With so many cryptocurrency ICOs hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, people would tend to forget it is not the only way to organize a crowdsale. In fact, there have been several ICOs on the Ethereum Classic blockchain as well. There are plenty of reasons to choose ETC over ETH. Classic is immutable and has lower contract costs, for example. Below are four Ethereum Classic ICOs people should be aware of. 4. Postalgia This particular cryptocurrency ICO is still ongoing, and it is an interesting project. The team provides users with a mobile application, which allows them to use their own photos and
With so many cryptocurrency ICOs hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, people would tend to forget it is not the only way to organize a crowdsale. In fact, there have been several ICOs on the Ethereum Classic blockchain as well. There are plenty of reasons to choose ETC over ETH. Classic is immutable and has lower contract costs, for example. Below are four Ethereum Classic ICOs people should be aware of.
4. Postalgia
This particular cryptocurrency ICO is still ongoing, and it is an interesting project. The team provides users with a mobile application, which allows them to use their own photos and have them printed. Once the order is completed, the photo print will be prepared and ship to your doorstep as quickly as possible. It may not be the most revolutionary project to some people, but it is an interesting project to keep an eye on. Purchasing photo prints can only be done with Bitcoin, ETC, or the POSTA token created during this ICO.
3. Dexaran’s ICO
It is interesting to see the Ethereum Classic community members host their own ICO to advance the development of this ecosystem. This is where the Dexaran ICO comes into the picture. As a valued community member and volunteer developer for ETC, Dexaran has built up a good reputation. However, he also disagrees with the future development of Ethereum Classic, and want to raise money to take things to the next level.
Dexaran aims to raise money to improve the Ethereum Classic infrastructure, maintain compatibility with Ethereum, and introduce important portal upgrades. Plus, there is a plan in place to finalize a decentralized token exchange as well. Investors in this particular ICO will receive DEX tokens, which are used to vote on development proposals come September 2018.
2. Corion
The Corion project is worth noticing. The team aims to decentralize the current financial system by basing it on blockchain technology. They want to introduce a stable price for the native token against the US Dollar. It also provides a “Bonus Coin” incentive, which grants users daily gains of up to 2.5%. The goal is to bring both businesses and individuals on board to build a worldwide decentralized network and a stable means of payment. It is a very ambitious goal.
1. ETCWin
Perhaps the most important ICO on the Ethereum Classic network is ETCWin. This project was announced a while ago, and the team eventually raised $1.3m when everything was said and done. Building a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange focused on Ethereum Classic will not be an easy feat, although the successful ICO should help the project attempt to reach this goal.
The team behind ETCWin are the same people who run the 91Pool, which is one of the largest Ethereum Classic mining pools. Owners of the WIN tokens will receive voting rights and profits rights in the exchange itself. It appears this exchange platform should go live sooner or later, but we did not find an official launch date at the time of writing.
I first met my Globitex.com co-founders Liza Aizupiete and Andris Kaneps at an inspired café in central Copenhagen during early 2015. Their mantra has always been that Globitex is a trading platform built by traders for traders. Unsurprisingly, that guiding philosophy has permeated every design choice since inception.
As my background is in foreign currency and derivatives trading, I have always aimed to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. In fact, I worked on putting together a Gibraltar-based investment group to purchase the original Mt. Gox from Jed McCaleb in early 2011, however the market proved too immature to finalise the reluctant investor commitments.
Since that time, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency exchanges have matured greatly, expanding into multiple trading pairs, margin trading, and even derivatives trading. All of this innovation has led to increasing liquidity and market depth for bitcoin trading as well ushering in the sophisticated hedging and risk management strategies desired by corporate treasurers.
So, where does the bitcoin exchange industry go from here? It already boasts one of the most predictable revenue streams in the Bitcoin ecosystem with steadily increasing volumes that generate commissions in both up and down markets. And liquidity is “sticky” giving incumbents a distinct advantage. But, traders also have a multitude of choices with at least 400 different exchanges and brokers around the world.
Three clear mega-trends are emerging in the bitcoin exchange industry: (1) an explicit distinction between global exchanges and local, or regional, exchanges; (2) a tendency towards the introduction of clearing members to diffuse the counterparty risk away from the exchange operator; and (3) increased use of margin trading and futures and options contracts.
Globitex is uniquely structured to benefit from all three mega-trends.
A global exchange aims to be a provider of maximum liquidity at the most attractive spreads. It accomplishes this by facilitating ease of trading for the greatest number of clients around the world, typically by providing the most common international transfer capabilities and trading pairs against the leading world reserve currencies.
Conversely, local exchanges will focus on a specific jurisdiction and most likely localise the language and the payment APIs for that audience specifically. Local exchanges do not facilitate global price discovery and they vary by operating model. In a broker model, the company buys and sells cryptocurrency with customers by maintaining their own inventory book and setting a bid/offer spread. Cryptocurrency brokers also do not hold customer balances like they would under a commission-based, order-matching exchange model.
The Globitex exchange provides premier banking relationships, documented trade reporting, and also supports the market standard FIX protocol for automated electronic trading, in use by professional institutional traders, brokers/dealers, mutual funds, investment banks, and stock exchanges.
With bitcoin, a clearing house can be thought of as a wholesale liquidity provider clearing transactions in an over-the-counter (OTC) market or a futures exchange. The clearing house reduces the settlement risks by netting offsetting transactions between multiple member clearing firms and by providing independent valuation of trades and collateral accounts.
Today’s bitcoin exchanges do not employ clearing members thereby consolidating the counterparty risk into a single entity rather than diffusing it among multiple clearing firms.
Globitex will eventually introduce a program for member clearing firms to process transactions on the exchange platform with Globitex monitoring the credit worthiness of member clearing firms and, ideally, establishing and maintaining a guarantee fund (for leveraged trading) that can be used to cover losses that exceed deposited collateral from a defaulting clearing firm.
In the not-too-distant future, an exchange will have to provide adequate margin trading on both the long and short side to be considered a viable exchange contender. The market demands and pressures for leverage will be too great for any exchange that wants to remain a liquidity leader.
Therefore, to facilitate margin trading, Globitex will introduce a two-way borrowing facility for bitcoin and fiat currency. Today, the most robust bitcoin lending facility is offered through the Bitfinex exchange with statistical data provided by BFXdata.
The development of a true Bitcoin economy requires the formation of capital markets with a corresponding interest rate duration curve across 1-day, 30-day, 90-day, and 1-year borrowing rates. Globitex will make a market in fiat-to-XBT swaps and XBT-to-fiat swaps for purposes of margin trading.
Additionally, Globitex will aggregate the leading interest rate markets for bitcoin to form a tradeable interest rate product on its exchange. Similar to LIBOR, the aggregated reference rate will be referred to as BIBOR [Bitcoin Inter-Broker Offered Rate], which is a term first coined in CoinTelegraph, “Bitcoin Needs Its Own Version of LIBOR.”
Globitex also intends to expand into standardised futures and options products that allow risk managers and speculators to trade the bitcoin exchange rate in the same way that they currently trade precious metals, equity indices, bonds, grains, foods, livestock, and crude oil.
Inevitably, we will see new decentralised trading methods, trustless security models and multi-signature techniques, such as threshold signatures, increasingly deployed to prevent against exchange hacks and exit scams. However, the larger trend is still towards gaining multiple entry points onto the exchange platform, because liquidity begets more liquidity.
Above all else, an exchange is ultimately defined by its integrity and the integrity of its principals over a demonstrated period of time.
Disclosure: Author is a shareholder and chairman of Globitex.
I first met my Globitex.com co-founders Liza Aizupiete and Andris Kaneps at an inspired café in central Copenhagen during early 2015. Their mantra has always been that Globitex is a trading platform built by traders for traders. Unsurprisingly, that guiding philosophy has permeated every design choice since inception.
As my background is in foreign currency and derivatives trading, I have always aimed to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. In fact, I worked on putting together a Gibraltar-based investment group to purchase the original Mt. Gox from Jed McCaleb in early 2011, however the market proved too immature to finalise the reluctant investor commitments.
Since that time, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency exchanges have matured greatly, expanding into multiple trading pairs, margin trading, and even derivatives trading. All of this innovation has led to increasing liquidity and market depth for bitcoin trading as well ushering in the sophisticated hedging and risk management strategies desired by corporate treasurers.
So, where does the bitcoin exchange industry go from here? It already boasts one of the most predictable revenue streams in the Bitcoin ecosystem with steadily increasing volumes that generate commissions in both up and down markets. And liquidity is “sticky” giving incumbents a distinct advantage. But, traders also have a multitude of choices with at least 400 different exchanges and brokers around the world.
Three clear mega-trends are emerging in the bitcoin exchange industry: (1) an explicit distinction between global exchanges and local, or regional, exchanges; (2) a tendency towards the introduction of clearing members to diffuse the counterparty risk away from the exchange operator; and (3) increased use of margin trading and futures and options contracts.
Globitex is uniquely structured to benefit from all three mega-trends.
A global exchange aims to be a provider of maximum liquidity at the most attractive spreads. It accomplishes this by facilitating ease of trading for the greatest number of clients around the world, typically by providing the most common international transfer capabilities and trading pairs against the leading world reserve currencies.
Conversely, local exchanges will focus on a specific jurisdiction and most likely localise the language and the payment APIs for that audience specifically. Local exchanges do not facilitate global price discovery and they vary by operating model. In a broker model, the company buys and sells cryptocurrency with customers by maintaining their own inventory book and setting a bid/offer spread. Cryptocurrency brokers also do not hold customer balances like they would under a commission-based, order-matching exchange model.
The Globitex exchange provides premier banking relationships, documented trade reporting, and also supports the market standard FIX protocol for automated electronic trading, in use by professional institutional traders, brokers/dealers, mutual funds, investment banks, and stock exchanges.
With bitcoin, a clearing house can be thought of as a wholesale liquidity provider clearing transactions in an over-the-counter (OTC) market or a futures exchange. The clearing house reduces the settlement risks by netting offsetting transactions between multiple member clearing firms and by providing independent valuation of trades and collateral accounts.
Today’s bitcoin exchanges do not employ clearing members thereby consolidating the counterparty risk into a single entity rather than diffusing it among multiple clearing firms.
Globitex will eventually introduce a program for member clearing firms to process transactions on the exchange platform with Globitex monitoring the credit worthiness of member clearing firms and, ideally, establishing and maintaining a guarantee fund (for leveraged trading) that can be used to cover losses that exceed deposited collateral from a defaulting clearing firm.
In the not-too-distant future, an exchange will have to provide adequate margin trading on both the long and short side to be considered a viable exchange contender. The market demands and pressures for leverage will be too great for any exchange that wants to remain a liquidity leader.
Therefore, to facilitate margin trading, Globitex will introduce a two-way borrowing facility for bitcoin and fiat currency. Today, the most robust bitcoin lending facility is offered through the Bitfinex exchange with statistical data provided by BFXdata.
The development of a true Bitcoin economy requires the formation of capital markets with a corresponding interest rate duration curve across 1-day, 30-day, 90-day, and 1-year borrowing rates. Globitex will make a market in fiat-to-XBT swaps and XBT-to-fiat swaps for purposes of margin trading.
Additionally, Globitex will aggregate the leading interest rate markets for bitcoin to form a tradeable interest rate product on its exchange. Similar to LIBOR, the aggregated reference rate will be referred to as BIBOR [Bitcoin Inter-Broker Offered Rate], which is a term first coined in CoinTelegraph, “Bitcoin Needs Its Own Version of LIBOR.”
Globitex also intends to expand into standardised futures and options products that allow risk managers and speculators to trade the bitcoin exchange rate in the same way that they currently trade precious metals, equity indices, bonds, grains, foods, livestock, and crude oil.
Inevitably, we will see new decentralised trading methods, trustless security models and multi-signature techniques, such as threshold signatures, increasingly deployed to prevent against exchange hacks and exit scams. However, the larger trend is still towards gaining multiple entry points onto the exchange platform, because liquidity begets more liquidity.
Above all else, an exchange is ultimately defined by its integrity and the integrity of its principals over a demonstrated period of time.
Disclosure: Author is a shareholder and chairman of Globitex.
Japanese bitcoin exchange Bitpoint has been actively expanding into the Greater China region. After launching operations in mainland China and Hong Kong, on Friday the company announced its launch in Taiwan through a partnership with a “major commercial bank”. Also read: Bitpoint Adds Bitcoin and Ether Payments to Platform with Unionpay, Wechat Pay and Alipay Expansion into
Japanese bitcoin exchange Bitpoint has been actively expanding into the Greater China region. After launching operations in mainland China and Hong Kong, on Friday the company announced its launch in Taiwan through a partnership with a “major commercial bank”.
Bitpoint, famed for partnering with Peach Aviation and promising to introduce bitcoin payments to 100,000+ retail stores across Japan, announced on Friday its expansion into Taiwan by partnering with a “leading commercial bank.” The announcement states, “We have received full support from Taiwan’s leading commercial bank, and we are pleased to inform you that we will establish a virtual currency exchange, Bitpoint Taiwan.” However, the name of the bank was not disclosed due to a “confidential obligation with the counterparty,” the exchange conveyed.
Citing that “Taiwan has independent monetary policies under a different business practice from mainland China,” Bitpoint said the region “is expected to be more active in digital currency trading going forward.” The company added:
With the support of the leading commercial bank in Taiwan, Bitpoint Japan will revitalize the virtual currency market in Taiwan and promote the spread of virtual currency transactions utilizing the global network of this bank.
Mainland China and Hong Kong
Taiwan is Bitpoint’s latest expansion. Last month, the company announced that it is launching a bitcoin exchange in Hong Kong called Bitpoint Global, through a joint venture with Top Wisdom Accounting and Consulting Ltd. The new exchange is expected to start service on July 28.
The company said at the time:
As Hong Kong is an important base along the settlement route to mainland China, it is expected that virtual currency transactions in Hong Kong will be revitalized in the future.
The launches in Taiwan and Hong Kong follow the company’s February expansion into mainland China, through a partnership with Galaxy Dragonfly Investments Co. Ltd, a bitcoin mining company. Under the agreement, the Beijing-based firm will provide Bitpoint with a stable supply of bitcoins. “The amount of bitcoin transactions in the Chinese market is overwhelmingly large, and we believe that stable procurement is necessary to prepare for the large scale demand of bitcoins,” Bitpoint detailed at the time.
Bitpoint’s spread into China came amid the company’s multiple ventures in its home country, which have grown significantly since the government began recognizing bitcoin in April. In addition to operating a bitcoin exchange, the company is working towards introducing bitcoin payments to over 100,000 retailers in Japan. Furthermore, the company will start offering its own bitcoin payment system by partnering with Nippon Pay.
What do you think about Bitpoint’s expansion plans? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Bitpoint
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With so many cryptocurrency ICOs taking place right now, something will need to change. It appears the entire cryptocurrency ICO scene is turning into a bit of a joke. Useless tokens are created which offer no real value to users, yet people are still throwing money at them. It is very unsettling. Cryptocurrency ICOs – Bubble or not? There are positive and negative sides to the entire cryptocurrency ICO sector. The positive element comes in the form of giving people a way to raise enough funds to create new products and services. Although not all of these concepts will succeed, using
With so many cryptocurrency ICOs taking place right now, something will need to change. It appears the entire cryptocurrency ICO scene is turning into a bit of a joke. Useless tokens are created which offer no real value to users, yet people are still throwing money at them. It is very unsettling.
Cryptocurrency ICOs – Bubble or not?
There are positive and negative sides to the entire cryptocurrency ICO sector. The positive element comes in the form of giving people a way to raise enough funds to create new products and services. Although not all of these concepts will succeed, using an ICO is the quickest and less cumbersome way of raising the necessary money right now. It creates a slew of new opportunities, which may also be its downfall.
To put this latter part into perspective, one could make the argument a lot of “dumb money” is poured into cryptocurrency ICOs. Most of these “investors” do not even take the time to read a project’s website or white paper. All they want is instant gratification and see the value of their tokens go up by 1,000% in a week or less. Sustaining such a bubble will not be possible for much longer.
As a result, we now see a lot of prominent ICO tokens decline in value as soon as they hit an exchange. Not because people are selling at a profit, but mainly because these “investors” have no patience. In fact, it has become almost cheaper to buy ICO tokens after a Bittrex listing compared to partaking in the ICO itself. Even with lucrative bonuses for early investors, there is no real reason to buy into ICOs right away. Once again, another sign of the cryptocurrency ICO “bubble” about to pop.
To make matters even worse, we now see people spending money on “joke” ICOs which offer no inherent value. Some people still believe even vaporware can be turned into something valuable, though this is rarely the case. In fact, anyone can create their own ERC20 tokens in an hour or less and post the smart contract address to the whole world. Regardless of what the tokens may be used for, there will always be people actively investing in these ICOs.
Not too long ago, we touched upon the concept of the Useless Ethereum Token. It was believed this ‘joke” ICO would not receive any money whatsoever. Things have turned out quite differently. The project’s smart contract address has seen nearly 20,000 transactions since it was revealed to the public. People are actively sending money to it, although no one knows why exactly. Most of these transactions are for 0.01 ETH. However, thousands of those small transactions still add up over time.
The cryptocurrency ICO ecosystem is showing a lot of signs of becoming a bubble. Billions of dollars have been invested in projects with no actual demo or prototype. The code for these projects has never been vetted by third parties in many cases. Lots of people will lose money due to investing in ICOs. Doing your own research when it comes to cryptocurrency ICOs has never been more important than it is today.
A majority of communications across the world happens over mobile phone networks and the internet. Almost everyone these days own a mobile phone, but not every one of these mobile phone users are happy with the prices charged by their respective carriers. Ziber is a revolutionary blockchain-based product that offers mobility and connectivity over decentralized … Continue reading Ziber, a New-Age Blockchain-Based Communication Platform Announces ICO
A majority of communications across the world happens over mobile phone networks and the internet. Almost everyone these days own a mobile phone, but not every one of these mobile phone users are happy with the prices charged by their respective carriers. Ziber is a revolutionary blockchain-based product that offers mobility and connectivity over decentralized … Continue reading Ziber, a New-Age Blockchain-Based Communication Platform Announces ICO
The European session is drawing to a close and, for our efforts this evening, we are going to tighten things up and try and do a little bit of scalp trading in the bitcoin price markets. Anybody who caught our analysis this morning will know that we went into the morning session with a relatively … Continue reading Bitcoin Price Watch; Bitcoin Scalp Trades
The European session is drawing to a close and, for our efforts this evening, we are going to tighten things up and try and do a little bit of scalp trading in the bitcoin price markets. Anybody who caught our analysis this morning will know that we went into the morning session with a relatively … Continue reading Bitcoin Price Watch; Bitcoin Scalp Trades
NewsweekThe Future of Money: Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrency Technologies Are a Way of Life in This Small Swiss TownNewsweekA bitcoin ATM might seem unconventional, but it makes sense in Zug. The town of 30,000 has persistently attracted entrepreneurs…
With so many cryptocurrency ICOs hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, people would tend to forget it is not the only way to organize a crowdsale. In fact, there have been several ICOs on the Ethereum Classic blockchain as well. There are plenty of reasons to choose ETC over ETH. Classic is immutable and has lower contract costs, for example. Below are four Ethereum Classic ICOs people should be aware of. 4. Postalgia This particular cryptocurrency ICO is still ongoing, and it is an interesting project. The team provides users with a mobile application, which allows them to use their own photos and
Japanese bitcoin exchange Bitpoint has been actively expanding into the Greater China region. After launching operations in mainland China and Hong Kong, on Friday the company announced its launch in Taiwan through a partnership with a “major commercial bank”. Also read: Bitpoint Adds Bitcoin and Ether Payments to Platform with Unionpay, Wechat Pay and Alipay Expansion into 
Bitpoint, famed for partnering with 
The launches in Taiwan and Hong Kong follow the company’s February expansion into mainland China, through a partnership with Galaxy Dragonfly Investments Co. Ltd, a bitcoin mining company. Under the agreement, the Beijing-based firm will provide Bitpoint with a stable supply of bitcoins. “The amount of bitcoin transactions in the Chinese market is overwhelmingly large, and we believe that stable procurement is necessary to prepare for the large scale demand of bitcoins,” Bitpoint detailed at the time.
With so many cryptocurrency ICOs taking place right now, something will need to change. It appears the entire cryptocurrency ICO scene is turning into a bit of a joke. Useless tokens are created which offer no real value to users, yet people are still throwing money at them. It is very unsettling. Cryptocurrency ICOs – Bubble or not? There are positive and negative sides to the entire cryptocurrency ICO sector. The positive element comes in the form of giving people a way to raise enough funds to create new products and services. Although not all of these concepts will succeed, using
