Day: August 21, 2017

The world of cryptocurrency debit cards is growing  a lot more competitive in the future. Several companies held an ICO over the past year to raise money for such projects. Three main debit cards are on a lot of people’s radars right now, although it remains to be seen if any of them can deliver. These cards all have promise if the team can deliver on their promise, though. It is good to see support for Ethereum via these cards as well, as that is pretty unusual.

3. Monaco

Although this card has nothing to do with the micro state in Europe, the Monaco debit card will offer support for popular coins. Analyzing all promising contenders and gradually rolling out support sounds like a solid idea, but it may be more difficult to achieve than originally anticipated. For the time being, the card will focus on both Bitcoin and Ethereum first, although that list could grow pretty quickly. Being currency-agnostic when it comes to debit card certainly has its advantages, assuming it will work as advertised.

The Monaco ICO did not sell out quickly, which is both a good and a bad thing. Their announcement of the card happened one month prior to the crowdsale. According to the latest information, the Monaco mobile app and card pre-orders should become available August 31st. A lot of people will be watching, including some of the company’s competitors in this space. There will also be a discount program for participating retailers, although the specifics are kept under wraps for the time being.

2. Token Card

Most cryptocurrency enthusiasts will have heard of the Token Card, which is a debit card for Ethereum and anything running on top of this blockchain. In theory, it should be possible to use any and all ERC20 tokens for this card as well, although that has not confirmed yet. Token Card partnered with some big players in the market, including Bancor, Melon Port, and Digix.

They also have a Cash & Burn policy, which means a small amount of every purchase is pooled together. Token holders can sacrifice tokens to get a portion of this pool’s money on request. For the time being, it is unclear when Token Cards will become available to customers, as the ICO only concluded recently. Their latest blog post indicates there is still a lot of work to be done on the backend, and new team members were added not too long ago. It is a very ambitious project, but one worth keeping an eye on.

1. TenX

TenX has the potential to be a very successful project. Their app is already on the market, which means they beat the two aforementioned competitors in this regard. Their ICO sold out pretty quickly, which is positive for the people who managed to buy some tokens. However, it seems the value of each PAYX token is somewhat stuck around the $4 mark , which is pretty unusual for something that is readily available. Then again, they do have a rather large supply of tokens, thus the $4 price seems more than fair at this point.

Card holders will get a 0.01% cash back in the form of TenX tokens for every purchase. That is a very interesting way of keeping customers within this particular ecosystem. There are also no transaction fees whatsoever, which is something a lot of users will appreciate moving forward. The end goal is to support other currencies in the future as well. Token holders will also receive an Ether-based reward for every transaction made. This is an interesting concept with a lot of potential.

Blockchain alone doesn’t fix it – privacy can only be protected when all loopholes are closed, not with a single general technology.

A group of banks led by Credit Suisse is eyeing the launch of a commercial platform for blockchain-based syndicated loans, according to reports.

Those in the investment know are looking to hedge their bets on Bitcoin as Harvard money manager delves into cryptocurrency.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) keeps advancing at an accelerated pace. Although it is not yet ready to create fictional worlds on its own, it is getting close. Recently, researchers at Stanford University and Intel debuted a new AI project that creates fictional street view images out of real-world photos, in high definition.

An AI that Creates Photorealistic Images

What researchers at Stanford and Intel created is essentially an imaginative AI that creates photorealistic street view-like images. The AI creates these images out of a rough layout, and out of memories of real streets it was trained on.

According to researcher Qifeng Chen, the AI was fed 5,000 photos of German streets and -with some human help- it can build images that resemble those it was fed, but that in reality do not exist.

The AI takes the layout it was given and creates the image out of various labels researchers add to the layout. For example, parts of the layout are labeled “cars,” and other parts are labeled “road,” so the AI knows what to do. The technique, according to Chen, could eventually help create video game worlds that resemble Earth. The algorithm was even used to replace the world in Grand Theft Auto (GTA) V.

The images, as seen in the video below, have the same quality of a photo taken with a two-megapixel camera. The images are rendered in 1,024 x 2,048 HD resolution.

According to Noah Snavely at Cornell University, New York, it is tricky to get AI agents to create these images, and most existing approaches cannot do it. Chen’s images are among the largest and most detailed available so far, meaning they open the possibility of a person describing a world, and have the AI build it in virtual reality. He stated:

“It’d be great if you could conjure up a photorealistic scene just by describing it aloud.”

According to experts, these images might not replace high-end special effects, but they are great for virtual reality worlds since people do not expect complete photorealism in VR yet. Researchers will present their work at the International Conference on Computer Vision, which will take place in Venice, Italy in October.

A Long Way to go Before Building Photorealistic Worlds

Although the results are pretty astonishing, researchers say that the system still has a long way to go before being able to build truly photorealistic worlds, as the images it produces right now are somewhat blurry and have a dreamlike quality. The AI does not know how to fill every single pixel in them just yet.

However, the AI was trained and tested on a relatively small database of only 5,000 photos of German streets. If it could capture the true diversity of our world, according to Snavely, we would see its true potential. It is hard to help the system do that, as images are labeled by hand, meaning the database would need to be extremely detailed and building it would be extremely labor-intensive.

After creating a good buzz among the cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiasts, Revain is finally set to launch its crowdsale round today on August 21 at 12:00 PM New York time. The blockchain-based feedback platform, which focuses on authenticating online reviews for businesses and customers alike, will be issuing a total of 1 billion R tokens. … Continue reading Revain, Blockchain-based Feedback Platform, to Launch Crowdsale on August 21

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Cointelegraph looks into the best practices of developing the White Paper, the document prepared by a party in anticipation of launching a new currency.

As the United Kingdom and countries around the world threaten to crank up the pressure on large messaging service’s use of end to end encryption to secure communications, another solution to slow governmental intrusion materialized in the form of the blockchain. Several companies in the blockchain technology space has set out to tackle the impending … Continue reading WWAM: Decentralized Mobile Exchanges

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Recently, a friend and I were talking about Bitcoin and investments in general. Ultimately this conversation led to him finally buying Bitcoin, but it also opened my eyes to some of the problems that new investors and users may face. One of the ones he worried about the most were fees associated with buying, sending, and trading Bitcoin.

Exchanges May Need to Rethink Fee Structuring

Anyone who has purchased cryptocurrency is well aware that the exchanges you purchase them from always take a cut as a fee for using their service. I have no problem with them doing that. They are a business and need to turn a profit to stay open, pay employees, maintain infrastructure, and grow. Fees will always exist, but percentage fees can add up very quickly.

Take for example one of the most popular places to buy Bitcoin, Litecoin, and ETH: Coinbase. Apart from a few hiccups, they run a rather nice service and make both purchasing and selling the three cryptocurrencies they support mostly painless. This is where my friend purchased his first Bitcoin from, and he was astonished at the fee structure. While Coinbase’s fees are not outrageous, they do leave something to be desired.  For customers in the United States, Coinbase has a base rate of 4% but some of that is waived if the user is using a certain payment or withdrawal method over another. Still, let’s do a little bit of math on how quickly even the lowest possible fee adds up.

Using a bank account transfer or a Coinbase USD account carries the lowest fees for both buying and selling cryptocurrency at 1.49% per transaction. In this hypothetical, we buy $1,000 worth of Bitcoin -which is just about .25 XBT at time of writing- with a bank account. At 1.49%, that transaction cost us just under $15. Let’s say that a month later the market has been kind to bitcoin, and our .25 XBT is now worth $2,000. Since we are the black and want to turn a profit, we decide to sell that .25 XBT for USD. Coinbase takes their 1.49% of our sale, which is now $30. While we have turned a profit, we are mount fees left and right. In our hypothetical situation, we have already spent $45 dollars on fees for two transactions and we still have to worry about taxes and miners fees. Percentage fees add up quickly, especially if users are transacting larger amounts.

One possible solution would be to move exchanges closer to traditional investment platform models. These take a flat fee per transaction, regardless of amount. This fee usually is somewhere between $7 and $10, with lower ones for options trading and so forth. For a quick comparison if I were to buy 100 shares of Tesla valued at about $347, the fees I would pay for that $34,700 transaction would be $10. If I were to purchase $34,700 worth of XBT from Coinbase, even with the lowest fee, that transaction would cost me $517. While flat fees may discourage lower value trades, it would be cheaper for users to pay a flat $10 fee as long as the amount was over about $675 dollars worth of Bitcoin. Anything over that starts to cost more than a flat fee would.

This is not a problem unique to Coinbase, it was just one useful example of how quickly compounding fees can stifle investor profits. Many people getting into crypto are investing less than $675 for purchases, but percentage fees may be one of the reasons why cryptocurrency can struggle with courting the deep pockets of traditional investors. At some point in the future, exchanges may need to change their fee structures.

There is still a lot of confusion regarding Ripple and their XRP token. Unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, Ripple is not targeting the same market. More specifically, the company wants to make the financial sector more efficient using blockchain technology. Their Consensus ledger has received high praise from various partners over the years. … Continue reading Can Ripple Effectively Rival Bitcoin and Ethereum in Terms of Success?

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A bill for unifying state legislators around virtual currency business rules is seeing both interest and hostility, each from unexpected parties.

The cryptocurrecy markets have been shaken up quite a bit over the past few weeks. With the Bitcoin price skyrocketing, other currencies had to suffer losses for the most part. It also appears the Bitcoin Cash price would generate some momentum, but those plans have been canceled for the time being. It looks as if the main focus is not on either Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash right now. Not entirely surprising, but still worth taking into account.

Bitcoin Price Continues Sideways Momentum

It is evident the Bitcoin price is going through a brief correction phase over the past few days. Leaping from around $2,000 to $4,300 in a few weeks will have that kind of consequence, unfortunately. Everything that goes up in price must come eventually and Bitcoin is no exception in this regard. Nor is Bitcoin Cash, for that matter, as that particular currency sees a much-awaited correction as well as we speak. It is unclear what the end value of both coins will be, though.

To put this into perspective, the Bitcoin price is stuck in sideways limbo for the time being. The price hovers around $4,000 for several days now, with most dips being bought up and most gains being oversold again. It is evident this stability is not necessarily what most traders were looking for, but it is never bad to go into sideways trading mode after some major gains. After all, the Bitcoin price has been pretty bullish all year long and still shows no real signs of slowing down. Reaching $5,000 before the end of the year is certainly possible, although it will not be easy.

There is still a healthy dose of Bitcoin trading volume to take into account right now. Similar to the past few days, the Bitcoin volume is well above the $2bn mark. This seems to slowly become the new normal, although things can always turn around at any given moment.  For the time being, Bitcoin has nothing to worry about in this department, as it still represents nearly 40% of all cryptocurrency trading volumes combined. Maintaining that position will not be easy, but now that the weekend is over, we can start looking toward the future once again.

Dominating the exchange volume for Bitcoin are the same markets we have seen topping the charts for weeks on end. However, the order in which they are ranked has changed quite a bit. bitFlyer is currently the #1 exchange for Bitcoin volume, bringing in 15.1% of all global volume in the past 24 hours. That is a very unusual turn of events, as Japan has never been one of the major trading hubs for cryptocurrencies. This has come to change, though, which is a good thing.

Bitfinex, Poloniex, and Bithumb are all in the top five as well. It is quite remarkable not to see Bittrex in this top list for a change, although they claim spots six through eight right now.  Bitcoin is getting most of its volume from the Japanese Yen, US Dollar, and Korean Won once again. Fiat currency trading against Bitcoin is always good to see. Altcoins are being converted to and from Bitcoin at an accelerated pace as well, with Monero and Ethereum clearly leading the rest of the pack. An interesting development, but Bitcoin will continue to reign supreme.

All things considered, everything is still in place to see the Bitcoin price rise in the near future. How much it will increase by remains to be determined, though. The market is seemingly preparing for a big move, which will hopefully result in a higher Bitcoin price. Right now, it is impossible to tell what market makers are thinking. Some people predict one BC will be worth $10,000 soon, whereas others expect a value increase to $100,000 or more in the next three years. It is certainly possible all of these predictions are incorrect, though, but we will find out soon enough.