Yesterday HTC announced the launch of Exodus, their blockchain phone. It is now available for preorder, and will be shipped in December, probably around Christmas. Exodus is not the first blockchain phone announced, but it probably will be the first blockchain phone released. The Exodus is basically a U12, which was the latest Android flagship device of HTC. It has all the specs, the cameras are great, the design is satisfying. So how Exodus is different from a normal U12 and what makes it a blockchain phone? The Exodus has a secure hardware element or an enclave. The operating system, Android in this case, cannot simply write information there. When you interact with the secure element, it's done on a lower level. In HTC's case, this secure element is used to store your private keys to your wallets. The phone will support Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and certain ERC20 tokens as a start. Exodus comes with dapp support out of the box, which is great as using dapps on a mobile is still a pain. It also has something called "social key recovery". But the most exciting feature of Exodus is the API.

Coinbase has just launched support for USDC or USD Coin, the stablecoin developed by Circle. USDC is fully-audited and fully-backed by US Dollar deposits. It think it is good thing for two reasons mostly. First, using USDC is certainly a much better idea than using USDT, Tether. Through Coinbase, USDC can capture a big slice of the stablecoin pie, and anything that makes Tether less used is a good thing. Second, USDC makes is possible to move quasi fiat from Coinbase to other exchanges, and this gives more opportunities for traders.

And another Coinbase news, their custody services are now fully operational, after obtaining a license from the New York State authorities. After Bakkt and Fidelity entering the institutional market, this news is not that earth-shattering anymore, but with mainstream adoption every little helps.

On the 19th we discussed a theory saying that Tether is gracefully exiting the market as Bitfinex is sending back USDT to the Tether Treasury at an unprecedented scale. The Treasury account holds the Tethers with are out of circulation. Some of them, those without fiat backing are meant to be burned, but of course no one knows how much fiat Tether actually has. But in any case, these Tethers are out of circulation. Since that show another $180M have been transferred to the Treasury account, where the balance is quickly approaching 1 billion dollars, currently it has $966M. That is a huge number, that is one-third of all the USDT in existence. We will see, but I'd say the signs are indeed pointing to a graceful exit, which would be amazing news for the whole ecosystem, and would probably trigger the next bull market.