Daily Berminal Brief (8/17/18): U.S.

The State of the Market: Today altcoin markets led a significant rally with only 3 of the top 100 coins by market capitalization in the red. Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) were also in the green today with much more modest gains of 2% and 4.5% respectively. In addition, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization climbed almost $14 billion on the day and is currently sitting comfortably at $217 billion.

1. The agency of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is launching a pilot program that would use blockchain technology to verify North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) certificates. Vincent Annunziato, the CBP’s Division of Business Transformation and Innovation head said during a recent speech that the agency was beginning a “live fire testing” of the new blockchain platform and that the system would be launched fully launched in September. Annunziato also noted that the blockchain system could be used through a mobile app, thereby streamlining the load on the agency by replacing the current paper-based manual verification process (read more).

2. As per aNasdaq report, Vechain (VEN) has found a way to alleviate a vaccine safety crisis by helping in the tracking of vaccines in China. The report has seen Vechain prices surge by 40%. The announcement has been received well by the crypto community and could see mainstream adoption of Vechain, according to Reddit users. Vechain has soared by 57% and currently is trading at $0.0144, at the time of writing from Tuesday’s low of $0.0062 (read more).

3. Bill Harris, the former CEO of PayPal CEO decried Bitcoin in a recent interview on CNBC’s “Fast Money.” During the interview, Harris contended that proponents of Bitcoin, who believe that the flagship cryptocurrency is revolutionary, were misguided. Harris told CNBC that Bitcoin will fall because “there’s just no value there.” These recent comments come on the heels of an April op-ed, when Harris called Bitcoin a “colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen” (read more).

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