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The FT reported that the US presidential election was heading to a drawn-out finish as Donald Trump threatened to go to the Supreme Court to stop the counting of votes and Joe Biden expressed confidence that he would win. With millions of absentee ballots still to be counted and several key states still undecided, neither candidate had secured the 270 electoral college needed to win. Mr Trump had done better than polls had predicted, winning the crucial battlegrounds of Texas, Ohio and Florida. But Mr Biden was the victor in Arizona, which Mr Trump had won in 2016, and held on in Minnesota, as well as the Democratic strongholds of California and New York. In terms of market reaction, in Europe equity markets are little changed and there is also little evidence of panic in the FX market, where the USD index traded higher and consequently USD/JPY was not subjected to downward risk averse flows. In turn, gold also traded lower. Bitcoin traded a touch softer, but the total open interest (OI) remained well within the recent highs, even if the contango term structure flattened somewhat. In the options market, the OI actually rose, even if the expected burst of volatility did not materialise just yet. Small caps continued to trade softer, with year-to-date return of just 11% (MVIS small cap index). Bitcoin ABC, the historically dominant implementation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), appears on the brink of giving way to a community-driven mutiny in the form of Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN). Cointelegraph writes citing Coin Dance that more than 75% of nodes have signaled in favor of BCHN over the past week, while a meager 1% have shown support for ABC. There’s just over ten days left in the race. BCHN nodes mined 84.7% of Bitcoin Cash blocks produced in the last 24 hours, compared to just 1.4% for ABC. BCHN emerged in response to ABC’s announcement it would introduce a new “coinbase rule” diverting 8% of block rewards to a development fund controlled by ABC lead developer Amaury Sechet, alongside changes to BCH’s difficulty algorithm come Bitcoin Cash’s scheduled upgrade on Nov. 15.
Elsewhere, 69,369 bitcoins, worth approximately $955 million, just moved out of wallet address 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx, the fourth-largest bitcoin wallet according to BitInfoCharts. The Block reported that this is the first outflow activity of the wallet since April 2015. Vice previously reported that the address has been passed among hacker circles in an attempt to crack the wallet and access the bitcoins inside.
DeFi may not be all the rage it used to be but Singapore-based NIFTEX, the platform that allows for the fractional trading of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), announced a $500,000 funding round led by 1kx and joined by CoinFund, MetaCartel Ventures, Sparq and Digital Currency Group. As per CoinDesk report, in an interview, co-founder and CEO also hinted at a “master plan” to design and build a second version of the platform, moving toward a fully decentralized NIFTEX – presumably with a governance token – in early 2021.
Telegram Messenger Inc. has been ordered to pay nearly $625,000 worth of legal fees to a small cryptocurrency firm that it sued over using the ‘GRAM’ crypto-ticker and trademark. In a Nov. 2 ruling, U.S District Judge Charles Breyer granted $618,240 in attorney’s fees for 1,030.4 hours work billed at $600 per hour. Lantah had requested compensation at a rate of $900 per hour, but the judge reduced the fees to meet the market rate for the services.
