Top Trending Cryptocurrency News of The Week: VanECK, BitTorrent ICO, WEF and Robinhood Among Major Newsmakers

Government Shutdown Brings down Bitcoin ETF

Well, all the excitement related to VanECK Bitcoin ETF has fizzled out as the application regarding the approval of the Bitcoin ETF has been pullout by VanECK thanks to the government shutdown in the UK. The discussions between the regulators and VanECK/CBOE were delayed due to US Government shutdown, halting progress on these talks. With the application decision date on Feb 27, the organization didn’t want to risk the decision or lose an opportunity due to the hurried decision making. A representative from applicant team said, however, that they “ plan to resubmit a filing at a later date and look forward to continued discussions with the SEC.”

BitTorrent ICO on Jan 28

Tron backed BitTorrent is about to launch its ICO on January 28, 2019. Based on Tron’s token ecosystem, TRC 10 the total supply of the coin would be 990 bn with an initial circulating supply of the coin has been kept at 9% of the total supply.BTT tokens will allow users to bid and receive for their bandwidth which would work simultaneously with a crypto wallet and bidding engine.

Crypto voices speak from Davos

This week also saw global readers heading to Davos for the World Economic Forum. As expected, Bitcoin and Blockchain also made their mark among the whose of who of business and politics. CEO and founder of BitPesa, Elizabeth Rossiello was appointed to co-chair the Global Council on Blockchain of World Economic Forum, when it came to the crypto panel discussion at the annual summit of WEF, Davos 2019, there was already a positive mindset towards crypto.

Robinhood is moving to New York

Robinhood Crypto has decided to move to NewYork as the trading app has received a Bitlicense from New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS). With this move, Robinhood now has permission from the regulator to trade seven crypto asset including  Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) — in the state of New York.

MIT researchers develop a faster and efficient cryptocurrency

MIT researches have bought in a new crypto coin that has capabilities of drastically reducing the data users need to join the network and verify transactions by up to 99 percent compared to the current popular cryptocurrencies making it more faster and efficient.