Weekly Cryptalk #21:
Some weeks we focus on price movements, while at other times we zero in on technology-related news. Today’s podcast, however, is all about exchanges. That’s because a variety of different global exchanges made headlines almost every day this past week, and unfortunately, not always for positive reasons.
We'll lead with Coinbase. The San Francisco-based exchange made the news on several occasions during the past week. First, by adding XRP to its trading platform, then by acquiring controversial intelligence firm Neutrino—whose founders previously sold spyware tools to governments under the name of 'Hacking Team.' We'll talk about these two major moves by Coinbase, and look at the crypto community's response to the controversy.
Then, we’ll examine a possible twist in the QuadrigaCX case we discussed a few weeks ago. A new report by Canada’s Globe and Mail suggests QuadrigaCX's co-founder Michael Patryn is actually Omar Dhanani, a fraudster deported to Canada after serving time for credit card fraud in the U.S.. As well, a report by Bloomberg claims that while six QuadrigaCX's cold wallets have been identified, five have been empty since April 2018. We'll take another look at recent developments in the QuadrigaCX case.
Last, Malta-based Binance is single-handedly bringing ICOs back. Last month, BitTorrent's token sale on the Binance Launchpad platform sold out in less than 20 minutes. This week, Fetch.AI, the latest token to be up for sale on Binance, sold out in about 10 seconds, literally. Are these recent events indicators that ICOs are back? We'll take a look at Binance's Launchpad platform, and discuss how is it different from previous iterations of ICOs.
Join us each week for a new edition of Cryptalk with Clement Thibault. It’s released every Sunday. You can also find it on Spotify, iTunes, or your favorite podcasting service.