Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, is boycotting Coindesk’s 2018 Consensus conference; moreover, he urges others to do the same, arguing that Coindesk is recklessly complicit in conducting giveaway scams; he also claims that their coverage of EIP 999 was lacking, that their reporting policies are sensationalistic and that the conference costs between $2K and $3K to attend - Link

French State Council changes the rate of gains generated by cryptocurrencies; at the moment, such capital gains can be subject to taxes of up to 45%; this new change will see that replaced by a flat rate of 19% - Link

Bezop cryptocurrency leak exposes thousand of investors’ personal information; Bezop left a MongoDB database unsecured, leading to the leak; somewhat ironically, found among the firm’s named advisors is security software tycoon John McAfee - Link

Germany’s "VPE Bank" becomes the first in the country to support cryptocurrency for institutional traders; furthermore, the bank is compliant with "all necessary" Know Your Customer and Anti-Money-Laundering requirements; VPE has partnered with fintech firm solarisBank to facilitate the trading - Link

Two Chilean banks have been ordered to re-open the accounts of the Buda cryptocurrency exchange; this order came from a Chilean anti-monopoly court, who reportedly did not want to appear as enforcing some form of cryptocurrency ban; the accounts were shut down earlier this month without explanation - Link

Sony looks to use blockchain technology to store rights data; this is revealed by a recent filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office; this will allow Sony to decrypt media content after the appropriate DRM rights have been verified in the blockchain - Link

The Request Network Foundation announces a new partnership with Wikimedia to facilitate donation; moreover, the organization took the opportunity to highlight the launch of the first WooCommerce plugin to use the Request Network, as well as an update of ERC-20 and BTC support - Link

Binance’s CEO meets with president of the African nation of Togo and announces a project in the country; the Togo project will reportedly create ”thousands” of jobs in Togo; this comes only days after announcing a Binance partnership to "support Uganda’s economic transformation" - Link

Litecoin confirms TokenPay partnership and a production Litecoin debit card; TokenPay has also confirmed it, saying an NDA has already been signed; this comes as the Litecoin cryptocurrency recently partnered with Wirex and Tenx, reportedly to create a physical debit card - Link

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