Justin Sun rescheduled the lunch with Warren Buffett which was long anticipated due to health issues. Sun was hoping that Buffett will be pleased to learn something more about blockchain technology so he invited other members of the community to join him and in the altcoin news below we read more about his situation and the idea behind the lunch. Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire and the Litecoin creator Charlie Lee accepted the invitation while the Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao declined. However, all of the people who agreed to come to the lunch will not have to wait for the ‘’crypto power lunch’’ since Sun has just gone out of the hospital over kidney stones. He wrote on Weibo:

 “I was in the hospital for sudden kidney stones, and I canceled the lunch with Mr. Buffett.”

He did continue to say that his health is currently fine. The situation was also confirmed by the TRON foundation on twitter. Warren Buffett also agreed to reschedule the meeting. According to the Tron foundation tweet:

‘’TRON Foundation announces postponement of Warren Buffett lunch, press conferences after founder Justin Sun falls ill with kidney stones. Parties agreed to reschedule at a later date.’’

Some users believe that this is just another one of the mishaps that Justin Sun and the foundation has. The last time the situation involved a mix-up with some Teslas that Sun was supposed to give away. The community leader also offered to give Binance more than 7,000 bitcoin after it was hacked. Sun even once described the questions that he was asked by CoinDesk’s Pete Rizzo as ‘’tough’’ earlier this year after he did not have an answer to them. Justin Sun rescheduled the lunch when it was too close to happening so this is why the crypto community is a skeptic and many are wondering whether he chickened out. Warren Buffet is a well-known crypto skeptic and is famous for being wrong in the past mainly talking about google. He is known for his ability to predict macro trading patterns and because of the major influence he has over Wall Street. As noted in the latest cryptocurrency news, Sun, Allaire, and Lee hope to change his mind regarding crypto.

Robinhood gathered more than $323 million in the latest fundraising which now makes the trading app worth $7.6 billion. Despite the major boost and support from the users, the broker is still less worth than the Bitcoin-focused Coinbase as we can read in the latest cryptocurrency news below. Coinbase has a total worth of $8 billion while the stock and crypto trading app only reached the $7.6 billion despite the massive fundraising. In a press release the company made it perfectly clear that they have been very busy since the last round of funding and even added several features to their platform:

 “We’re focused on building products and services that expand access to our financial system. Since May of last year, we’ve launched our own clearing system, Clearing by Robinhood; rolled out a new Robinhood Gold experience including Nasdaq Level 2 Market Data; and introduced multi-leg options strategies. We also acquired Robinhood Snacks to bring people digestible financial news; grew our management team, including leaders for operations and finance; and expanded Robinhood Crypto to more than 30 states.”

If you take a closer look at the features that the company ships out, Robinhood crypto stands out as anything remotely groundbreaking. Everything else is either already on the market or old news which makes the attractiveness of the broker less magical. There are about 4 million people that use the platform of the Robinhood App while in the meantime Coinbase only makes deals in Bitcoin and other crypto assets, scored a stunning $8 billion in value last year. The fact that Coinbase value is now even higher than the one in 2018 after the bitcoin price plummeted, suggests that the crypto exchange could now be worth more than $8 billion. With the improving prices and the sentiment on the market make up for a great period ahead for Coinbase’s value but it still not clear how much they will affect Robinhood. Robinhood aims to be different and even brands itself like such but the perception could not be further from the truth. Saying that your platform has zero commission does not mean that there will be free trading at all and they also perform the anti-client action of selling order-flow to HFTs just like other exchanges do. Robinhood gathered a huge sum of money as noted in the altcoin news, but the only difference could be better marketing.

Government of Iran finally decided to give a green light to the crypto mining activities despite the issues it had with the authorities in the past. In the coming altcoin news today, we are reading more about the decision they came up with and what will this bring to the country. According to the Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, the Government of Iran decided to allow crypto mining with a series of legal reforms that will put an end of the period of uncertainty, persecutions, and misunderstandings. Iran is legalizing crypto-mining, giving a boost to this activity which was already booming despite the unfavorable position of the authorities. Iran is one of the countries where crypto-mining is the most profitable because of the low electricity costs and subsidies. For the reason, over the past several years there was a wave of miners swamped the country and caused multiple problems in the distribution of energy across many regions. This initiated a movement in the country that was going to actively persecute this activity which actually didn’t stop the miners from mining but just made them go underground. Due to the U.S. sanctions and the major escalation of tensions between the two countries, the government of Iran began to show a more favorable attitude towards this issue. Iran announced the creation of its own gold-backed cryptocurrency in order to promote the commercial transactions after its exclusion from the SWIFT system but using cryptocurrencies is still a legal void in the country. The increase in crypto mining activity became a major issue to the United States since the regulators believe that this activity could bypass their sanctions. They are now working on a draft to sanction mining Iran according to some statements by officials of the country. At the moment, the Central Bank of Iran and its Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati confirmed the approval of the new mechanism that will allow mining in the country and stated:

‘’A mechanism to mine digital coins was approved by the government’s economic commission and will later be put to discussion at a cabinet meeting.’’

As reported in the latest cryptocurrency news, the Deputy Minister of Energy Homayuan Haeri noted that the new decision will let the miners operate in Iran and pay the energy bills without the subsidy offered by the Government of Iran so the country can stimulate the economy and receive extra income on mining.

Bakkt’s Moonshot bitcoin futures platform is scheduled to start testing today and in the coming altcoin news, we are about to refresh our memories and rear more about it. The bitcoin futures platform has been long-delayed and it is expected to start testing today. The platform is aimed mainly at institutions and it is widely expected to change and boost the markets and especially the price of the number one cryptocurrency. As it was reported by Fundstrat last week, the investors are waiting patiently for the launch on the sidelines.

 “There appears to be a critical mass of adopters ready to come on board on Day 1 of the Bakkt launch… The launch could be a huge accelerator for market growth.”

Bakkt’s Moonshot which was rolled by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and both Microsoft and Starbucks is not the most anticipated launch of the year. According to a post written on Medium by Adam White in June, the platform will begin the user acceptance testing today: Bank-rolled by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) - the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange - as well as Starbucks and Microsoft, Bakkt is the most anticipated launch of 2019.

 “On July 22, two days after Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary, Bakkt will initiate user acceptance testing for its bitcoin futures listed and traded at ICE Futures U.S. and cleared at ICE Clear US.”

While the bitcoin futures trading is not a novelty, Bakkt brings fresh air on to the table. The futures contracts are basically settled in Bitcoin so the investors will receive a real allocation of BTC at the end of the contract period. Also, the CME bitcoin futures are tracking the spot price and are settled in cash but they never actually touch bitcoin. Bakkt will also provide institutional-grade custody for digital assets and this will be fully regulated. The company applied for a trust license which makes it possible to act as a qualified custodian with more than $100 million in insurance coverage. The market research company Fundstrat, stated last week that Bakkt will be a major booster for the price of bitcoin since more than 150 institutional investors and service providers who attended the digital asset summit last week responded positively on the project as it was reported in the latest cryptocurrency news.