ARK Announces Partnership with Magic.Link

As Ark approachs the launch of MarketSquare, we want to give our community an inside look at some of the partnerships we have formed. These strategic partnerships will not only help make MarketSquare the new homepage for the decentralized web but will also create inroads between ARK and other projects looking to build and collaborate together. Today we would like to introduce you to Magic.Link!

What is Magic?
Magic is a developer SDK that can be integrated into applications to enable passwordless authentication using magic links - similar to systems used by Slack and Medium.

Once a developer integrates Magic into their application a user is able to sign up or log in by doing the following:

A user requests a magic link be sent to their email address.
The user clicks on the magic link
The user is securely logged into the application.
#Saying Goodbye to Passwords
You may have noticed that this process occurs without the need for signing in or registering with a password. The benefits of passwordless authentication in modern applications and services are becoming more apparent. Let's go over a few of them below:

Increased Security: Passwords are becoming obsolete. The resources required to manage user credentials and passwords are increasing. It is estimated that 81% of security breaches are due to poor passwords set by users. The problem is further complicated due to the fact that 59% of users reuse their passwords everywhere. By using Magic, password leaks can be prevented which reduces risk and liability for companies using passwordless authentication.

Less Overhead: Statistics show that nearly 50% of all support tickets are related to lost and forgotten passwords. The estimated cost for handling 10 support tickets a day is $128,000 annually. Magic takes a different approach. Magic leverages blockchain-based, standardized public-private key cryptography to achieve identity management. When a new user signs up for an application or service, a public-private key pair is generated for them. Private keys are used to sign cryptographic proofs of a user's identity.

Boost Conversion: By removing passwords, Magic creates a better user experience. The number of steps necessary to login and signup for a new platform or application is reduced by over 66%. This amounts to better conversion rates and happier users.

Magic & MarketSquare
One of the main goals of MarketSquare is to be an industry leader in providing educational and informative content centered around blockchain. By working closely together with Magic we have an opportunity to explore integrating their robust SDK, create content around decentralized identification management, and more.

Other areas of collaboration include:
Creating MarketSquare content centered around Magic.
Explore integrating Magic's SDK for ARK's products.
Exploring other areas where working together would make sense and be beneficial for both projects.
As we expand the number of developer tools that we are featuring on MarketSquare, we believe that Magic is a great fit and are looking forward to having them as a partner.

Coinbase cancels margin trading, updates tax form

Coinbase has disabled its margin trading service, and is also switching out the tax form they send to their users come tax season. According to two new blog posts from the company, the move to cancel margin trading was induced by guidance that the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released in March, and the move to change the tax form was caused by the IRS misinterpreting the previous form Coinbase users were required to send in (1099-k).

Disabling margin trading
Coinbase began terminating its margin trading service on November 25. The margin trading service will be completely disabled in December when the remaining margin positions expire.

Many believe Coinbase's decision to terminate this service is because of CFTC's guidance. Given the guidance, it appeared as though Coinbase was bound to run into the same obstacle as Bitfinex, who settled with the CFTC for $75,000 back in 2016 for executing "illegal trades."

"We believe clear, common-sense regulations for margin lending products are needed to protect and provide peace of mind to U.S. customers," said Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal in the official announcement. "We look forward to working closely with regulators to achieve this goal."

That being said, the regulatory landscape seems to be the reason Coinbase has decided to disable their service. However, Coinbase seems hopeful that they will have clarity on the issue in the future which might mean that they bring back margin trading sometime in the future.

A new tax form
In Coinbase's second announcement, they informed their users that they will no longer be issuing the problematic 1099-k when it comes time to report taxes. Instead, Coinbase will issue a 1099-misc to any user that "has received $600 or more in digital currency from Coinbase Earn, USDC Rewards, and/or Staking in 2020 and is subject to U.S. taxes."

This update comes just several days after a Coinbase user announced that he received a CP2000 notice from the IRS that said he underreported his 2018 earnings from trading on Coinbase. The user accurately reported his taxes, however, the IRS believed he made a mistake because the 1099-k form obfuscated his true earnings—which was actually a $2,000 loss. This is because the 1099-k does not represent any gains or losses you need to report to the IRS; it solely reports the gross proceeds from all transactions you've made.

To solve this problem, Coinbase will be distributing 1099-misc forms to its users this year who have received over $600 from specified activities. However, it remains unclear if individuals who profited or lost from trading on Coinbase during the tax year will also receive a 1099-misc form.

Although tax experts believe the 1099-misc is a step up from the 1099-k, they do not believe it is the real solution to the problem

"Even with the new form, you will still have to track your cost basis using a tool like CoinTracker, said Shehan Chandrasekera, head of tax strategy at Cointracker. "Neither 1099-MISC or 1099-K report your cost basis, unfortunately. To calculate your crypto taxes correctly, you need to keep track of the cost basis."

Waves sets up $3M grant fund to promote cross-chain interoperability

The Waves Association announced on Wednesday a new grant program for cross-chain interoperability development.

The pool consists of 1 million Waves tokens, worth approximately $3 million as of press time. Projects will be eligible for grants of up to 300,000 Waves to develop solutions for interoperability and cross-chain communication.

There will be three separate types of grants: open grants, grants distributed through hackathons and Waves-focused grants. Sten Laureyssens, strategic advisor at the Waves Association, explained to Cointelegraph that open grants will have a wide scope:

"For the open grant category, the grants are open to a wide variety of interoperability projects, that don't necessarily have to be connected to Waves. We're looking for creative solutions to connect existing blockchains and dApps."
The latter two types of grants will have to adhere to certain requirements, which makes it likely that the Waves blockchain will be involved in some form. Nevertheless, Laureyssens said that the association is planning to sponsor blockchain-agnostic solutions as well.

Sasha Ivanov, president of the Waves Association, threw a subtle jab at certain types of interoperability solutions offered today:

"Waves Association aims to support independent developers working on interoperability solutions — especially those thinking outside the box. Solving interoperability by adding a dedicated blockchain and native token as an additional layer would only lead to more complexity, undercutting the potential of the proposed solution."
Grants will be stipulated and decided on by members of the Waves Association, though the disbursement of funds will be automated through a decentralized application.

Waves is a smart contract-enabled blockchain platform competing with the likes of Ethereum and EOS. Its developers have often criticized the mainstream approaches to certain tenets of blockchain technology, notably misleading claims of transactional capacity.

The Waves blockchain was recently used with apparent success in a Russian local election, following a disappointing performance by a similar system developed by BitFury.

Swiss National Bank and BIS announce digital currency trial by 2020 end

The Swiss central bank and the Bank for International Settlements have announced plans to jointly trial a central bank digital currency by the end of 2020, in the latest development in the global race to CBDCs.

The plan was revealed by Benoit Coeure of the Bank for International Settlements earlier this week at a summit in Shanghai. According to local press reports, Coeure said the Swiss National Bank and the BIS would launch the currency in proof-of-concept before the end of this year.

Head of the Innovation Hub at the BIS, tasked with researching CBDCs, Coeure said the Swiss proof of concept would be a precursor to experimenting with the currency in retail settings. The trial will also allow the banks to see how the technology syncs with existing payment systems, as well as providing more effective routes to monitoring compliance.

Coeure said the Bank for International Settlements was already working with several other international central banks on similar projects, helping develop their central bank digital currencies. Among those named were the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand, both keen to explore CBDCs for cross-border digital currency transactions.

The announcement follows on from the partnership between the Swiss National Bank and the Bank for International Settlements, first struck back in October 2019. Welcoming the partnership at the time, the Swiss National bank said the new digital currency would be primarily used in settlement between banks and other institutions.

"This new form of digital central bank money would be aimed at facilitating the settlement of tokenized assets between financial institutions."

The move comes at a time of increasing efforts across the world's major central banks to move towards CBDCs, with plans already developing in China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan and elsewhere to launch state-backed digital currencies.

Waves and Fantom enter collaboration

Joint work will be focused on developing a broader DeFi ecosystem using the Gravity cross-chain communication protocol.
We are excited to announce a collaboration between Waves and Fantom. Waves and Fantom are committed to building an open ecosystem between different chains, based on the Gravity protocol, which is essential to the DeFi industry's wider success.

Under the collaboration deal, WAVES, the native utility token of the Waves ecosystem, will join Fantom's DeFi ecosystem as collateral for minting synthetic assets, including fUSD, Fantom's stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
WAVES holders will be able to use fMint to access fUSD and other synthetic assets, which can be used with other Fantom DeFi products. Specifically, fLend allows users to lend and borrow assets, while fTrade allows users to trade them.

For instance, If you want to go long BTC (without losing exposure to your WAVES collateral), mint fUSD against your WAVES in fMint and use the fUSD to buy fBTC (synthetic BTC) in fTrade. Sell the fBTC for fUSD later to repay the minted debt. Once you've repaid any outstanding minted debt, you can unlock your collateral to withdraw.

About Gravity
Gravity is a decentralized cross-chain and oracle network based on a truly blockchain-agnostic protocol for communication between blockchains and with the outside world, working with the native token economies.
Gravity provides multi-purpose cross-chain interaction without introducing a native token. The true blockchain agnostic no-token approach creates a more inclusive, open ecosystem, while addressing future scaling/stability issues.

About Fantom
The Fantom Foundation is committed to building technology that is open-source, decentralized, DAG-based distributed ledgers with aBFT consensus. Fantom aims to create fast, secure and scalable technologies across various industries, allowing organizations, businesses, and individuals to develop decentralized and secure applications, solving real-world problems.

Ripple motion to dismiss class action lawsuit only partly granted

Cross border payment remittance company Ripple has been part-granted a motion to dismiss some of the claims brought against it by investors, as the firm battles an ongoing class-action lawsuit over alleged securities fraud.

Investors claim Ripple and the company's CEO Brad Garlinghouse failed to register XRP with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and then went on to make misleading statements about the token, leading to the eventual class action suit.

In the U.S. District Court of Northern California last Friday, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton granted two legs of Ripple's motion for dismissal, with 10 claims total outstanding against the firm.

The judge said that plaintiff Bradley Sostack had provided insufficient evidence to support two of the claims, which relate in particular to purportedly false statements made by the firm back in 2017.

However, for the most part, the judge refused to dismiss the claims against the company, including over misleading advertisements for XRP and allegations of an illegal securities issue.

One particular claim found that Garlinghouse had misrepresented his personal investments in XRP to investors, telling prospective customers that he was personally "very, very long XRP as a percentage of my personal balance sheet." In reality, Garlinghouse had sold off substantial parts of his investment in XRP, adding up to millions of dollars.

Other claims alleged to be misleading included that banks were using XRP for liquidity, and that token demand was being driven by its "value proposition."

Based on this and other of the claims still standing, Sostack now has leave to proceed with the action against Ripple and Garlinghouse.

While the decision by Judge Hamilton leaves Ripple in a marginally better position, the firm will now be expected to account for the remaining claims in the class action lawsuit.

Lamden Mainnet is Here!

A Technology Delivered
We're happy to announce that we've officially launched Lamden mainnet! Today marks a day of independence and new beginnings. Three years in the making, this milestone represents a culmination of intense efforts to deliver a novel blockchain with a revolutionary leap in performance, scalability and usability. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution to these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective.

What is Lamden Mainnet?
Lamden's engineers aimed to not only deliver on the original promises of blockchain but to revolutionize it. Lamden tackles the fundamental challenges of blockchain head-on, from high barriers to entry to poor performance and scalability.

Easy to Use
Lamden's open-source, Python-native platform empowers developers to focus on quickly building blockchain applications, instead of learning new programming languages and messing around with complex syntax and system architecture. This means easier development and faster revenue generation on Lamden.

Highly Performant and Scalable
Lamden uses an array of advanced algorithms to remain highly performant and scalable as demand increases for on-chain activity and large-scale applications. Lamden is engineered to achieve sub-second transaction finality and to scale linearly with additional CPU cores, as described here. There are no Ethereum-style "gas-wars" on Lamden because the system uses a first-in-first-out queuing algorithm which prevents people from paying more to get ahead of the line and further congest the network.

A Developer Incentives System
Lamden has a built-in rewards distribution system with voteable and configurable parameters. Developers who create applications on Lamden will be awarded a percentage of transaction fees processed through their smart contracts, thereby earning revenue automatically from their applications without relying on third-party payment services. Incentives are made with Lamden's native coin TAU and sent straight to the developer's wallet. Because revenue is tied to transaction volume, developers will earn more revenue as their DApps become more popular.
For an introductory period, developers will automatically earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contracts.

A Self-Regulating System
Lamden has a self-regulating governance system where the community nodes have direct voting rights on key decisions including rewards distribution, transaction rates, and platform functionality upgrades. The system naturally strives for an equilibrium where each network participant will act in their best interest to maximize their reward. No single party controls the Lamden network and no single party can monopolize it.

Mainnet Token Swap
Now that mainnet is live, a token swap from Ethereum ERC20 TAU to Lamden Mainnet TAU will commence. The swap period will be open for approximately 6 months and is mandatory. If you do not swap your ERC20 TAU tokens during the 6 month swap window, you will be unable to do so afterwards.

IMPORTANT: Do not send ERC20 tokens to the Lamden wallet or they will be lost forever! ERC20 tokens are not compatible with the Lamden network. The only way to get your ERC20 TAU onto the Lamden network is by following the wallet token swap process.

The swap process is built directly into the Lamden wallet, which you can download on the Lamden website..

Feature from Tech The $55M Hack That Almost Brought Ethereum Down

Bloomberg News reporter Mathew Leising's new book, "Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist That Almost Destroyed It All", tells the story of the infamous DAO hack that almost brought down the world's second-largest blockchain.

In June 2016, a here-to-now unknown assailant (or assailants) began syphoning off funds from Ethereum's first decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, a bit of software that functions like a corporation. Weeks earlier the DAO went live, following a $150 million crowd sale.

"[T]he DAO had a huge part to play in the early history of Ethereum," Leising writes. "It's not overstating it to say that the DAO made Ethereum." That's because it was one of the earliest examples that Ethereum's network of computers was resilient enough to support complex applications.

While the attack never broke Ethereum's code – it merely exploited a loophole in The DAO's smart contract – it cast doubt over the viability of a blockchain-based "world computer." It was also the beginning of Ethereum's two Ethereums.

Leising, who has been covering the crypto industry for the better half of a decade, had called out sick from work the day a hacker absconded with $55 million in stolen ETH. But he didn't let the story die. Over the past four years he has been reporting out the story told in the book, examining blockchain data, following through on cryptic tips and ultimately tracing a path towards his leading suspect.

In the excerpt below, readers find themselves in eastern Germany along with Christoph Jentzsch, one of The DAO's principle architects, who woke up to realize the project he has spent months building is being robbed "at the rate of about $8 million an hour."

A religious family man, Jentzsch takes this extemporaneous moment to reflect on the challenges that faced the DAO's creation – from securities worries that still plague token projects to the critical opinions of the early Ethereum community – before taking action. – Dan Kuhn

Chapter 7
The town of Mittweida in the state of Saxony in Germany escaped being bombed in the Second World War. In the middle of town, old stone streets divide rows of brightly colored buildings. If you leave the town square and walk for about 10 minutes you'll come to a quiet street with a police station; next door is a mint-green house with brown trim and shutters. On Friday, June 17, 2016, just after 8 a.m., Christoph Jentzsch lay on the beige carpet of the first-floor office inside. He tried to still his breathing, to take deep breaths, to not let the world get away from him. Thieves were inside the DAO, his creation, robbing it at the rate of about $8 million an hour.

One of the first things Christoph felt was relief: finally the DAO saga would come to an end. It had overtaken his life for the past six months.

He'd battled anxiety and depression and exhaustion; he'd neglected his wife and five kids. There had been moments when he froze at the thought of releasing the DAO code, because once it was out in the world it couldn't be changed. There could be a bug in the software, or maybe terrorists could figure out how to use it to fund an attack he'd be power- less to stop. The pressure made him physically ill several times. He'd puked under the strain. God, please, let this be the end of all that.

But Christoph also felt a strong sense of responsibility. It shook him that he'd messed up so badly and that people were losing money because of it. He believed in the ideas underpinning DAOs. (The language gets a bit confusing here as there were other DAOs around at this point, MakerDAO among them. DAO is a generic term for the structure that smart contracts fit into, but because of its eventual size and high profile, Jentzsch's DAO became the DAO.)

THERE WERE SO MANY FEARS," GRIFF SAID."DOES THIS DESTROY ETHEREUM? DOES THIS DESTROY DAOS? WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ALL THIS MONEY?

A DAO is what got him into Ethereum in the first place, the moment he realized its potential. Vitalik's white paper had outlined a vision for how DAOs could democratize corporate structures to replace owners, employees, and investors with users who directly managed the firm's affairs with smart contracts encoded on the blockchain. That breakthrough is what made Christoph pause his PhD studies and start working for Ethereum in 2015. And then, improbably, he built one: the biggest DAO ever built, in fact, which made it a fat target. After all the security checks, Christoph couldn't understand why no one had found the right bug in time.

He got up from the floor of the office and went back to his IBM ThinkPad laptop. Christoph knew the cops next door couldn't help him. No, this was his mess and he'd have to clean it up.

In one sense, if toasters and door locks were allowed to have bank accounts the DAO never would have happened.

Lamden Mainnet is Coming. Lamden Mainnet will be launching on…16 september 2020

The Moment of Truth
The wait is almost over; Lamden's mainnet launch is fast approaching. September 16th, 2020 will be an inflection point, marking the transition from a technology promised to a technology delivered.

We at Lamden have been working nonstop to deliver on the unfulfilled promises of blockchain. Instead of modifying an existing technology, we decided to design and build a novel blockchain architecture from scratch. As a result, our Python-native modular blockchain delivers a revolutionary leap in performance, efficiency, and usability.

The moment of truth and the reveal is drawing near. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution upon these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective. One day, we will look back and remember September 16th, 2020 as a pivotal moment for blockchain and its revival.

The Road Traveled
We at Lamden took the road less traveled and it made all the difference. The imminent release of Lamden blockchain is the culmination of two and a half years of nonstop development and testing, and pushing the limits of what blockchain can do. We have worked hard to make life easier for developers by creating a Python-native platform that simplifies development and testing, and accelerates product deployment and monetization.

We have set our goals sky-high and refused to take a shortcut or compromise, and achieved results beyond our wildest expectations. We are deeply grateful to our amazing community for their unfailingly generous and enthusiastic support over the years. The mainnet would not have been possible without our team of developers and their unwavering commitment to deliver something extraordinary.

The Road Ahead
In the coming weeks, we will share more details on mainnet and exciting new plans with our community members. Our roadmap includes a developer on-boarding campaign, exciting new DeFi products, and a specification for Lamden version 2.0.

Lamden mainnet is just around the corner, but community members can start developing their ideas now using Lamden's Python-based smart contracting system. For an introductory period, developers will earn 90% of all TAU used to transact against their smart contract.

To our existing community members and those new to Lamden, we extend our warmest welcome to the Lamden Legion.

For more information, please visit:
https://lamden.io/  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFLtqJQ5LRc  

TECH 26 AUGUST 2020 Patrick Thompson Mitiga, an incident readiness and response company, has discovered that a product available on Amazon Web Services Marketplace contained Monero mining malware. Mitiga published their findings, noting that they discovered the malware when conducting a security audit for a financial services company. “Mitiga’s security research team has identified an AWS Community AMI containing malicious code running an unidentified Monero crypto miner,” according to the Mitiga’s blog post. “We have concerns this may be a phenomenon, rather than an isolated occurrence.” Malware on AWS Marketplace Unfortunately, the AWS marketplace allows anyone to sell virtual services on its marketplace. Although the marketplace is full of verified vendors, it also contains offerings from unverified community members. Mitiga discovered that one community member was selling a Windows 2008 virtual server that secretly used the computing power of anyone who downloa

Mitiga, an incident readiness and response company, has discovered that a product available on Amazon Web Services Marketplace contained Monero mining malware. Mitiga published their findings, noting that they discovered the malware when conducting a security audit for a financial services company.

"Mitiga's security research team has identified an AWS Community AMI containing malicious code running an unidentified Monero crypto miner," according to the Mitiga's blog post. "We have concerns this may be a phenomenon, rather than an isolated occurrence."

Malware on AWS Marketplace
Unfortunately, the AWS marketplace allows anyone to sell virtual services on its marketplace. Although the marketplace is full of verified vendors, it also contains offerings from unverified community members.

Mitiga discovered that one community member was selling a Windows 2008 virtual server that secretly used the computing power of anyone who downloaded it to mine Monero in the background. Although it may come as a surprise that Monero mining malware was present on Amazon's AWS Marketplace, Amazon's policy clearly states that:

"Amazon can't vouch for the integrity or security of AMIs shared by other Amazon EC2 users. Therefore, you should treat shared AMIs as you would any foreign code that you might consider deploying in your own data center and perform the appropriate due diligence. We recommend that you get an AMI from a trusted source."

Reducing the attack vector
To avoid falling victim to malware that might live within community offerings on the AWS marketplace, Mitiga recommends "verifying or terminating these instances [unverified offerings], and seeking AMIs from trusted sources"

"As AWS customer usage is obfuscated, we can't know how far and wide this phenomenon stretches without AWS's own investigation," said Mitiga. "We do however believe that the potential risk is high enough to issue a security advisory to all AWS customers using Community AMIs."

Over 1,000 customer data missing in CryptoTrader.Tax breach

Digital currency tax reporting service CryptoTrader.Tax suffered a breach, resulting in 13,000 rows of data and 1,082 unique customer email addresses stolen.

The breach reportedly took place on April 7, but the platform did not make an official announcement at the time. Instead, it contacted the individuals affected directly. The incident only came to light after CryptoTrader.Tax co-founder and CEO David Kemmerer confirmed that the data breach happened.

How it happened
An individual familiar with the matter was quoted by CoinDesk saying the hacker was able to gain access to a CryptoTrader.Tax employee's account. The employee worked in marketing and customer service, which allowed the hacker to access customer names, emails, payment processor profiles, and messages to customer service on the platform. Once the hacker accessed this information, they allegedly took screenshots of the data, and subsequently posted them on a dark net forum to show others that they had personal identification data for sale.

Why are we just finding out?
Although CryptoTrader.Tax did act relatively responsible after learning of the breach, it comes as a surprise that the April 7th hack is officially being made public for the very first time four months later in August.

Kemmerer told the new outlet that shortly after CryptoTrader became aware of the breach, they alerted the customers that were affected and took steps to improve security measures and monitoring systems across internal and third-party applications. Yet, it remains unclear why there was no official announcement, such as a blog that announced the data breach or even a post on a social media network alerting their users.

Although their team did take appropriate steps to warn customers and upgrade their system security after the breach took place, they did so in a rather intransparent way, which should make any individual that does business with CryptoTrader.Tax a bit weary of how the platform decided to operate.

Story from News Goldman Sachs Eyes Own Token as Bank Appoints New Head of Digital Assets

Goldman Sachs is seriously considering its own cryptocurrency, possibly a stablecoin, as it significantly expands its digital assets team and appoints a new head to spearhead efforts.

1. Matthew McDermott, Goldman's new digital asset global head, confirmed the U.S. investment bank was exploring whether to launch its own digital asset, CNBC reported Thursday.
2. "We are exploring the commercial viability of creating our own fiat digital token, but it's early days as we continue to work through the potential use cases," he said.
3. Last month McDermott hired Oli Harris as head of strategy. Harris was instrumental in JPMorgan's blockchain, Quroum, as well as its settlement coin, JPMCoin.
4. McDermott said he is already looking at how blockchain can make savings in the inefficient repurchase, or "repo", market used by banks to lend money to one another, as well as credit and mortgage markets.
5. He also said Goldman might consider collaborating with its rival, JPM, as well as Facebook on future digital asset initiatives.
6. McDermott said he plans to significantly expand Goldman's digital asset team, including doubling headcount in both Asia and Europe.

Previously on Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs held an investor call Wednesday to discuss current policies for bitcoin, gold and inflation in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The big takeaway? The stalwart investment bank is still no fan of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

A slideshow released before the call cited hacks and other losses related to cryptocurrencies as well as their use to "abet illicit activities" as some potential liabilities.  

Seven of Goldman's 35 slides mention bitcoin, but the people on the call only discussed bitcoin for roughly five minutes at the end, with no questions taken after.

In the call materials, Goldman notes that while cryptocurrencies like bitcoin "have received enormous attention," they "are not an asset class."

Why? The reasons include bitcoin's inherent lack of cash flow, unlike bonds, and its inability to generate earnings through exposure to global economic growth, according to the presentation. Goldman also notes bitcoin's volatility, citing the recent drop to 12-month lows in early March. The price spiked nearly 5% to $9,200 a few hours before the call.

Some professional cryptocurrency analysts were less than impressed by Goldman's analysis. "The criticisms were very cookie cutter, the type you'd expect if someone just read mainstream headlines," said Ryan Watkins, bitcoin analyst at Messari and former investment banking analyst at Moelis & Company. "It's like they didn't fully diligence the asset."

Goldman's cash flow argument was particularly odd to Tom Masojada, co-founder of OVEX Digital Asset Exchange.

"Many investments that Goldman labels as 'suitable for clients' do not generate cash flows and are primarily dependent on whether someone is willing to pay a higher price at a later date," he said on Twitter.

"One could argue bitcoin isn't backed by anything, but to liken it to a game of hot potato ignores the subjective value such a novel asset provides," said Kevin Kelly, former equity analyst at Bloomberg and co-founder of Delphi Digital, a cryptocurrency research firm that recently published a comprehensive report on bitcoin.

Bitcoin's current value, according to Kelly, is backed by "the demand for an apolitical speculative asset that may or may not turn out to be one of the world's most valuable safe havens."

The two Goldman speakers on the call, its head of research and a Harvard economics professor, said several bitcoin forks, which they refer to as "nearly identical clones," occupy three of the six largest cryptocurrencies by market value. With this, Goldman inferred that cryptocurrencies as a whole "are not a scarce resource," according to the presentation.