Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson: A Soul in Hell?

In his Longmont, Colorado office, there’s an odd painting on the wall that Charles Hoskinson faces. It depicts a Roman man sitting in a beautiful garden. What’s striking is the look of utter torment on the Roman's face, even as he sits in a such a lovely place.

In many ways that’s an apt metaphor for Hoskinson, the man who founded the new, long-anticipated and potentially revolutionary crypto platform Cardano.

“I’m kind of polarizing. People either like me or they hate me. There’s not a lot of people in between,” he says. 

True enough. As the creator of Cardano, Hoskinson, 32, is revered and celebrated as a serial entrepreneur and polymath. But as a co-creator of Ethereum, the second-most valuable blockchain, he’s been derided as an incompetent, a turncoat, a thin-skinned crybaby and worse. 

HTC launches Exodus 1s “cryptophone”

Smartphone manufacturer HTC today launched the HTC Exodus 1s, a new “cryptophone” that can run decentralized applications and a full Bitcoin node.

The Exodus 1s is a cheaper alternative to the Exodus 1, HTC’s previous blockchain smartphone released last year. The Exodus 1s will cost around $250, which some users will be able to buy using cryptocurrency–depending on where you are. According to the release, buyers in Europe and Taiwan will be able to pay in euros (€219) or the Taiwanese dollar (5990 TWD), as well as the equivalent values in BTC, ETH, LTC, BNB or BCH.

The Exodus 1s is packed with new cryptocurrency features. Notably, it’s possible to operate a full node on the 1s, though users will have to buy a memory card big enough to store the bitcoin blockchain, which is currently around 250 gigabytes. HTC recommends if you're going to do that, to have it connected to WiFi and be plugged into a power source. In an interview with Forbes, Chen said the phone does not currently support Bitcoin mining.

Here are the biggest stories in the cryptoverse:

• Researchers uncover vulnerability in Lightning Payments.
• Bitmain opens crypto mining farm in Texas.
• Korean banks join government-backed blockchain ID initiative. 
• Brave ads are coming to iOS users next month. 

The world is built on a giant $256 trillion pile of assets. Everything from property to art, to stocks to oil. Blockchain wants to change all that. This collection explores the industries being disrupted, by whom, and what that means for both consumers and enterprises. We've delved deep into the tokenized world to uncover the people, the projects and the potential of this technology to change capital forever.

Retailers are rushing into crypto–is this the start of mass adoption?

What you need to know

Real-world crypto adoption is booming, according to a slew of recent announcements. Earlier this month, Crypto.com made their Pay Checkout plugin available for WooCommerce merchants, which it claims make up about 30 percent of the world’s online stores. 

Payments and privacy coin Dash recently announced partnerships with a number of payment providers that reach millions including Overstock.com. Some of France's largest retailers meanwhile, are planning to accept Bitcoin come 2020; you can buy bitcoin from 7-Eleven in the Philippines, and an Icelandic firm just settled a payment from IKEA using the Ethereum blockchain. It’s even possible to use cryptocurrencies to buy food at refugee camps. 

Why it's important

According to an April 2019 research paper by Nicole Jonker of the De Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves anytime soon. “Acceptance of crypto-payments [by online retailers] is modest,” she wrote. Just two percent of a random selection of 768 retailers in the Netherlands accepted payments in crypto. 

Brexit and Crypto: a 3-year rollercoaster

Brexit might be, may be coming to a close. With the announcement that the British government has reached an accord with the EU last week, all eyes are now on Tuesday after ‘super Saturday’–the debate in the Houses of Parliament which would decide the UK’s fate on October 31–failed to deliver any clarity. As a result, we decided to look back at how, if anything this seismic shift in European politics has affected the price of the British pound, gold, and of course, bitcoin.

Read more and watch the video here.