Ethereum Watch

Cryptonet Unites to Call Out Congressman Sherman, Who Suggested Total Ban on Crypto

On July 13, 2018, Congress announced a hearing on cryptocurrency. Not one but two hearings took place yesterday, July 19.

Though many comments were positive, U.S. Representative Brad Sherman summoned the immediate wrath of Crypto Twitter with remarks that cryptocurrency fans called “ill-informed” and “laughable.” Sherman called for a complete ban on “buying or mining cryptocurrencies” for U.S. citizens.

Coindesk collected some of the most memorable response tweets and comments. Some pointed out a possible conflict of interest Representative Sherman has, as he has received campaign donations from Allied Wallet, a traditional payment processing company which facilitated illegal gambling in 2010. Sherman’s office has not yet responded to the accusations.

JPMorgan Applies for Patent to Use Blockchain Tech to Issue IPO Tokens

According to a report on Smartereum, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published an application on Thursday that was submitted by JPMorgan for blockchain-based IPO tokens.

JPMorgan is no stranger to blockchain development, having run a number of blockchain tests before with its system Quorum, an open-source solution developed by JPMorgan in 2017 and which the company has considered releasing for public use.

Ethereum’s Lighting-Like Raiden Network Deploys on Testnet for Final Testing

The Ethereum community continues to work towards solutions for its scalability problems, which have been the focus of most competitors. Raiden, a third-party Ethereum payments channel similar to Bitcoin’s Lighting Network, has been launched on Ethereum’s Ropsten testnet. Raiden is set for release this summer, after testing and tweaking.

Unlike Lighting, Raiden does have its own tokens, RDN, currently with a $45-million market cap. However, the token is only for those who wish to “pay for the convenience of not having to run a full node.” Check out this Coindesk article for more details.