Hong Kong protestors use peer-to-peer messaging apps for secret chats

Hong Kong protestors, spooked by a vulnerability in encrypted messaging app Telegram—which exposed users’ phone numbers to security agencies—have turned to peer-to-peer networking apps.
In the last few weeks, Bridgefy and FireChat, two peer-to-peer messaging apps, have boomed in popularity in the region.

Bridgefy is an offline messaging app that creates a mesh network of its users’ mobile phones via bluetooth. This allows them to send messages from phone to phone, until they reach their destinations.

FireChat is also highly popular and works in much the same way as Bridgefy. Its iOS app was the tenth most downloaded app in Hong Kong in the middle of August according to AppTrace, though, as of yesterday, it is the #58 most popular app. The Android version was the fourteenth most popular app in the same time period, though it is now the 52nd most popular app.

With the internet so heavily controlled in China—and largely centralized across the world—is it time for peer-to-peer technologies to have another moment in the sun?

No, Venezuela didn’t just break its weekly Bitcoin trading record

Venezuela might have "broken a new record" on LocalBitcoins last week—a 30 percent increase in Bitcoin trading over the previous “all time high” when measured in bolivars, Venezuela’s fiat currency.

But this doesn’t mean what you think it means. 

Contrary to reports yesterday from CoinTelegraph and others, Bitcoin traders in Venezuela aren’t “smashing” or “exploding” anything. Bitcoin trading in Venezuela is, in fact, on the decline when measured (appropriately) in BTC, and not a rapidly depreciating fiat currency.

According to Coin Dance statistics, Bitcoin traders in Venezuela moved a volume of almost 117 billion sovereign bolivars (VES) during the last week of August. That number might look impressive, especially considering that the previous all-time high in bolivars was just shy of 80 billion, and there was no obvious pattern that could have predicted such a spike.

But the truth is that this says much more about Venezuela’s hyperinflated national currency than it does about Bitcoin. When looking at the actual volume of BTC being traded in Venezuela, it’s currently on a downward slope—with traders moving just 541 BTC last week.

Here are the biggest stories in the cryptoverse:

• Ripple hires prominent Washington political advisor.    
• John McAfee releases Zombie Coin white paper.
• 15 arrested for allegedly bribing cafe to mine crypto. 
• Marshall Islands issues blockchain-based currency. 

Ethereum Name Service launches auction for shorter, "simpler" blockchain domains

What you need to know

Are long, cumbersome cryptocurrency addresses holding the industry back from wider adoption?

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) thinks it might—and it’s taken another step on its mission to eventually make them obsolete.

Over the weekend, the Ethereum Name Service launched an auction for short .eth domain names on the OpenSea decentralized marketplace. All three to six-character-long domain names that were not among the 194 approved during the reservation period that closed in mid-August are now up for grabs, and can be bid upon using ETH cryptocurrency. 

Why it's important

The idea, if it catches on, is to help facilitate greater consumer adoption by enabling the use of easily recognizable names—such as “satoshi.eth” (currently going for 1,500 ETH at auction)—to receive tokens and perform transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.

ENS is an open naming system that aims to make using blockchain simpler by implementing these more memorable, human-readable names as opposed to the robotic, 42-character-long crypto addresses. These domains are built on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain instead of the old-fashioned DNS system for managing domains, and ENS is designed to be decentralized in its infrastructure and governance.

OKCoin pledges $10 million to bitcoin developers

San Francisco-based crypto exchange OKCoin has pledged to donate 1,000 bitcoin into a community ‘voting-based’ development fund for the Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV projects.

The initiative called “‘Let’s Build Bitcoin Together” will let crypto enthusiasts come to the OKCoin platform and “vote for which project they would like to receive a donation.”

The exchange has stipulated that for every vote received, “OKCoin will send 0.02 BTC (or the BCH or BSV equivalent) on the voter’s behalf to the selected project,” up to 1,000 bitcoin ($10 million). At the end of the campaign, the amount raised per project will be divided and evenly distributed amongst the developers and organizations chosen by the community. 

Read more here.