Crypto News Weekly 10.08.18: Chinese Lottery kills Ethereum

Tron spends a week in the toilets with porn

Have you ever found yourself as a third world citizen, unbanked and without the right change for the public toilet? Fear not! Super-cryptocurrency Tron is coming to the rescue! Just cross your legs a little longer.

Tron, the eleventh-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has just announced a new deal with the Chinese public toilet manufacturer Moshroom in a partnership where they will aid cross-boundary payment structures. This comes hot on the heels this week on the completion of Tron’s working agreement with Pornhub that allows TRX tokens to be taken for premium membership packages.

Barclays considering a crypto trade desk?

Reports in the press and in particular Business Insider are suggesting that Barclays has made new hires with the intention of putting together a firm business case internally which could lead to an active crypto trading desk.

Barclays is no stranger to controversy and risky markets, after being fined $ 290 million in 2012 for trying to rig interbank rates, and the bank was also caught up in legal action against its employees for a last-minute bailout deal with a Qatar bank which allowed them to narrowly avoid the British government bailing them out.

South Korean shipwreck scammers raided

Police in the South Korean capital Seoul have raided the offices of Shinil Group, with up to 27 investigators after an ICO offering was claiming to be underwritten by gold from the  Russian battleship Dmitri Donskoi, which sank in 1905 and was rumored to contain about $116 billion.

The ICO offered the Shinil Gold Coin, which they said would rise from its purchase price of $0.18 to $9 once the gold was recovered. So far it is thought to have raised $ 50 million from seemingly naive investors. If you had the path to billions of dollars of gold, obviously you would stop and set up a complicated ICO structure to help the needy investors rather than proceed to just get the gold and sell it. Greed as always, powering the cryptocurrency economy.

SEC postponement claws at Bitcoin prices

As the SEC postponed their latest decision on a Bitcoin ETF from August 10th to September 30th at least, the market became even jitterier with a fast downward reaction to Bitcoin and all the altcoins, taking off over $ 30 billion or 13% from the market cap in a day. The sudden move downwards was surprising as it was not breaking news but more of a confirmation of a circulating story.

Ethereum loses big in Chinese lottery

For most of the week, the Ethereum network has been hampered by excessive traffic from two unknown contracts which are now thought to be linked to Chinese lotteries running on the blockchain.

The effect of the excessive traffic has once again exposed one of the main weaknesses in the Ethereum network in that at present any contract can completely clog the system for all users, which leads to excessively long times for transactions or increased costs. This week the increase was 12 x the normal rates at peak times.

The Chinese lottery which is thought to be blocking the most is  Last Winner. It’s based on an existing app called FOMO (fear of missing out) which has a 24 hr clock, and last bid before the clock runs out supposedly takes all the money. Each new bid increases in price and extends the clock by 30 seconds. Currently, the pot is at many millions of dollars. As the code is not published it is possible that the payout may never be made and just be a fantastically effective scam.