Day: August 3, 2017

Opposition to the IRS effort to obtain user information from cryptocurrency exchange startup Coinbase is growing.

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Once again, people actively trading Bitcoin on the LocalBitcoins platform have found themselves in enforcement’s cross hairs. In the past, this type of activity went by relatively unnoticed in Belgium and the Netherlands. However, police have now arrested two Belgian residents for their involvement in a large-scale unlicensed Bitcoin exchange operation. The team, Zhao Dong 1982 on LocalBitcoins, had been charging exuberant commissions for Bitcoin sales.

Another LocalBitcoins Seller Is Arrested

Although LocalBitcoins is a platform known for connecting buyers and sellers of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, the platform is also of great interest to many law enforcement agencies. Several people selling on the platform have been arrested in the past, most of them for either being involved in money laundering or for running an unlicensed exchange operation. Selling on LocalBitcoins is considered the same as performing exchange operations, although it is usually allowed under certain amounts.

In the case of LocalBitcoins vendor Zhao Dong 1982, he caught the attention of Belgian police officials due to the high fees he charged when selling Bitcoin. Two brothers have been arrested in Brussels for their involvement in these exchange activities. Dealing with large amounts of Bitcoin is generally frowned upon, especially when sales exceed several hundred of thousands of euros. To this day, it is still unknown where all of these bitcoins came from, although it is possible they were obtained illegally.

A total of 400,000 euros has been seized during the arrest. Nearly 100,000 euros in cash was discovered hidden behind a spare tire in a garage. The remainder of the funds took the form of bank accounts, all of which have been frozen. These two men are not early adopters of the Bitcoin currency by any means; they would not have attracted the attention of law enforcement officials otherwise. However, not too many details regarding this investigation are known so far.

The alias “Zhao Dong 1985” did not just sell Bitcoin in Belgium, but additionally in the Netherlands and Germany. For those unaware, LocalBitcoins is no longer allowed to operate in Germany. The individuals in question had shut down their portal in that region some time ago. All communication between buyers and sellers occurred on the Telegram platform, which provides end-to-end encryption. Though that was considered “suspicious behavior,” people are still free to use whatever platform they like.

It is certainly possible these arrests are a direct result of the recent crackdown on darknet marketplaces. With both AlphaBay and Hansa being taken offline in the past few weeks, more arrests will surely follow moving forward. “Zhao Dong 1982” charged a very high commission for converting Bitcoin to and from cash, similar to how most coin mixers would operate these days. This was a fairly large-scale operation that was illegal in Belgium without an official license. Moreover, there is the possibility that both men were involved in money laundering activities.

As it happens, one of the two arrested brothers is a police official. Those individuals should certainly know better than to get involved in illegal Bitcoin activities. The allure of making a lot of money pretty quickly can sway even the most level-headed people to do things they otherwise would not. For the time being, both men remain in custody, although their fate has not yet been determined. This is an intriguing development that just goes to show selling on LocalBitcoins may be subject to considerable scrutiny by law enforcement officials.

ICO-Hypethon to showcase carefully screened pre-ICO projects, host meetup

Australia’s war on cash continues with new proposals under consideration to punish consumers who do not have receipts for purchases.

The blockchain has widespread implications for many different businesses. It brings distributed ledgers and decentralization to a world badly in need of it. One area that benefits immensely from blockchain adoption is domain and hosting applications. The project known as nametoken is looking to take this world to the next step of an entire domain ecosystem.

The First Domain Ecosystem

While many might not think about it on a day-to-day basis, the trading and hosting of domains is an insanely lucrative business. If you want to start a business nowadays, you need to have a domain name that corresponds to your business. This creates a high demand for various domain names, and higher demand means higher prices.

Ever heard of premium domains? These domains can go for ludicrous amounts of money. One famous example is insurance.com which sold for US$35.6 million back in 2010.

nametoken is looking to invest in domain names and grow the wealth of those domains. With its upcoming ICO, the project believes that it will help add value to an existing market and sell domains for profit when the time comes. The team has over 20 years of experience in domain name investing, and investors will get the opportunity to participate in that market with them.

nametoken will also provide a decentralized web hosting service that will be affordable yet redundant and incredibly safe. Hosted files will be split, encrypted, and published across the network to keep everything safe.

NAT tokens will live on the Ethereum blockchain, so we will also see utilization of smart contracts with this domain marketplace. Investors and traders will be able to buy and sell various domains, and the transactions themselves will be backed up by smart contracts.

But that is not the only way to monetize a portfolio using nametoken. Investors and traders will be able to earn nametokens for doing things like registering, parking, listing, buying, and selling domain names.

The Roadmap

It is always good to see a project that has a roadmap. It all begins with nametoken’s ICO, which is ongoing. After that comes to an end on September 30th, the team will acquire its first domain names in early October. From there, the development of the first application will take place in Q4 of this year, with beta-testing in Q1 of 2018 and the live launch in Q2 of 2018. Maps like these are helpful in letting investors know what the plan is.

The Token and the ICO

90% of the tokens will be distributed in the ICO, and nametoken wants this to be a deflationary coin. It plans to use 50% of its profits to buy back and burn tokens to raise the value of the coins themselves, while the other half will go into re-investment.

Tokens will also be used as an incentive to drive mobile marketplace usage. Unsold coins will be stored and used as a reward system for use in the marketplace.

Check out the project here: https://www.nametoken.io/

This is not investment or trading advice; always conduct your own independent research prior to investing in anything.

A livestock farming cooperative in Arkansas is taking part in a blockchain supply chain trial.

Over the course of the past twelve hours, the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain has been chugging along as miners have processed a total of 37 blocks so far. Further, the network is operating at 26% of the original chain’s difficulty as mining has become much easier on the BCH chain.

Also Read: 20+ New ICOs Announced Despite SEC Warnings

The Bitcoin Cash Chain Chugs On With 37 Blocks Mined So Far and Difficulty Much Lower Than the Legacy Chain

The Bitcoin Cash blockchain is still alive, and mining newly minted BCH tokens has become a whole lot easier. At press time three mining pools are participating in finding and confirming blocks on the BCH chain which include Viabtc, pool.bitcoin.com, and an unknown miner. It seems the miner from Hong Kong is not participating anymore or he’s decided not to advertise on the blocks’ corresponding coinbase data. So far approximately 37 blocks have been found by mining pools, and the BCH network is 274 blocks behind the legacy chain.

Blocks Begin Moving Along Much Faster With One Unknown Miner Capturing the Lion’s Share of Bitcoin Cash Hashrate

Block 478577 activated the last adjustment to 26 percent of BTC’s difficulty and many of the BCH blocks have been varying in size from under 1MB, 2MB+, and a 4.6MB block. The BCH chain’s genesis block mined by Viabtc contained over 6,000 transactions. Out of the three pools participating right now, the unknown miner has captured two-thirds of the entire network hashrate and blocks found. Pool.bitcoin.com and Viabtc are capturing the remaining hashpower.

At press time blocks mined are averaging 25 minutes between each other which is far faster than August 2nd’s BCH block times. Yesterday a lot of naysayers believed the chain would not overcome the initial difficulty as the first block of August 2nd took 12 hours to complete. However, Bitcoin Cash is now moving along like “The Lil’ Engine That Could.” 

BCH Markets Down 40% Over the Last 24-Hours

Right now BCH markets are dipping in value pretty significantly, and roughly half of Bitcoin Cash markets are being traded in fiat with the other half captured by BTC trades. So far there are not that many exchanges taking BCH deposits, and many wallets still haven’t provided a splitting tool for users. This has made the currency’s $6B market thinner than most cryptocurrency trading markets, which can be seen with the tokens volatile price swings.

At the time of writing one BCH is averaging around $385-430 depending on the exchange used, and has $325M worth of daily trade volume. Meanwhile, BTC markets have been up about 2-3% on August 3 reaching a high of $2745 across global exchanges. 

What do you think about Bitcoin Cash’s current performance on its third day of life? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Coin Dance, and Kraken.

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LedgerX could power cryptocurrency on a ‘virtuous cycle’ to broader adoption, Bloomberg thinks.

A few months ago, we touched upon the concept of sharding as part of the Ethereum ecosystem. This particular concept will be introducing some major changes to Ethereum as we know it today. It will help scale the network, which is still a major challenge. A test version of Ethereum with sharding is currently undergoing testing. This is a pretty big development for all Ethereum supporters.

Sharding May Be Coming to Ethereum Sooner Than Expected

It is good to see the Ethereum team provide a long-awaited update on the future of sharding. Making Ethereum scale is of the utmost importance since the network suffers from quite a few issues that need addressing. This, however, is much easier said than done. Sharding may be the best solution for Ethereum in its current state, although it may take a lot of time until we see the real benefits of this technology.

There is still a lot of testing to be done before sharding can be implemented as a part of the Ethereum protocol. For the time being, it appears a test has been going on in connection with a slightly modified version of Ethereum with sharding. It appears this project was written in Python. The question now becomes whether or not this project will be capable of handling more transactions per second compared to what the current network can process.

Vitalik on Wechat: We have started developing a test version of Ethereum with sharding using python. pic.twitter.com/adfCBmQ2jP

— cnLedger (@cnLedger) August 1, 2017

Sharding is not the end-all, be-all solution that will allow Ethereum to scale to new levels. Several improvements will be made to Ethereum over the coming months and years. The upcoming Metropolis hard fork as well as Casper — which introduces Proof of Stake — are just two other intermediary steps needed before sharding can become a factor. How long this process will take remains to be determined.

Considering how the Metropolis hard fork and Casper are not completed yet, it is hard to put a timeline on all of these developments. We do know the ongoing test regarding Ethereum and sharding is underway, which seemingly hints at this implementation coming to fruition a lot sooner than people anticipated at first. According to the roadmap, we should see sharding well after Ethereum has switched to Proof of Stake, which could be another 18 months away or more.

That being said, the opinions in the Ethereum community are somewhat divided on this front. Many users feel sharding will not take that long and could happen as early as 2020. It is good to see major steps being undertaken to advance Ethereum to new levels. Scaling is a big problem for virtually any cryptocurrency these days.

Considering all of the above, things will soon be getting very interesting for Ethereum. How all of those developments will play out remains to be seen, though things are definitely looking up. We will keep an eye out for more information regarding the sharding test and see how things look in a few weeks. Given the lack of detail surrounding this test, it is impossible to predict what will happen next.

The token sale for a blockchain-based prediction market promoted earlier this month by boxing champion Floyd Mayweather, Jr., has raised $30 million.

A London art dealer has launched a dedicated platform for purchasing “luxury” goods with Bitcoin and altcoins.