You know the thing I love most about Ethereum upgrades?... They're silent.

The last Ethereum major upgrade, known as Byzantium, went live in October of 2017 and barely any end users even noticed. Even though Byzantium was implemented using a hard fork, no new Ethereum coins were created. For a better understanding, see this article about how forks work.

The next Ethereum hard fork is now scheduled for mid-January. Constantinople is mostly a maintenance and optimization upgrade that will pave the way for most of the big league scaling solutions and more.

The field of decentralized networks and computing is still very new and presents various challenges. So these type of upgrades, though sometimes take longer than expected, are an excellent example of how dev communities get it right and pave the way for a better future.

Traditional Markets

Today we'll start off with some positive news for global trade. The European Union and Japan have finalized a deal that's been 5 years in the making.

It's nice to think that even at the present time when many politicians are advocating for more isolation, some countries can continue making deals.

The President of the European Commission was on record as saying..

“We’re saying...we believe in open, fair and rules-based trade,” 

Stocks are enjoying a rally this morning. After holding steady during the US session yesterday, Asian and European markets are well off the lows.

Yellen Breaking the Silence

Life comes at you fast sometimes.

The former Chair of the US Federal Reserve said a bit more than a year ago that...

It seems her rhetoric has changed completely since then and it now seems that she's expecting something bad to happen soon.

In this interview, she pointed out the $9.1 trillion corporate debt and gave a stern warning that it could cause a lot of bankruptcies, especially for companies with less than sparkling credit.

Interesting times.

Happy Birthday Bitcoin Futures

The bitcoin futures market on Wall Street turns one today.

Many will argue and many often do about what effect this has had on Market prices. Though it's often downplayed, even by the CBOE themselves, volumes in these CBOE and CME contracts often reach up to about 8% of the volumes reported by major global exchange sites.

For better or for worse, they're part of this market now and it's only going to grow when the new Nasdaq futures come online in Q1.

Happy birthday!!

Let's have a spectacular day ahead!!