Day: July 7, 2017

As holidaymakers and consumers seek better value for money, many have turned to cryptocurrencies to protect themselves from further effects of inflation and get better value for their money.

Bitcoin lending service providers can make a big impact on a global scale. A lot of unbanked people do not have access to basic financial services. Bitcoin can fill that gap nicely, assuming service providers take the necessary steps to combat fraud and other nefarious activities. BTCJam is a popular Bitcoin lending platform, but its reputation has taken a few hits over the past few years.

An Overview of BTCJam and its Problems

The concept of the BTCJam platform first appeared in a post on Bitcointalk in September of 2012. At that time, Bitcoin was not even close to its current popularity. BTCJam predates the Mt. Gox debacle and the Bitcoin “bubble” of 2013-2014. The American company wanted to provide a valuable service to make cryptocurrency a household name. This goal was too ambitious, and BTCJam never lived up to it.

BTCJam started off well. The company gained some initial transaction, and they were accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program in 2013. Even seed capital was secured, which seemed to indicate a bright future for BTCJam. The company also received Series A funding in January of 2015.

All of the money was put to good use as well, as the company expanded across the globe. Over the course of the past few years, BTCJam saw over 100,000 users from over 200 countries sign up for the service. They also serviced over 15,000 loans. All of this makes it seem like the company was on track to accomplish its main goals. However, that is not how things worked out in the end and the company has been plagued with platform issues for nearly as long as it existed.

BTCJam suffered from a large portion of its issued loans not being repaid by customers. Their identity verification seemed robust enough that BTCJam had enough information to prosecute nefarious users and pursue collections. It does not appear they ever did this on a large scale. Failure to pursue fraudulent activity strained tensions between the company and the majority of its users.

To make this situation even worse, the platform dealt with a significant decline in available loan offers. Clearly, the negative reputation the company has built up began to take its toll. Finally, BTCJam was hacked and ultimately forced to shut down its service altogether. A sad ending to the Bitcoin lending platform, but given all of its issues over the years, shutting down seems to be the only option. A business only deserves to be a business if it can succeed. This is the hard truth of the private sector.

There is still a big demand for Bitcoin lending services. However, providing a viable service is a different matter altogether. BTCJam felt they took the necessary precautions, but they vastly underestimated the potential issues which could arise. Finding a popular Bitcoin lending service is virtually impossible these days. It always requires relying on a third-party, which is not something most people will feel comfortable with.

The post Lombrozo: Bitcoin Core Developers May Never Use Miner-Focused BIP 9 Signaling Again appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This week a class-action lawsuit has been filed against the San Francisco-based trading platform Kraken. A group of customers have revealed that their holdings of 3,414 ETH was liquidated during an Ethereum market flash crash. According to the plaintiffs the cryptocurrency exchange suffered from a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack at the time having many Kraken users unable to use the service.

Also read: Germany’s Largest Food Delivery with 11,000+ Restaurants Now Accepts BTC

     Five Kraken Customers File Class Action Lawsuit Against the Exchange

Just recently Bitcoin.com reported on the GDAX exchange dealing with an ethereum flash crash that caused quite a bit of controversy. Following the crash, the Coinbase-owned GDAX exchange made amends with its customers by offering to absorb customer losses. However, less than two months ago on May 7th, there was another ethereum market flash crash that allegedly liquidated five customers ETH holdings at $96 USD per token. According to the five plaintiffs, Kraken should have halted trading while under attack. However, Kraken has stated if they had stopped market trading the “consequences for traders would have been even worse.”

At the time Kraken responded to ethereum traders about the margin liquidation incident on the subreddit Ethtrader after the crash and DDoS.    

“We have completed our investigation into the May 7th DDoS attack, and the cascading margin liquidations on the ETH/USD order book,” explains the exchange. “Despite the coincidental overlap in timing of the events, we did not find any evidence of a coordinated attack or market manipulation.”

‘The DDoS Did Neither Cause nor Exacerbate Liquidations’

According to Kraken the DDoS did not cause or prolong the liquidations.

Once liquidations are triggered, they cannot be stopped. The best that can be hoped for is that liquidity is there to absorb the market orders. Kraken’s market price protection system attempts to protect those being liquidated by pausing at times to allow liquidity to fill in but there is no guarantee that others are willing and able to provide that liquidity.

“Traders are encouraged to use advanced order types such as stop-loss to set their own exits,” explains Kraken. “Unfortunately, we cannot compensate traders for the outcome of naturally occurring events in the market, nor losses due to unavoidable DDoS attacks.”

Redress for ‘Unlawful Conduct’

The class-action lawsuit seeks restitution for what the plaintiffs believe was “unlawful conduct” from the Payward Incorporated Kraken cryptocurrency exchange.

“For unconscionably freezing and liquidating the ether holdings of plaintiffs and the class in the midst of an event that exposed fatal flaws in Kraken’s business operations,” explains the lawsuit’s argument. The paperwork from the Silver Law Group details that ethereum markets dropped over 70 percent from approximately 3:30 pm PST until approximately 4:30 pm PST. “[Ethereum’s] value almost fully restored to its previous position after the one-hour business interruption,” the plaintiff’s case reads.

All-Time Highs and Flash Crash Parties

The story comes at a time where exchanges are seeing a massive surge of new users and heavy trading. Customers have complained about nearly every exchange having operational issues, and almost every exchange has warned their clients of these nuisances. During the first week of April, Poloniex traders complained about a Ripple market flash crash taking place with a similar outcome.

People have tried to speculate on who may be behind the quick crashes taking place on these altcoin markets, more specifically ethereum markets have flash crashed twice in less than two months with little evidence to be found. Moreover, although there have been losses some people have made a lot of money too. One trader scooped up 3809 ethers at $0.10 per ETH making a cool million in a matter of seconds. Others grabbed many ether tokens at various amounts under $40 as well. At the time multitudes of ethereum traders hoping to get lucky with another flash crash created hundreds of bids for ether tokens under $50.

What do you think about the class action lawsuit against Kraken? What do you think about all the flash crashes lately? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Pixabay, Trustnodes.com, and The Silver Law Group lawsuit.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Cryptocurrency Exchange Kraken appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Japanese banking group Mizuho has released the results of a blockchain experiment focused on trade finance.

Source

Cryptoping’s ICO is officially over. The project has attracted many investors because of its interesting and unique business goals. Let’s take a moment to review those goals, how they are implemented, and how the ICO did overall.

CryptoPing is the Telegram Bot Which Sees Altcoin Signals

CryptoPing is a bot that lives on the Telegram messaging service and it is able to analyze incredible amounts of data coming from the largest exchanges -but it does not include data from every exchange-. It takes this data and determines where the next big pumps -and dumps- will be in altcoin trading. This means anyone who is subscribed to its services will be able to take at least partial advantage of what it predicts. Once the user sets up their alarms, they begin to receive alerts and signals. The project claims that their long term data collection on CryptoPing’s use has show an average of 10% profit daily. All trades are made by the user themselves, since this is not a trading bot.

While it was once free to use the beta version of the bot, a subscription based model is the future of the business. Subscription fees are paid in the project’s native token, PING.

The ICO Statistics

Many investors bought up PING during the project’s ICO. Some did this to buy and hold, but many purchased these to be able to continue using the -now premium- bot service since they find value in it.

The ICO ran from May 25th to June 24th, and the numbers that project is reporting are impressive. 4,727 investors chose to participate in the ICO, and their investments made up just over 1,000 Bitcoin. Current market value of the raised funds is about $2.6 million -at the time of writing this article-.

In all, 9,000,000 PING tokens were sold during the ICO. Of those, 807,221 PING tokens were referral based, 136,868 tokens were discounted bonus tokens, and 8,000 were bounty tokens for identifying bugs and issues. A further 47,911 tokens are scheduled for burning -coins which were not sold during the course of the ICO- as well.

While the general value of the ICO was given in Bitcoin, Bitcoin itself only made up about 68% of the coins invested. The next largest was ETH with about 23%, followed by Litecoin with about 5.3%, Waves with about 3.2%, DASH with 1.1%, and Ethereum Classic with 0.9% of the ICO purchase share.

All of the well made charts and reported information can be found on the project’s website for further study. Overall, it appears that CryptoPing did well for itself with the ICO. I suspect that one reason it performed this well is because they had a free beta version of the product and service they promised. Having a working product puts many investors’ concerns about returns on investment at ease.

CryptoPing’s Website: https://cryptoping.tech/

All the ICO data: https://cryptoping.tech/ico

This is not trading or investment advice, always do your own independent research before investing in anything.

Adoption of Bitcoin in Japan’s famous electronic sector, Akihabara, is on the rise as the tech-savvy neighborhood starts embracing the digital currency.

A 3-month ICO giving away 30 bln tokens at 3 satoshis each begins at a Blockchain video platform July 18.

China’s central bank does not think Bitcoin has the ability to be a functioning currency but maintains that it is still valuable as an asset.