Things could not have started better for the crypto community this year. A Wells Fargo bank outage, a little price rally, and Jamie Dimon basically about-turns on his2017 comments. Ok, sure, Dimon says he regrets calling Bitcoin a fraud, but this story was bound to be food for the wolves. Besides the 2018 “regret announcement”, Dimon’s JP Morgan have announced they will launch a Blockchain-empowered digital value exchange for the movement of institutional funds. In a press release on Valentine’s Day (can the irony get any better?), JP Morgan said they believe Blockchain is the best technology to allow for instantaneous payments, and thus created a “stable coin” backed by their US Dollar reserves for immediate transfer of value between their corporate clients.

Forbes have a nice write up here (where they tell us to stop calling JPM Coin a cryptocurrency – and yes, JP Morgan really called it “JPM Coin”!)

Ok, not quite “far away”, yet… But Wells Fargo found themselves deep underwater last weekend when a smoke detector in one of their server facilities caused a nationwide outage of – get this – all their banking systems! ATMs, online banking, card processing, you name it – it couldn’t be done if you were a Wells Fargo customer. The bank is America’s fourth largest by assets, and as American Banker reports, despite their size, this is a third serious glitch in a series of technical issues they have had in a year – with this specific outage lasting two full days.

The outage highlights the opportunities for true internet currencies, and as Billy Bambrough writes, the crypto community were having a field day with this one.

While the crypto community knocks big banks, the crypto payments industry took its own knock this week. Shift have announced that they will shut down operations. Shift, a US debit card manufacturer, partnered with Coinbase back in 2015, and have enjoyed much of the crypto debit card limelight since. But this announcement, made with a sudden email, casts doubt on the robustness of the industry in America. Some are speculating that VISA, Shift’s payment processor, had increased their fees and nullified Shift’s business model. But Shift’s website seems to indicate a pivot toward white-labeled card manufacturing – perhaps a bit of both? Shift cardholders will have until 11 April 2019 until their cards become unusable.

Crypto Crimson has more.

The Cape Town iteration happening on Wednesday 6 March will feature many of the same speakers, but with the addition of a few more, including:

• Helen Zille (Western Cape Premier)
• Beverley Schäfer (Minister of Economic Opportunities, WC)
• Nezaam Joseph (Chief Economist of the WC Government)
• Simon Dingle (CEO of Inves Capital)
• Riccardo Spagni (aka FluffyPony on Twitter – Lead Maintainer of Monero Project)
• Llew Claasen (Exec Director at Bitcoin Foundation)
• Many more

We have one ticket left in our giveaway! This ticket could be for Jo’burg or Cape Town, depending on your preference.
And to win, simply head over to Twitter and tweet a reason (or many) why you deserve a ticket! You need to tag @BlockchainZA – @Global Crypto_ and the hashtag #BAC19 to qualify.
We’ve even made it easy for you, just click this button to complete your sentence on Twitter.

If you don’t want to risk missing out on the competition, Blockchain Africa are discounting tickets until the end of this week:

Click here to register for Jo’burg (30% off!)

And here for Cape Town (20% off!)

We’ll be there, so come say “hi”!

Ark Invest recently had the privilege of Elon Musk on their podcast (we’re working on that!), and in it they couldn’t help but broach the subject of cryptocurrency. While at first apprehensive, Musk eventually got serious, saying that Bitcoin’s structure is quite brilliant, and that crypto is a far better way to transfer value than paper money, which is going away. He also said that as someone focused on sustainable energy, he hopes to see the problems of crypto’s energy requirements solved. CCN have the full story, with a link to the podcast.

Craig Wright has once again been making quite a fuss this week, writing to the CFTC that he is willing to state under oath that he is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto. But on a subsequent public blog post by Wright, a user made some intriguing comments to actually claim to be the real Satoshi. And while the user left a link to his Twitter account, and his writing doesn’t seem to align with other confirmed writings of Satoshi, he does seem to know some intricate details about the real Nakamoto. Perhaps he is simply a well-educated Bitcoin enthusiast? Or has the real Satoshi Nakamoto finally come out of hiding to put to bed Wright’s claims? Research for yourself by checking out the original Blog comment on the user’s Twitter feed here.

And read the full story at Bitcoin.com.

Title: Market Analysis 4 – Where do we stand now?
Length: 15 mins
Subject: A look at the Bitcoin market, TRX, LTC & BNB as well
In this episode our Financial Analyst Graeme Tennant says there are some bullish signs in the altcoin markets (as validated this week!) – while the macro trend of a continued bear market remains in tact. Graeme explains just how much is needed to turn things around for the Bitcoin market, and also explains that a further break to the downside is also likely. Listen on Apple Podcasts here
Listen on Spotify here
Visit the Anchor Podcast page here
Watch the YouTube video of the episode here 

And that’s what is happening in Blockchain this week! If you found this newsletter informative and helpful, support Global Crypto by forwarding it on to a friend.

Don’t forget to make sure you get your tickets to Blockchain Africa 2019, it really is going to be significant for the African Blockchain industry.

Until the next edition, stay safu!

James & The Global Crypto Team