. For more information and to tune-in to the livestream, please visit www.techcrunch.com 

Few cryptos have been as controversial in 2018 as TRON (TRX). Accused of plagiarism, vaporware, and hyperbolized marketing tactics, the creators of this project have seen the extremes of human emotions in fans and adversaries. 2017 saw unprecedented growth in the token value, and many investors believed TRON was a pump and dump scam.

But so far, everything has gone as planned for Justin Sun and his operation, from the testnet in the Spring, to the first incarnation of the mainnet (called Odyssey 3.0) and the Super Representative election in June. Now we are just starting to see what the technology is capable with the new Tron Virtual Machine, or TVM.

TVM launched on August 30th and came packaged with smart contracts and a developer kit for decentralized applications. According to their press release, TVM is the first step in creating a “World Computer”. Sound familiar? Yeah, they gave the same pitch for Ethereum, and EOS. Dapps on TVM can be coded in Java, a very popular programming language, and apparently anything created for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) will easily port or migrate to the Tron blockchain seamlessly.

Here is a rundown of some of TVM’s features:

- Fully compatible with Ethereum’s solidity language.

- Virtual memory usage—practically limitless for devs, who won’t need to rely on physical
resources.

- Unique resource consumption for smart contracts—easier on end users and callers of
contracts.

- Ability to create tokens.

- Decentralized exchange.

This Summer the Tron Foundation acquired the file sharing network Bittorent which will connect to the Tron network through a new protocol called Project Atlas. Details have been cryptic, but fans are eager nonetheless.

In addition, the TronWallet was announced, which is said to feature multiple accounts for individual users, a peer-to-peer exchange, smart contract storage, and even a cash-back loyalty program using a unique utility token.

Stay tuned to Global Crypto Press as we’ll be reporting on the first dApps as they become available on TVM and the Tron network.

Published by Tech Crunch two days ago, the article titled  "The collapse of ETH is inevitable" has received a lot of attention.

But what are we really looking at here? There's one huge factor we can't just gloss over - the author of the article is Jeremy Rubin - one of Stellar's advisers.

My point isn't any disrespect to Stellar or Rubin either, I own some Stellar. I own Ethereum too, so maybe since i'm a fan of both I can see this article for what it is - rivals making their cases for their product, and against their competitors.

The case Rubin is attempting to make is summed up in these key points:

● Gas isn't required to execute a contract on Ethereum's blockchain.

● Ethereum isn't even needed for as a mining reward "We’re able to incentivize miners to mine transactions without paying any fees in ETH whatsoever" as the article states.

● Leading to the conclusion - apps built on Ethereum (the blockchain) don't really need ETH (the token).

Ethereum's founder Vitalik Buterin took to Reddit to respond, saying in part:

"In Ethereum as it presently exists, this is absolutely true, and in fact if Ethereum were not to change, all parts of the author's argument (except the part about proof of stake, which would not even apply to Ethereum as it is today) would be correct. However, the community is strongly considering two proposals, both of which have the property that they enshrine the need to pay ETH at protocol level, and furthermore the ETH gets burned, so there's no way to de-facto take it out of the loop by making the medium-of-exchange loop go faster."

Which frankly, is the truth.  That's why I'm leaning towards labeling Rubin's arguments borderline misleading.  Let's pause for a second and ask - what tech-based project would still exist today, if the first version was the final version?

Rubin's argument is more along the lines of "If Apple stopped at the iPhone 1, no one would be buying them today".  In other words, his argument depends entirely on nothing changing.

While it's always way more exiting to get caught up in the heat of the argument, the fact is - any tech with developers who call the project "finished" is doomed. Ethereum does not fall into that category. To the credit of Ethereum Foundation, they are constantly evaluating places to improve, and following through with proposals to implement those changes.

Until that key factor changes - Ethereum is absolutely not headed towards collapse. They're simply part of the never-ending uphill battle, known better as "technology".

Our Silicon Valley team lead by US Editor In Chief Ross Davis will be on the ground reporting the latest from this year's TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco!

Guest speakers include CoinBase CEO Brian Armstrong, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Jina Choi of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The event takes place this Wednesday through Friday. 

Full information at https://techcrunch.com/events/disrupt-sf-2018/

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When it comes to launching products that require comprehensive testing, clinical trials, and extensive oversight, status quo systems are notoriously inefficient. For new medicines, testing can enter the billion dollar range, which drives up costs that inevitably fall upon the consumer and insurance companies. The pharmaceutical industry has been grappling with this problem for decades.

ClinTex is creating an Ethereum-based network meant to streamline the clinical trial process. They aim to build a decentralized platform incorporating predictive analysis and machine learning to bring new medicines to market faster, safer, and in the most optimized way yet.

According to ClinTex, the problems of the current system are many. Inefficiencies are often discovered and addressed after they occur. Patient recruitment is inefficient, which wastes time and resources. Data is regularly incomplete and implausible which leads to trial failures. Finally, miscommunication with doctors and vendors leads to detrimental delays.

The ClinTex solution is called CTi, or Clinical Trials Intelligence, and is a complete overhaul. Over six layers of protocol are best seen in a graphic diagram; from source data, smart contracts, data manipulation, to their blockchain integration and client UX, CTi is a veritable mouse-trap designed to deliver medicines in the safest and most efficient way possible.

This may sound like an obvious use for blockchain and smart contracts, however we don’t often see product development applications in crypto. When we do, they are usually an implementation or afterthought in a wider supply chain or research platform. When it comes to medical trials, Clintex will stand alone as there is yet no competition. Not only will they be first to market, but it may be a while before we see an alternative.

Besides being a immutable, distributed protocol, which obviously can benefit any detailed workflow (imagine the simplicity of audits), the main features of CTi are its “intelligent” elements, namely machine learning and predictive (and prophylactic) analyses. Artificial intelligence is proving to be a invaluable data collection tool, and is conducive to a system that can anticipate errors and complications before they occur faster than any human ability.

They also propose an interoperability of data solution which would facilitate communication and data sharing between facilities and foster collaboration across the pharmaceutical industry. In other words, having all data on a blockchain makes it easier to access throughout the clinical trial ecosystem, creating better relationships between labs.

The ClinTex utility token, CLX, runs on the powerful and well-established Ethereum network. CLX will primarily be used for access to the platform, but also will be used as a payment system for doctors and vendors. It will be available to the public via ICO presale in Q4 following a token generation event (TGE).

Development of the various stages of the platform will take place throughout 2019, and is planned for on-chain migration in 2020. The team, composed of business and software developers as well as medical professionals, should have ample time to roll out each feature individually and effectively.

For more information on Clintex, CLX, and the inner workings of the CTi solution, visit www.Clintex.io