The Tezos blockchain project has raised a record amount in its initial coin offering, and the Bitcoin testnet forked this week. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 28:
- The Tezos blockchain project has completed its initial coin offering, or ICO, bringing in a record-smashing $232m-worth of Bitcoin and Ether. At close, Tezos had netted 65,627 BTC and 361,122 ETH. The crowdsale, which didn’t have a cap on the total amount of tokens sold, began on July 1, and was timed with the passage of 2,000 transaction blocks on the Bitcoin network. The total represents the most collected via an ICO to date, topping the amount raised by Bancor, a platform for launching new blockchain tokens, which raised $150m at then-current prices in mid-June.
- It appears a splitting of the Bitcoin blockchain is not the only thing to worry about right now. For the first time in a while, the BTC1 testnet experienced such a major issue which left many nodes stuck on block 27070. The unintentional fork was caused by the SegWit2x scaling solution. Any node running the Segwit2x code was stuck on block 27070, whereas any other software could just carry on without problems. Although this hiccup does not affect the Bitcoin main net by any means, it demonstrates the fragility of the network and reminds us to be careful these following weeks.
- The Bitcoin community was abuzz this week when, during an appearance before a Congressional committee by Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, an attendee held aloft a “buy Bitcoin” sign. The image of the sign quickly went viral, though the attendee and his friend were ultimately asked to leave by a staffer. Soon after his appearance, it emerged that the individual is a friend of a cryptocurrency trader who tweets under the handle CryptoEthan. He posted a picture of the person – soon known as the “Bitcoin Sign Guy” – who, in addition to holding up the now-infamous sign, shared a Bitcoin address as well. That address has now garnered more than 6 BTC.
- Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, an enterprise collaboration focused on Ethereum blockchain technology formed earlier this year, has announced a new technical steering committee, CoinDesk reported. The setting up of the committee is part of the alliance’s strategy to lay down some of its governance foundations. The committee will focus on advancing the EntEth 1.0 reference software. In addition, the EEA also announced seven new working groups, which will focus on the development of blockchain use-cases on the Ethereum platform in specific areas. In particular, these working groups will focus on seven specific areas – token issuances, banking, healthcare, insurance, advertising, legal, and supply chain finance.
- Compared to the previous week the price of Bitcoin has decreased by more than 17 percent, with the exchange rate currently at about $2,100 per BTC. The price of Ethereum decreased by almost 25 percent over the same period, taking Ether down to a rate of $184 per ETH. Ethereum Classic lost about two percent, with the price decreasing to $15.93 per ETC. Zcash lost roughly 30 percent. One ZEC is now trading at roughly $167 per coin.
