roadrunner

Cryptocurrency prices have been seemingly stable lately as there hasn’t been much volatility in the last two weeks in either direction. The overall market capitalization of the entire crypto economy has lost about $4 billion since our last markets update and global trade volumes are much slimmer than weeks prior. Also read: Properties Are Still Being Sold for Cryptocurrency Despite the Bear Market Traders Are Patiently Waiting for the Next Big Move Traders are itching and waiting for the next big move in crypto land as the entire digital asset economy of all 2000+ coins has been relatively stable. There have been a few price spikes here and there by a few lesser known coins, but most of the top digital currencies haven’t moved very much. This Sunday, Feb. 3, the price of bitcoin core (BTC) is hovering around $3,477 and has a market valuation of about $60 billion. BTC is down a hair today percentage-wise and down more than 3% for the week. Top 10 cryptocurrencies according to Satoshi Pulse on Feb. 3, 2019. The second largest market capitalization is captured by ripple (XRP) and each coin is swapping for $0.30. Not too far behind ripple is ethereum (ETH) which holds the third highest market valuation at $11.3 billion. ETH is trading for $108 per coin and the market is down over 5.9% in the last seven days. In the fourth position is eos (EOS) which is priced at $2.38 per token at press time and is up 1.89% today leading the top 10 pack. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Market Action Moving on to bitcoin cash (BCH), traders will see that the coin is trading for $119 per BCH this Sunday. The decentralized cryptocurrency has an overall market valuation of around $2.1 billion but has lost more than 3.4% this week. The top five BCH trading platforms swapping the most BCH this weekend include Lbank, Fcoin, Binance, Hitbtc, and Huobi. BCH/USD 7-day. Sunday – Feb. 3, 2019 USDT (tether) is dominating the BCH trades today by 39% and ETH is not too far behind at 33.5%. Following behind those pairs are BTC (14.8%), USD (5.4%), KRW (4.9%), and JPY (0.90%). This weekend, bitcoin cash is the seventh most traded cryptocurrency as far as global trade volume below XRP and above CKUSD. Poloniex BCH/USDC 4-hour. Sunday – Feb. 3, 2019 BCH/USD Technical Indicators Looking at the 4-hour BCH/USD chart on Bitstamp shows the price has been consolidating but still has been dropping slightly, hence the 2% loss over the last seven days. Currently, the two Simple Moving Averages (100-200 SMA) are still spread apart but looks as though they may cross hairs in the near future. For now, the long term 200 SMA is well above the short term 100 SMA, which indicates the path toward the least resistance is still in favor of the bears. RSI and Stochastic oscillators show oversold conditions are still dominating the playing field and MACd seems as though it will be heading southbound in the short term. Kraken BCH/USD 4-hour. Sunday – Feb. 3, 2019 There’s been six months of downward prices and dead kitties bouncing so bulls need to press past the 200-week moving average (MA) in order to gain some better headway this time around. Order books show there’s some pretty good resistance up until $130 a coin and things look smoother from there. On the back side, after a week of consolidation, foundations are slimmer than the week prior and bears will see pit stops between now and $110 for the second time in two weeks. The Verdict: The Growing Sentiment of Uncertainty Dominates the Entire Global Economy and Is Not Secluded to Crypto Markets Overall, traders are still waiting patiently for the next big move and other global markets may be playing a role. The global economy has been stuttering and many leaders and economists worldwide believe society is on the brink of another economic crisis like 2008. Safe haven assets like gold have experienced a significant increase since the economic tides began shifting and this sentiment may have kept cryptocurrencies from dropping further. The entire cryptocurrency to fiat money flow in the last 24-hours. Sunday – Feb. 3, 2019 Moreover, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been heavily discussing pausing interest rates which could affect the western economy a great deal. Since cryptocurrencies like BTC and BCH have seen price declines, the global SHA-256 hashrate has declined since last October by more than 35%. However, there’s been a slow and steady increase in hash power this year and around 10% of that power has been recovered. This indicates miners who have a lot of skin in the game are more confident and cryptocurrency price values could follow suit. For now, traders must wait but still many hope the longest bear run in crypto history will soon see a reversal. Where do you see the price of BCH, BTC and other coins heading from here? Let us know in the comments below. Disclaimer: Price articles and markets updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not to be considered as trading advice. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of the private keys are in control of the “money.” Images via Shutterstock, Trading View, Bitstamp, Coinlib.io, and Satoshi Pulse. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. The post Markets Update: Traders Patiently Wait for Crypto’s Longest Bear Run to End appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

In this edition of The Daily, a leading Grin developer has received donations worth $26,000 to fund his work on the project. Also, research group Bellingcat has tracked a BTC transaction allegedly made by Russian agents meddling in U.S. elections, and stablecoin paxos has reached $10 billion in transactions. Also read: Zebpay Launches in 5 European Markets, Coinpulse Enters ‘Indefinite Maintenance’ Grin Developer Receives Donations Worth $26,000 A campaign to raise funds for the development of privacy-centric coin Grin is halfway towards its target. A dedicated page on the project’s website shows that €22,530 (approx. $26,000) of the targeted €55,000 ($63,000) has been collected in crypto already. As of Feb. 1, 3.4 BTC, 134.14 ETH and 7 GRIN have been donated. The money will be used to finance the work of Grin’s developer Michael Cordner, also known as ‘Yeastplume.’ Cordner has been an active contributor since May 2017 and the Grin project has been his full-time job since February of last year. Yeastplume also states: I hope my performance so far has been satisfactory to the community as well as beneficial to Grin and Mimblewimble development … I’m happy to make myself known partly for funding transparency reasons, and partly because I’m happy to take on some of the public-facing tasks that will inevitably come up as Grin evolves. Michael Cordner further shares information about what the previous funds have been used for, as well as his future development plans. He also notes that once the funding goal is reached, the crypto amounts will be cashed out into euros. The money is expected to finance his efforts in the development of the coin until August 2019. Grin is one of two cryptocurrencies based on Mimblewimble that were launched this year, with Beam being the first. The protocol was originally developed in 2016 to improve the scalability of the Bitcoin network and provide enhanced privacy for its users. Bellingcat Claims to Have Tracked BTC Sent by GRU Research group Bellingcat has reportedly tracked a 0.026043 BTC transaction from Feb. 1, 2016 that, according to Robert Mueller, special counsel of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, is related to the activities of agents of Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency GRU as well as the hacking of the DNC servers. Despite noting that in recent years cryptocurrencies have been used by “bad actors,” the authors of the report admit many people utilize them for legitimate purposes and that the Bitcoin blockchain “cuts down on anonymity with regard to cryptocurrency use.” That allowed Bellingcat to track down the transaction mentioned in the Mueller indictment of 12 alleged Russian GRU agents from July 2018. Using a block explorer, the researchers found that the first block containing a transaction for that amount was on Feb. 1, 2016, in block 396049. Then they checked all subsequent blocks and found two transactions of roughly the same amount, in block 396123 (0.026043 BTC) and in block 396060 (0.02604322 BTC). Since the exact amount was sent with the transaction in block 396123 from 1LQv8aKtQoiY5M5zkaG8RWL7LMwNzVaVqR, Bellingcat concludes that address is more likely to have been used by the GRU agents three years ago. The digital cash was sent to 1NZ4MSeYcDKFiPRt8h7VK6XMhShwzhCzCp and the U.K.-based research group believes this address is connected to the presumed Russian hackers. Paxos Marks $10 Billion in Transactions Since Launch The U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin paxos standard token (PAX) has reached over $10 billion in transactions in less than five months since its launch in September 2018, the coin’s developers announced on Twitter this week. “Redemption requests are processed in just 5 hours,” their post further details. All-time redemptions are close to $260 million and weekly redemptions are over $16 million. According to the shared data, the weekly PAX transactions currently amount to almost $580 million. As of Jan. 29, the total issuance has been $394 million and at the time of writing, the stablecoin’s market capitalization hovers around $123 million. The paxos standard token is issued by the Paxos Trust Company. PAX was one of two ‘regulated’ stablecoins that received approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services last fall, with the other one being the Gemini dollar (GUSD) issued by Gemini Trust. Both have been announced as cryptocurrencies backed 1:1 with USD. The team behind another dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), recently announced they’ve expanded the crypto’s ecosystem. Goldman Sachs-backed startup Circle revealed three new companies have added support for its digital currency, bringing the total number of partners to more than 100. Among them are cryptocurrency exchanges, wallet providers, other crypto platforms and app developers. What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell us in the comments section. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Make sure you do not miss any important Bitcoin-related news! Follow our news feed any which way you prefer; via Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, RSS or email (scroll down to the bottom of this page to subscribe). We’ve got daily, weekly and quarterly summaries in newsletter form. Bitcoin never sleeps. Neither do we. The post The Daily: Grin Developer Fund Grows, Russian Agent’s BTC Transaction Tracked appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

What constitutes a fair coin launch? It’s a question that has had some of the brightest minds and brashest projects in the space debating the best way to kickstart a cryptocurrency. Every crypto, Bitcoin included, has attracted criticism over a distribution schedule that favored early adopters. To date, no other coin has come close to matching the egalitarianism of Bitcoin’s launch. Also read: These Payment Gateways Will Enable Your Business to Accept Cryptocurrency There’s More Than One Way to Launch a Coin When it comes to world-changing innovations, it generally pays to get in on the ground floor. Not every piece of transformative tech enriches its developers (think of the internet itself or email or encryption), but most do. Bitcoin certainly did. Despite launching with no ICO, no premine, and no founders’ reward, the cryptocurrency succeeded in turning many of its earliest supporters into very rich men. This in turn empowered many of them to launch their own cryptocurrencies, which have launched very differently from Bitcoin. Jed McCaleb Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Zooko (Zcash), Charlie Lee (Litecoin), Jed McCaleb (Ripple, Stellar) and Dan Larimer (Bitshares, Steemit, Eos) are examples of early bitcoiners who became altcoiners. The distribution of all of the coins they spawned has came in for criticism in some way. The 20 percent mining reward that goes to the Zcash treasury to fund development remains controversial, and spawned a hard fork to create Z Classic, which removed the founders’ reward, and fork-of-a-fork Zencash, now Horizen. Zcash has also been questioned on account of the missing zero-knowledge proofs that would legitimize the “trusted setup” at the privacy coin’s creation. The ICO that birthed Ethereum has been attacked for allocating most of the coins to a handful of whales, and in other quarters has been accused of comprising a security rather than a utility. Eos’ year-long uncapped ICO has also irked members of the cryptocurrency community, and don’t get them started on Ripple. Aside from the fact that the company that created the currency has the lion’s share of XRP, the missing early block headers means it’s impossible to even examine Ripple’s genesis event. Grin, Beam and the Quest for the ‘Perfect Launch’ 2019’s newest protocols, Grin and Beam, share commonalities, not least in terms of the Mimblewimble privacy technology they’re built upon. In other respects, however, the pair couldn’t be more different. Beam has a publicly known team, is incorporated as a business, and has a Zcash style founders’ reward to fund development. Grin, on the other hand, has a pseudonymous team, no premine or founders’ reward, and operates as a community project with no central leadership. Whether Grin’s launch could be deemed “fair,” however, is a matter of debate. One of the goals when launching a cryptocurrency is to align incentives. This gives people a reason to devote their time, skills, and resources to the project, and rewards them for trusting in it when it was at its weakest. There were no guarantees that Bitcoin, or any of the projects mentioned above, would succeed. Their early backers knew they were taking a risk. In “Grin and the Mythical Fair Launch,” Arjun Balaji asserts that “a fair launch offers equal opportunity — not equal outcome — to acquire a coin 1) over a long period of time 2) at a relatively equal price.” They conclude by opining that Grin’s launch “excels in both dimensions.” The absence of rewards for the project’s developers, however, has forced them to scrabble for the funds necessary to support their work. At the time of publication, Grin developer “yeastplume” has only raised $25,000 of the $63,000 they’re seeking. That’s a problem that funded projects like Beam and Zcash don’t have. Unpacking Bitcoin’s Launch To begin with, bitcoin could be extracted in virtual shovelfuls in a process akin to open-cast mining. The low difficulty rate, coupled with the 50 BTC block reward, meant it was easy for hobbyists to mine bitcoins by the thousand. Bitcoin mining today is more like fracking: it calls for specialist hardware, has a high cost of entry and triggers environmentalists. It is widely assumed that Satoshi has permanently locked away the BTC he accrued in the early days, when he is believed to have solo mined hundreds of thousands of coins. If so, it is a selfless act from the creator of the most unselfishly launched cryptocurrency to date. Not only has Satoshi forgone his founder’s reward, but he’s removed a significant amount of coins from circulation, effectively increasing the value of everyone else’s holdings. It’s easy to criticize Bitcoin’s launch a decade after the fact, claiming that its logarithmic supply curve was too steep, but it served its purpose of ensuring that Bitcoin survived to this day. Without it there would be no Grin, Beam, or any one of the 2,000 other cryptocurrencies out there, most of which are derived from Bitcoin. Which cryptocurrency do you think had the fairest launch? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Bitcoin Had a Fairer Launch Than Any Altcoin appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponents were pleased to hear this week that the point-of-sale payment processing application Anypay has fully integrated BCH. With the Anypay platform, anyone can accept BCH at their store using a tablet, mobile device or desktop in a noncustodial fashion. Also read: Properties Are Still Being Sold for Cryptocurrency Despite the Bear Market Crypto Payment Processor Anypay Completes Bitcoin Cash Integration Derrick Freeman, the founder of point-of-sale (PoS) cryptocurrency platform Anypay Global, explained to BCH supporters the payment application has integrated bitcoin cash support. Anypay initially announced support for BCH back in November 2017 but as some users tested the platform it had a few quirks, so support was removed off and on for a year. Now since Jan. 31, the cryptocurrency has been added to Anypay’s list of fully supported coins which also includes LTC, DASH, BTC, DOGE, ZEC, XRP, and ZEN. Freeman explained in a recent blog post that he knew at some point Anypay would give BCH the attention that it deserves. The entrepreneur and activist also stated he admired that BCH is about “spendability, low fees” and that it’s also “easy to send, and easy to accept.” “We knew we would come back to it, someday, to treat it right — to give it the beautiful, easy to use, and ideologically pure point of sale app it deserves,” Freeman detailed. The Anypay founder further stated: And finally, it is done and BCH is now fully supported on Anypay — Go ahead and try it. You will be amazed at how fast your payment arrives in your wallet. Your eyes will well up at the beauty and simplicity of the experience — You will see God. Free, No IDs, and No Complicated Setup Last November, news.Bitcoin.com reviewed Anypay Global’s application and was the first to notice the platform had fused Cointext into the system. The Cointext integration means people who pay an Anypay invoice with BCH can simply text the payment by using SMS. The user could pay a tab without an internet connection or use a Nokia style feature phone without web services. In a matter of minutes, with a bitcoin cash address, anyone can accept the currency in a noncustodial manner as all the funds are held by the merchant. Anypay has zero access to the private keys as the PoS system simply uses an anchored public address. “You can approach any business, and in minutes have them accepting multiple cryptocurrencies on their store iPad, Android tablet, mobile, or desktop — totally free, without IDs, and without any complicated setup,” Freeman detailed during the announcement. On social media and BCH related forums, supporters were thrilled to hear the news about the payment processor’s full support. Many BCH proponents enjoyed Freeman’s honesty and opinion on how the cryptocurrency originally forked off. “[Bitcoin Cash] shed its fat, ugly layer of loser nobodies who were frantically buying up as many digital tokens as they could, getting high off the rush from their imaginations of lambos and yachts and get-rich-quick easy money,” the activist remarked. What do you think about Anypay adding full BCH support? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Disclaimer: Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned companies or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com and the author are not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. This editorial is for informational purposes only. Image credits: Anypay Global, and Bitcoincash.org. Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com The post Point-of-Sale Platform Anypay Adds Full Bitcoin Cash Support appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Joel Ortiz, a college student who allegedly stole cryptocurrency worth over $5 million, has pleaded guilty and accepted a 10-year prison sentence. Ortiz was arrested last year and accused of hijacking the phone numbers of around 40 people. He is now the first person to be sentenced for the crime, commonly known as SIM swapping. Also read: Plaintiff in AT&T SIM-Swapping Case Sues ‘Bitcoin Bandit’ for $81M First Case of SIM Swapping Conviction The 20-year-old from Boston was detained at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2018 while trying to leave for Europe. He is one of several hackers arrested for SIM swapping last year including Xzavyer Narvaez, Nicholas Truglia and Joseph Harris. All of these individuals have been accused of stealing millions in crypto. The SIM swappers used the hijacked phone numbers to gain access to the victims’ email and social media accounts, as well as their bitcoin wallets. Joel Ortiz accepted the plea deal last week and will be officially sentenced on March 14, Motherboard reported, quoting the Deputy District Attorney in Santa Clara County, California, Erin West. Authorities believe his case is the first that ends with a conviction for SIM swapping. West commented: In looking at Joel’s sentence – 10 years – it shows that our community will not tolerate this type of crime. And we will continue to find everyone who’s responsible. Multiple Other Investigations Under Way Law enforcement representatives expressed hope the case will also serve as an example for others alleged or suspected of the same crime and send a message to the hackers. The officials did not reveal the number of ongoing investigations but admitted there have been new arrests and search warrants. According to the publication, the majority of these investigations are led by the Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team (React). The task force unites the efforts of numerous local police departments in the U.S. state of California. Samy Tarazi, one of the agents who worked on the Ortiz case, said the unit has received hundreds of reports of SIM swapping attacks from people that have been targeted by hackers. However, he added that their number has now decreased. When Joel Ortiz was arrested at LAX last summer, he was about to fly to Europe with $250,000 in cryptocurrency, Boston Globe reported. Before his attempt to leave the U.S., Ortiz had spent another $150,000 of the misappropriated digital funds. Ortiz and his accomplices specifically targeted people from the crypto space. It’s believed their victims included attendees of the Consensus conference in New York last May. They managed to steal the crypto assets after tricking wireless phone companies into transferring the target’s phone number to a SIM card in their control. During his trial, Joel Ortiz was facing 28 charges including multiple counts of hacking, identity theft and grand theft. What do you think about the outcome of the Ortiz case? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Swiss Venture Capital Report 2019. Make sure you do not miss any important Bitcoin-related news! Follow our news feed any which way you prefer; via Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, RSS or email (scroll down to the bottom of this page to subscribe). We’ve got daily, weekly and quarterly summaries in newsletter form. Bitcoin never sleeps. Neither do we. The post Crypto-Stealing SIM Swapper Pleads Guilty, Gets 10 Years in Prison appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Blockchain startup Blockstack has revealed the company is in the midst of developing a new distributed ledger protocol called Stacks, a chain that leverages the hash power from the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network. Not only is the Stacks network secured by over 45 exahash of distributed hashrate, but its consensus algorithm also burns BTC by using a mechanism known as proof of burn (PoB). Also read: Properties Are Still Being Sold for Cryptocurrency Despite the Bear Market Proof of Burn Blockstack, formerly called Onename, and Stacks lead developer Jude Nelson have published a video that describes a newly designed blockchain consensus algorithm. It utilizes Bitcoin Core’s proof of work (PoW), alongside the burning of coins (PoB) in order to process blocks on the Stacks chain. Nelson details there are inherent issues with proof-of-stake consensus models and the PoB consensus mechanism is meant to bootstrap itself from the established hash power stemming from the BTC chain. Over time, the Stacks chain will slowly transition away from BTC’s hash power, but using it initially will help curb 51% attacks that have been seen in recent months with networks that have an extremely low amount of PoW. Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea founded Blockstack in 2013. Nelson believes it would be better to build on top of the security of BTC rather than try to mimic that success. “Instead of expending electrical and hardware costs, participants in proof-of-burn consensus do just that — They provably destroy (or “burn”) their own bitcoin as the economic cost for their participation,” explains Nelson’s recent video describing the Stacks chain. “Every participant competing for the opportunity to write the next block must burn a certain amount of proof-of-work token (bitcoin) to enter the competition.” The Blockstack developer continued by stating: A participant’s likelihood of winning the competition increases with the percentage of bitcoin they burn compared to other participants — The competition’s winner writes the block, collects transaction fees, and earns the block reward of Stacks tokens. Stacks won’t be the only chain that has used proof-of-burn (PoB), as Counterparty (XCP) is well known for initiating this process. The protocol that works with the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain Wormhole Cash (WHC) also uses a burning mechanism. Building on Top of the Largest PoW Chain Nelson’s blog post and recently published video also explains that the Stacks blockchain has its own memory-hard PoW process, but only 5 percent is allocated and the other 95 percent stems from BTC’s hash power. The process is tunable so that in future the Stacks developers can lessen the dependency on the BTC chain. “As the Stacks blockchain starts to get significant hash power there is a path available (by changing the tunable threshold) to reduce the percentage for Bitcoin and slowly transition away from it,” Nelson’s report notes. Figures from the Stacks token protocol whitepaper. A Stacks block is found by using a mechanism called “cryptographic sortition” and each block with the burns from all participants is used to calculate a probability distribution at random. If a participant spends a lot of bitcoin during the burn process and doesn’t receive any incentive, the loss is similar to BTC miners using electricity and losing the block race, Nelson explains. “If you contribute 90% of all burns in an epoch, there’s still a 10% chance that you will lose (but your Bitcoin is destroyed either way,” the developer adds. Nelson states further: It’s worth noting though; the burns aren’t truly “wasted” — they still improve the chain quality since their (wasted) burns get used to calculate a “burn quota” which helps slow down attackers. The Blockstack programmer says the firm is building the chain in this manner because they believe it would be “fruitless” to compete with the security of BTC. Rather the team decided to build on top of the largest PoW chain in order to create a more distributed and censorship-resistant web. Blockstack’s main intentions have always been working toward the decentralization of the internet. Nelson believes it’s even better when there’s a blockchain system that’s verified by individuals and organizations “acting out of rational economic self-interest.” In Hong Kong, Nelson detailed that Stacks version 2 is currently under development during his recent keynote discussion concerning the protocol. At the moment developers can review the two open SIPs or Stacks Improvement Proposals. What do you think about Blockstack’s Stacks proof-of-burn consensus model? Let us know what you think about this project in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Blockstack, Pixabay, and the Blockstack white paper. Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com. The post Stacks Network Plans to Leverage BTC’s Proof of Work and Burn Bitcoins appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Fidelity has published an update announcing that its highly anticipated cryptocurrency exchange and custody platform, Fidelity Digital Asset Services (FDAS), has entered its “final testing” phase. The financial services provider also stated that it is exclusively serving a “select set of eligible clients” while developing the platform. Also Read: Properties Are Still Being Sold for Cryptocurrency Despite the Bear Market Fidelity Highlights Institutional Focus for FDAS The company has emphasized its institutional focus, stating that Fidelity’s “initial clients are an important part” of the “final testing and process refinement periods,” that will enable the company to “provide these services to a broader set of eligible institutions.” Fidelity added that its discussions with “a variety of institutions” had underscored the perceived demand for “a trusted platform provider to engage with digital assets in a meaningful way.” The company also stated that its risk and compliance teams are “actively” working with auditors to tighten policies and operational processes, adding that it hopes to “set new benchmarks for this aspect of cryptographic … finance.” Fidelity described the development process for the platform as comprising both a “challenging and rewarding time.” No Date for FDAS Launch Despite Rumors of March Target While Fidelity has not revealed a firm date for the launch of FDAS, much of the cryptocurrency community is anticipating the platform may launch sometime around March. On. Jan. 29, Bloomberg reported that the company was targeting March as a launch date for its custody service, citing “three people with knowledge of the matter.” At the end of 2018, Tom Jessop, the founding head of Fidelity Digital Assets, stated that the company was then hoping to launch FDAS during the first quarter of 2019. Do you think that Fidelity will launch its cryptocurrency platform before or after the second quarter begins? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! Images courtesy of Shutterstock At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more. The post Fidelity Announces Institutional Crypto Platform is in ‘Final Testing’ appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

As more people become interested in the world of cryptocurrency, adoption grows and so does the number of merchants interested in accepting bitcoin payments. Here are some of the easiest methods for integrating bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into your online business. Also read: Wikipedia Now Accepts Bitcoin Cash Donations via Bitpay Why Your Business Might Want to Accept Bitcoin Charging customers in bitcoin can prove beneficial to a business in many ways. For a start, accepting payments via credit card can be expensive, with banks and payment processors typically taking a cut of 3-5 percent. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can actually reduce such fees to less than one percent. In the case of bitcoin cash, fees are usually less than one cent. Bitcoin transactions are also irreversible, so chargebacks or returns, which are common with credit card payments, become a thing of the past. Receiving payments in bitcoin can also dramatically expedite international transactions while minimizing fees, which is ideal for online merchants. On top of all this, there is immediacy of access to funds. Merchants of course like to have funds available as quickly as possible, as cash flow can make or break a business. Charging customers in bitcoin is one way to facilitate this. How to Get Started First and foremost, when a business wants to start charging its customers in bitcoin, it needs to make this fact obvious. Just as many businesses, both online and offline, make it clear they accept Mastercard, Visa or Paypal, a merchant accepting bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies will want to display this fact prominently on their website, and particularly at checkout. A brick and mortar store can display their wallet addresses in the form of a QR code at the counter. Hardware terminals and touchscreen apps are other methods for accepting payments. Setting prices is also an important matter to consider. When a business accepts bitcoin, it makes sense, at least at this stage of cryptocurrency adoption, to display the corresponding fiat currency price, and charge the customer accordingly, since the value of bitcoin fluctuates. Depending on where the business is based, tax will also have to be taken into account. It makes sense to view any bitcoin received as payment as similar to receiving a cash payment; though somewhat anonymous, it will still have to go through the books like any other payment. One thing to bare in mind is refunds. If a customer requests a refund, the merchant will need to ask for their address in order to send the cash back to them – although some platforms have ways of dealing with this smoothly. Bitpay Bitpay is by far the most common method for merchants to accept bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH) and other cryptocurrencies right now. Its system is fast, simple and incurs little risk of volatility for merchants, since Bitpay will handle settlement and automatically convert the crypto into fiat. The cryptocurrency payment processor recently released figures revealing it processed over $1 billion in payments last year. When it comes to refunds, things are simpler with Bitpay and merchants only need an email address in order to return funds to the buyer’s account. Benefits of Bitpay include its ability to support numerous currencies including the U.S. dollar, euro, pound sterling and Chinese yuan and direct bank deposits. Coinbase Commerce Another popular way to accept bitcoin payments is to use Coinbase Commerce. This is ideal for an online business as it enables merchants to accept payments in bitcoin and instantly convert it into fiat to save themselves from price volatility. It’s free, too, unlike receiving payments via credit card. Given the recognition and trust granted to the Coinbase brand, it may make sense for merchants to integrate Coinbase Commerce. Gocoin Receiving international payments is much easier when charging customers in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Gocoin is one of the largest crypto payment processing services and supports a number of cryptocurrencies. It offers easy integration in the form of a plugin that businesses can install on their website and has a zero chargeback system. Btcpay Open source payment processor Btcpay is particularly useful for more technically accomplished merchants. The processor is essentially a decentralized version of Bitpay and allows easy migration of existing codebase to the merchant’s self-hosted payment processor. Btcpay is helpful for merchants who want to be in control of their own funds and to accept several different cryptocurrencies. The merchant retains complete control of the full node, and payments go directly into their cryptocurrency wallet, which increases privacy and security. What other cryptocurrency payment processors have you tried? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Gocoin. Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support these products/services. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned companies or any of their affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. The post These Payment Gateways Will Enable Your Business to Accept Cryptocurrency appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Bitcoin and many other digital assets have lost more than 80 percent of their fiat value since 2017. Despite this, the trend for people selling homes for cryptocurrency continues to thrive amidst one of the longest bear markets in crypto history. Also read: Canadian Exchange Insolvent After CEO Dies With Keys to $145M of Cryptocurrency The Real Estate and Crypto Asset Trend Continues in 2019 It’s been one of the longest bear markets ever in bitcoin land, but digital asset proponents are trucking along with relentless faith hoping that the lows will eventually come to an end. Because of the price drop, the entire cryptocurrency economy has been affected as blockchain companies have suffered layoffs and cryptocurrency-related internet searches have dropped significantly. Not all crypto trends have been downwards however: people are still interested in crypto-focused conferences and over-the-counter (OTC) bitcoin volumes have been climbing. Another trend that’s managed to survive is the real estate market and its newfound relationship with cryptocurrencies. Back in late 2017, when crypto assets were extremely valuable, people were selling real estate for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And now, even after the 80+ percent drop in value, individuals and real estate firms are still putting homes on the market for digital currencies. A Saddlebunch Key estate located in Key West, Florida can be exchanged for digital currencies. Home Owners in Australia Are Still Selling for Cryptocurrencies On Jan. 30, a regional news outlet reported how property in Australia is still being sold for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. For instance, Real Estate agency Ray White is selling a luxurious three-bathroom home in Surfers Paradise for $580,000 and the owner is willing to accept payment in BTC. In a suburb of Darwin, an apartment is selling for roughly 126 BTC or $600,000. The private listing says “We are happy to accept Bitcoin or any other major cryptocurrency instead of Australian dollars for this property.” Not only are homes selling for cryptocurrencies in Australia but people can purchase parcels of land with digital assets as well. Another listing located in the town of Helidon, Queensland has the homeowner seeking the equivalent of $86,000 paid in BTC. “You can purchase this property entirely using bitcoins,” the listing details. Ray White Real Estate is selling a Surfers Paradise home for $580,000 which can be purchased with BTC. There Are People Listing Luxury Apartments, Estates and More for Digital Assets in 2019 Australia isn’t the only region seeing this trend, as real estate listings being sold for cryptocurrencies has become a mainstay over the last two years. For instance, in San Fransisco, according to a Craigslist ad, a mid-century hillside estate can be purchased for $3.3 million. “The seller may consider offers including consideration paid in bitcoin or other forms of cryptocurrency,” explains the advertisement. This Playa Colorado beach home is for sale and the owner is happy to accept cryptocurrencies. In Hughson California, you can buy a $2.3 million 5,138 sq ft luxury cherry estate with four bedrooms. The property also includes 14 acres of land and was designed by Conrad Sanchez. For 70 BTC, a property in the beautiful region of Playa Colorado can be purchased that includes its own private beach club and restaurant membership. For $900,000 in digital currencies, there’s a 3-bedroom, 1,800 sq ft Key West estate for sale located on Saddlebunch Key. A $2.3 million 5138 sq ft luxury cherry estate in California with four bedrooms is being sold for digital currencies. Lots of Parcels and Acreage for Sale Homes and apartments are not the only types of properties being listed for cryptocurrencies as there are lots of plots of land for sale too. You can use BTC, ETH, or LTC to purchase 41 hectares of land by the Baltic Sea which consists of eight interconnected parcels. The owner of over 300 acres of land located in Bouse, Arizona will sell the large parcel for digital assets. In Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, someone could snatch up a vacant Poconos lot and acquire a ½ acre of this popular vacation land for digital currencies. There are almost 12 acres of land for sale that borders Boise in the region of Sweet, Idaho and the owner is interested in a digital currency trade. Or if you want a whole bunch of acreage, for $475,000 in cryptos you can purchase a 300-acre farm with water in Bouse, Arizona. It seems that people are still finding value in listing luxury homes, apartments and lots of acreage in exchange for cryptocurrencies. The lower cryptocurrency values may entice owners selling properties because essentially they can gather a lot more coins. So far, in 2019, there are still plenty of sellers who are attracted to this form of payment and are happy to accept cryptocurrencies instead of fiat in exchange for property. What do you think about the continued trend of people listing homes and land in exchange for cryptocurrencies? Why do you think this trend has been persistent? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse these real estate products/services. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned listings, advertisements, companies or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com and the author are not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. This editorial is for informational purposes only. Image credits: Shutterstock, Ray White Real Estate, and Craigslist. Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com The post Properties Are Still Being Sold for Cryptocurrency Despite the Bear Market appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Death is complicated enough in the cryptosphere when a private investor dies with the private keys to their fortune. But the pain is amplified exponentially should the deceased be the CEO of a digital currency exchange responsible for the safekeeping of millions of dollars. The death of Gerald Cotten, founder and chief executive officer of crypto exchange Quadrigacx, has led to the loss of CAD $190 million (~ U.S. $145 million) stashed in the platform’s cold storage wallets. Also read: Australia’s Financial Intelligence Agency Registers 246 Cryptocurrency Exchanges Quadrigacx Seeks Court Protection From Creditors Canadian exchange Quadrigacx this week filed for protection from creditors in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, claiming to have failed to locate or access the money since the death of Cotten on Dec. 9, according to a report by local newspaper The Globe and Mail. Significant customer investments are understood to be locked up following the loss of cold storage wallets, especially since Quadrigacx was the largest crypto exchange in Canada by traded volume. One customer is reported to have lost $700,000. Cryptocurrency can be lost, particularly if the owner doesn’t share the private keys that allow access to the wallet to a third party by way of legacy management. Chainalysis estimates that about 25 percent of all bitcoins now in circulation (valued at roughly $23.5 billion) have already been lost forever, with death accounting for a sizeable portion of the losses. Following the death of Cotten, Quadrigacx has reportedly lost 26,488 BTC, 11,278 BCH, 11,149 BSV, and 35,320 BTG. About 199,888 LTC and 429,966 ETH has also been lost. ‘A Lone-Wolf Operation’ In her affidavit, the CEO’s widow, Jennifer Robertson, states that her husband was the sole director and officer at Quadrigacx and its sister companies at the time of his death. The company’s misfortune may have resulted in the chief executive officer’s lone-wolf style of operation. “To the best of my knowledge, most of the businesses of these companies was being conducted by Gerry whenever and wherever he and his computer were located,” she stated. A bankruptcy hearing is scheduled for February 5 at Nova Scotia Supreme Court, with Ernst and Young Inc to be appointed as an independent monitor. Quadriga’s board of directors has posted the legal steps to be taken on their website, stating: For the past weeks, we have worked extensively to address our liquidity issues, which include attempting to locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves held in cold wallets, and that are required to satisfy customer cryptocurrency balances on deposit, as well as sourcing a financial institution to accept the bank drafts that are to be transferred to us. Unfortunately, these efforts have not been successful. The treasury that held Quadrigacx funds was allegedly personalized around the late CEO who had to use his personal account for company funds, as banks kept as skeptical remove away from the crypto aspect of the business. In the absence of a company account, third parties were used to facilitate payment and receipt of funds from users, according to the CEO’s widow. The exchange’s troubled relationship with banks resulted in the loss of $28 million when a portion of its funds were frozen in January 2018. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) froze the funds citing ownership concerns. The company initiated ongoing legal action to challenge the action. A Loss That Could Have Been Avoided Posthumous loss of bitcoin can be avoided if investors make plans for having this information disclosed to their heirs after they die. In April 2018, U.S. investor Matthew Mellon died, leaving his $500 million crypto fortune permanently inaccessible. “Investors need a storage execution strategy for account information, as well as advice on the implications regarding the deceased estate, including access to accounts, distribution to beneficiaries, and tax implications,” Eran Brill, an investment management director at Stonehage Fleming in South Africa, explained last year. What are your thoughts on the Quadrigacx situation – do you think the funds are lost for good? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com The post Canadian Exchange Insolvent After CEO Dies With Keys to $145M of Cryptocurrency appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Saturday’s edition of The Daily covers developments of interest to crypto traders. Once one of the largest exchanges in India, Zebpay is now increasingly focusing on Europe. The platform has expanded its services to residents of five more countries in the region. Also, troubled crypto trading platform Coinpulse has announced “indefinite maintenance,” asking customers to withdraw their funds, and Binance has introduced credit card deposits. Also read: Bitcoin Carnivory, Dapps & DEXs, Quadrigacx Claims Insolvency Zebpay Continues European Expansion Zebpay, which was one of largest Indian cryptocurrency exchanges until last fall, is expanding its presence in Europe. The trading services of the now Malta-based platform will be available for users in five more countries on the Old Continent – Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain – bringing the total of supported European jurisdictions to over 40. The exchange terminated its services in India in September 2018 due to the banking ban imposed by the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank. At the time, it claimed to have around 3 million users. Zebpay then established subsidiaries in Malta and Singapore and started introducing its digital asset trading platform in a number of new markets in Europe, Asia and South America. In December, Zebpay launched euro deposits and withdrawals and started trading BTC, ETH, LTC, XRP, and EOS with EUR in 26 countries. The platform is accessible through its Android and iOS apps. The company also became a member of two Swiss industry organizations – Crypto Valley Association and Bitcoin Association Switzerland. Coinpulse in Maintenance ‘Until Further Notice’ Crypto exchange Coinpulse has announced it will enter what it calls “indefinite maintenance” on Feb. 7, 2019 until further notice. Its team explained in a blog post that it’s been working with an investor “behind the scene” to try to keep the platform afloat, but the process has been taking longer than expected. On Thursday, Coinpulse tweeted: We will have to suspend all trading and deposits from Feb. 1, 2019. We will keep withdrawals open until Feb. 7, 2019. The exchange also informed users it expects them to transfer their funds out of Coinpulse wallets to their personal wallets or other exchanges in order to avoid being locked out during the maintenance. It advised traders who keep more than one currency to start withdrawing their BTC balance first, then ETH, and after that any other digital coins or tokens. Coinpulse is currently looking for other investors interested in acquiring its digital asset trading platform along with its website and trademark. Binance Enables Card Payments, Lists Stablecoin Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, has announced its users will be able to make deposits with Visa and Mastercard credit cards. The payment option has been introduced through a new partnership with the payment processor Simplex. The feature is already live, the platform said in a blog post. “We want to provide Binance traders with fast and easy access to crypto, in the most secure way possible,” said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, commenting on the news. He added that the partnership with Simplex allows the exchange to bridge the gap between credit card payments and cryptocurrencies for traders. In a separate announcement, Binance has informed users it will list another stablecoin. On Friday, the exchange tweeted to say it’s adding support for Stable USD (USDS). The crypto is reportedly backed 1:1 with U.S. fiat currency. Trading pairs with BTC and BNB, Binance’s own token, will be available on Feb. 6, the exchange noted. What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell us in the comments section. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Make sure you do not miss any important Bitcoin-related news! Follow our news feed any which way you prefer; via Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, RSS or email (scroll down to the bottom of this page to subscribe). We’ve got daily, weekly and quarterly summaries in newsletter form. Bitcoin never sleeps. Neither do we. The post The Daily: Zebpay Launches in 5 European Markets, Coinpulse Enters ‘Indefinite Maintenance’ appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The worlds of traditional finance and cryptocurrency have always been divided, for regulatory and technical reasons. Until recently, it was difficult for cryptocurrency traders to gain exposure to stocks and commodities. Currency.com is looking to remedy that through launching the “Bitmex of stocks,” a crypto-friendly platform that promises high leverage and low barriers for entry. Also read: Wikipedia Now Accepts Bitcoin Cash Donations via Bitpay Currency.com Launches With 150 Tokenized Assets and Another 10,000 to Come Ivan Gowan In mid-January, news.Bitcoin.com reported on Currency.com, a Belarus-based trading platform for tokenized securities. Unlike other platforms of this nature, Currency.com promises entry to retail investors and a marketplace of readily tradable assets from day one. What’s more, these comprise globally recognizable assets such as Microsoft stock, gas, oil, and the Nasdaq 100. The platform is now live in invite-only mode, with around 1,000 traders putting it through its paces. Another 113,000 and counting are on the waiting list. This week, news.Bitcoin.com spoke to Currency.com CEO Ivan Gowan to learn more about the interest the exchange has received, and the regulatory logistics of launching such an operation from Belarus. Gowan explained how much of that interest has come from the English and Russian speaking worlds, with 70 percent of those on the waiting list hailing from Eastern Europe. Western Europe, Japan, and Korea account for the remaining regions that have shown strong interest in the exchange. U.S. citizens, however, are unable to sign up at this time. “I think there’s a lot of excitement where people see this kind of merging of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and capital markets and they see tokenized assets as a big part of that future,” began Gowan. “We’re not setting ourselves up to be focused on the institutional market – we’re focused on people who want to trade with us directly, people who value simplicity and ease of use.” Assets can be filtered by a range of metrics on Currency.com Institutional Assets for a Retail Audience The ease of use that Ivan Gowan speaks of is evident when accessing the exchange. While professional traders might balk at its simplicity, it has clearly been designed with a retail audience in mind, introducing them to a world of tokenized assets while retaining the familiarity of the crypto exchanges they’re accustomed to trading on. For traders raised on the volatile thrills of the crypto markets, stocks, which typically move no more than a couple of points a day, can seem dull. Currency.com has found a way to inject some fun into these tranquil “nocoiner” markets by adding leverage. “On the one side, you’ve got the more deliverable side of tokenized assets without leverage,” explained Gowan, “and then on the other side, you can use your cryptocurrencies as collateral for trading with leverage.” With 20x margin trading available for equities, and up to 100x for other assets, even the slightest movements can generate major wins – or losses – for traders. While it is the responsibility of traders not to get carried away in this marketplace of maximum leverage and multiple possibilities, there are at least some general safeguards built in. The Currency.com exchange “If you run low on margin, the client protection systems kick in so you don’t go into debt,” explained Gowan.” Because Currency.com purchases the underlying assets or their derivatives, there are limitations on the extent to which traders can get rekt. “If you did have a trade open on Facebook and it dropped by 10 percent overnight because they missed an earnings call, say, then we would take on some of that risk, and we would give negative balance protection.” Proactive Regulation From the Belarusian Government Twitter stock can be leveraged up to 20x on Currency.com CEO Ivan Gowan divides his time between London and Belarus, where Currency.com has a large technical team operating out of the country’s High Technology Park. He speaks warmly of the “innovative legislation” that’s been created to incubate cryptocurrencies and blockchain in Belarus in a bid to drive economic growth, and of the quality talent pool that includes highly proficient programmers with a strong work ethic. Although getting regulated in the U.S. is on Currency.com’s long-term roadmap, there are significant hurdles that must be overcome to gain SEC approval. In the meantime, there is work to be done onboarding the tens of thousands of users on the waiting list. Once through the exchange’s virtual doors, they will be free to deposit funds with BTC or ETH, as well as fiat currency, and there are plans for other crypto assets to be added in future including BCH and LTC. There will also be a mobile app rolled out in February. The gulf between the traditional finance and cryptocurrency worlds is gradually narrowing. Currency.com may be one of the first crypto exchanges to provide a bridge, but it is unlikely to be the last. What are your thoughts on tokenized securities? Would you trade stocks and metals using a platform like Currency.com? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Capital.com Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support this product/service. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. The post Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

This is a paid press release, which contains forward looking statements, and should be treated as advertising or promotional material. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the press release. MoneyToken, one of the leading global crypto-lending platforms offering crypto assets-backed loans, has announced the launch of their new MoneyToken Exchange platform in a collaboration with Huobi Cloud. This gives MoneyToken the ability to leverage Huobi’s technical expertise and security know-how, plus gives users access to the liquidity that Huobi Cloud has to offer. The Exchange has been launched at 1:00 PM UTC today, and the team has also announced that a lottery with a 200 ETH prize fund is in the pipeline, as a way to engage and thank all of MoneyToken supporters. MoneyToken is one of 2018-19s top ventures, with a thriving community of more than 50,000 active users and a number of well-known advisors and supporters such as Roger Ver. With the launch of their Exchange, MoneyToken is starting to fulfill the dream of their founders and developers, creating a financial ecosystem that revolutionizes the finance industry and opens the door to new opportunities for their customers. MoneyToken’s current user base will be crossing over to join the Huobi Cloud ecosystem while getting unique access to one of the biggest liquidity pools in the world. If we were to make a prediction, then in our opinion this will dramatically accelerate MoneyToken’s growth potential. MoneyToken users can expect all kinds of new opportunities from the partnership between Huobi Cloud and MoneyToken – right away: Lending platform users will have the unique ability to trade their collateral, not only gaining access to liquidity through the loan process, but also getting the chance to work their crypto-assets and gain potential growth. MoneyToken will be able to liquidate collateral much quicker, accelerating a service already known for its speed of operation. More features, like derivatives contracts, margin trading, OTC, withdrawal to fiat and short selling will become available on the MoneyToken Exchange as it is rolled out to users. With MoneyToken Lending platform combined with MoneyToken Exchange the opportunities are endless. By sharing one order book with Huobi Cloud, MoneyToken ensures sustainable volume to make smoothly processing unlimited orders possible. It seems that initiatives like MoneyToken and Huobi Global are leading the way to a bright future for cryptocurrency. Why not join them on the journey? To participate in the MoneyToken Exchange beta test, go to exchange.moneytoken.com and find out what the future looks like… Contact Email Address james.hendersonmt@gmail.com Supporting Link http://exchange.moneytoken.com This is a paid press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release. The post PR: MoneyToken Is Launching Its Own Exchange – in Collaboration With Huobi Cloud appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

On Tuesday, Jan. 29, Bitcoin Cash developer Mark Lundeberg revealed two planned features for the scheduled May 2019 BCH upgrade. In the gist published to Github, Lundeberg described a specific improvement that’s been discussed by cryptocurrency developers for years — implementing Schnorr signatures in place of ECDSA signatures. This could upgrade the BCH chain to a new level of innovation by bolstering scaling and privacy all at once. Also read: A Look at Openbazaar’s Multi-Currency Wallet and Vendor Listings The Bitcoin Cash Chain May See Schnorr Signature Support in the Near Future Every six months, the BCH network upgrades its protocol in an effort to advance the blockchain in readiness for cryptocurrencies gathering mainstream attention. Back in November, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the proposed specification for the May fork, so developers could discuss the proposals and begin coding. One of the biggest concepts on the table was the implementation of Schnorr signatures to make the BCH protocol more robust. On Tuesday, Lundeberg published a description of two important features and one of the additions consists of supporting the Schnorr signature scheme. A Schnorr signature is a digital signature scheme invented by Claus Schnorr that is lauded on account of its simplicity. One of the main benefits of Schnorr is multisignature aggregation, which can benefit both data scaling and privacy. Traditional bitcoin transactions include a lot of data like multiple inputs, but Schnorr’s method simplifies this process by creating a single merged signature. For instance, when a multitude of bitcoin signatures produce one aggregated signature, it is estimated that Schnorr’s scheme could reduce blockchain storage and bandwidth by at least 25 percent. In addition to this advantage, the operation helps produce better privacy when combined with different protocols. One example privacy benefit Lundeberg notes is called “Hiding as P2PKH,” which allows an aggregation scheme with the standard pubkey script that Pays To PubKey Hash (P2PKH). “Schnorr signatures allow very simple multi-party aggregation schemes, where multiple parties collaborate to produce one aggregated signature under one aggregated pubkey, checked with OP_CHECKSIG as in pay-to-public-key-hash (P2PKH) addresses,” explains Lundeberg’s Github gist. Lundeberg’s research continues by stating that the Schnorr scheme can even avoid second-party malleability: Schnorr signatures cannot be malleated at all, even in the aggregated case, except when all signers collaborate to create a new signature from scratch. CLTV payment channels. The Combined Benefits of BIP62 and Schnorr The BCH developer also describes the advantages of Schnorr-Spilman payment channels. Before the introduction of OP_CLTV, developers discussed the idea of Spilman payment channels, but the technique was insecure on BCH due to malleability, Lundeberg notes. However, by upgrading to Schnorr, not only can programmers use Spilman channels, they can also opt out of using OP_CHECKMULTISIG and use regular P2PKH addresses instead. The channels can be bolstered by using an aggregated signature and BIP62 malleability restrictions, the developer notes. “I’ll repeat that for emphasis: we will be able to do payment channels which merely use P2PKH — completely indistinguishable from ordinary transactions,” Lundeberg states. Schnorr-Spilman channels. The gist also highlights the possibility of hidden atomic swaps and high-frequency microswapping. Lundeberg had previously described how trustless cross-chain swaps could be hidden in payment channels, but the procedure can be done with Schnorr-Spilman payment channels as well. In addition to the benefits of Schnorr signatures, Lundeberg details how combining the upgrade with a completed version of BIP62 malleability restrictions adds enormous amounts of innovation. One example is the ability to create unmalleable smart contracts as Lundeberg explains it will be “possible to write smart contracts whose scriptSig inputs cannot be malleated.” Atomic swaps can be concealed in Schnorr-Spilman channels. Lundeberg is also the creator of the Openswap protocol. In conclusion, Lundeberg details the “advantages and disadvantages” of BIP62 + Schnorr compared to the Segregated Witness (Segwit) approach. The BIP62 technique only requires a small change to wallet code, in order to quickly transition to Schnorr from ECDSA. However, smart contract developers must practice due diligence when designing contracts to prevent malleability, although Lundeberg says it’s not too difficult. A big difference is that Segwit makes a total of 66 types of addresses and the BIP62 + Schnorr approach only modifies one legacy address class (p2pkh). “For privacy reasons, it is desirable to have as few address types in use as possible, so as to not fracture the anonymity set,” the developer remarks. Lastly, Lundeberg emphasizes that backup transactions are more straightforward to set up with Segwit in certain cases. Overall, the Bitcoin Cash community on social media and forums were elated to hear about the possible introduction of the Schnorr scheme and the completion of BIP62. Over the past few years, Bitcoin Core (BTC) developers have been discussing implementing Schnorr into the protocol, but removing the ECDSA signatures and replacing them with a Schnorr scheme is a major upgrade. With the rate of upgrades in favor of the Bitcoin Cash protocol, it’s likely BCH will see this improvement well before the BTC chain. What do you think about the Bitcoin Cash chain supporting the Schnorr signature scheme? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Mark Lundeberg’s gist, and Bitcoin.com. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. The post Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Users from all over the world can now support the widely popular free encyclopedia Wikipedia with bitcoin cash donations via Bitpay. The non-profit model and global nature of the organization means it has to find a universal and cost-effective payment solution, and cryptocurrencies are an obvious choice. Also Read: Blockchain.com Launches New Educational Resource With BCH Report Accepting Bitcoin Cash Is a Natural Step The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and similar free knowledge projects, has partnered with Bitpay, the popular cryptocurrency payment processor, to accept bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin core (BTC) donations. The Wikimedia Foundation has already been accepting BTC since 2014 via Coinbase but recently switched payment processors to Bitpay and used this opportunity to expand into accepting BCH. “Our donors have shown an increased interest for different cryptocurrencies, so accepting bitcoin cash was a natural next step,” said Pats Pena, director of payments and operations at Wikimedia Foundation. “We accept donations globally, and we strive to provide a large variety of donation options. It’s very important that we can get international donations processed in ways that are efficient and cost-effective.” Cheapest Payment Options Available Bitpay works with many large non-profits to allow them to accept cryptocurrency donations. The company reports that donations have increased dramatically in the last couple of years, especially at the end of the year as people look for tax benefits. The service has reportedly processed several multi-million dollar donations to non-profits in the recent past and expects that to continue in 2019. “Bitcoin and bitcoin cash are one of the cheapest payment options available so more money goes to charity rather than paying fees. Wikimedia does so much good around the world that it is a privilege to help them raise money,” said Sonny Singh, Bitpay chief commercial officer. Bitpay recently reported strong performance for 2018. During the year, the service processed over $1 billion in payments for a second year and set a new record for transaction fee revenue by adding new customers. The company’s B2B operation also had a record year as it grew almost 255 percent from 2017. What do you think about Wikipedia accepting BCH donations via Bitpay? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com. The post Wikipedia Now Accepts Bitcoin Cash Donations via Bitpay appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

In today’s edition of The Daily we feature a number of stories about financial companies adding cryptocurrency-related services including a custody solution from Fidelity and new CFDs for trading BCH vs precious metals. We also cover the latest update about the ongoing Cryptopia hack. Also Read: Report: Two Hacker Groups Stole $1 Billion From Crypto Exchanges Fidelity Crypto Custody Set for March Back in October 2018 the Boston-headquartered financial services corporation Fidelity Investments announced the launch of a subsidiary called Fidelity Digital Asset Services LLC. The company is dedicated to providing cryptocurrency services including custody and trade execution to institutional investors such as hedge funds, family offices, and market intermediaries. According to a new report, the first service from the venture, a cryptocurrency custody solution, is now scheduled for March 2019. The company will reportedly begin with offering BTC storage with ETH expected to come next. “We are currently serving a select set of eligible clients as we continue to build our initial solutions,” Fidelity stated on Tuesday. “Over the next several months, we will thoughtfully engage with and prioritize prospective clients based on needs, jurisdiction and other factors.” Cryptopia Exchange Hack Continues Earlier this month we reported that $16 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in the ‘weird’ hack of New Zealand-based exchange Cryptopia on Jan. 14. But an investigation by data company Elementus has revealed that the incident is not yet over. The company reports that the Cryptopia hacker withdrew further funds on Monday, siphoning an additional 1,675 ETH from an another 17,000 Cryptopia wallets. This doesn’t represent a new breach, it should be noted, but rather reflects the fact that the hacker retains a copy of the private keys originally used to infiltrate the accounts. This enables them to remove any new funds they receive at will. Among the wallets affected are over 5,000 that had already been drained in the original hack, but have since been topped up with new money. Elementus explains that most of these funds are coming from mining pools. “Presumably, these payments are being sent on behalf of miners who opted to receive their rewards automatically via ‘direct deposit,’ and have since forgotten about it.” 79% of Financial Advisors Asked About Crypto Assets Bitwise Asset Management and ETF Trends have released the results of a survey on financial advisors’ attitudes towards crypto assets that was conducted during December 2018. The survey involved over 150 respondents including independent registered investment advisors (RIAs), independent broker-dealer representatives, financial planners and wirehouse representatives. Key findings are that 79 percent of advisors received questions from clients on crypto in 2018, 9 percent currently manage an allocation to crypto in client portfolios and 22 percent plan to either start a new allocation or increase their existing allocation to crypto during 2019. Additionally, 55 percent of surveyed advisors expect prices to appreciate over the next five years with the mean BTC price target for December 31, 2023, at $17,571. “After a year in which the Bitwise 10 Large Cap Crypto Index fell 78%, the survey shows that interest in crypto investing from financial advisors not only survived, but grew,” said Matt Hougan, Global Head of Research for Bitwise Asset Management. “There are clear reasons why: Advisors tell us that they are getting inbound questions from clients, that they need ways to connect with a younger generation of clients, and that clients are investing in crypto outside of their advisory relationship anyway.” Liquidity Provider Adds BCH vs Gold and Silver CFDs B2Broker, a liquidity provider for the crypto and FX industry, has announced the launch of 40 new cryptocurency-based CFDs, comprising top cryptos against major fiat currencies. The launch also features a range of interesting pairs including BTC, LTC, ETH, XRP and BCH against XAG (gold) and XAU (silver). The company has also announced that it has increased leverage for crypto CFDs to 1:5, and that is now able to provide as a base currency any fiat currency, USD-pegged stablecoins and top cryptos. Brokers and exchanges can connect directly via FIX API to the liquidity pool at the datacenters in London and Hong Kong. B2Broker CEO Arthur Azizov commented: “Any broker can connect to us quickly and easily, with bridges offered free of charge to those operating MT5 and MT4 trading platforms. These latest developments further strengthen the company’s presence in the industry and reaffirms our position as a global leader.” New Hong Kong Dollar Stablecoin Bitspark, a cryptocurrency remittances platform, has announced the launch of Sparkdex.HKD, a stablecoin pegged to the Hong Kong Dollar (HKD). The token is tied to the company’s reserves of physical cash in HKD and Bitspark promises this will be regularly audited by a local audit firm in a quarterly report for the public. The coin already began listing on Sparkdex, Bitspark’s decentralized exchange (DEX), and Bitshares’ connected DEX, on 31 Oct, 2018 and can be integrated into other exchanges as well. “Bitspark was founded in Hong Kong, a front runner for innovation in finance. We see the launch of Sparkdex.HKD as a clear opportunity for Bitspark to bring the benefits of this technology to Asia. We’re planning to also launch a further 179+ stablecoins to service the company’s money transfer markets starting initially with emerging and frontier markets.” said Maxine Ryan, Bitspark COO. What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com. The post The Daily: Fidelity Crypto Custody Update, Cryptopia Hack Continues appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The leading cryptocurrency markets have seen a slow start to the year, with the top three markets by capitalization shedding between 10% and 37% since early January’s local highs. January has also seen volatility in market cap rankings, with XRP and ETH competing for the second largest crypto asset capitalization, and EOS, USDT, and BCH competing for a position within the top five. Also Read: Iran in Talks With 8 Countries for Use of Cryptocurrency in Financial Transactions BCH Maintains Triple Figures Throughout January After ending 2018 with a roughly 200% bounce from the all-time lows at the $75 area, BCH/USD has produced a slow start to 2019, slipping 36% from the Jan. 3 local monthly high of $175 to currently trade for approximately $110. When measured from the local top of $240 posted on Dec. 21, BCH has lost nearly 54 percent over the course of six weeks. BCH/USD – BItstamp – 4HR On Jan. 28, the markets saw significant selling pressure that drove BCH down 15 percent in just 12 hours to test support at $100. Since then, BCH has made slight gains amid consolidation, but appears poised for a retest of all-time lows should the current support area fail to hold. When measured against BTC, BCH has also shed most of the gains it garnered during the late December bounce, with the current price of 0.032 BTC comprising a 43% drop from the Dec. 21 local high of 0.057 BTC, and a loss of 27% from January’s high of 0.044 BTC, with BCH currently trading for 0.032 BTC. BCH/BTC – BItstamp – 4HR Despite the bearish price action, this past week’s selling pressure saw BCH/BTC retest the upper side of the descending trendline that appears to have guided price action over the course of the preceding six weeks. However, should the current support area fail to hold, it is likely that BCH will retest the all-time low area of 0.025 BTC. Bitcoin cash is currently the sixth largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $1.96 billion. BCH market dominance has slipped by nearly half a percent since the start of the month, dropping from 2.20% to nearly 1.73%. BTC Experiences Low Volatility During January BTC/USD has traded within a tight range during 2019 so far. BTC began January trading for $3,700, before posting a monthly high of $4,100 on Jan. 8. BTC/USD – BItstamp – 4HR Since then, BTC steadily bled down to yesterday’s local low of $3,325, a 19% drop in three weeks. BTC currently has a market capitalization of nearly $60.6 billion, and a dominance of 53.42%, up 1.5% since the start of the year. XRP Ranks Second by Market Cap for Most of January Opening January trading for nearly $0.35, XRP/USD spent the first 10 days of 2019 oscillating within an approximately 10% range, before posting a monthly high of over $0.38 on Jan. 10. Since then, ripple has fallen by roughly 25%, with prices currently testing support at December’s lows of roughly $0.28. XRP/USD – Kraken – 4HR Despite also producing a bearish start to 2019, the XRP/BTC charts show bullish price action, with XRP currently testing the support at the long-term key price area of 0.000084 BTC. However, XRP has fallen by nearly 12% since opening the year trading for 0.000095 BTC. XRP/BTC – Binance – 1D After starting the year as the second-ranked crypto asset by market cap with a dominance of roughly 11.50%, ripple slipped to third on Jan. 3 and Jan. 11. XRP has since regained its rank as the second largest crypto asset by capitalization, with XRP currently posting a market cap of $12.01 billion and a dominance of 10.57%. ETH Posts Volatile Start to 2019 ETH/USD traded within a wide range during January, opening the year at roughly $135 before gaining over 25% in roughly one week. After posting a monthly high of approximately $170 on Jan. 6, ETH has since lost more than 37% against the dollar, with current prices testing support just below $110. ETH/USD – Poloniex (Calculated by Tradingview) – 4HR ETH/BTC started the year trading for roughly 0.035 BTC, before rallying over 17% in a week to post a three-monthly high of approximately 0.041 BTC on Jan. 6. Since then, ETH has fallen 26% when measuring against bitcoin core to currently trade for nearly 0.031 BTC. ETH/BTC – Poloniex – 4HR ETH is currently the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with a capitalization of $11.08 billion. ETH dominance has fallen from 11.05% at the start of January to 9.78% as of this writing. What do you think the overall trend for 2019 will be? Bullish? Bearish? Sideways? Share your prediction in the comments section below! Images courtesy of Shutterstock Disclaimer: Price articles and markets updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not to be considered as trading advice. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of the private keys are in control of the “money.” The post Markets Update: Top Crypto Assets Open 2019 With Slow Month of Trading appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

A recently released report confirms a well-known observation – crypto-focused events are still largely male-dominated, not only in terms of registrants in general but also speakers. According to another finding, almost half of the attendees at the studied forums came from the U.S. Also read: Crypto Mining Could Bring Russia $1B in Taxes, Report Suggests Crypto Industry Events Remain Male-Dominated The research conducted by event software platform Bizzabo covers 100 conferences across 15 countries. These are all events visited by professionals from the crypto industry and related sectors who want to stay informed about the latest developments in the crypto space. The results highlight the gender disparity the sector is known for. More than three quarters, or 79 percent, of the attendees at the studied events were male, while only 21 percent were female. In another report on gender diversity and inclusion released in November, Bizzabo found that 70 percent of speakers at events across multiple industries including the crypto sector were also male. Alon Alroy, Chief of Customer Success at Bizzabo, noted: Like the tech industry, at large, there is a lack of gender diversity in the overall virtual currencies space. We’re seeing that reflected in the attendance for these events, as well as the speakers. One cryptocurrency conference recently featured 84 men onstage and three women. That has to change. Almost 60% of Registrants Are From the Finance Sector The authors of the study have drawn other interesting conclusions based on the data collected by Bizzabo. For example, 45 percent of the registrants and attendees at the examined events came from the United States. The United Kingdom is second with 28 percent, followed by Belgium at 5 and Canada at 3 percent. Israel, Hong Kong, China and Australia have been represented by 1 percent of the attendees. Around 57 percent of all registrations for the crypto events in the study were made by people working in the finance sector, while 37 percent were employees of companies from the technology sector. Management consulting firms accounted for 6 percent of all attendees. Alon Alroy further commented that the lack of gender diversity in attendees speaks about the industries most of the registrants come from. “The financial services and technology sectors have all struggled with inclusion and that has a cascading impact on the gender mix at these events,” the cofounder of Bizzabo elaborated. What is your opinion about the findings in the study? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bizzabo. Make sure you do not miss any important Bitcoin-related news! Follow our news feed any which way you prefer; via Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, RSS or email (scroll down to the bottom of this page to subscribe). We’ve got daily, weekly and quarterly summaries in newsletter form. Bitcoin never sleeps. Neither do we. The post Study Finds Three Quarters of Attendees at Crypto Events Are Male appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

On Jan. 17, the blockchain and cryptocurrency company OB1 released Openbazaar version 2.3 which provides users with the ability to use a multi-currency wallet within the marketplace. Since then, there’s been a large number of added listings and an increased amount of people trading cryptocurrencies in a peer-to-peer fashion. Also read: Inspired by Unwriter’s Apps, BCH Developers Create Fountainhead Cash Experimenting With Openbazaar Version 2.3 and the New Multi-Currency Wallet With Openbazaar 2.3 now out, I decided to explore the recently added features to give readers of news.Bitcoin.com an insight into the platform. The Openbazaar marketplace has been out for a while now and OB1 released a 2.0 version last year. The latest protocol version 2.3 gives users a multi-currency wallet allowing them to store, send, and receive bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin core (BTC), litecoin (LTC), and zcash (ZEC). Before, Openbazaar users were once restricted to choosing a single currency to operate with on the platform. The Openbazaar download page offers three operating system choices. In order to experiment with the new version, I downloaded the 2.3.0 release for Mac OSX, but the application can be used on a Windows and Linux operating systems as well. I backed up my existing Openbazaar app and then opened the .dmg file I downloaded from the official landing page. After giving my computer permission to run the new file, Openbazaar opened as it usually does and I was greeted by my home page. The multi-currency wallet supports four cryptocurrencies and OB1 developers say ethereum (ETH) will be added next. The differences you will see from the prior version are in the wallet section, which reveals a BTC, BCH, LTC, and ZEC multi-currency wallet. Each wallet does basic operations like sending and receiving and there’s also a log for recorded transactions. The wallets also tell you the value of your cryptocurrency holdings using a local fiat currency. Inside the wallet section is a tab that allows users to create a cryptocurrency trade listing, which means they can swap cryptos in a peer-to-peer fashion. After clicking the “view listings” tab it is noticeable that users are trading a bunch more coins than when I visited the platform during my last Openbazaar review. There are so many more listings now when you select trades for all four cryptocurrencies. Some trades I noticed were quite fair, set at only 2-5 percent above spot value, but there are other trades that were 995 percent above market value. Still, there are plenty of traders and listings available with a large variety of the 1,500 available digital assets enabled on the marketplace. Since our last review, there has been a significant increase in traders buying and selling cryptocurrencies in a peer-to-peer fashion. Many of the traders are rated and you can view some of their other listings as well to see if they are reliable. If people are in search for a place to trade cryptocurrencies without revealing their identity and going through the hoops of a KYC process, then Openbazaar might entice them. Moreover, if desired, they can run an Openbazaar node using the privacy-centric Tor software. Connecting to a trader in order to swap BCH for XMR. In order to make a trade, simply choose the kind of cryptocurrency you are interested in swapping. For instance, if you chose to trade BCH for monero (XMR), you will find the vendor W.H. Lewis who is charging 3 percent above spot rates for this trade. All of Openbazaar’s trade listings can be filtered by cryptocurrency. A trader will sometimes list how much they have in inventory and in this case Lewis’s XMR inventory says “unknown.” However, this particular vendor allows the trade to be moderated by a verified Openbazaar moderator. Purchasing and selling digital assets is not much different to checking out your items after choosing to buy physical goods. Traders have different rules on how they settle the crypto trade on Openbazaar and these will vary between vendors, especially with premiums and settlement times. Most trade guidelines are clearly stated on the trader’s listing page. Traders explain how to execute exchanges with them and some offer a verified Openbazaar moderator to oversee the deal. Marketplace Listings Increase Moving on to the marketplace section where users sell other types of goods and services there’s been a noticeable influx of vendors selling wares. Four days ago the r/btc community noticed this trend when BCH listings spiked from 1,000 to 5,200. Another notable sight I saw on the marketplace was how litecoin listings had around 4,800 on the OB1 browser. Zcash listings hover at around 4,600 listings at the time of publication. BTC listings total 11,400 but while surfing through the listings on the marketplace, it clearly shows that many vendors have decided not to take the ‘maximalist’ route and have chosen to accept multiple cryptocurrencies since the upgrade. Over the last week, BCH listings have spiked from 1,000 to 5,200. Listings include comics, music, books, clothing, art, and more. Openbazaar 2.3 definitely adds more variety to the platform and the number of listings added since the release on Jan. 17 shows vendors like the fact they can accept more cryptos. The trading section could still use a lot more liquidity than what is offered at the moment. The platform may suffice for a person who wants to obtain some crypto in an anonymous manner, but won’t be good enough for someone looking for deep pools of liquidity. Still, there’s been a significant spike since the startup added all four cryptocurrencies, and OB1 says ethereum support is near completion and will be added soon, alongside other coins. It seems many Openbazaar vendors have simply opted to accept all four cryptocurrencies since the wallet upgrade on Jan. 17, 2019. Overall, the platform continues to improve and its user base and a number of product listings have increased a great deal. It still needs to gain mainstream traction, which might not happen until cryptocurrencies themselves gain mass adoption. Until then, Openbazaar’s marketplace has seen slow and steady growth and the multi-currency wallet has opened the platform to more people. What do you think about the new Openbazaar version 2.3 with the multi-currency wallet? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Disclaimer: This editorial should be considered Review or Op-ed material. During the review process, the opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support views, opinions or conclusions drawn in this post. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the review article. Review editorials are intended for informational purposes only. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned company or any of its affiliates or services. There are various steps mentioned in reviews and some of them are considered optional. Bitcoin.com and the author are not responsible for any losses, mistakes, skipped steps or security measures not taken, as the ultimate decision-making process to do any of these things is solely the reader’s responsibility. Image credits: Shutterstock, Openbazaar, and Jamie Redman. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. The post A Look at Openbazaar’s Multi-Currency Wallet and Vendor Listings appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Iran is exploring various options, including holding negotiations with other countries to introduce cryptocurrency in global trade, as the Islamic state moves to sidestep U.S. economic sanctions. Mohammad-Reza Modoudi, the acting head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO), said the country was negotiating the use of cryptocurrency in its financial transactions with eight countries. Also read: Cryptocurrency is Providing a New Lucrative Revenue Stream for Governments Negotiations Aim to Dismantle U.S. Dollar Hegemony Speaking to local Tasnim news agency on Jan. 28, Modoudi said: “Representatives from Switzerland, South Africa, France, England, Russia, Austria, Germany and Bosnia have visited Iran to hold related talks about the issue.” He expressed hope that Iran was capable of luring foreign investors into the country. In November last year, the U.S. announced severe economic sanctions against Iran that, with the exception of just eight countries, cut the rest of the world off from the country’s oil, shipping and gas market, including its financial system. An earlier round of sanctions in May targeted Iran’s currency, aviation industry and other sectors, as President Donald Trump broke away from his predecessor Barack Obama’s engagement with Tehran. Measures against the financial system have already started to hurt international settlements. The U.S. arm-twisted global banking network Swift into severing ties with Iran’s central bank, leaving the country and its citizens in limbo. In the cryptocurrency realm, global exchanges such as Binance and Bittrex have unofficially dropped Iran from the list of supported countries to receive services. Now, the oil-rich Middle East country has set its sights on virtual currency. Iran, the world’s third largest oil producer, is hoping to leverage cryptocurrencies to compensate for the squeeze in petrodollars arising from the economic sanctions. The blockade has also throttled trade relations with much of the world, where the U.S. dollar still dominates. Since mid-2018, Iran has engaged in research and development of its own digital currency that is likely to be linked to the rial, mainly for use in expanding banking system services and to fend off the sanctions. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently indicated that Russia was “actively working” with partners to establish financial systems that are fully independent of Swift, without naming partner countries. This was after Iran had signed a trilateral blockchain cooperation agreement with Russia and Armenia on Nov. 14. Iran Publishes Draft Crypto Regulation Framework Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has published its draft framework, dubbed “Version 0.0,” on regulating cryptocurrencies. According to an Al Jazeera report, Iran has reversed a previous ban on crypto assets “but still imposed restrictions on the use of digital currency” within the country. The bank said the framework “is aimed at organising and defining boundaries of ongoing crypto operations in the country, and allowing traders to plan for their future.” The CBI recognized and approved the use of virtual currencies like bitcoin, the article said, and permitted initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency exchanges as well as mining operations. However, CBI said that “Using global cryptocurrencies as methods of payment inside the country is prohibited.” Also, Iranians are prohibited from holding large volumes of crypto, just as they aren’t allowed to possess fiat amounts exceeding €10,000 – something that has elicited sharp criticism from Iranian bitcoin investors. Aljazeera quoted Perhman Azhdarpour, a 28-year old trader, as saying: “The ban on using internationally accepted cryptos as payment methods can negatively affect the work of me and many like me. We were hoping the central bank’s stance would not again restrict the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in any way.” More than $10 million worth of BTC is traded in Iran each day, according to the Iran Blockchain Association. The Islamic republic banned its banks from handling transactions in popular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin last April, concerned about issues of money laundering and other alleged criminal activities. But the move was widely interpreted as a way to block capital flight in light of impending United States sanctions. What do you think about Iran’s plan to tackle economic sanctions using cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com The post Iran in Talks With 8 Countries for Use of Cryptocurrency in Financial Transactions appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The cryptocurrency market has its very own long tail trend that sees the majority of all value flow to BTC, with altcoins left to fight for the scraps. With a $60 billion market cap and a dominance of 53 percent, BTC has ruled the market since day one. As altcoin investors endure the persistent pain of an ongoing bear market, they may be entitled to ask: is the long tail a long-term trend? Also Read: Using Technical Indicators to Trade Crypto in 2019 The Top 7 Cryptocurrencies By Market Cap At the time of publication, the top seven cryptocurrencies by market cap are BTC at $60B, XRP at $12B, ETH at $11B, EOS at $2.05B, USDT at $2.04B, BCH at $1.97B and LTC at $1.86B. Over the years there have been significant spikes and falls in bitcoin core’s decade-long dominance, but BTC has always retained the highest market cap. But this could yet change. Jan.28 2019 Based on ripple’s $12B market cap – a figure which is hotly disputed – it would it take a 5x for second-in-line XRP to dethrone BTC. Currently, bitcoin core is sitting pretty and leading the way by a considerable margin, just as it has done for the majority of its history. It is also listed on the most exchanges, making the mother coin tough to take down. Market Cap Is a Poor Metric According to crypto analysts, market capitalization is a poor metric for measuring the value of the cryptocurrency market. Mati Greenspan of Etoro told news.Bitcoin.com: “Trying to measure the value of a crypto network using the market cap is like evaluating the health of a person based on body weight.” Is it even possible to predict which cryptocurrency might one day overtake BTC? Hugo May, investment analyst at Invictus Capital, said: “I am wary of predicting which of these sides will eventually prevail. It is often said that ‘hindsight is 20/20’ in terms of vision, and it is likely we will look back one day amazed at how seemingly obvious the natural progression of adoption was. But for now, we can merely look to where the users and development resources are migrating.” Crypto Market Is Packed With Opinions May stressed that the crypto space is packed with opinions regarding future asset prices and technical developments. “A very contentious dispute exists between the supporters of maximalism and those that lean to multi-tokenism,” he noted. “The maximalists, often referred to as bitcoin maximalists, generally believe that the genesis blockchain would serve all of the blockchain needs and that the bitcoin asset would regulate all appropriate value transfer.” The concept of multi-tokenism envisions a network of networks, which comprise small applications that connect with large protocols at various junctures. May explained the movement has come about through the creation of Turing complete blockchains, specifically Ethereum, which today hosts a magnitude of tokens and decentralized applications. May noted how, compared to Ethereum, the traditional first-generation blockchains such as Bitcoin Core and Litecoin tend to have smaller developer communities, which are comprised of highly competent developers who consistently develop the protocols. “Some of these developers even get paid salaries to produce updated code and advancements. The vast majority of blockchain engineers and IT professionals that enter the space do not work for Blockstream, the largest [BTC] blockchain development company [but] are involved with smaller endeavors,” he explained. Most developers are focused on so-called second generation blockchains where interoperability is one of the technical challenges that currently has the highest resource allocation within the industry. May explained that if these interconnected networks and tokens become migratable and the establishment of some development standards is successful, it is plausible that we could see a multi-token ecosystem in the future. The experience, he added, would be akin to visiting a grocery store, with several producers equally connected at the UX layer. “In terms of value transfer and applications, the backend is built by a magnitude of projects that interact and communicate with each other, but the user in the front experiences a seamless and simple process when engaging the interface. The long tail thesis is only possible if decentralized … [projects] develop with some sort of standard in terms of interoperability,” said May. Lesser Known Cryptos Likened to Dodgy Watches The crypto market downturn has seen many casualties. Stefan Neagu, the co-founder of Persona, told news.Bitcoin.com: “I believe that what we see, and what we have right now in the cryptocurrencies market, is similar to what we see in the movies when a guy opens up his jacket and on both sides, you can pick a shiny new watch, whichever one you want. But just like in the movies, in which the buyer will have no guarantee that the watch will function properly or that it’s an original not a counterfeit, the same occurs in crypto. You don’t have much information about the project or a team’s ability to deliver, you have no idea about how successful or not that project will be.” Neague explained that it makes more sense to have a long tail on cryptocurrencies where one coin performs a specific purpose. “What would make them more valuable, in the sense of raiding their utility, is a way to interconnect these long tail tokens, so a user of blockchain X is not stuck in that blockchain but has the ability to get outside the borders and perform whatever action it wants in another blockchain.” As the crypto market evolves, only a handful of digital coins currently near the top of the market cap charts are likely to survive. Whatever the outcome, it’s likely that the long tail trend will continue, with BTC leading the charge and the chasing pack coming in a distant second. Will BTC ever be dethroned as the dominant cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Analysis: Will the Cryptocurrency Market’s Long Tail Trend Ever End? appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

A new report alleges that just two groups of hackers dominate the majority of cybercrime directed against cryptocurrency exchanges. Together, these groups have responsible for stealing about $1 billion of cryptocurrency so far. Also Read: Arwen Enables Self-Custody for Traders of Centralized Exchanges The Most Lucrative of All Crypto Crimes Digital surveillance company Chainalysis has released its latest “crypto crime” report, claiming to identify two groups responsible for the majority of hacks in the field. Its findings were obtained in part by analyzing the different practices the thieves used for laundering their illicit gains. On average, the incidents that the researchers traced from the two hacking groups involved $90 million per incident. They suspect that the first group is a “giant, tightly controlled organization” that may be partly driven by non-monetary goals. The second group is found to be smaller and less organized but absolutely focused on money and without much regard for evading detection. “Hacking dwarfs all other forms of crypto crime, and it is dominated by two prominent, professional hacking groups,” the Chainalysis team wrote. “Together, these two groups are responsible for stealing around $1 billion to date, at least 60% of all publicly reported hacks. And given the potential rewards, there’s no question hacking will continue; it is the most lucrative of all crypto crimes.” Most Stolen Crypto Laundered on Exchanges According to the report, at least 50 percent of the stolen funds were cashed out through some type of conversion service within 112 days of the hacks. The researchers found that 64.3 percent of the funds were sent to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, 11.9 percent to peer-to-peer exchanges and the remaining 23.8 percent went through other conversion services such as mixing services, bitcoin ATMs and gambling sites. “Exchanges are regularly processing the stolen funds, allowing the hackers to convert the funds to traditional currencies or other cryptocurrencies,” the Chainalysis team explained. “This is in part because unless you’re the exchange that was hacked, these funds look like they have come from legitimate owners (that is, the original entities who were hacked); it is hard to tell which funds have been stolen and which haven’t without specialized investigation software.” Chainalysis recently announced the launch of Know Your Transaction (KYT) for stablecoins, an anti-money laundering (AML) compliance solution for monitoring stablecoin transactions from issuance to redemption. What do you think about the findings of this report? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com. The post Report: Two Hacker Groups Stole $1 Billion From Crypto Exchanges appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

When the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network split last November, prominent platform developer Unwriter decided to focus on building applications for the BSV chain. Since then, a group of BCH developers has forked Unwriter’s 21 Century Motor Company. On Jan. 27, a few BCH programmers revealed the Fountainhead Cash project and explained they had decided to keep building the anonymous developer’s valuable platforms such as Bitdb and Bitsocket. Also read: Bitcoin Mixing Concept Payjoin Makes a ‘Huge Mess’ for Blockchain Surveillance Fountainhead Cash Developers Continue to Build On Unwriter’s Projects On Sunday a group of BCH developers publicly announced they are working on a project called Fountainhead Cash. The project is basically a forked model of the developer Unwriter’s 21 Century Motor Company which incorporates blockchain applications like Bitdb, Bitsocket, read cash, and data cash. The name Fountainhead derives from Ayn Rand’s quintessential novel, which emphasizes that a person’s ego is “the fountainhead of human progress.” With Fountainhead Cash “Bitdb development on Bitcoin Cash lives on,” the team of programmers detailed. “Fountainhead Cash is a community developed fork of 21 Century Motor Company that continues development on Bitcoin Cash — We run our own nodes of Bitdb and Bitsocket on multiple servers, and continue to build on and improve these pieces of infrastructure for Bitcoin Cash developers,” explained the developers. The announcement continued: We have fixed multiple bugs, worked on new optimizations for the future, and have been discussing new ways to improve and grow the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem — The end-game goal is to make developing for Bitcoin Cash as easy as any other sort of development. ‘The Point Is, Who Will Stop Me?’ Essentially, Bitdb is an autonomous database that continuously synchronizes with the BCH network and the platform Bitsocket is a message bus service for building real-time bitcoin applications. The three main developers working on the Fountainhead project consist of Kosinus the creator of Bookchain, Jt the producer of Craft.cash, and the Badger Wallet creator Spend BCH. On the website, the team has published code, documentation, and a link to its public chat room on Telegram. The creators say that anyone is welcome to join the discussion and help develop future BCH applications with Fountainhead tools. Meanwhile, and per usual, Unwriter continues to publish a mind-boggling number of experiments and they are always open source. A great advantage to open source software is how the practice invites collaboration and sharing, even if programmers are not on the same development team. Open source projects also permit another development team to make modifications to a project that another set of programmers wouldn’t commit. Couple this scenario with market dynamics and ultimately the free market decides on which incorporated changes suit consumers best. The Fountainhead Cash project is an exemplary model of two competing development teams sharing open source ideas. Just as Ayn Rand’s main character Howard Roark defiantly asked: “The point is, who will stop me?” What do you think about Fountainhead Cash? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Fountainhead Cash, and Bitdb. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. The post Inspired by Unwriter’s Apps, BCH Developers Create Fountainhead Cash appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

A report recently published by Diar has estimated that nearly $15.42 billion of value was added to the market capitalization of the combined cryptocurrency markets in the form of newly created tokens and crypto asset inflation during 2018. Also Read: Bitcoin Climbs up China’s First Crypto Ranking of 2019 12 Percent of Current Crypto Market Cap Was Created During 2018 According to Diar’s report, new crypto asset value created during 2018 is estimated to comprise more than 12 percent of the current combined cryptocurrency market cap. The largest contribution to newly created value during 2018 was new token additions, representing $4.96 billion, or 32 percent of the $15.42 billion that was added to the markets last year. More than 700 new crypto assets entered into circulation during 2018, a more than 50 percent increase when compared with the start of 2018, and an addition of 110 percent of the number of circulating cryptocurrencies as of the start of 2017. BTC and ETH Added 27 Percent of Newly Created Value Last Year BTC added roughly $2.63 billion to the combined crypto asset market cap during 2018, with inflation and newly mined BTC comprising 17 percent of new value added to the cryptocurrency markets, forming the largest contribution made by a single virtual currency. New value created in the form ETH comprised the second largest contribution from a single market to the combined cryptocurrency capitalization during 2018, adding $1.55 billion, or 10 percent of new value. Inflation on all other cryptocurrency tokens that were circulating as of the start of 2018 added a further $4.17 billion to the combined market cap, comprising 27 percent of last year’s newly created crypto asset value. Burned Tokens Removed $195 Million From Combined Market Cap in 2018 Newly issued stablecoins comprised a significant contribution to the cryptocurrency market cap, adding more than $1.26 billion in value. The BSV fork also comprised a notable source of new crypto asset value, adding $1.04 billion to the combined cryptocurrency market cap. Finally, burned tokens comprised $195 million in value that was removed from the combined cryptocurrency market cap during 2018. Are you surprised that $15.4 billion of last year’s newly created cryptocurrency value survived to see 2019? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Diar At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more. The post $15.4 Billion of New Cryptocurrency Value Was Created During 2018 appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

In today’s edition of The Daily we feature another recent example of venture capital infusion into the cryptocurrency space as Japan’s SBI invests in the BRD wallet. We also cover a recent security vulnerability that was detected on the P2P exchange Localbitcoins, and a new AML/KYC compliance solution for stablecoins. Also Read: Galaxy Digital Is Raising $250M to Help Firms Survive Crypto Winter Crypto Wallet Raises $15 Million Cryptocurrency mobile wallet BRD (formally Bread Wallet) has announced it has raised $15 million in a Series B financing round to accelerate international expansion and scale its technology platform. The funding came from SBI Crypto Investment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate SBI Holdings. The new funds are meant to enable BRD to grow its product and engineering teams as well as to expand its operation in Japan and across Asia. “SBI Group’s investment in BRD allows us to firmly cement ourselves in the Asian market,” said Adam Traidman, CEO of BRD. “It shows incredible support for the foundation that we have built in North America and reinforces our proven ability to scale the success we have achieved in the past 4 years. The new investment will ensure our long-term global growth, and we are incredibly excited about collaborating with SBI as a strategic investor and business partner to make that happen.” BRD also announced the availability of cryptocurrency purchases using SEPA transfers for the European market through a partnership with payment provider Coinify. This will enable users to purchase bitcoin in the 34 countries across the SEPA region using bank accounts. “BRD has blazed the trail as a decentralised financial platform and we are excited to be the selected partner for their European launch,” said Rikke Staer, Chief Commercial Officer of Coinify. “They have been one of the pioneers of the virtual currency industry, and it is a pleasure to be chosen to power their SEPA trades.” Localbitcoins Suffers Vulnerability Peer-to-peer trading platform Localbitcoins has notified users that on Jan. 26, at approximately 10:00 UTC, the exchange’s team has detected a security vulnerability. The notification explained that “an unauthorised source was able to access and send transactions from a number of affected accounts.” Outgoing transactions were temporarily disabled by Localbitcoins while the team investigated the case, and they were re-enabled after a number of measures to address the issue and secure the accounts were taken. “We were able to identify the problem, which was related to a feature powered by a third party software, and stop the attack. At the moment, we are determining the correct number of users affected – so far six cases have been confirmed. For security reasons, the forum feature has been disabled until further notice.” The team also added some security guidance for users: “Your Localbitcoins accounts are currently safe to log in and use – we encourage you to enable two-factor authentication, if you have not yet.” The announcement by the exchange came after a user complained on Reddit about a phishing attack on the forum. Chainalysis Goes After Stablecoins Digital surveillance company Chainalysis has announced the launch of Know Your Transaction (KYT) for stablecoins, an anti-money laundering (AML) compliance solution for monitoring stablecoin transactions from issuance to redemption. The developers say that stablecoin issuers can integrate with the tool via an API to begin monitoring large volumes of activity and identify high risk transactions on an on-going basis. The service is also said to help issuers understand the risk profile of each stablecoin holder and filter them by level of risk exposure to identify those that require the most immediate attention. “Chainalysis exists to build trust in cryptocurrencies among institutions and users,” said Chainalysis COO Jonathan Levin. “The repeated knock against cryptocurrency is its volatility, and trust in stablecoins could lead the way to increased commercial use. Chainalysis KYT for stablecoins further supports this vision by raising the bar for accountability and providing compliance teams with the technology they need to meet AML requirements.” The company says that the service is now available for a number of ERC-20 stablecoins, and will become available for additional tokens in the coming months. What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com. The post The Daily: Crypto Wallet Raises $15 Million, Localbitcoins Suffers Vulnerability appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article