Africa surpasses Latin America in terms of the volume of bitcoin transactions on LocalBitcoins
For a long time, Latin America topped the ranking of regions in terms of the scale of bitcoin trading.
Investments in BTC through LocalBitcoins and Paxful platforms have grown in Venezuela, Argentina and other countries in the region over the past two years.
However, now the leadership in this rating has passed to the African continent. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the volume of investment in cryptocurrency has dropped significantly not only in South America, but also in Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
The surge in activity of investors from Africa occurred after the May halving (reduction of miners' reward).
The volume of bitcoin transactions in this region last week exceeded $ 14.6 million, thus breaking the previous record of $ 10 million, recorded in early May.
Most of the transactions were made with Bitcoin paired with Nigerian Naira. The total amount of such transactions was about $ 9.5 million).
According to many observers, the scale of BTC trading in Africa will grow steadily. Recently, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey even predicted that countries in the region are already becoming an important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Albania passes specialized law to regulate the cryptocurrency industry
The Albanian parliament, during a plenary session on May 21, adopted a law on the regulation of the cryptocurrency industry.
The Law on Financial Markets Based on Distributed Ledger Technology was presented to the Committee on Economics in October 2019 and approved on Thursday by 88 votes to 16. The initiator of the new regulation is Minister of Finance and Economy Anila Denaj.
“The bill is aimed at regulating the licensing conditions and execution of the activities of operators and exchanges, as well as overseeing them and preventing abuse in the market. Serious fines are stipulated for violators of the provisions of this law, ”Denage commented earlier.
According to her, the law is intended to ensure "the best use of the benefits of technology" and at the same time to reduce the associated risks, including the creation of fraudulent schemes with virtual assets and their use in money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as market manipulation.
Albania became the third European country to adopt full regulation of the cryptocurrency industry. Previously, similar legal documents were approved in France and Malta.
John McAfee's Ghost private coin whitepaper copied from another project
In new tweets, eccentric cryptocurrency figure John McAfee admitted that his Ghost confidential coin project copied in part the whitepaper of another open source confidential coin, PIVX.
However, McAfee seems intent on suing the creators of PIVX for spreading defamatory information.
This week, the PIVX devs claimed that the Ghost whitepaper turned out to be a rip-off of an outdated 2018 PIVX document. They claimed that "20 of 26 pages" of the Ghost whitepaper "directly plagiarized from the 2018 PIVX whitepaper."
A Ghost spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the original codebase of the coin is a fork of PIVX, although there are allegedly "many improvements" in the Ghost code already.
The PIVX developers also claim that their whitepaper is "fully copyrighted in 2018" and is not open source.
However, John McAfee seems to want to bring PIVX to justice for defamation:
“PIVX is trying to claim their source code is in the public domain, while the whitepaper of how it works is not. According to the creators, the product is open source, and the documentation, according to their creators, is fraudulent. It's pretty simple. I will soon demonstrate this in court. "
When asked by one Twitter commentator about whether it was plagiarism, McAfee replied:
“Of course I was !!! The doc explains what the code they released is swearing !!! Are you recording your way from home to the pizzeria? Wake up! I don't do that kind of nonsense either. "
In a conversation with Cointelegraph about a possible legal action, the PIVX developers explained that "PIVX is not a legal entity."
“This is similar to how John would sue bitcoin,” they said.
In addition, they recalled that the legal status of John McAfee does not allow him to go to court, as he is hiding from the US authorities.
PIVX is an open source protocol originally invented by the creators of the DASH coin. In Q4 2020, the coin is expected to implement the zk-SNARKs privacy protocol from Zcash (ZEC).
On the other hand, McAfee plans to launch his Ghost next month. His whitepaper also mentions zk-SNARKs - possibly borrowing from PIVX as well.
ETH 2.0 Testnet Topaz attracted 29,300 validators
The Ethereum 2.0 testnet Topaz, launched last month by Prysmatic Labs, is gaining traction and has already attracted 29,300 validators.
Just over a month after Prysmatic Labs launched Topaz, 29,300 validators have already joined the testnet, accounting for over 1 million ETH. If real ETH were used on the testnet, then the total value of all coins would be about $ 214 million.
“We are delighted to see this level of support and community engagement at Topaz. This is the first large-scale ETH 2.0 testnet in which the community controls the majority of validators, ”said Prysmatic Labs co-founder Preston van Loon.
A very big progress is going on in the transaction process which is a nice move indeed