Today signaled the close of another week in the crypto space. January is now already more than halfway over, and the market still has not seen much public interest in bitcoin, as reflected in its struggle to maintain any kind of upward price momentum.
Bitcoin’s price this week showed consolidation in the mid-$3,000 range. News headlines, however, continued to roll in, spicing up bitcoin’s slow week.
Check out some of this week’s top headlines:
$100 in funds returned after ETC hack
Monday kicked off this week with a dash of intrigue as one of ethereum classic’s (ETC) recent hackers returned $100,000 in funds to the Gate.io exchange. Motives for the return reportedly were unclear. Although, Gate.io speculated the hacker might have been someone simply looking to bring awareness to security flaws via the original hack.
ETC recently fell victim to a 51% attack, resulting in more than $1 million in total stolen ETC.
John Carvalho challenges Roger Ver to a fight for the Bitcoin.com domain
John Carvalho, aka Bitcoin Error Log, challenged Roger Ver to a fight this week, suggesting the fight’s winner receive the Bitcoin.com site. Bitcoin.com is predominantly run by bitcoin cash (BCH) proponents.
The details of the event have not been ironed out yet, but Roger Ver reportedly is interested, according to a podcast interview with Peter McCormack (“What Bitcoin Did” podcast). McCormack also interviewed Carvalho on a separate episode of his podcast.
MimbleWimble, Beam and Grin: What’s the buzz all about?
MimbleWimble is the new technology everyone is talking about on the streets of crypto. Beam launched its MimbleWimble-based crypto asset earlier this month. Grin launched its much-anticipated similar coin this week on January 15.
The difference, however, is in the supply. Beam has a capped total supply. Grin, on the other hand, has a steep inflation curve with no maximum supply, making it more of a usable private currency than a scarce store of value.
Is the MIT-backed Unit-e better than bitcoin?
Distributed Technology Research (DTR), a new non-profit organization, has set out to create a crypto asset that solves all of bitcoin’s problematic issues, including scalability. The group named the asset the Unit-e.
The DTR team is made up of professors from some of the most notable universities from around the U.S., including Stanford and MIT. DTR also touts support from the popular hedge fund Pantera Capital.
The group desires to make a crypto asset with transactions times comparable to Visa, while still holding as closely as possible to bitcoins true nature and roots.
Vontobel Bank announces Digital Asset Vault for crypto custody
This week also brought more news of institutional interest in the crypto space. To accommodate for increasing customer interest in digital assets, investment banking and asset management player Vontobel announced a digital asset custody product this week.
Vontobel’s Digital Asset Vault will allow utilization of traditional banking infrastructure for digital asset custody.
“With the new Digital Asset Vault business solution, Vontobel is therefore the first bank in the world to offer industry-standard quality standards within the established and regulated environment,” Vontobel noted in its news release.
