What Is This? The Stock Market?

Another relatively uneventful week for the cryptocurrency market. Even with positive news of Gemini’s digital asset insurance, Coinbase’s multi-billion dollar valuation, and further worldwide adoption, the market still managed to fall from $219.7B to $217.9B. 

That market cap change calculates to a less than 1% fall, however. In an industry in which 20%-50% weekly swings are considered normal, it’s remarkable how stable we’ve been. Let’s check in on the top three coins.

Bitcoin lost a meager 1.64% of its value over the week.

Ethereum only fell 1.42% in the last seven days.

And, Ripple’s Swell Conference must’ve been anything but as XRP fell the most with a 3.21% dropoff.

 Cryptocurrency Market Stats (10/5/18)

Shapeshift Faces-Off With the Wall Street Journal: Last Friday, good ol’ WSJ published How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency, a seemingly tell-all of the nefarious activity happening on the Shapeshift exchange. The journalists behind the article claimed that Shapeshift is a hotbed for criminals looking to launder their ill-gotten funds.

Well, Shapeshift founder and CEO Erik Voorhees wasn’t going to take those accusations laying down. He responded with his own post, Shining Light on WSJ’s Attack on ShapeShift and Crypto, in which he basically states that the WSJ article is a load of B.S. He argues that it was a poor attempt to make Shapeshift and cryptocurrency as a whole look poor and stems from a lack of understanding about blockchain technology.

Lawmakers Push for Official ‘Blockchain’ Definition: In a further push to gain some clarity on the status of blockchain and related cryptocurrencies, Congresswoman Doris Matsui and Congressman Brett Guthrie have introduced a bill “to establish a common definition of the blockchain”. The Blockchain Promotion Act of 2018 would also create a committee of governmental stakeholders and private industry leaders to help further research the potential of blockchain technology.