Episode 205 - EOS troubles brewing, N. Korea is all about that crypto, and finally... it's a bird! It's plane! It's the Federal Reserve!

Welcome once again to Flagship Friday! Although one day late, we're still calling it Flagship Friday to keep our tradition alive. Flagship Extended Weekend didn't sound all that nice.

Tune in as Karim and Adam (Brent's got the sniffles :') dive into EOS and its latest scandal, talk about North Korea's crypto project and the Federal Reserve's intervention on the economy, along with some juicy commentary and rants by Karim, our in-house "important things" expert. So if you wanna hear Karim spit some fire preaching and Adam PASSIONATELY agreeing with him, put on your headphones and press play cause this episode is a feisty one. 

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

 

• Rapid Fire

  • Netflix has an upcoming series on crypto. Altcoins to be exact. Will be interviewing Vitalik, Charles, and Da Hongfei (NEO)

  Alcoin Documentary Coming In Late 2019

  What To Expect From Netflix's Upcoming Crypto Series

  • EA tweets out “invest in Crypto”. New character in Apex Legends

  Electronic Arts on Twitter

  • Istanbul, the Ethereum mainnet update has a release date after most recent maintenance update. Istanbul is Ethereum’s long-debates hard fork. First update will be by in October or November and the second update will be 1Q 2020. That update will include ProgPoW (progressive proof of work)

  Ethereum reveals launch dates for testing Istanbul

  • J.P. Morgan's nlockchain-based network grows to over 330 banks. It's called the Interbank Information Network. Deutschbank is big players. They are using Quorum, a permissioned version of the Ethereum blockchain.

  J.P. Morgan's blockchain-based network grows to over 330 banks

  • Ethereum celebrates the end of August with more than 75 million unique addresses.

  [cryptoslate.com/ethereum-celebrates-successful-august-with-more-than-75-million-unique-addresses/](Ethereum Is Sweet)

  • Ethereum has had a steady rise Q1 of 2018. Basically looks like a 45 degree angle since then. Back in July of 2017 it was at roughly 2 million addresses.

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• Here Comes The Federal Reserve

  • overnight borrowing rates shot up, forcing the New York Federal Reserve to come to the rescue with a special operation aimed at easing stress in financial markets

    • First wanted to understand overnight rate

      • Amount of cash a bank has can fluctuate a lot based on daily activity, they can have shortage or surplus of cash at the end of the day.
      • Banks with surplus can lend money overnight to banks with shortages to maintain reserve requirements
      • Interest rate that large banks use to borrow and lend from one another.
      • This rate is targeted by the central bank, which is also a participant in the market (lending and borrowing)
      • Since this is the base borrowing rate it can be used as a predictor of short term rates for broader economy. Goes up when liquidity decreases

    • Fed target rate for July? Between 2% and 2.25%. On Monday it hit 5%, which was up from 2.29% previous week, it kept surging until 10% high on tuesday

       

    • Called an overnight repo operation, where Fed eases downward pressure on markets by purchasing treasuries and other securities

    • Managed to inject $53b into the system

    • One theory was for the stress is a large quarterly withdrawal by US companies to pay Taxes (estimated around $100b total)

    • On wednesday Fed had to pour an extra $75b, so $128b, getting rates to lower to 3% (still above target rate)

    • Bigger pic, we now have a $1 trillion federal deficit so Government borrowing has climbed (Tax revenue decreased because of tax cuts, but bipartisan surge in spending)

• EOS Troubles Brewing

  https://www.coindesk.com/everyones-worst-fears-about-eos-are-proving-true?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=coindesk&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=Organic

  • A few weeks ago one of it's early supporters, EOS Tribe, a small company that participated in the launch of the first EOS chain called it quits as an EOS block producer. In a post made on Steemit Eugene Luzgin said "We at EOS Tribe have never participated in the game of vote trading and stayed true to our principles, and hence while we leave EOS as Block Producer, we are also free to speak truth and give warnings to the rest." WHOA. Shots fired!!
  • You guys covered in your EOS 101 how there were issues with governance and that it's pretty centralized. 21 block producers at any time that make governance decisions, establish consensus on the chain, and earn substantial rewards. This has always been a concern and now the most technically proficient BPs are receiving little to no rewards at all.
  • Luzgin called it a braindrain. What does he mean by that exactly?
  • Most of the BPs are in located in China
  • May 8th 2019 they burned $167 million in EOS for the worker proposal system, which was a way to fund EOS dapp development
  • EOS NY proposed an EOS user agreement which was adopted y 15 of the 21 BPs at the time but nothing against vote-buying was in the agreement
  • two forks already, Telos and Worbii. Telos has a token cap at 40k and number of innovations to ensure potential BPs actually serve. Worbii created with certain consumer protections and more of a focus on the financial industry.
  • not saying EOS is a sinking ship but touting themselves as the Ethereum killer is a bit much.

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Crypto Around the World

• North Korea Is Building Its Own Bitcoin
• Cubans flock to cryptocurrency to shop online, send funds

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THAT'S A SCAM

• [https://decrypt.co/9379/sec-files-suit-against-icobox-founder-over-14-million-ico](ICOBox Gets Slapped With $14 Million Fine From SEC)