The first Ethereum Exchange Traded notes are live, and SegWit2x is losing support. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 41:
- Investors seeking exposure to the price movement of ether, the native token of the Ethereum platform, just got a new, but familiar option: two Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) which track the price of Ether – Ether Tracker One (COINETH:SS) and Ether Tracker Euro (COINETHE:SS). XBT Provider by CoinShares, the issuer behind the world’s first bitcoin ETNs, is announcing that the first Ether ETNs are now available for trading on Nasdaq Stockholm. The two ETNs, COINETH and COINETHE are denominated in SEK and EUR respectively. In similar fashion to the group’s bitcoin ETNs, the ether ETNs are structured to track the price of ether, as determined by an index rate comprising the average of the 3 most liquid of a select group of exchanges, daily.
- Cryptocurrency mining pool F2Pool has stopped signaling support for SegWit2x, potentially undermining the argument for the November implementation of the controversial scaling proposal. Apart from F2Pool also the Bitcoin community in South Korea has just voiced its opposition to the scheduled hard fork. Mexican Bitcoin exchange BitMEX has even said it will not support SegWit2x “even if the SegWit2x chain has the majority hashrate.” SegWit2x did get some support from Xapo, which stated it “will support the blockchain with the most accumulated difficulty” and “assign the ‘Bitcoin’ label and BTC ticker” to this chain.
- Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said Thursday he is no longer going to discuss bitcoin after his comments last month that the digital currency was a “fraud” caused quite the stir on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. This, however, didn’t last very long. On Friday, Dimon repeated much of his September rant against the cryptocurrency, saying people who buy bitcoin are “stupid” and that governments will crush it one day. He did end his rant with another vow that this is the last time he talks about bitcoin.
- The People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank, has completed trial runs on the algorithms needed for digital currency supply, taking it a step closer to addressing the technological challenges associated with digital currencies, according to a top official associated with the project. Yao Qian, director-general of the Institute of Digital Money at the PBOC, said China’s central bank has successfully designed a prototype that can regulate the supply of its future digital fiat currency. The successful simulation of money supply paves the way for the central bank to become the future sole regulator and policymaker governing the value of digital fiat currency, said Yao.
- Compared to the previous week the price of Bitcoin has increased by more than 30 percent, with the exchange rate currently at about $5,747 per BTC. The price of Ethereum increased by more than 10 percent over the same period, taking Ether up to a rate of $342 per ETH. Ethereum Classic gained about two percent, with the price increasing to $12.33 per ETC. Zcash lost 4 percent. One ZEC is now trading at roughly $238 per coin.
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