This Week in Cryptocurrency: July 5th, 2019

• What’s New at CoinCentral?
• People Saying and Doing Stuff:

Happy belated 4th of July to our American readers, and Happy “Watching Videos of Americans Blow Eachother Up with Fireworks” Day for our international readers. 

This week’s markets experienced a pullback from the gains of last week. Bitcoin seems to be settling just shy of $11,300, down 6.3% for the week. Ethereum is down 5.29%, XRP is down 5.29%, and Cardano is down 11.65%. Privacy coins Monero and ZCash are down 9.17% and 10.18% respectively. 

However, the markets weren’t all red this week. Tezos went up 20%, Dogecoin up 8.81%, Bytom up 12.67%, and Komodo had a whopping 25.31% gain on the week.  

Cuba Looking to Use Cryptocurrency to Avoid U.S. Sanctions: According to Reuters, Cuba is exploring to use cryptocurrency to avoid U.S.-imposed sanctions. In a public address, Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Candel said the plan will raise capital for about a fourth of the population and help pay for reforms. Cuba has felt the waves of financial dismay from Venezuela, which prior to its own economic calamity, was a major source of aid. “We are studying the potential use of cryptocurrency… in our national and international commercial transactions, and we are working on that together with academics,” Reuters quoted economy minister Alejandro Gil Fernandez as saying. 

Some Telegram Grams to Hit Market at Nearly 300% Increase from ICO:  South Korea’s Gram Asia was an early investor in Gram is looking to sell rights to its Grams at an asking price of $4 per Gram starting July 10th, a hefty gain from the $1.33 paid by private investors in Telegram’s second ICO in March 2018. Telegram currently has over 200 million users and raised around $1.7 billion from qualified investors in 2018 to develop the Telegram Open Network blockchain. 

What’s New at CoinCentral?

What Happened to the DEX? | Building in Secrecy or Just out of Steam?: There are clearly serious downsides to using centralized exchanges then and yet they still thrive.

DreamTeam’s Founder on Tackling the $50BN eSports Market as a Startup: We connected with DreamTeam CEO and Founder Alexander Kokhanovskyy. Kokhanovskyy has 20 years of experience in the eSports industry and created Natus Vincere (Na`Vi), one of the most popular teams and successful teams in eSports history. In 2016, Kokhanovskyy became a shareholder of ESForce, which was acquired by Mail.Ru for $100m. 

CRYPTOTAG Review: Is This Badass Backup Wallet Worth It?: A Cryptographer, engineer, designer, and metalworker walk into a Norwegian death metal concert…and comes CRYPTOTAG. Or at least, that’s how we like to imagine it. 

Stablecoins Grow in Popularity, Goldman Sachs Likely to Launch Own Cryptocurrency: The CEO asserted that frictionless payments and digitized assets offer unique convenience to both financial companies and their clients. As such, many leading financial agencies will at some point strive to develop systems that can execute transactions on the blockchain.

People Saying and Doing Stuff:

Shark Tank Shark Kevin O’Leary Calls Crypto Non-Compliant Crap: Famed businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary aka “Mr. Wonderful” commented on his decision to stay out of “any of this crypto crap” because it is not compliant, and as a participant in the global financial services industry, he doesn’t want to breach any regulators.  

Bitcoin is a rogue currency, says Mr. Wonderful @kevinolearytv pic.twitter.com/eF860ahg3s

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) July 3, 2019

Billionaire Investor Jumps into Cryptocurrency: Henry Kravis, a co-founder of the private equity firm KKR & Co., has invested in a cryptocurrency fund created by ParaFi Capital. The portfolio includes projects such as Coinbase, MakerDAO, and a logistics and financial services app called Grab.