Day: July 16, 2017

Bitcoin has exploded in popularity over the last few years, with more and more people switching from traditional currency to crypto-currency. And with the value of bitcoin continuing to rise due to the increased demand, that trend should continue. Bitcoin has even made its way to the online betting industry, with casinos and sportsbooks adding … Continue reading How To Bet Online With Bitcoin

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Here is my claim. Within 5 years the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap will not be Ethereum or any other platform currency. Instead, it will be an application token.

The post How to Buy Zcash in 3 Simple Steps – A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on 99 Bitcoins.

What is Zcash (ZEC)? ZCash is a new project which is headed by Zooko Wilcox, that’s here to tackle one of bitcoin’s most urging issues – traceability. As you may or may not know Bitcoin isn’t completely anonymous. Zcash has one major added feature on top of bitcoin, which is completely private transactions. This means […]

Key Highlights Ethereum classic price has outperformed ETH and moved above $14.00 against the US Dollar. There was a break above a major bearish trend line with resistance at $14.00 on the hourly chart of ETC/USD (Data feed via Kraken). The price is currently struggling to clear $15.00, but remains supported on the downside. Ethereum … Continue reading Ethereum Classic Price Technical Analysis – ETC/USD Recovering Nicely

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You’ve Missed the Most Important Part of Cryptocurrencies.

The author, Dr. Nicholas Adams Judge, is a cofounder of RootProject.  The other cofounder is Chris Place, a Y Combinator alumnus.  Their nonprofit’s pre-ICO started July 10, 2017.

I’m a political economist.  I wrote my doctoral dissertation on models of currency markets.  The power of cryptocurrencies is greater than even those in the cryptocurrency community have understood.  

I write ‘political economist’ instead of plain ‘economist’ because I focus on institutions as well as markets.  Institutions determine who wins wars, what countries get to be free, and the pace of economic growth.  The best way to think about cryptocurrencies?  Ask what new institutional capacities they create.  

To do that, put away your theory, put away your ideology.  No one cares.  Instead, think about feedback loops.  Raise .99 to a large number, you get zero.  Raise 1.01 to a large number, you approach infinity.  If each day an institution’s efforts multiply its last day’s effects by 99%, it fails.  If that number becomes 101%, it scales, it becomes a Google or Apple – until something pushes that number back below 1.

The genius of cryptocurrencies is that a liquid asset can be designed along with a new institution to create a currency value—institutional size feedback loop.

Call it the Feedback Loop theory of cryptocurrencies.  Its most exciting consequence:  Value can be created for investors from non profit-seeking behavior.   The cryptocurrency brings the power of markets, and investor self-interest to the table; the nonprofit brings the moral relevance.

That does create dangers for nonprofits – but that’s like saying bitcoin can be used by smugglers, so let’s give it up.  It misses the bigger story.

Let’s illustrate the major story here by what we’re doing at RootProject, whose pre-ICO is currently under way.  Each part is simple.  How they come together is illustrated in the figure above.    

• A crowdfunding platform lets people and institutions raise money for projects that help the neighborhood or local businesses.  Instead of a typical crowdfunding fee, 10% of funds raised gets put into purchasing our currency, ROOTS, on the open market, driving price up.   We call this the currency-as-fee model.  
• A nonprofit is based on a new set of programs in American cities.  We know from recent data that these day-work programs are very effective at lifting people out of extreme poverty.  Importantly, it also lets most donations be tax deductible, which in the United States is effectively a 30-40% government subsidy.  
• Workers (and one manager) get paid to complete the project out of the other 90% of funds (this 90% project spend rate is typical for the very best-run nonprofits).  Workers get paid in USD, but then on top of that get 50% of that deposited in a medium-term pension fund that holds (only) our cryptocurrency.  Like the 10% fee, the currency for the pension fund is purchased on the open market – again, driving prices up.  
• As the price of our token goes up, the nonprofit can expand, creating more demand for our cryptocurrency.  Larger crowdfunded projects with bigger institutions involve burning currency.  

Organic demand enters a system.  That’s good:  People who need jobs and exposure to things like shelters and medical care get them (more on that in our whitepaper).  But what makes it really exciting is that that demand doesn’t just go away in a one-off event.  It enters, by design, a feedback loop where it grows and grows, multiplying off itself.  

It wouldn’t be possible without a cryptocurrency, and that fundamentally changes the institutional economics of nonprofit activity.  Help us get this off the ground, and we’ll prove out a model where nonprofit work has the same market power as massive global profit-seeking corporations.

Our Pre-ICO runs this week.  It’s a great investment for you and it will save people from freezing to death on the street. Be cynical if you want. Or help us build a new world.

Ever wonder what it’s like to work at a bitcoin mining farm in China? Just recently two reports revealed the inner workings of Chinese bitcoin mines operating in the country’s Sichuan prοvince.

Also read: Japan’s Cryptocurrency Business Association Plans for August 1 Guidelines

China’s Central Television’s Bitcoin Mining Facility Documentary

Last week on July 11, China’s Central Television (CCTV-2) channel aired a special documentary on bitcoin mining operations located in Kangding county in the southwest region of the country. The channels news reporter drives to a desolate mountainous area in Sichuan to visit a three-story mining data center. Each floor is filled with mining rigs housed on metal racks and surrounded by massive fans. CCTV also interviews Wang, the young data center owner in his twenties who runs five mining sites in the area. According to a translation from the local publication, 8btc, Wang says he runs a medium sized data center that can grow bigger. The twenty-year-old native says the operation mines 16 BTC (US$30,000) a day.   

“We are a middle-sized mining factory with 5000 bitcoin miners,” explains Wang. “We still have room to run another 5000 mining machines.”

Wang and the data center’s operations manager Xu says lots of people are choosing to set up mining sites in Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Inner Mongolia. The reason for this is cheaper electricity from hydropower stations located in the mountains. Wang details that typically electricity in China is 0.7 yuan per KwH, but by partnering with neighboring hydropower stations mining facilities are paying 0.3 yuan per KwH (about 0.045 USD at the time of writing).

“[Electricity] is directly transmitted from nearby hydropower stations,” Wang tells the CCTV journalist. “This is mainly why we set up the site here. Bitcoin mining is electricity-consuming and 50 percent of our profits go to the electricity bill.”

The price is the outcome of our negotiation with the hydropower station. Put simply, we made a deal with them and give them part of our profits. They provide electricity, we provide machines, and we share the profits. It’s win-win.

‘Why Should We Pay Taxes for Playing Games?’

According to CCTV’s broadcast, an executive at the Sichuan Electric Power Company says that these mining sites are not supposed to partner with hydropower stations. The sites have been investigated he says, but nothing materialized from the local government inspection. Furthermore, Wang says he doesn’t pay taxes for his bitcoin revenue.

“Why should I?…We are mining bitcoin, it’s all about computational power. It’s like playing games. Why should we pay taxes for playing games?”

A Sichuan Bitcoin Miner‘s Dorm Life

Another report from the Chinese photographer Liu Xingzhe covers the interesting world of Chinese bitcoin mines. Liu’s photographs show workers at data centers in another area located in the Sichuan prοvince living in dormitories and taking care of machines for weeks on end. Many of the workers travel from other towns and hitchhike to the remote mountainous region to make a better salary than most local jobs.

Miners at Lui’s farm work during all hours of the day and evening reassembling calculatiοn bοards and fixing malfunctioning machines in the middle of the night. Lui tells the publication he has moved his mining operation from Henan to Sichuan to leverage the cheaper electricity in the region. Additionally, Lui details that he manages roughly 7,000 mining rigs for clients located in China.

One of the bitcoin mine workers explains that the nearest town is roughly 20 miles away and there is nowhere to spend money near the facilities. “Τhe gοοd thing is, there isn’t anywhere tο spend mοney, sο yοu can save yοur whοle salary,” οne miner tοld the photographer Liu Χingzhe.

What do you think about the Chinese bitcoin mining operations? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Liu Χingzhe, CCTV, and 8btc.

Do you want to vote on important Bitcoin issues? Bitcoin.com has acquired Bitcoinocracy, and rebranded the project to Vote.bitcoin.com. Users simply sign a statement with a non-empty Bitcoin address and express their opinions. The project focuses on determining truth backed by monetary value and transparency.   

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Key Highlights ETH price declined further below $140.00 against the US Dollar and currently correcting higher. There is a new connecting bearish trend line with resistance at $166 forming on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via SimpleFX). The price remains capped near $155 and $178, and any major recoveries may find hurdles. Ethereum … Continue reading Ethereum Price Technical Analysis – ETH/USD Recoveries Capped

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After the first day of forecasting, the WINGS Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) community is predicting that ACT – a decentralized platform for social action, (https://daoact.org) will raise 19600 ETH (around $4million) during its token pre-sale, which starts 17:00 CEST on July 18th and runs for two weeks.

Happening now, WINGS.ai is hosting ACT a DAO for Social Action, and its community have given the project the digital thumbs up.

According to ACT’s founder, Fraser Brown from Northern Ireland, “The reason that this prediction is interesting is because WINGS’ forecasters are rewarded based on accuracy. Therefore, they comb through all project materials on a technical level, assess the team fully, and decide about the technical capacity of the developers too”.

Blockchain has enabled many improvements to how business, banking and government operates, but few applications actually realise its full potential – the complete automation of organisational governance and decision-making. DAOs are created as a vehicle to achieve and maintain a shared purpose, and ACT combines decentralized decision-making for filtering out low quality proposals with an innovative new form of crowdfunding where a global community votes on proposals and promotes them to their social networks.

According to Brown who is an Irish Olympian, and currently works as a consultant advising conservation organisations about innovative finance, “Only by amplifying citizen voice and empowering citizen action are we going see the change that we need to happen, happen fast enough. When I describe the potential of ACT to people, I can almost see their relief at the thought that there could be an answer to some of the world’s big problems that feel so insurmountable”.

Fundamentally, ACT seeks to address the imbalance of power that always exists between the State and Citizens. It does this by supporting civic mobilization, and citizen action. Examples of potential applications range from access for disabled people, to citizens opposing open cast coal mining. The platform’s revenues come from citizens buying votes that they apply to proposals (within limits of course) and 20% of this Ether revenue is hard coded as rewards for curators and platform maintenance. The balance funds proposals. In theory ACT could fund citizen-led change at any pace and any scale.

The ACT crowdsale will raise the funds needed to build the platform, and it has unique differences from other initial coin offerings (ICOs). It will reward early contributors ten times, which means that if you contribute $100 in the “platinum” tranche it is the same as $1000 during the ICO. A pre-ICO soft cap will also be announced based on the WINGS forecast result – once this cap is reached, fundraising will last a further 24 hours.

ACT’s thesis is that driving resources into proposals for community-led change is imperative. The crypto community is well placed to back a project like ACT, and constitute the first movers on it. The early forecast results on WINGS.ai indicate that the crypto community believes that blockchain can drive social change as well as transform the major industries that most ICO dollars to date have targeted.

ACT AMA:

Press contact
Fraser Brown
[email protected]
Phone: +35319695775
Twitter @daoact_org

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any The Merkle employees. This is not investment or trading advice, always do your own independent research.

Bitfury Group is announcing its first major step into the enterprise blockchain sector with the launch of its Exonum software solution.

Source

Key Highlights Creditbit price remained in a downtrend and struggled to move back above 0.00022BTC against the Bitcoin. There is a short-term bearish trend line with resistance at 0.00022BTC forming on the 7-day chart of CRB/BTC (data feed from Coinmarketcap). On the downside, the 0.00018BTC level is providing support and holding losses. Creditbit price continued … Continue reading Creditbit Price Technical Analysis – CRB/BTC Pressured Below 0.00022BTC

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Bitcoin price could be due for a correction from its breakdown move so that more sellers could allow the downtrend to continue.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 07/17/2017 – Broken Support Pullback appeared first on NEWSBTC.

MobileGo moved in reaction to its counterparts bitcoin, ethereum, and US dollar instead of establishing its own direction.

The post MobileGo Price Technical Analysis for 07/17/2017 – Mixed Performance appeared first on NEWSBTC.