roadrunner

BTC supporters were elated to discover recently that the Lightning Network’s (LN) capacity had spiked by 216 percent in just one day. Some individuals suspected the Build on Bitcoin conference had sparked more LN interest. However, onlookers have found the spike was due to a single node created by the owner of Shitcoin.com. According to LN explorers, the node holds more than 49 percent of the Lightning Network’s total funds. Also read: Study Finds Cryptocurrency Rebalance Portfolios Outperform ‘Hodling’ Everyone is Talking About One Node That Holds More Funds Than 49% of the Entire Lightning network There’s a new Lightning Network node on the block that has BTC supporters in a frenzy trying to figure out why one person has so much money on this nascent network. At the time of writing the so-called “≡ƒÆ⌐LN.SHITCOIN.COM≡ƒÆ⌐” holds 35.24 BTC or $220,000 USD. The node is operated by Andreas Brekken, the owner of Shitcoin.com who has detailed he plans on doing a review of the Lightning Network. Brekken’s Shitcoin.com reviews a wide variety of cryptocurrencies like IOTA, Tron, EOS, and Dash. Brekken’s node is massive compared to the rest of the nodes across LN and on July 14 the node operator stated to his Twitter followers: To make the Lightning Network truly decentralized, we must first become the Lightning Network. Supporters Afraid the Node May “Reduce People’s Trust in the Lightning Network”, While Some Are Using the Node for Routing, Even Though They “Don’t Trust the Guy” Operating It Of course, LN supporters had a lot to say about Brekken’s node as some believed it was just an expensive marketing attempt for his review website. Some users even argued that Brekken might try to attempt some sort of “attack.” “If he could somehow crash or reduce people’s trust in the Lightning Network, that would be a plus for his side,” explains one Reddit user. Oddly enough, one user explained that even though he didn’t trust Brekken, he’s been using the node for liquidity. “I opened a channel with this node — it routes payments very well (loads of liquidity),” reveals another Reddit user. I will not be receiving (only spending) via this channel as I don’t trust this guy — If you spend only — there is no need for watchtowers, or zero risk to your money. All Eyes on One Node Brekken hasn’t disclosed when his official LN review will be published or what type of testing he has been doing. Just recently he revealed how much money he’s made so far from routing, which turned out to be around $0.028 USD worth of BTC. It’s likely Brekken will follow through with a detailed review, but in the meantime, it’s safe to say many bitcoiners will be watching this node closely. What do you think about the Shitcoin.com node on the Lightning Network? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comment section below. Images via Shutterstock, Twitter, Recksplorer, and Shitcoin.com. Why not keep track of the price with one of Bitcoin.com’s widget services? The post One Guy Controls the Lightning Network’s Biggest Node appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The BTC markets are currently attempting to establish a higher low above $6000 after failing to break above resistance at $6800 at the end of June, whilst BCH appears to have bounced off the critical support area of $600 – $650 for the second time in 2018. In recent altcoin market action, Cardano (ADA), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Zcash (ZEC), and 0x (ZRX) have produced gains of roughly between 10% and 20% after Coinbase confirmed on the 14th of June that it is currently “exploring” listing said markets. Also Read: Australian Bank Bans Use of Mortgage Funds for Crypto Speculation BTC Rangebound Between $5800 and $6800 Since gaining 18% from the 29th of June low of approximately $5800 to the local high of roughly $6840 on the 7th of July, the BTC markets have retraced by over 8% during the last seven days – with current prices hovering at approximately $6250. Market sentiment is mixed, with price action currently testing a key support level on the daily charts after failing to break above the significant resistance area of approximately $6800, however, appearing to produce what could turn into an inverse head and shoulders formation – should support at $6200 hold, thus producing a higher low. Looking at the stochastic RSI, one can see that both the 1-week, 1-day, and 12-hour charts appear heavily oversold – with the stoch RSI below the 20 threshold, whilst the 3-day chart is showing a retrace from a test of the 80 threshold. BCH Markets Retrace Heavily in Recent Weeks As of this writing, the BCH markets are sitting at approximately $700 after testing the critical support area of roughly $650 earlier this week. Looking at the weekly charts, the markets have produced three weeks of sideways consolidatory action after losing nearly 60% of its value over the course of the preceding seven weeks. When measuring against BTC, Bitcoin Cash currently appears to be forming a green doji candle after five consecutive weeks of downward momentum. As of this writing, BCH is trading for roughly 0.1125 BTC Coinbase Considers Adding Five New Cryptocurrencies Major exchange and cryptocurrency unicorn, Coinbase, has published a blog post announcing that it is currently “exploring the addition of several new assets” – specifically Cardano (ADA), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Zcash (ZEC), and 0x (ZRX). The news produced sharp bullish momentum across the aforementioned markets – with the fiat-value of said cryptocurrencies all posting quick gains of between roughly 10% and 20%. The company states that it “will be working with local banks and regulators to add them in as many jurisdictions as possible,” adding that “Unlike the ongoing process of adding Ethereum Classic, which is technically very similar to Ethereum, these assets will require additional exploratory work and we cannot guarantee they will be listed for trading.” The exchange claims to have announced the new prospective listings “internally at Coinbase and to the public at the same time,” emphasizing its intention to “remain transparent with [its] customers about support for future assets.” Coinbase also notes that its “listing process may result in some of these assets being listed solely for customers to buy and sell, without the ability to send or receive using a local wallet,” elaborating that “We may also only enable certain ways to interact with these assets through our site, such as supporting only deposits and withdrawals from transparent Zcash addresses.” Markets React to News of Prospective Listings Despite Coinbase emphasizing that it “cannot commit to when or whether these assets will become available at this time,” the announcement of the prospective listings caused sudden bullish surges of over 9.5% across each of the cryptocurrency markets in question. Whilst each market currently appears to be consolidating, it is not yet clear as to whether the upward moves will evolve into meaningful longer-term rallies, or fail to produce anything more than short-term spikes. The seventh-ranked cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Stellar, quickly gained 9.5% from approximately $0.1847 to $0.2023 in less than two and a half hours. When measuring against BTC, the markets gained from 2794 satoshis to 3244 satoshis. As of this writing, Stellar has a market capitalization of $3.76 billion, and is trading for $0.2 and 3209 satoshis. Stellar, Coinmarketcap, Jul 8th – Jul 15th Cardano, the eighth largest cryptocurrency by market cap ($3.5 billion), enjoyed a sudden gain of 11.5% from roughly $0.1265 to $0.1411 following Coinbase’s announcement. When measuring against BTC, the markets gained from 2036 satoshis to 2270 satoshis in just half an hour. ADA is now consolidating at approximately $0.1363 and 2185 satoshis. Cardano, Coinmarketcap, Jul 8th – Jul 15th Zcash, the twenty-first largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $754.5 million, gained 17.5% from $157.5 to 185.1 and from roughly 0.02536 BTC to 0.02977 BTC in half an hour following the news of the possible Coinbase listing. As of this writing, ZEC is trading for approximately $173.4 and 0.02774. Zcash, Coinmarketcap, Jul 8th – Jul 15th 0x, the twenty-fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization ($521 million), responded with 15% bounce from approximately $0.87 to $1.00 and 0.0001395 BTC to 0.0001614 BTC over the course of two hours. ZRX is now trading for roughly $0.974 and 0.00015 BTC. 0x, Coinmarketcap, Jul 8th – Jul 15th Basic Attention Token, the thirty-seventh largest cryptocurrency market with a total capitalization of $334.3 million, produced the strongest bounce of the markets confirmed to be in consideration for a Coinbase listing. BAT gained 19.3% from roughly $0.2777 to $0.3314 and 4464 satoshis to 5335 satoshis over the course of one and half hours, before producing a secondary high of $0.3403 and 5466 satoshis three hours later. Basic Attention Token, Coinmarketcap, Jul 8th – Jul 15th Which markets do you think Coinbase will list? Join the discussion in the comments section below! Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Trading View, Coinmarketcap Want a comprehensive list of the top 500 cryptocurrencies and see their prices and overall market valuation? Check out Satoshi Pulse for all that hot market action! The post Markets Update: HODLers Pray for Higher Lows, Prospective Coinbase Listings Rally appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

This week Bitcoin.com reached a milestone of a whopping 2.5 million Bitcoin.com Wallets created in less than a year. Since we started our web portal we’ve focused on providing people with world-class resources that fit every bitcoiner’s needs and our simple-to-use wallet is no different. Also read: Bitcoin.com and Purse.io Bolster Spending Giving New Shoppers $10 in BCH The 2.5 Million Milestone is the First Step Towards Our Goal to Provide a World-Class Cryptocurrency Wallet to Billions of People The Bitcoin.com Wallet was launched on August 25, 2017, just a few weeks after the Bitcoin blockchain split that took place on August 1. Since then our light client that supports both Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Core (BTC) has become very popular and the amount of wallets created in so little time has been thrilling to watch. We think that the popularity of our wallet is due to the fact it is so easy to use, and you can send bitcoin wherever you are in the world. Not only that but our lightning fast wallet is safe and secure while at the same time allowing individuals to hold their private keys in a non-custodial fashion. The Bitcoin.com Wallet can be downloaded for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux. Further, the Bitcoin.com Wallet comes with a myriad of features that allow individuals to do more than just send and receive cryptocurrencies. The Bitcoin.com Wallet is also tethered to our first class blockchain explorer so you can verify all of your transactions. Moreover, we provide real-time charts, and a portal where you can purchase bitcoins effortlessly. Our client also enables users to create shared wallets that utilize the innovation of multi-signature technology. Meanwhile, Bitcoin.com’s wallet provides a shapeshifting feature where users can swap between BCH and BTC effortlessly by utilizing the popular Shapeshift API. Bitcoin.com’s wallet product manager, Alfonso Rocha, was pumped to see how popular the client has become and he believes 2.5 million wallets created in eleven months is a landmark occasion. “We are so pleased that 2.5 million wallets have been created. It just shows how many people find our wallet useful and proves that it’s the best place to use and store their bitcoin cash — People trust us,” Rocha detailed. We are also continuously working every day to make sure we have the best wallet out there. The quality of what we produce is as important to us as it is to our customers. Increase the security of your funds by sharing wallets with multi-signature technology, or effortlessly change cryptocurrencies using the integrated Shapeshift API. Open Source and Available for Your Operating System Today Alongside all these features, the Bitcoin.com Wallet is open source so individuals can review the client’s source code on Github at any time. So if you are looking for an easy-to-use bitcoin wallet that allows you to store your own private keys then the Bitcoin.com Wallet is the perfect choice for your storage needs. The innovative light client is available today for iOS, Android, Linux, Windows and OS X devices. Here’s a rundown of just a few of the benefits the Bitcoin.com Wallet offers: Multiple wallet creation and management in-app Creates both Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Core (BTC) wallets by default Intuitive, multi-signature security for personal or shared wallets Easy spending proposal flow for shared wallets and group payments BIP32 Hierarchical deterministic (HD) address generation and wallet backups Device-based security: all private keys are stored locally, not in the cloud Customizable wallet naming and background colors Multiple languages supported Support for over 150 currency pricing options and unit denomination in BTC or bits. Lightning fast transactions. Have you tried the Bitcoin.com Wallet? Let us know what you think about the wallet in the comment section below. Images via Shutterstock, and Bitcoin.com. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Bitcoin.com Celebrates 2.5 Million Wallets Created in Less Than a Year appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The Reserve Bank of India has justified its crypto banking ban to an industry group which has been trying to convince the central bank to ease crypto restrictions. In response, the central bank outlines key areas of concern and upholds its stance on crypto. Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space RBI’s Main Concerns India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has divulged key areas of concern regarding cryptocurrency. The communication is in response to a representation submitted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). The document was sent to the central bank during the Supreme Court hearing of IAMAI’s petition against the crypto banking ban. While RBI’s response cannot be made public, some industry participants have seen it and have discussed its content. A source who has seen the document told news.Bitcoin.com that RBI told IAMAI it is particularly concerned about investor protection, cryptocurrencies’ lack of intrinsic value, and their anonymity, which could lead to money laundering. Investor Protection Sohail Merchant, CEO of crypto exchange Pocketbits, commented on RBI’s response, stating that “all the basis of their arguments is ‘Investor Protection’.” Nischal Shetty, CEO of crypto exchange Wazirx, concurred. “Some of the arguments seem to be around investor protection,” he noted, adding that “but investor protection comes with regulation and not a ban!” Other crypto exchanges also agree that a ban is not the way to protect investors. Praveen Kumar, CEO of crypto exchange Belfrics, was quoted by Quartz: By limiting transactions via bank accounts and allowing more cash-related transactions, RBI is allowing more people to get duped…Instead, they need to regulate the exchanges and lay down guidelines that can help prevent these frauds. In addition, the source shared with news.Bitcoin.com that, “exchanges have been hacked globally and that worries them.” There has been a rise in crypto-related scams in India. Even BJP party leaders have been accused of being involved in a bitcoin scam. Recently, the Indian state of Maharashtra announced that it is setting up a special investigative unit to investigate all crypto-related cases. No Intrinsic Value The central bank is also concerned that “cryptos have no intrinsic value,” the source added. RBI’s view reiterates the statement issued by the country’s finance ministry in December last year. Aimed at warning people of the risks of investing in cryptocurrencies, claiming that they are “like Ponzi schemes,” the statement reads: VCs [virtual currencies] don’t have any intrinsic value and are not backed by any kind of assets. The price of bitcoin and other VCs therefore is entirely a matter of mere speculation resulting in spurt and volatility in their prices. There is a real and heightened risk of investment bubble of the type seen in ponzi schemes…. Anonymity of Crypto The third major factor of concern for RBI is the “anonymity of crypto leading to money laundering,” the source noted. However, exchanges argue that strict adherence to know-your-customer (KYC) norms would prevent money laundering, Quartz elaborated and quoted them clarifying, “all transactions are usually carried out via bank account transfers to keep a tab on the money trail.” India is also not the only country concerned about the anonymity of crypto. Japan, where cryptocurrency is a legal means of payment, is another. The country’s top financial regulator has reportedly been pressuring exchanges such as Coincheck, which was hacked in January, to drop privacy coins. What do you think of RBI’s concerns? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock and the Indian government. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Indian Central Bank Justifies Its Crypto Stance – Outlines Key Areas of Concern appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The Satoshi Revolution: A Revolution of Rising Expectations Section 4: State Versus Society Chapter 9, Part 4 Does Your Money Serve the State or You? The State, in short, subjects people, whereas Society associates them voluntarily. – Felix Morley Two simple litmus tests determine whether money serves the state (organized force) or whether it serves society (voluntary exchanges). Who issues it? State money is issued either by the state or by an authority controlled by it, who claims a monopoly. Can people choose to use it or not? State money is established by requiring people to accept it as legal tender. Cryptocurrency is privately issued, and no one is forced to use or to accept it. Crypto is a pure money of society—a public money, not one that serves rulers and elites. Indeed, many people use it to escape the corrupt central banking system and its domination of the global economy through fiat money. Control of the economy is the basis of social control. The state lives or dies through its ability to regulate the flow of wealth within society. This makes cryptocurrency, even in its infancy, a threat to established power that the state addresses by dominating crypto through regulation, through its own monopoly issuance, or through banning it. Each step requires law. And, except for dictatorships, law requires public justification. Even with dictatorships, public justification is usually offered in order to avoid public resistance. The state needs law to destroy crypto, which means it needs justification. If there is not a real need, then a false one must be created. The appeal to law reveals another and more fundamental difference between state money and that of society. Namely, what is the purpose of law regarding each one? What is the Purpose of State Law Regarding Crypto? The alleged illegality of crypto and of those who use it is, again, divided by the state into two clear categories. First and foremost to the state are violations of its own self-declared jurisdiction. Given that the state produces no wealth, its claimed jurisdiction amounts to the rules by which wealth is confiscated and redistributed. Crypto violates these rules. Some uses do so directly. For example, it is sometimes used for tax evasion, money laundering, black-market activities, and other functions that compromise the state. Of course, people who use fiat also commit such ‘crimes.’ In those cases, however, there is a remarkable difference in how the law approaches the offenses. Namely, objectionable individuals are demonized, often in a high-profile manner that intimidates those in the shadows. But the money itself is accused of no crime, and bears no liability. With cryptocurrency, both individuals and the money are demonized. The money is the true target, with individuals being the means by which to attack its legitimacy. Prosecutions springboard quickly into calls for monetary control. Crypto also violates rules of the state in a more profound manner. It renders trusted third parties irrelevant, and there is no more massive third party than the state. The state created the central banking system as an omnipresent regulator of money and as a choke point for information. It wove an iron web of laws to monitor money and require its ounce of flesh from every transaction. If no one needs central banks, if they can easily avoid the strangling laws, then the power of the state dramatically diminishes. Some crypto zealots argue that the power is or will be destroyed. In either case, crypto constitutes a threat as muscular as any other revolution. Perhaps more so. No wonder, the loudest cry of “there ought to be a law” revolves around the preservation of state privileges. The second round of the state’s cry for law is the claim that crypto violates the person and property of individuals. The line of attack is secondary, by far, and often sounds like an afterthought. But it is also the most dangerous claim to the continued freedom of crypto users because the accusation is valid, and it resonates with decent people. Most people hate taxes, and many would avoid them if it were safe to do so. But the same people hate fraud, theft, and violence. Fraud, Theft, and Violence Some uses of cryptocurrency are fraudulent. A March 2018 article in bitcoin.com opened, “In the time it takes you to read this sentence, $850 will have been lost to cryptocurrency scams. In the time it takes to complete this article, that figure will have risen to $17,000. Phishing; fraud; theft; hacking; it’s all rife. In the first two months of 2018, there were 22 separate scams involving thefts of $400,000 or more. Put it all together and that equates to an average of $9.1 million a day. Oh, and that doesn’t include 2018’s outliers – Coincheck, Bitconnect, and Bitgrail. Otherwise, the total would actually stand at $23 million a day.” There are thieves who prey upon the crypto community. An April 2018 article in bitcoin.com explained, “Hardware wallets are regarded as one of the safest means of storing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Each device grants the holder possession of their private keys and adds a PIN code plus other tamer-proof [sic] tech for enhanced security. Hardware wallets are not impregnable, however, as one British man found to his peril after purchasing the device on Ebay. Redditor moodyrocket is coming to terms with having his “life savings” wiped out this week, after $34,000 of crypto was stolen from his newly acquired Nano Ledger hardware wallet. The device was compromised, not due to any flaws in its design, but thanks to a man in the middle attack that saw the reseller insert their own recovery seed.” Crypto allegedly cloaks acts of violence. This is the shakiest claim, because it is based on reports from state officials, or experts who are often in their pay. The “10 of the Biggest Lies Told About Bitcoin” (December 2017) addressed the claim that crypto is the finance of choice for terrorists. “If you want to blame a currency, try the U.S. dollar which has been used to fund more wars, proxy wars, bombings, hijackings, and insurgencies than any other. Europol found no evidence that terrorists were using cryptocurrencies to fund their activities. That’s not to say it hasn’t happened and won’t happen. It’s telling however that the only people linking bitcoin with terrorism are governments seeking to crackdown on digital currencies.” For the sake of argument, assume every accusation leveled at cryptocurrency is true. But it is also true of fiat. Fraud, theft, and violence has been associated with every means of exchange that has ever existed. Again, only crypto is discredited. Not barter. Not gold. Not fiat, against which no one shakes their fist due to fraud. It is telling that cryptocurrency is blamed for the actions of individuals, in much the same manner that guns are blamed for crimes. Law will be imposed upon crypto. The state needs to reassert control. The free market needs to do what it does best: provide a solution to a need. State versus society. It will play out before our eyes. I have a good idea of what it will look like, on both sides. [To be continued next week.] Reprints of this article should credit bitcoin.com and include a link back to the original links to all previous chapters Wendy McElroy has agreed to ”live-publish” her new book The Satoshi Revolution exclusively with Bitcoin.com. Every Saturday you’ll find another installment in a series of posts planned to conclude after about 18 months. Altogether they’ll make up her new book ”The Satoshi Revolution”. Read it here first. The post Wendy McElroy: Does Your Money Serve the State or You? appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Shrimpy cryptocurrency portfolio management is a platform that helps investors curate a portfolio with automated investment strategies. With the company’s portfolio experience, the Shrimpy team published a study that gives an informative technical analysis comparing two types of cryptocurrency investment methods: rebalance against holding (hodl). Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space The Portfolio Firm Shrimpy Looks at the Best Method of Cryptocurrency Investment — Rebalance vs Hodl If you have been into cryptocurrency for a while now you’ve probably heard the expression ‘hodl’ which is a purposely misspelled word for digital asset holders or hoarders who hold their coins for a long time without spending them. These type of people believe that someday their bitcoins will be worth far more than they are today. Even during the big market dips, ‘hodlers’ continue to hold. Another form of investment that some cryptocurrency proponents use is called ‘rebalancing’ which involves a portfolio rebalance only when the asset allocation has dropped below a predetermined threshold. Unlike holding and weathering bearish market action, rebalancing protects investors from being constantly exposed to market dips. Some cryptocurrency proponents believe that holding is the best method of investment. Rebalancing Beats Hodl by a Median of 64% Shrimpy used a variety of data to help determine which investment strategy was more profitable such as a complete year of market data, the creation of a rebalance structure, the number of assets in a portfolio, and asset selection. Further Shrimpy tested multiple portfolios with 2-10 assets each. Within the study, Shrimpy had found that rebalancing outshined hodling in a few instances. “There are two major relations we can draw from this study — The first relation is that increasing the number of assets increased the performance of a portfolio,” explains Shrimpy’s research. “The second relation is that decreasing the rebalance period (increasing rebalance frequency) increased the performance of a portfolio. Therefore, the ideal portfolio was rebalanced frequently and also contain numerous assets.” Rebalancing beat Hodl by a median of 64%. After taxes, this represented 92% of all possible cryptocurrency portfolios. “Combining all of the backtests over all the portfolios and rebalancing periods produces a complete picture comparing rebalancing and hodl — We observe a median complete performance of 64%,” Shrimpy’s study states. Ten Asset Portfolio With a 1-Hour Rebalance Period Outperformed Hodl by 234% Shrimpy’s experiment also compared portfolios that hold ten assets but have a different rebalance period, which showed some interesting statistics. “If you randomly selected 10 assets and rebalanced at least once a month, you would have had a 99.75% chance of outperforming buy and hold over the last year — This is truly incredible,” details the research. The median performance for a portfolio with 10 assets and a rebalance period of 1 hour was 234% better than Hodl. “The median performance demonstrates that the higher the rebalance period with the higher number of assets presents the highest gains for rebalancing — Each value represents a percent increase over buy and hold,” explains Shrimpy. The Cryptocurrency Spend vs Hodl Debate is Years Old, But Is Being Argued Fervently Once Again The study goes against the many people who believe hodling or hoarding is the best method of investment. For years there has been a long debate on which form usage is better for long-term cryptocurrency adoption, and lately, there’s been a new wave of people bolstering the idea of ‘spend and replace,’ most notably with the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) crowd. One wallet called Cashpay allows users to spend and replace their BCH every time they buy stuff with bitcoin cash. Holding can definitely bring people gains especially over long periods of time, but rebalancing seems to be less risky and more rewarding according to Shrimpy’s study. What do you think the best method of investment is — rebalance or hodl? Let us know what you think about this subject in comment section below. Images via Shutterstock, Pixabay, Medium, and charts designed by Shrimpy. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Study Finds Cryptocurrency Rebalance Portfolios Outperform ‘Hodling’ appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Russian intelligence officers accused of meddling in the 2016 presidential elections in the US have used bitcoin to finance their campaign, cover the tracks and obscure their identities, a new federal indictment suggests. You can check the details in today’s edition of Bitcoin in Brief. Also in the daily, billionaire Steven Cohen invests in crypto hedge fund, mysterious expert bets that 1 BTC will cost more than the Berkshire Hathaway’s share in five years, and a leading horse-betting platform now accepts BTC and BCH. Also read: Crypto-Inheritance Service, Taiwanese Stablecoin, Bitcoin Gift Cards Russian Agents Used Bitcoin, Mined Cryptocurrency Rod Rosenstein This Friday, a federal indictment announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein turned another page in the story of the alleged Russian meddling in the last US presidential election, and it features cryptocurrency. According to the document, which was released just before a major summit between Trump and Putin in Helsinki next week, Russian agents used cryptos like bitcoin in their campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 vote. Authorities in Washington claim that hackers working for the Russian foreign military intelligence paid in crypto for servers in the US and Malaysia, website domains, and virtual private networks (VPNs) used to release information stolen from the Democratic camp and to obscure their identities and cover their tracks. They also laundered more than $95,000 through bitcoin. The 12 GRU officers indicted by the United States special counsel Robert Mueller are said to have acquired bitcoin (BTC) in different ways, including through peer-to-peer crypto trading platforms, using other digital coins and prepaid credit cards as well. US investigators claim the Russians even mined their own cryptocurrency. The indictment, the first to level criminal charges against Russian officials pertaining to the alleged election interference, suggests that crypto funds were used to lease servers in two US states, Illinois and Arizona, where the hacked information was stored, and pay a Romanian company through a US-based processor to set up a website used to spread it. Billionaire Steven Cohen Invests in Crypto Hedge Fund Billionaire Steven Cohen has reportedly invested in the crypto hedge fund Autonomous Partners. The investment was made through his Cohen Private Ventures, Bloomberg reported, quoting an unnamed source. The fund, founded last year, is focusing on cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based companies. It has already attracted investments from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Craft Ventures cofounder David Sacks. Autonomous Partners invests in major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) but has stayed away from ripple (XRP) over concerns that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may decide that the token is a security. Crypto advocate Arianna Simpson, founder of the hedge fund, commented that she is interested in investing in cryptocurrencies that serve as general purpose money and companies that are building the next generation of financial infrastructure. The number of crypto hedge funds increased significantly with the rising prices of cryptocurrencies last tear. Recently released data suggests, however, that they have suffered a negative growth in the past months due to the bear market, as news.Bitcoin.com reported. A Billion-Dollar Bet on the Price of Bitcoin A crypto trader from Australia has requested to place a unique bet. According to famous Australian bookmaker Tom Waterhouse, the “well-known crypto expert,” who preferred to remain anonymous, wants to wager $8.5million AUD ($6.3 million USD) that by the end of 2023 the price of one bitcoin (BTC) will exceed that of a share in Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway. If the bitcoin punter is right, he is expected to win $1.2 billion AUD (~$890 million). Waterhouse said in a tweet this week he had put the man in touch with a large syndicate. Judging by the shared numbers, the prospective crypto gambler is looking for odds of 1/141. Bitcoin is currently trading at $6,200 USD per coin, while the share price of the US-based conglomerate currently stands at almost 290,000 USD, which is over 45 times the price of 1 BTC. Bitcoin reached almost $20,000 in December last year, and Berkshire Hathaway’s shares have been trading above $220,000 since 2016. Horse Betting Site Now Accepts BTC and BCH Amwager.com, a leading website for watching and betting on live horse racing, is now accepting bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) deposits. The US-based online platform is arguably the first advance deposit wagering (ADW) company to obtain regulatory approval that would allow the implementation of cryptocurrency payments. “Over the past several years we have witnessed Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies evolve from an esoteric concept to a widely recognized digital currency that is quickly making its way into the mainstream. With mainstream acceptance, cryptocurrencies have the potential to drastically transform our global payment systems, and we at Amwager seek to be on the forefront of that transformation,” said company CEO Nelson Clemmens. Amwager’s executive added that the company has been working with the Oregon Racing Commission and Bitpay to bring cryptocurrencies to the ADW industry. According to a press release, bitcoin and bitcoin cash offer Amwager customers an attractive alternative to the traditional methods for adding funds to their wagering accounts. The platform notes that the crypto technology addresses the “inefficiencies that exist in our current banking system by verifying and finalizing transactions rapidly,” mitigating chargeback risks and eliminating delays in the availability of funds. What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell is in the comments section below. 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: Russians Used Bitcoin to Hack US Elections, Trader Bets on the Price of BTC appeared first on Bitcoin News. 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This is a paid press release, which contains forward looking statements, and should be treated as advertising or promotional material. Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support this product/service. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the press release. W12 offers a completely new approach to the development of blockchain technology, smart contracts and the crypto economy, the adoption of which can massively affect existing traditional infrastructure in the very near future. Smart contracts are proving effective in the crypto community by eliminating the problem of mistrust between parties in simple operations, but their application in the real world is severely limited. The transition to a new decentralized digital economy requires a reliable and scalable infrastructure that facilitates the rapid implementation of blockchain technologies. In W12, we created a protocol that extends the application of smart contracts, ensuring their introduction into the traditional economy and eliminating the mistrust between all parties of the deal. The main problem in the traditional economy: the parties do not trust each other. Without trusting one another, in order to settle disputes and make payments, the parties involved are compelled to trust traditional institutes on behalf of the state, and frequently do not have access to alternative solutions. The existing infrastructure is extremely expensive to use, slow and rarely transparent. The W12 Solution: the creation of a decentralized blockchain infrastructure where the parties do not need to trust each other, and any controversial issues are resolved transparently, quickly and at a lower cost. The problem of existing smart contracts: without the entry of verified information from the external world to the blockchain, the number of use cases for smart contracts is extremely limited. The W12 Solution: A protocol that allows you to create smart contracts with the necessary logic for their execution without programming skills and a decentralized oracle network confirming the execution of milestones of the contract and the transfer of funds to the other party. The oracles in the decentralized W12 network transmit verified information from the external world to the blockchain and confirm the execution of the scenarios programmed in smart contracts. The use of a blockchain based on the proof of authority consensus allows this system to execute smart contracts faster and cheaper than older systems. W12 creates a system in which the parties do not need to trust each other, the settlement of disputes occurs quicker, more transparently and at a lower cost, providing a wide range of users with easy access to the benefits of blockchain technology. Today, the W12 solution is perhaps one of the most significant innovations in the financial sector. Priority markets for implementation of the solution: ICOs Crowdfunding Charity Logistics, delivery of goods Ordering goods and services via the Internet Construction In the very near future, W12 intends to start using this technology for the ICO market, which currently suffers froma lack of trust between token buyers and projects in their early stages. Currently, token buyers bear significant risks by participating in ICOs. According to statistics from research performed by Satis Group LLC, up to 81% of ICO projects may turn out to be scams, and only 3.8% are successfully traded on exchanges. Nowadays, there is no infrastructure behind the ICO market to establish trust between the parties. W12 allows you to use such a system and sign a smart contract where no trust is required at all. If a project attracts token buyers in order to develop a solution for the crypto currency segment, token buyers conducting their transaction via W12 smart contracts can be sure that the project will receive its funds only following the implementation of its milestones according to the published road map. According to W12 founder Oleg Sharpaty, the ICO market is only the first step towards implementation of the W12 solution. W12 is going to create a bridge between the crypto industry and the traditional economy by introducing its solution into real businesses. The W12 solution allows us to reconsider the role of the state as an arbiter in relations between entities and to relieve the burden from some state institutions, shifting it to smart contracts and moderated decentralized organizations. The implementation of the W12 solution will create the basis for a new decentralized digital economy.The development of the technology provided by W12 is likely to affect many traditional financial and civil-law institutions in the immediate future. https://w12.io WORLD BLOCKCHAIN FORUM. A two-day conference held at the Metropolitan West between the 11th and of 13th June, delved into the innovative possibilities of blockchain and disruptive technologies, provided an introduction to securities and looked at the transformative impact of cryptocurrencies on the global financial landscape. Different ICOs from around the globe participated in the conference with a total of 2,500-3,000 participants from all over the world in attendance. However, the most liked and appreciated concept was W12. And due to the uniqueness of the idea and the huge success potential of the W12 platform, it secured 1st position in the conference among a huge number of participants. As a result, the renowned tech incubator that has helped a number of tech giants getting on their feet is looking to assist W12 to do the same. Media Contact: Company Name: W12 Pte. Ltd. Contact Person: Lisa Siurina Email: l.siurina@w12.io; oleg@w12.io; Contact No:+39 324 984 88 89 Country: Singapore Website: https://tokensale.w12.io/ Supporting Link https://tokensale.w12.io/ 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: W12 – a Platform Raising New Generation of Smart Contracts – Winner at the World Blockchain Forum (NYC) appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

One of Australia’s oldest financial institutions, Bank of Queensland, has prohibited the use of home equity loans for virtual currency speculation. The move has been attributed to concerns pertaining to the growing regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency sector in Australia. Also Read: Tether Announces Appointment of New Chief Compliance Officer Bank of Queensland Cracks Down on Customers Using Mortgage Funds to Trade Crypto Bank of Queensland has banned its customers from using loans that are leveraged against home equity for the purposes of cryptocurrency speculation due to concerns pertaining to the increasing regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency activities in Australia. Contracts issued by Bank of Queensland will now caution prospective borrowers “any loan purpose that involves the acquisition of or usage of cryptocurrency is unacceptable.” The Australian Financial Review (AFR) recently reported that a spokesperson for Bank of Queensland “has confirmed the changes.” Whilst borrowers cannot invest the capital loaned for property straight into the cryptocurrency markets due to such being paid directly to the vendor, many opportunistic debtors have used funds that are redrawn from their mortgage in order to purchase virtual currency. Other traders have reportedly sought cryptocurrency exposure through accessing a line of credit – where the borrower draws on predetermined lines of credit accessed against property equity. Australian Regulators Increasingly Target Cryptocurrency A mortgage broker who wished to remain anonymous discussed financial institutions’ concerns pertaining to virtual currency speculation with AFR, asserting that lenders are increasingly monitoring debtors accounts for indications that they may be involved in cryptocurrency trading. “They are concerned because the Australian Taxation Office, Treasury, the Reserve Bank of Australia and AUSTRAC are crawling all over it,” the broker said. Additionally, AFR asserted that Australian “Lenders and prudential regulators are also concerned to prevent anything that might worsen the nation’s worrying household debt levels, which is already among the world’s highest.” Other uses for mortgage funds typically prohibited by Australian financial institutions include the refinancing of payday loans, the payment of government fines or penalties, and payments to debt collection agencies. What is your reaction the Bank of Queensland’s move to ban the use of mortgaged funds for cryptocurrency speculation? 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 Australian Bank Bans Use of Mortgage Funds for Crypto Speculation appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Following great delays and great fanfare, Augur’s decentralized prediction market has launched. One week on, an examination of the sort of wagers it’s attracted shows the ways in which the Ethereum-based project can be harnessed as well as the potential hazards. How decentralized is Augur and, if push came to shove, could the platform prove that it is truly censorship resistant? The fate of Augur may hinge on the outrageousness of the predictions its users place. Also read: Want to Develop Bitcoin Cash Apps? Bitcoin.com Has You Covered The Market That Was Three Years in the Making Long before the ICO meme hit peak velocity, there was Augur. The project held its crowdsale back in 2015, raising $5 million, a figure that looks modest by today’s standards. Tokens were issued at $0.6 apiece, which is a snip given their current price of $29 – and Augur’s native REP token has reached more than twice that price at its peak. Building a decentralized prediction market powered by smart contracts is as difficult as it sounds. Even so, no one expected it to take until mid 2018 for Augur to launch. As of last week, Augur has been live, enabling the masses to post predictions and to sell shares in the outcome of the event coming to pass. The higher the price of the share, the likelier the particular outcome is. Officially, Augur relies on the wisdom of the crowd. Unofficially, it’s a form of unlicensed gambling. The legality of Augur and its ability to circumvent censorship has become a hot topic. Should the US, where the project is based, take exception to the nature of its business model or to the iniquity of certain predictions, it could pressure the founders into winding up their operations. While there’s nothing to suggest that Augur’s in trouble, one morbid prediction could be all it takes. Predictions for Good, Predictions for Bad In its first week, Augur has seen some interesting predictions placed, ranging from the predictable to the meta. As a “decentralized” project that is reliant on a web domain hosted on a centralized server, Augur is no more decentralized than Cryptokitties. Shut down the site and you would effectively shut down the platform, even if it could be ported to an alternative domain. Working within the constraints of the web in its extant form, however, Augur is decentralized in the sense that no one can stop the flow of ether and REP tokens that lubricate its market, and no one can stop its code from being cloned. As with any crypto project that has clearly defined leadership, however, a subpoena from the US government is likely all it would take to send Augur on an extended hiatus. There is nothing to suggest the US gov has its sights set on making life hard for Joey Krug and his Augur colleagues, just as there’s nothing to suggest that the team would wind down or censor their project without a fight. But with a marketplace where it’s possible to place any sort of prediction and then to profit from it coming true, the potential for abuse doesn’t need spelling out. As crypto commenter Matt Odell noted, assassination and terror attack markets are just two of the possible applications for Augur. In that respect, Augur elicits memories of a deep web site called The Assassination Market. Like many supposed darknet sites, it was probably a hoax, but its premise wasn’t so far removed from Augur. Operating under the slogan “We close governments”, The Assassination Market explained its methodology as follows: 1. Someone adds a name to the list along with some information. 2. People add money to the dead pool. 3. Other people predict when that person will die, but the content of the prediction stays hidden until after the fact. 4. Correct predictions get the pool. In other words, there was a monetary incentive to kill public figures. It seems unlikely that anyone would predict a presidential assassination just to claim a few ether from Augur, but it’s an interesting possibility. Until the platform’s been stress-tested to the limits, we won’t know what it’s capable of and what abuses it can withstand. For the sake of all decentralized markets in, the future of Augur is worth watching. Do you think Augur will be able to withstand attempts to shut it down? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter and Augur. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post What Does the Future Hold for Augur’s Prediction Market? appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

New York is seeking to foster growth in its cryptocurrency mining sector, with the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) approving new electricity rates for Massena Electric Department. The new provisions will facilitate “high-density load customers, as such cryptocurrency companies” accessing “individual services agreement tariff,” including “protect[ion] […] from increased supply costs.” Also Read: Cash Shuffle’s BCH Mixer Moves Forward with Steady Testing New York Crypto Miners Eligible to Apply for “Individual Service Agreement” A PSC release states that “cryptocurrency customers and other high-density-load customers will be eligible for service under an individual service agreement if their maximum demand exceeds 300 kW, and the customer provides benefits to the utility. The change allows Massena to recognize potential benefits associated with high-density-load customers, such as increased utilization of currently underutilized transmission and distribution facilities.” Commission Chair John B. Rhodes described the new rates as “part of our continuing effort to balance the needs of existing customers with the need to attract new companies, we must ensure that business customers pay a fair price for the electricity that they consume,” emphasizing that “the abundance of low-cost electricity in Upstate New York, [provides] an opportunity to serve the needs of existing customers and to encourage economic development in the region.” The Public Service Commission has stressed the economic benefits that increased investment on the part of cryptocurrency companies could reap for the county, stating that “Massena to receive significant revenues if new cryptocurrency companies set up shop in the community,“ and that in the event of such, “the utility would be required to defer the revenues for the benefit of ratepayers.” Municipal Utilities Face Increasing Demand From Cryptocurrency Miners PSC states that “In recent months, several municipal power authorities had seen an increase in requests for new service from new commercial customers for disproportionately large amounts of power. These requests come mainly from similar types of potential customers: server farms, generally devoted to data processing for cryptocurrencies. As a direct result of the intense computer data-processing efforts, these companies are using extraordinary amounts of electricity — typically thousands of times more electricity than an average residential customer would use.” “While such a significant amount of electricity usage might go unnoticed in large metropolitan areas,” PSC continues, “the sheer amount of electricity being used is leading to higher costs for customers in small communities because of a limited supply of low-cost hydropower.” The commission describes the creation of the new electricity rates as seeking to “mitigate the impact on existing customers, the Commission has already allowed municipal power authorities.” Massena’s tariff revisions are scheduled to come into effect from July 17th, 2018. What is your response to the introduction of individual services agreement tariffs for cryptocurrency miners in Massena? Join the discussion 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 look up 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 New York Approves New Electricity Rates for Crypto Miners appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Tether has announced the appointment of Leonardo Real, a former anti-money laundering (AML) quality control manager at Bank of Montreal, as the company’s new chief compliance officer (CSO). The announcement comes just one week after Phil Potter, one of Tether’s directors, announced that he will be leaving sister company, Bitfinex. Also Read: Japanese Police Seize Cryptocurrency for Parking Violations Tether Announces New CCO Leonardo Real, former AML control manager of Canada’s fourth-largest financial institution, Bank of Montreal, has been announced as Tether’s new chief compliance officer. A press release issued by Tether has stated that Mr. Real has been brought in “to assist in setting the highest standards in compliance.” Jean-Louis van der Velde, the chief executive officer of Tether welcomed the arrival of Mr. True, stating “We are all very excited to introduce Leonardo as Chief Compliance Officer at Tether, as he joins us on what has already been a remarkable journey to date disrupting the legacy financial system. His depth of experience managing AML risk in capital markets, as well as the wealth management and commercial banking sectors, combined with his proven expertise in quality control management and strategy formulation will make him an invaluable asset to our company. All of us at Tether have every confidence in his ability to oversee and manage all relevant compliance issues as we continue to move forward and grow.” “We are particularly excited to announce this key hire at a seminal point in the life of the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector. As the industry matures, all actors within the space shall be expected to meet a higher standard of industry best practices. As Tether continues to work to realize our vision of total transparency and unparalleled security within the cryptocurrency market, we will always endeavor to set the gold standard in regulatory compliance. Leonardo will play an important role in realizing these aims, and we are very excited to welcome him aboard as we look forward to all that lies ahead,” the Tether CEO added. Mr. Real’s Cryptocurrency Resume Before working with Bank of Montreal, Tether states that Mr. Real “also has experience working in financial day, stock, and futures trading,” adding that “Real is a proven thought leader in the industry, having co-written the 2016 ACAMS Today Article of the Year which focused on money laundering risks associated with cryptocurrencies.” “Joining Tether as CCO is an incredibly exciting move for me personally, and I am particularly impressed by the motivation, dedication, and talent of the Tether team. I look forward to helping showcase Tether’s commitment to transparency and regulatory compliance within the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. As a longtime advocate of blockchain technology and the integration of cryptocurrencies into the mainstream, I am looking forward to putting my experience in AML and regulatory compliance in traditional financial institutions to use, to ensure that the Tether project can continue its work disrupting traditional industries,” said Mr. Real. Mr. Real “also organized a Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and AML event held in Toronto, Canada in August 2016, bringing together regulators, bankers, law enforcement professionals, and companies in the blockchain space to discuss responsible use of cryptocurrencies.” Phil Potter to Stand Down From Bitfinex Tether director, Phil Potter, recently announced that he would stand down from his role as the Bitfinex’s chief security officer, before soon leaving Tether’s supposed sister company. Mr. Potter stated: “As Bitfinex pivots away from the U.S., I felt that, as a U.S. person, it was time for me to rethink my position as a member of the executive team.” Tether Sends 100 Million USDT to Bitfinex At 12:53:29 AM, 13th of July, 2018, 100 million USDT was sent to a wallet that is owned by Bitfinex, following one of few major Tether issuances of recent months. At 11:59:27 PM on the 25th of June, Tether created 250 million USDT, following the creation of the same quantity of USDT on the 19th of May. What is your response to Tether’s appointment of Leonardo Real to the position of chief compliance officer? 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 Tether Announces Appointment of New Chief Compliance Officer appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The blockchain technologies research and development firm, Nchain, has acquired three new patents that have been issued by the European Patent Office. The company’s latest intellectual property invented by Nchain’s chief scientist, Dr. Craig Wright, cover “digital rights management using blockchain.” Also read: Mainstream Media Claims Bitcoin Burns More Energy Than Ireland – Does It? Nchain Acquires Three New Blockchain Patents Nchain says that the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network has the ability to disintermediate the current intermediaries within our financial transactions. Digital rights management allows creators of digital content the ability to ensure that they are paid for their work. Nchain asserts that the three new patents issued by the European Patent Office will help bolster digital rights management. Furthermore, the patents follow two other EPO grants acquired by Nchain on April 11 and June 20 – which apply to BCH deterministic key generation, and a blockchain registry and automated management method. “These third, fourth and fifth patent grants by the European Patent Office marks demonstrate the value in Nchain’s program for blockchain innovation,” explains the Nchain Group CEO Jimmy Nguyen. We will continue working to make blockchain technology more usable, for more advanced functions, by major enterprises around the world. Digital Rights Management Using Blockchain The three patents acquired by Nchain and invented by Dr. Craig Wright include: EP3295349 “A method and system for verifying the integrity of a digital asset using a distributed hash table and a peer-to-peer distributed ledger”. This invention uses a standard Bitcoin Cash transaction that includes additional metadata to reference an entry within an external Distributed Hash Table (DHT) where signatures of the digital asset, plus the signatures on the DHT and the signature on the blockchain transaction itself, must align to demonstrate the integrity of the asset. EP3295362 “A method and system for verifying ownership of a digital asset using a distributed hash table and a peer-to-peer distributed ledger”. This invention builds on the technique in the first invention above (EP3295349) to add another set of cryptographic operations that allows the current owner of the digital asset to be validated. EP3295350 “A method and system for verifying ownership of a digital asset using a distributed hash table and a peer-to-peer distributed ledger”. This invention is a logical extension of the technique defined in the second invention above (EP3295362); it allows the computer software to check the rights of the user to execute such software prior to launching that software. Calvin Ayre: Protecting the Technology They Invent to Release Open Source Coingeek’s Calvin Ayre. Of course, not everyone is thrilled about the use of patents within the cryptocurrency ecosystem – which is traditionally dominated by open source projects. Some people within the BCH community detest the fact that Nchain has been acquiring state-enforced intellectual property rights. However, the owner of the blockchain and mining firm Coingeek, Calvin Ayre, believes it is necessary for companies like Nchain to acquire these patents because otherwise bigger companies like Bank of America, Visa, and others will grab them first. Many large financial incumbents have been patent grabbing blockchain concepts, with firms like American Express and Mastercard acquiring IP just recently. When Mastercard acquired a patent that facilitates anonymous cryptocurrency transactions Coingeek’s Calvin Ayre stated: This is precisely why Nchain has to go the patent route…to protect technology they invent to release open source. What do you think about Nchain acquiring three new blockchain patents from the European Patent Office? Do you agree with Calvin Ayre that if Nchain doesn’t grab these patents, a much larger financial incumbent will? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comment section below. Images via Shutterstock, Twitter, and Nchain Group. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Nchain Group Granted Three New Blockchain Patents appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

This week Bitcoin.com is thrilled to announce a new platform called Developer.bitcoin.com. The web portal is dedicated to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) software developers and provides them with a wide variety of tools that can supercharge their workflow. We want the Bitcoin Cash network to change the world for the better and Bitcoin.com’s suite of developer applications allows anyone to produce world-class platforms within this innovative ecosystem. Also read: Crypto Phones, Spy Games, Binance CEO vs Vitalik Meet Bitcoin.com’s Developer Platform: Priming the Flames of Passionate Bitcoin Cash Development Bitcoin.com is all about the power of economic freedom and we believe Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has the power to change the world. Over the past few months, BCH development has been exponential as there has been a slew of new apps like wallets, social media platforms, SMS apps, tipping bots, coin shufflers, torrent software, and so much more. At Bitcoin.com we want to keep the passionate flames of Bitcoin Cash development going strong so we’ve decided to launch a massive development web portal with a suite of tools that can help bolster the next great Bitcoin Cash project. Five Key Tools That Can Help You Scale, Deploy and Monetize a Bitcoin Cash Application Developer.bitcoin.com has five key tools for blockchain programmers: The Bitbox SDK, REST, GUI, and Cloud platforms can help you scale the project and deploy the software. Furthermore, we provide a tool called Market that can assist developers by providing a way to create revenue from the project as well. Bitbox SDK The Bitbox SDK is a powerful suite with intuitive APIs that enable developers to create world-class applications. Bitbox has been so popular it has been downloaded more than 36,000 times in over 100 countries worldwide since launch. The javascript framework offers programmers addresses, mnemonics, HDNodes, ECPairs, transactions, and more. With Bitbox, individuals and organizations can create powerful Bitcoin Cash applications on the client or server with full mainnet and testnet support. REST Developer.bitcoin.com also offers REST — a Bitcoin Cash RPC over HTTP application for Bitcoin Cash development. The entire Bitcoin Cash JSON RPC is available over HTTP with the proper REST semantics. Programmers can also tether the Bitbox SDK for further enhancements. Essentially, with the help of REST and Bitbox users can build their own clients that speak to the Bitcoin Cash chain. GUI Then we also provide a GUI which is a full BCH blockchain and BIP44 compatible wallet that can be used for experimentation and development. Basically, the GUI provides a BCH chain that can be configured and recreated from scratch with every restart. The GUI doesn’t connect to the BCH mainnnet and only consists of transactions and blocks which you create locally as our BCH-based GUI can allow a great deal of testing. Cloud & Market Moreover, we will soon provide a 1st class environment called the ‘Cloud,’ which is a system that is still under construction. Essentially, when it is finished Bitcoin.com’s Cloud will allow anyone to deploy and scale their frameworks entirely on our cloud, providing another great resource for BCH app experimentation. Lastly, another unfinished platform called ‘Market’ will allow users to monetize their work and newly created apps with paid downloads, streaming media, in-app purchases, tokens and more. Mastering Bitcoin Cash Additionally, Developer.bitcoin.com wants individuals to learn how to master the art of cryptocurrency with a web portal dedicated to learning. Bitcoin.com’s ‘Learn’ section provides users with the educational resources like ‘Mastering Bitcoin Cash,’ tutorials, human interface guidelines, and insights from developers who have already shipped successful applications. We want the entire world to use BCH, not just a niche group of people, and this means constant development is sorely needed. Bitcoin.com also wants to help promote real-world applications that provide real use cases, in contrast to the promotion of speculative digital assets that really don’t provide utility. So if you are a developer or want to learn to how to develop awesome BCH applications, head on over to the Developer.bitcoin.com web portal for all your building needs in one place. What do you think about our new developer tools and guides? Let us know what you think about Developer.bitcoin.com in the comment section below. Images via Shutterstock, and Developer.bitcoin.com 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 Want to Develop Bitcoin Cash Apps? Bitcoin.com Has You Covered 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 does not endorse nor support this product/service. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the press release. As many of new public chains became available on mainnet this year and openly compete with blockchain product like Ethereum , 2018 has been known as ‘the first year of public chains’. Public chains have been drawing lots of attention in blockchain markets. DBXChain might be a main competitor to Ethereum in the near future. DBXChain, released by an internationally well-known public chain research team named DBX Foundation, is a value-based ecosystem of data based upon blockchain. This new value-based ecosystem is a decentralized data community that provides a platform for users to explore and exchange data. It provides a safe data exchange process and users are able to own their data rights. This new ownership with data is based upon blockchain technology. Original DDPoS optimizes the consensus mechanism of blockchain DDPoS is a new consensus mechanism that is created by DBXChain for the first time in the world. It helps resolve oligarchy and security issues from DPoS consensus mechanism by EOS. As everyone knows, DPoS consensus mechanism is similar to a shareholding system and its problems are quite obvious: first, it has a low voting rate. More than 90% shareholders never voted. It is because it takes time, energy and skills to vote, which are what most investors do not have. Additionally, there are many challenges dealing with bad nodes. If interfering nodes can’t be checked during a community election, it will put web security at risk. Then, how does DDPoS help resolve security and oligarchy issues while keeping its capacity at the same level? DDPoS makes the whole node selection system “fluid” so that block producer becomes a role, not a node, and this role can be transferred to other candidate producers at any time. With continuous data exchange at the bottom level of DBX public chain, the coupling level between a node and the whole ecosystem will be counted into an election system using weighted algorithm. During this process, users can vote at anytime, and DBXChain thus helps dodge potential bribery and security issues under DPoS system. Enhance TPS and improves consensus efficiency Blockchain is a distributed system, and a main factor that affects TPS is networks. Due to a large amount of nodes in a blockchain network are scattered around the world, the web state of each node is uncontrollable and it is hard to set a requirement to their bandwidth or to make sure everyone have access to stable network. This kind of situation is absolutely a disaster to TPS. Compared with underlying systems of “classic blockchain” such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, DBXChain is able to support more nodes– more than ten thousand nodes, and allows users to sign up and quit at anytime. The algorithm uses a voting system among potential block producers and cryptography techniques to improve algorithm’s efficiency. Similar to PBFT Prepare/ Commit, the use of aggregated signatures reduces the size of voting signature from nodes and therefore reduces the use of bandwidth. It also requires to exchange data twice for a block among all confirmed nodes. In additional to provide a good security, it efficiently improves consensus performance of BFT. Building a win-win ecosystem base on big data DBXChain has massive data, also many users and clients as resources for support, which make this program special. Many projects invested by Top Venture Capitals had ecological cooperation with DBX. Thus, DBX Chain is able to merge a large amount of support and resources from these projects, which is absolutely a good starting point. As it shows, the consensus mechanism by DDPoS has a promising future. These well-known resources in China chose DBXChain because they all needed internet that not only had high capacities, but was also highly secure and was able to prevent manipulations and bribery. All these requirements were met by DBXChain. In fact, DBXChain will support many developed businesses, which already has a large volume of data on classical internet. These data will test the capacity of DBXChain internet and its security. It is also why the new consensus mechanism of DDPoS and its public chain can outperform Ethereum and EOS in terms of democratization and security. DataGame benefits its participants DataGame is a DApp for crowd-sourcing data collection , where DBX demonstrates capacities and feasibility of its public chain. Every data collector can launch a data collecting game using a certain amount of DBX coins in areas such as AI, purchases and IOTs. Owners of data can get rewards by participating in games. They can also search data needed with high accuracy and pay for a specific amount based upon data size. DataGame has largely lowered prerequisites to participate for data owners, making more valuable and long-tail data available for sharing. Additionally, DataGame has also reduced costs to obtain data so that more users are able to achieve goals and get a brand new experience in data exchange in the blockchain world. As we can see, for DBX to build a new data infrastructure, the first step is to use DataGame. Obviously, the third generation of big data ecosystem will be more common, but this area will eventually become the most competitive among blockchain tycoons. In the face of big rival, we are looking forward to seeing if Ethereum will still be a leader in the public chain competition. Press Contact Email Address 470295400@qq.com Supporting Link http://www.dbx.one/ 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: Challenging Ethereum – DBX Public Chain Offers a New Business Application Model appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Japanese police have seized cryptocurrency belonging to a man with unpaid parking fines. The police explain that the revised fund settlement law enacted in April last year allows cryptocurrency to be seized like any other asset. Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space Crypto Seized for Parking Violations Image from the Hyogo Prefectural Police’s website. The Hyogo Prefectural Police traffic guidance division announced this week that it had seized cryptocurrency owned by a 59-year-old resident with multiple delinquent parking violation charges, local media reported. Hyogo is a prefecture in the Kansai region of the country’s main island, Honshu. Kobe, located west of Osaka and Kyoto, is the capital of the prefecture. The Kobe Shimbun reported that about 5,000 yen (~US$44) worth of cryptocurrency was seized but the police did not reveal which crypto. Nikkei, on the other hand, reported that “there were 2 kinds” of cryptocurrencies “such as bitcoin deposited with an exchange that were seized.” The news outlet elaborated: According to the prefectural police traffic guidance division, it is the first time in the country to seize virtual currency in relation to parking violations. Image from the Hyogo Prefectural Police’s website. However, the crypto seized from the man’s account at an exchange currently does not cover the total amount owed to the cops. According to the Kobe Shimbun, he has failed to pay a total of 99,700 yen (~$885) in violation charges including four parking tickets issued between January 2014 and July 2016. The news outlet further detailed that if payment is not received by the end of this month, which is the deadline for claiming seized property, the cryptocurrency will be cashed out at the current rate and paid to the prefectural police. Crypto is Asset that Can be Seized The man’s parking violations are considered “unattended vehicle.” The Kyoto Prefectural Police explained that the term means “a vehicle that is illegally parked, with its driver away from the car, and which cannot be started immediately. This is regardless of the length of parking time, or whether the vehicle engine is turned on or off, or whether the emergency flashing lights on or off.” Usually, “Land, houses, automobiles, bank savings, salary, and life insurance payouts could be seized, based on the decision of the Public Safety Commission,” the police clarified. However, in the case of the 59-year-old, the Hyogo Prefectural Police “did not know his place of work and [he] had no cash deposits or savings,” the publication conveyed. Citing that the revised fund settlement act that legalizes cryptocurrency as a means of payment enables the police to seize crypto assets, the news outlet elaborated: According to the prefectural police, after [crypto] asset value was recognized by the revised fund settlement law enforced in April last year, it [cryptocurrency] was judged as an asset that can be seized. The Hyogo Prefectural Police have been increasingly active in collecting unpaid fines and have seized small items including an automatic mahjong table, golf bags, figurines, and brand name goods, the Kobe Shimbun described. The division says that they will not allow violators “to escape since it will be unfair for the people who are paying [the fines].” Editor’s Note: Nathalie Stucky contributed to this article. What do you think of the Japanese police seizing crypto for unpaid fines? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock and the Hyogo Prefectural Police. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Japanese Police Seize Cryptocurrency for Parking Violations appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Crypto exchange Binance is working on a project to launch a decentralized bank bridging the crypto industry with conventional banking. The financial institution will be based in Malta and fundraising will be conducted under German law. Authorities in Valletta have welcomed the initiative that is expected to win support from other crypto investors as well. Also read: Mainstream Media Claims Bitcoin Burns More Energy Than Ireland – Does It? Decentralized, Community-Owned Bank Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, is exploring opportunities to launch a bank. The project, expecting support from other crypto investors, is centered on the idea to create a decentralized, community-owned financial institution, according to the trading platform. The future Founders Bank will be based in Malta, the island nation that has established itself as a crypto-friendly destination. Binance told Bloomberg it has taken a 5 percent stake at a 133 million-euro ($155 million) pre-money valuation, alongside other anchor investors. In essence, the new bank represents an effort to bridge the crypto industry with conventional banking. To do that, Binance and its partners need to obtain the necessary permits in Malta, where authorities have already welcomed the initiative. Moreover, the bank’s board will include the government’s blockchain advisor Abdalla Kablan, Malta Daily reported. According to the outlet, the board will be chaired by entrepreneur Michael Bianchi. “We are honored to be chosen as the location of the first global community-owned bank,” said Silvio Schembri, junior minister for financial services, digital economy and innovation within the Office of the Prime Minister of Malta. He was quoted in a statement released by Binance on Thursday. To operate in the EU, the bank will have to acquire a license from Maltese regulators and an approval from the European Central Bank. Founders Bank will conduct its offering through the blockchain-based equity fundraising platform Neufund and will issue its own legally-binding equity tokens. The token sale will be conducted under German regulations in collaboration with one of Europe’s major stock exchanges later this year, Binance said, without identifying the exchange. Part of a Wider Expansion The news about the project comes after the Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, revealed that the trading platform expects to accumulate a net profit of between $500 million and $1 billion USD this year. The exchange that was launched last year currently reports an average daily turnover of $1.5 billion and has about 10 million users. As a result of increasing regulatory pressures in Japan and Hong Kong, Binance decided to relocate to Malta, where it intends to set up a fiat-crypto exchange with support for fiat deposits and withdrawals as well as EUR and GBP trading pairs. The exchange is not the only crypto company moving from Asia to the island. Okex, another Chinese exchange, announced in April it is setting foot in the country, and in May, the Polish Bitbay revealed its plans to move to Malta. The small island nation, member of the European Union, is competing with destinations like Gibraltar and Switzerland for the attention of crypto businesses from around the world. Recently, the parliament in Valletta adopted new laws designed to introduce clear regulations for the country’s growing crypto industry. The expansion of Binance includes other markets, too. Earlier in July, the company announced it is launching a fiat-crypto trading platform in Uganda. The exchange also reached an agreement with the government of Bermuda, where it wants to set up a global compliance center. Do you expect Binance to receive approval for the project to launch a bank in Malta? Let us know 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 Binance, Crypto Investors to Launch a Bank in Malta appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Featured in today’s edition of Bitcoin in Brief are a service that allows inheritance of crypto assets and a new stablecoin launched in Taiwan. Also in our daily roundup, crypto terminals have been installed by a restaurant chain in Hong Kong, and a company now offers bitcoin gift cards for easier access to the crypto space. Also read: Crypto Phones, Spy Games, Binance CEO vs Vitalik Startup Offers Crypto-Inheritance Service A new platform supporting a crypto-inheritance service has been launched by a Latvian startup. The idea was born when cofounder Normunds Kvilis experienced health issues while on a business trip. “It occurred to me then that there was no provision for my own crypto assets, should something serious happen to me,” Kvilis said, quoted by the ICO examiner. “That was essentially where Digipulse came from – I realized there was simply no service on the market for this kind of thing,” he explained. Digipulse uses a blockchain-based vault allowing its users to upload data that is then stored securely for as long as the platform observes online activity from the account holder. In case no activity is observed over a period of time, the platform sends an automated message to a specified recipient with details on how to access the vault’s contents. According to Kvilis, the business model extends beyond inheritance, incorporating any situation which requires the automated transmission of assets or other information, like documents, passwords and cryptocurrency wallet keys, in accordance with certain pre-set criteria. The platform, which conducted its ICO in October last year, is currently available both as an app and a web-based solution. Quoted by LSM, Digipulse Head of Business Development, Jānis Zaltāns, added: “We see an increasing trend amongst tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter towards developing tools for managing their inactive accounts. However, each service can only operate within their own platforms. Digipulse’s B2B ‘Pulse Network’ aims to provide a unified service for enterprises and user bases of all sizes.” New Stablecoin Pegged to the Taiwanese Dollar A new digital currency, another so-called stablecoin, has been introduced by a company that operates one of the major payment processors in Taiwan. Green World Fintech Services says the crypto is pegged to the New Taiwan Dollar (NTD). The coin has been created using the Ethereum network and is called Taiwan Digital Token (TWDT). Local media reported that the value of the ERC20 token will be calculated according to the NTD market. Green World claims to have patented a dollar-to-token process that is supposed to protect the TWDT from fraud and money laundering risks. The project will be realized in cooperation with some established Taiwanese banks. The crypto accounts of TWDT users will be tied to “trusted bank accounts” in order to verify personal data before transactions are permitted. After the launch, the Green World plans to offer the tokens online and through terminals located in some retail stores. The company hopes that the NTD peg will increase confidence in TWDT among Taiwanese users who seem to be the main target group of the stablecoin. Hong Kong Restaurants Install Crypto Payment Terminals A chain of organic food restaurants and other associated businesses in Hong Kong now accepts cryptocurrency. The service has been introduced through a partnership between the conglomeration, FAMA Group, and Pundi X, a company that produces and installs point-of-sale devices supporting crypto payments. The Pundi X terminals accept a number of cryptocurrencies including bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and the company’s own token, NPXS. They are also capable of processing transactions from other cryptocurrency wallets through a QR code scan. Once a payment is accepted, customers are also issued a paper receipt. According to Pundi X CEO, Zac Cheah, 25,000 crypto terminals have been ordered already by businesses in Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland in the last six months. The company hopes to supply at least 100,000 Pundi XPOS units globally within the next three years. Bitcoin Gift Cards to Improve Access to the Crypto Space Used by individuals who don’t have direct access to the banking system for various reasons, including legal status or age, traditional gift cards have been offering their holders the opportunity to purchase products and services without a bank account or a credit card. Applied in the crypto space, gift cards can significantly improve access to cryptocurrencies and crypto payments. A startup is now working to do exactly that. Kaiusb offers a hardware-software USB wallet which holds an amount of bitcoin (BTC) or ethereum (ETH) determined at the time of order. The product, KUSB, is currently available online, but the team plans to start selling it at a number of physical stores and through other online retailers by the end of this year. What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell is in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Pundi X, Kaiusb. 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: Crypto-Inheritance Service, Taiwanese Stablecoin, Bitcoin Gift Cards 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 does not endorse nor support this product/service. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the press release. Blockchain technology promises to transform business processes, bringing automated record-keeping and turning entirely secure, distributed, decentralized, and scalable applications into a new norm in the business world. Today, there are technical and commercial obstacles that prevent widespread adoption of decentralized applications (Dapps) in the business community. The genEOS project was created to eliminate the barriers to adoption and build a community of business and technology professionals to deliver on the power of blockchain technology. Fostering the adoption of decentralized business applications Introducing an operating system-like environment, genEOS facilitates the development of Dapps that rival traditional web apps for speed, versatility, and ease of use. Project participants can not only develop, create and launch their own business outcome-driven solutions on the top of blockchain 4.0 technology but also monetize unconsumed bandwidth by renting it out to third parties. There is a strong and growing team of blockchain experts who are ready to build and maintain business-critical Dapps to order. Key genEOS ecosystem features: – Ready-to-go development environment for Dapps of the enterprise-grade performance. – Transaction rates at least equivalent to real-time transaction processing of standard Web 2.0 applications. – Real-world decentralization combined with scalability and security across the network. – The requirement for mining is eliminated, making energy costs comparable to those of traditional web applications. – Open-source code available on GitHub for developers to consult and use to develop their own Dapps. – Investors from any country can participate in the project, as a US-based non-profit foundation conducts the Secured Token Offering (STO) for genEOS. genEOS tokens and crowdsale genEOS tokens give project participants access to the ecosystem and its specific resources such as computing features, storage features, monetization features, etc. The genEOS project has already launched the token crowdsale at [https://geneos.io/] that includes 176 distribution periods (‘windows’) and ends on December 23, 2018. Allowing the purchase of genEOS tokens with Ethereum (ETH) and fiat currencies (USD, EUR, and CNY), they intend to generate $2 million USD as a soft cap through the STO event. All investors need to go through the KYC procedure before the token sale is over. Project Partners Those individuals and businesses share the genEOS’ vision and commitments towards creating a powerful, fast, and secure decentralized ecosystem that lets businesses design and deploy their own blockchain applications are always welcome to join the project. genEOS’ advisory partner, OpenLedger ApS, has considerable experience of conducting successful ICOs and building successful blockchain-as-a-Service applications, including a decentralized trading platform. Ronny Boesing, the OpenLedger founder and CEO, is a serial technology entrepreneur who has been working with the thought leaders of blockchain technology since 2014. Aetsoft is the project’s technology partner. The company has been on a mission of assisting businesses in developing custom blockchains as well as creating and implementing next-gen business applications on Ethereum, Graphene, and EOS blockchains. NextGenOne llc, a non-profit organization registered in the United States of America, carries out STO as a SAFT type PPM for the genEOS project, ensuring transparency while using the latest guidance from the US SEC and US FINRA. To learn more about genEOS or get involved in the project, please visit their website [https://geneos.io/] or read their White Paper [https://geneos.io/assets/files/geneos_white_paper.pdf]. Join the genEOS group on Telegram and subscribe to our Twitter updates. Press Contact Email Address mt@openledger.info Supporting Link https://geneos.io/ 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: genEOS – Blockchain 4.0 for Business Announced – Crowdsale Is Launched appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The Texas State Securities Board has taken an emergency action to stop a network of crypto-related companies from illegally offering investments in the state. A token offering and a mining firm are among those targeted by the securities board as selling fraudulent “cryptocurrency-related investments.” Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space Emergency Action Taken The Texas State Securities Board announced Thursday that an emergency action has been taken to “target promoters of crypto-mining investments.” According to the notice published on July 12 by the Board: Texas Securities Commissioner Travis J. Iles took emergency action July 11 to stop a network of companies from fraudulently offering cryptocurrency-related investments to Texas residents. Utah-based companies Mintage Mining LLC, Symatri LLC, NUI Social, Social Membership Network Holding LLC, and BC Holdings and Investments LLC are named in the emergency cease and desist order. They are all controlled by Darren Olayan of Lehi, Utah. In addition, NUI Social affiliates, Utah-based Douglas Whetsell and Houston-based Wyatt Mccullough, are also named in the order. Investment Schemes Mintage Mining LLC allegedly issues and offers two different crypto mining-related investments “illegally and fraudulently.” Together with Symatri LLC, they sell “pre-configured computer hardware to mine Kala,” an ERC-20 token which Symatri claims to be “fungible and transferable, and it is expected to be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges in the near future.” Symatri also claims that more than 13,000 users have signed up for Kala’s ICO, which sold more than 814 million tokens. It supposedly raised over $8.5 million and more than 800 BTC. According to the Commissioner: Symatri is not disclosing material information about the value of its cryptocurrency Kala. Nor is it providing information about the risks of investments in the computer hardware used to mine Kala. NUI Social is a multi-level marketing company that claims to have more than 300,000 members in 140 countries. Members of the scheme recruit individuals for crypto investments and earn commissions for the people that they recruit. Whetsell and Mccullough were named for publishing “advertisements targeting Texas residents,” the Commissioner explained. According to the document, the promoters made claims such as: The average weekly rate of interest varies from three percent to seven percent and the annual rate of interest ranges from 180 percent to 250 percent. The advertisements also represent that Mccullough’s investment grew 500% within 7 weeks while his uncle’s rose 4,000% in 10 weeks. The Violations The order “alleges widespread violations of the Texas Securities Act” by all of the entities and individuals named within. According to the Commissioner, “none of the persons offering any of the investments are registered to sell securities in Texas, nor are the investments themselves registered for sale or have qualified for an exemption from registration.” The Commissioner elaborated: The violations include making deceptive claims to the public. Olayan and Mintage Mining, for instance, are telling investors that Mintage is ‘in compliance’ with securities laws, ‘works to always stay ahead of cryptocurrency regulation,’ and ‘remain so continually by keeping in contact with legal firms.’ All named parties have been ordered to immediately cease and desist from offering a security for sale in Texas until the security is registered or exempt. They must also cease acting as securities dealers or agents in the state until they are registered or exempt. They have likewise been told that they cannot engage in any security-related fraud in the state. What do you think of the Texas State Securities Board’s cease and desist order? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock and the Texas State Securities Board. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Texas Regulator Issues Cease and Desist Order to a Network of Crypto Companies appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

You can’t have software without bugs. Every major piece of code is subject to extensive debugging, which is an inevitable part of the development process. But when that code controls digital assets worth millions of dollars, ensuring it’s free of critical errors isn’t just desirable – it’s imperative. As this week’s Bancor hack and this year’s spate of smaller smart contract fails has shown, creating bug-free code is virtually impossible. Also read: Only 12 out of 23 Korean Crypto Exchanges Pass Probe – Inspector Under Fire Bugs Have Cost a Lot of People a Lot of Crypto Cryptocurrencies, even those that don’t permit smart contracts, are susceptible to bugs. Even bitcoin, the benchmark by which other coins are measured, has had its share, like the overflow bug in 2010 that created 180 billion bitcoins in block 74638. It was quickly fixed though without anyone gaining or losing coins. Ethereum users haven’t always been so lucky. Incidents such as the DAO, Parity, and most recently Bancor, whose $12.5 million loss has been attributed to a permissioned backdoor in their smart contract, have pushed the amount of crypto lost to coding errors towards $1 billion. As a turing complete blockchain, the Ethereum Virtual Machine can be used to enact smart contracts that use extremely sophisticated logic. The trouble is, the more complex that logic, the greater the likelihood of an exploitable bug creeping in. Solidity, the main language used to code Ethereum smart contracts, is notoriously tricky to master. The smart contract-enabled blockchains that have since emerged have been intent on eliminating such mistakes. This entails moving away from Solidity, and often from turing completeness, in favor of a more restrictive system with less margin for error. How New Blockchains Are Approaching Smart Contracts At Blockchain Expo in Amsterdam, news.Bitcoin.com spoke with Jordan Andrews, Smart Contracts Lead at Stratis. Their platform uses C#, which has been favored because it provides access to “so many tools like decompilers, great editors, a cohesive testing and debugging deployment suite in Visual Studio. What this means is you can decompile any contract from the bytecode to real C#,” explained Jordan. He contrasts this with Solidity which is in “a delicate developmental stage, where you can’t actually decompile many contracts well. The fact that you can audit only around 1% of contracts on Ethereum is a problem, because basically, the decompilers don’t work.” While Stratis is largely focused on enterprise adoption, other blockchains are gunning for Ethereum, but have yet to reach a state of readiness where they can lay a glove on the cryptoverse’s de facto smart contract platform. Tezos will use formal verification for its smart contracts in the form of Michelson, a simplistic programming language that prizes security over multi-functionality. As a result, it should be harder for coders to create arbitrary programs, which in turn means it should be harder for them to introduce fatal flaws. Stellar provides limited smart contract abilities to cover such matters as multi-sig, batching and time bounds. Cardano’s smart contracts must be formally verified to ensure they’re free of bugs and run using a virtual machine called IELE. EOS smart contracts are deployed as pre-compiled Web Assembly using C/C++. Like Cardano and Tezos, EOS is still at an early stage in its development, with just a handful of developers building upon its protocol. Ethereum, in comparison, can count 35,000 Solidity developers, and thus remains the web’s preeminent smart contract blockchain. Formal Verification Will Reduce Errors Stratis’ Jordan Andrews is confident that increased adoption of formal verification will make smart contracts less vulnerable: “I think the ecosystem for both [Stratis] and Solidity is going to see so many improvements. One thing that comes up a lot now is formal verification, the idea that you can verify that a contract is going to behave. This is obviously a big thing…Stratis are gonna have the potential to do that, and I know that they’re looking into it with Ethereum as well.” As blockchain technology permeates every industry, the role smart contracts play in executing decisions will increase dramatically. In the process, computer code will go from controlling hundreds of millions to billions of dollars of digital assets. Eliminating bugs is essential if smart contracts are to become a part of everyday business. Before that happens, costly errors caused by further flaws are inevitable. Ethereum’s smart contract bugs are already out there. It’s just a case of who finds them first: whitehat or black. Do you think smart contract bugs will ever be completely eradicated? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and Stratis. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post The Billion-Dollar Quest to Eliminate Smart Contract Bugs appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Back in December, a new privacy protocol was released for bitcoin cash users called Cash Shuffle. The application has seen steady development since its inception and this week Cash Shuffle developers say that the platform’s alpha testing has been successful and the team has seen lots of testers. After the application is polished up, some more Cash Shuffle will be released to the general public soon. Also read: Bitcoin.com and Purse.io Bolster Spending Giving New Shoppers $10 in BCH Cash Shuffle Development and Testing Progresses Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponents will soon see the stable release of a mixing application that will help preserve an individual’s transaction privacy when using the BCH network. The BCH mixer Cash Shuffle was launched this past December and users could use the pre-release version and experiment with the plugin for the BCH wallet Electron Cash. Then in March the blockchain and mining firm Coingeek announced the company would help fund the Cash Shuffle development process. Furthermore, the programmers Josh Ellithorpe, Jonald Fyookball and other developers have been helping progress Cash Shuffle’s development. A fully confirmed Cash Shuffle transaction. This week a few developers including Ellithorpe and Fyookball detailed that the Coin Shuffle alpha testing has been going very well. “We just did a test on Cash Shuffle (alpha) and it worked! A few more things need to be fixed before it can be released to the public, but it’s awfully exciting,” explained one of the mixing platform’s developers on Reddit. Ellithorpe added to the Reddit post by thanking all the testers experimenting with Cash Shuffle platform. “Just want to extend a huge thanks to all the testers! Really helps a lot to get support from the community to finally get Cash Shuffle in a stable state for everyone to use,” Ellithorpe emphasized. Cash Shuffle in action from behind the scenes. BCH Proponents Can Help Test Cash Shuffle Today Moreover, Jonald Fyookball details that people can help test the Cash Shuffle platform and learn how to use the application by following this walkthrough. Essentially people have to download Electron Cash 3.3 for Windows or Mac and fund it with at least .0011 BCH. Then users can download the Cash Shuffle protocol (do not unzip) and add the plugin to Electron Cash by selecting the zip file. After that, you’ll be able to see the ‘Shuffle tab,’ select your specified addresses and press shuffle. It will take about 60 seconds for the shuffling process to start and then it should finish. If the transaction ‘times out’ Fyookball says it will be because the liquidity bot is busy helping others, in which case testers should wait five minutes and try again. Bitcoin Cash supporters were pleased to hear about the progress of Cash Shuffle this week, and look forward to the stable version release. There are not many privacy-centric applications for BCH transactions, but news.Bitcoin.com reported on the Bob Wallet development last week which also does some BCH mixing. However, Bob Wallet is still in its initial stages using testnet, and Cash Shuffle looks as though it will be ready first. Do you look forward to the stable release of the Cash Shuffle application? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comment section below. Images via Shutterstock, Reddit, and the Bitcoin.com Explorer. Want a comprehensive list of the top 500 cryptocurrencies and see their prices and overall market valuation? Check out Satoshi Pulse for all that hot market action! The post Cash Shuffle’s BCH Mixer Moves Forward with Steady Testing appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

A mainstream media assertion made recently implies that cryptocurrency is quite costly in terms of energy consumption. “Bitcoin has been alarming people for years,” the report notes, pointing to the amount of electricity used for its mining – almost as much as a small nation needs. But is that really so? Also read: Japanese Internet Giant GMO Boosts Own Bitcoin Mining Output With 7nm Rigs Bitcoin Said to Use ‘Almost’ as Much Electricity as Ireland Mainstream media is often preoccupied with exploring and revealing the negative effects of cryptocurrencies. A common criticism towards Bitcoin is that its energy-intensive mining is too expensive for the planet. The latest mention of this feature comes from a respectable outlet. In an article titled “Why bitcoin uses so much energy”, “The Economist explains” the reasons noting that “Bitcoin has been alarming people for years because of the amount of electricity needed to mint new virtual coinage.” The magazine quotes Alex de Vries, a bitcoin specialist at PwC, who estimates that “the current global power consumption for the servers that run bitcoin’s software is a minimum of 2.55 gigawatts (GW), which amounts to energy consumption of 22 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year – almost the same as Ireland.” The piece adds that bitcoin miners consume more and more power with no signs of a slowdown. “Why does bitcoin require so much energy to make something that exists only electronically?” the Economist asks. Let’s skip the lecture on how bitcoin transactions are recorded in the ledger, how “the miners’ race, known as ‘proof of work’, could be superseded by ‘proof of stake’,” and get straight to the point by asking in our turn – Does Bitcoin really spend as much electricity as Ireland, and what does “almost the same” consumption really mean? Bitcoin Burns at Least One Malta Less Than Ireland It seems the Economist got it wrong in two respects. Let’s take a look at the energy consumption of Ireland first. According to the data compiled in the CIA World Factbook, the country has used 25 TWh of electrical power in 2017, and over 26 TWh yearly between 2011 and 2014. Consumption, in this case, means the total electricity generated in the country, plus imports and minus exports, as quoted by Indexmundi. And according to Eurostat, Ireland is among the EU countries with the highest increase in gross energy consumption – 38% between 1990 and 2015, when it consumed almost 24 TWh. The statistics reveal a difference of 3 TWh, if we use the 2017 data for reference, between the 22 TWh claimed in the article and what Éire actually consumed last year – 25 TWh. Using a similar comparison to illustrate the discrepancy, 3 TWh is more than what Malta or Andorra need in a year – 2 TWh and change, each. So, it’s safe to say that Bitcoin uses less electricity than Ireland by a substantial margin. Now, let’s talk about the financial side of things. Each mined BTC block currently generates 12.5 new bitcoins (the next halving will occur in 2020). A block of transactions takes 10 minutes to get mined, on average, which means approximately 1,800 bitcoins are minted each day. That translates into a daily BTC network reward of roughly a little more than $11 million (at the time of writing). The reward should allow miners to cover their costs for electricity, but also all other expenses of their business – salaries, amortization, maintenance, rent and so on. Let’s not forget the electricity needed to power the cooling systems. Actually, the electrical energy consumed by cryptocurrency mining is believed to account for around half of all costs. Let’s assume that it’s half of the total reward, $5 or $6 million. Do you want to know how much the Irish consumers pay for their daily electricity consumption? Last year, Eurostat revealed that Ireland has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe, actually the fourth highest rates in the EU, as of November, 2017. It has been reported that Irish customers pay an average of 23.1 cent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity, which is 13% higher than the EU average. According to Eurostat, electricity prices for household consumers in Ireland were averaging €0.24 per kWh (~$0.28, with taxes) in the second half of 2017. The simple arithmetic shows the Republic has paid an average of $19 million dollars for electricity daily, last year. With the current state of crypto markets, it’s true that mining is getting less profitable, if not more expensive. According to a recent study, its profitability in different countries varies significantly. Using a Bitmain’s Antminer S9 at an energy consumption of 1.5 kWh earns about 0.0008 BTC in 24 hours and mining a single bitcoin requires approximately 45 MW of electricity. That means that in the Czech Republic, where electricity is priced at €0.06 per kWh (~$0.07), mining 1 BTC would cost around €3,000 (~$3,500). And in Germany or Italy, bitcoin mining is prohibitively expensive – it eats more than €6,500 ($7,500) per coin. Do you think bitcoin mining is expensive, in terms of energy consumption and other costs? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Eurostat, CIA World Factbook, Index Mundi. 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 Mainstream Media Claims Bitcoin Burns More Energy Than Ireland – Does It? appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Everyone knows that bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices have been on a steady decline since the last month of 2017. While digital asset spot prices have been quite volatile, bitcoin futures products provided by two of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, Cboe and CME Group, have seen a steady increase in trade volume and more liquidity within these markets. Furthermore, Cboe is hoping to launch a bitcoin-based exchange-traded-fund (ETF) and the US Securities Exchange Commission will decide on the fate of this new product on August 10. Also Read: Bitcoin in Brief Thursday: Crypto Phones, Spy Games, Binance CEO vs Vitalik While Spot Prices Decline Bitcoin-Based Futures Contracts Have Been Steadily Increasing Cryptocurrency spot prices have been in a slump over the past two quarters of 2018 but rumor on the street is institutional interest in cryptocurrency custody and regulated investment vehicles is picking up speed. Even though market sentiment has been bearish, futures contracts sold by Cboe and CME Group have increased significantly during the second quarter of 2018. Right now, on July 12, there have been 1199 contracts filled so far and products for the month of August are adding up today as well. Cboe has been selling between 2500-18,000 bitcoin futures contracts per day. CME Group sees a spike in futures contract volumes on July 5. CME Group’s bitcoin futures volumes are usually less than Cboe’s trade volume but contracts sold on Globex have also spiked. Today CME has 2634 contracts sold for July and products for August and September are seeing a small increment of sales. CME Group’s contracts jumped to 6739 on July 5, marking a new record for CME’s bitcoin derivatives market. However, it’s still not even close to the record-setting 18,000+ contracts Cboe recorded on April 25. With the steady trend of investors getting into bitcoin-based futures products, Cboe hopes these derivatives markets will pave the way towards a bitcoin ETF. Cboe bitcoin futures touched 6,121 contracts on July 5. The Fate of the Cboe Bitcoin ETF Will be Decided August 10 — Will the Futures Markets Launch Affect the SEC’s Decision? On July 9, Cboe announced it has filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) so it can sell a bitcoin-based ETF backed by the Vaneck Solidx Bitcoin Trust. The SEC is seeking public opinion concerning the ETF application in order to help guide their decision on whether or not they will approve a bitcoin ETF this time around. Since the first announcement this past Monday, the SEC has revealed the fate of the ETF will be decided on August 10. The SEC will decide on Cboe’s bitcoin ETF application on August 10, 2018. “We believe that collectively, we will build something that may be better than other constructs currently making their way through the regulatory process,” explained the Vaneck CEO Jan van Eck this week. A properly constructed, physically-backed bitcoin ETF will be designed to provide exposure to the price of bitcoin, and an insurance component will help protect shareholders against the operational risks of sourcing and holding bitcoin. The SEC may also look into how well the current bitcoin futures markets have done so far, and if there were any issues during the launch of those derivatives products. With the bitcoin futures volume spikes, there’s been a lot of action within these regulated market settings and investors seem to want these products — And some people think a bitcoin ETF should naturally follow. What do you think about the bitcoin futures trade volumes and current interest in these products? Do you think that the SEC will approve Cboe’s ETF application based on their prior experience with these futures markets? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comment section below. Images via Shutterstock, Cboe, and CME Group. 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 Bitcoin Futures Volume Spike As Cboe Awaits ETF Decision appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The self-regulatory inspection of South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges is complete. Fourteen out of 23 exchanges agreed to be inspected. Twelve met the self-regulatory standards despite security flaws, raising questions of how effective the inspection is. Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space 12 Exchanges Pass Security Checks The Korea Blockchain Association (KBA) held a press conference Wednesday to announce the results of its inspection of cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country. The Association “gave a nod to the cybersecurity standards of 12 cryptocurrency exchanges,” the Korea Herald reported. The KBA has been heavily promoting self-regulation since its establishment last year. Out of 23 members that are crypto exchanges, 14 of them voluntarily agreed to be inspected. According to the news outlet: Exchanges that gained self-regulatory affirmation were 12 out of 14: Dexko, Hanbitco, Okcoin Korea, Huobi Korea, Bithumb, Upbit, Neoframe, Gopax, Cpdax, Coinzest, Korbit and Coinone. Operators of the other two — Sunny7 and Komid — withdrew from the KBA-led inspection. The inspection was conducted “through interviews by third-party experts authorized by KBA in June and July,” the publication noted, emphasizing that a “hacking simulation on the exchanges did not take place.” Nonetheless, the association said the 12 exchanges met “general standards” such as “minimum total assets, adoption of a cold wallet, anti-money laundering requirements and dozens more.” They also met “the criteria for cybersecurity standards, which the association referred to as minimum requirements.” Association Criticized for Poor Screening Following the KBA’s announcement, some industry participants pointed out major flaws in the inspection. The association has come “under fire for poor screening of cryptocurrency exchanges,” the Korea Times wrote, emphasizing that “the KBA even extended its one-month inspection to two months to allow sufficient time for underprepared exchanges, inviting criticism for carrying out an inspection in name only.” Furthermore, “It is pointed out that even though hacking incidents at virtual currency trading sites have occurred recently, all trading sites have passed the screening,” Money Today wrote, suggesting that the inspection was ineffective. Last month, Coinrail and Bithumb were hacked. The news outlet quoted an industry source asserting, “it is doubtful that all of them have passed [the inspection],” noting that “the fact that the scores of the detailed evaluation items are not disclosed for each trading site is also a cause of doubt in the examination results.” The Korea Times elaborated: The KBA did not disclose a detailed score or security rating of each cryptocurrency exchange, casting doubt about the fairness of the inspection. The KBA said the disclosure could trigger another cyberattack on domestic exchanges with weaker security firewalls. The chairman of the association, Jeon Ha-jin, even “indirectly admitted the group’s inspection may have loopholes,” according to the news outlet. He was quoted explaining, “This inspection does not guarantee the absolute safety of the 12 exchanges,” noting that “The result indicates the 12 exchanges satisfy the minimum requirement for their operations. It is like a driver’s license. It is hard to tell whether they are good drivers or not.” The chairman also declined to elaborate on a “huge gap in the level of handling cybersecurity risks between the 12 exchanges,” the Korea Herald conveyed. The announcement by KBA came just days after the Korean government revealed its analysis of hacking incidents in the country. The government has been criticized for not doing enough to prevent hacking damages since three of the 31 exchanges it inspected were hacked, causing damages of about 110 billion won (~US$98 million). What do you think of this self-regulatory inspection and standards? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. The post Only 12 out of 23 Korean Crypto Exchanges Pass Probe – Inspector Under Fire appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article