TL;DR: Welcome to In Case You Missed It (ICYMI), a daily crypto news update. Charlie Lee proposes mining donations to fund Litecoin developers. Justin Sun of TRON sued over workplace hostilities. Binance donates $1.5 million to aid Coronavirus victims. NASDAQ considers launching a bitcoin futures product. Bitpay introduces in-app crypto purchases, and Bitcoin Gold suffers 51% attack.
Litecoin Proposes Voluntary Mining Donations
1/ I think a better way to fund development is mining pools voluntarily donate a portion of the block reward. How about Litecoin pools donate 1% (0.125 LTC) of block rewards to the @LTCFoundation? If every miner/pool does this, it amounts to about $1.5MM donation per year!
— Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) January 24, 2020
Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, proposed mining pools could voluntarily donate a percentage of their block rewards to help fund Litecoin ecosystem developers. The donations would not be enforced via code, but done voluntarily by giving 1% of all the block rewards to several projects. According to Lee, this would inject $1.5 million toward development each year. The timing of Lee’s announcement is an obvious response to the Bitcoin Cash community’s ongoing debate about this issue.
Justin Sun Sued Over Workplace Hostilities
Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of TRON, is being sued in California by two individuals for alleged workplace hostilities that led to their termination last summer. Richard Hall and Lukasz Juraszek were employees of BitTorrent, a company TRON acquired last year. According to the lawsuit, Sun berated them with derogatory statements to achieve a fast track in the development of BitTorrent-related software. The company’s Head of Engineering is also mentioned in the lawsuit, allegedly warning the employees “things will end badly for you,” and “I cannot protect you,” when they tried to document such verbal altercations.
Binance Donates $1.5 Million to Help Coronavirus Victims
For #Wuhan, not realistic to do crypto to end beneficiaries.
Binance pledged 10m RMB ($1.5m USD) to help #coronavirus victims.
We didn’t make any announcements. But BCF/Binance team has been busy for the last few days.
Still need help to arrange logistics locally.🙋♀️ https://t.co/UH6FXgVSrX
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 25, 2020
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, donated $1.5 million to help Coronavirus victims in China. The lethal virus is said to be spreading at an alarming rate within the mainland. Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, declared the exchanged did not make any announcements on the subject, but also communicated the Binance Charity Foundation had been busy with responding. This makes Binance the first cryptocurrency organization to donate funds to helps the victims of the Coronavirus outbreak.
NASDAQ Considers Launching a Bitcoin Futures Product
NASDAQ, the second-biggest stock exchange in the US, is studying a possible launch of a bitcoin futures product, according to statements from its CEO, Adena Friedman. During an interview with Bloomberg, Friedman stated the exchange was considering to launch a bitcoin futures product with the help of an unnamed partner. In any case, Friedman stated there are two things the exchange needed to do before launching a product of that kind: differentiating from the rest of the already existing market offerings and insulate the company from a risk management perspective.
BitPay Introduces Cryptocurrency Purchases With Fiat
BitPay introduced cryptocurrency purchases in-app, partnering with Simplex, a fintech payment processor. BitPay, based in Atlanta, will now allow customers to purchase cryptocurrencies with their credit card, deposited directly to users’ wallets. “Whether converting fiat to crypto to make crypto payments or converting crypto to fiat to pay with the Bitpay card, the Bitpay app is an all-in-one solution,” declared Stephen Pair, co-founder and CEO. The payments processor has expanded to accept XRP and regulated stablecoins recently.
Bitcoin Gold Suffers 51% Attack, $70K+ Lost in Double Spends
Bitcoin Gold, a fork of BTC using Nicehash as a consensus algorithm, suffered a 51% attack from an unknown party, causing more than $70,000 in losses due to double spends. James Lovejoy, President of MIT Bitcoin Club, revealed in a report how the attack caused two deep reorgs within the blockchain. As a result, Binance’s withdrawal requirements for Bitcoin Gold have been raised to 20 confirmations in order to offer more safety to customers. Bitcoin Gold endured an earlier 51% attack back in 2018, with more than $18 million stolen.
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