Bitcoin Daily: LinkedIn Co-Founder Seeks $20M For Token, Google ‘Bitcoin’ Searches Plummet

Eric Ly, a LinkedIn co-founder, is raising money for a token tied to a future platform called ICOHub, CoinDesk reported. The Hub Token has raised just over $13.5 million in a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) sale. In all, $20 million is being offered for the sale. As of a Form D filing on Friday (June 1), 20 investors had participated in the sale.

And Ripple has unveiled a $50 million fund for universities, The Next Web reported. Through the University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI), Ripple plans to provide funding to universities for cryptocurrency, blockchain and digital payment initiatives. As of now, Ripple has partnered with universities including MIT and UC Berkeley.

In other news, people aren’t searching for bitcoin as much as they used to, CNBC reported: Google Trends found that searches for “bitcoin” on Google have plummeted 75 percent since the start of 2018. The news is significant for people such as Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.

“We use Google Trends to track search queries for ‘bitcoin’ as a proxy for potential new buyers,” Colas said in an email to clients. “Bitcoin needs a new narrative in order to reestablish global attention.”

And the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has a new crypto advisor, CoinDesk reported. Valerie Szczepanik will serve as a new senior advisor on digital assets and innovation, as well as an associate director of the corporation finance division. Szczepanik has some experience in the field, having led the agency’s distributed ledger working group.

In other news, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak agrees with Jack Dorsey’s thinking that bitcoin could grow into the world’s single currency, CNBC reported. “I buy into what Jack Dorsey says, not that I necessarily believe it’s going to happen, but because I want it to be that way,” Wozniak told CNBC. Wozniak had purchased bitcoin when it was much less expensive than current days, priced at $700. The price of bitcoin was $7,508.26 at 6:47 p.m. today, according to CoinDesk.