Day: August 21, 2017

When looking over the cryptocurrency market caps, one has to look beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash. In fact, it appears some of the major action is taking place behind the top 10, as Monero is going through a massive bull run right now. With the Monero price going up by as much as 51.1%, it is evident good things are on the horizon for this currency. Its market cap also surpassed the $1bn mark for the first time in history, which means things are looking quite good right now.

Monero Price Explodes all of a Sudden

It has to be said, very few people seem to pay attention to the Monero price until big things happen. It is certainly true the Monero team isn’t focusing a lot of attention on marketing, as they don’t want to create hype for something that isn’t necessarily there. More often than not, we see alternative currencies gain a lot of value based on hype and press releases published in mainstream media outlets. That will never be the case for Monero, yet the approach seemingly seems to work out just fine.

Keeping this information in mind, one can certainly make the argument the Monero price has been undervalued for quite some time now. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the developers’ work so far, as they are effectively providing anonymity features to cryptocurrency users. Their technology has been documented multiple, times and keeps on improving every single year. In fact, a recent developer meetup shows some big changes may be coming to Monero in the very near future.

More specifically, it seems there will be no further work on the RingCT 2.0 group as previously indicated, due to the trusted setup required to make this venture a success. However, there are other proposals to further improve Monero by using sublinear ring signatures and CT. As a result, the ring size of Monero transactions can be greatly increased, although its effective “range’ has yet to be determined. Taking this route will result in reworking the MultiSig work for Monero, though, but it seems the developers aren’t too bothered by the prospect of making some changes in the future.

There is other good news influencing the Monero price as well. It appears a new Android wallet for XMR is currently in the works, which goes by the name of Monejuro. For the time being, this Android wallet works just fine, but it is not yet possible to spend XMR on the main net. It is only compatible with armv7 32-bit, but that may be improved upon in the future as well. It is good to see more Monero wallets for mobile devices come to market, even though Monejuro is still in the early stages of development by the look of things.

Additionally, Monero may be making its way to the Korean Bithumb exchange very soon. A blog post released by the company indicated an XMR trading pair against the Korean Won will be added on August 23. At that time, XMR deposits will be opened, with the actual trading market listing taking place on the 25th and trading beginning the day after. These are all quite exciting events that will elevate the Monero price to new heights accordingly. Right now, the Monero price sits around $79, although there is no reason why it should be worth less than currencies such as Dash, for example.

All things considered, good news is coming to the Monero community as a whole. The upcoming developments combined with the Bithumb listing and the new Android wallet all indicate this ecosystem will continue to grow for quite some time to come. Monero should never be overlooked by cryptocurrency enthusiasts, as the ecosystem has a lot more to offer than most people realize. This may very well be only the beginning of achieving truly anonymous cryptocurrencies. Only time will tell how things evolve, but for now, things are looking quite good for Monero.

Vitalik Buterin met with Thai central bank discussing the future of Thai economy and how Thai banks can use Blockchain technology.

Swift has completed development work on its first blockchain proof-of-concept, and six global banks are about to put it through its paces.

Breadwallet’s stance on SegWit2x highlights potential complications for users who store funds in hot wallets.

In the first week of August, CNBC’s Brian Kelly outlined three factors for the recent surge in bitcoin price: completion of the August 1 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork, elimination of uncertainty surrounding scaling and rapid increase in demand from institutional investors.

The successful execution of the BCH hard fork established an important precedent for the bitcoin community and network. Unlike the analysis of most analysts including Vinny Lingham, bitcoin price demonstrated a strong rally after the execution of BCH hard fork, mostly because it had minimal impact on the main bitcoin network. Prior to and after the fork, the bitcoin network operated normally, processing transactions without any sort of security issues.

Elimination of uncertainty of a future hard fork was also a driving factor of bitcoin price because it built confidence around investors and the market. Traders started to express confidence in bitcoin’s ability to scale and as a result, bitcoin price began to surge. During last week’s strong rally, bitcoin price established a new all-time high at $4,510.

However, over the past few days, bitcoin price dipped below the $4,000 mark, dropping by over $500. It has recovered since to $4,060 and various momentum indicators including the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) demonstrate that bitcoin price will likely sustain its current upward momentum throughout the upcoming days.

What Led to Short-Term Decrease in Bitcoin Price?

Earlier this week, BitPay, arguably the largest payment processor for merchants, received harsh criticism from the bitcoin community for misleading users and merchants with its SegWit2x hard fork. The Merkle previously reported that some businesses and miners are preparing for the SegWit2x hard fork.

Nicolas Dorier of NBitcoin went as far as to provide a BitPay API without SegWit2x support, or as Dorier explained without “BitPay” to current merchants on the BitPay platform.

“I will provide a Bitpay compatible API for those who want to keep Bitcoin payment deployed for using Bitpay but without the bitpay part,” said Dorier.

Led by Jean-Pierre Rupp and former Bitcoin Core developers including Jeff Garzik, the consortium of 58 businesses and mining pools established by Digital Currency Group is planning a hard fork in November, to create a separate SegWit2x chain to bitcoin. If the proposal is accepted and the consortium decides to fork bitcoin, it will lead to another chain split, leading to the existence of two bitcoin-originated cryptocurrencies: BCH and the SegWit2x coin.

The announcement of Rupp read:

“During the month of November 2017, approximately 90 days after the activation of Segregated Witnesses in the Bitcoin blockchain, a block between 1 MB and 2 MB in size will be generated by Bitcoin miners in a move to increase network capacity. At this point it is expected that more than 90 percent of the computational capacity that secures the Bitcoin network will carry on mining on top of this large block.”

Although Garzik emphasized that SegWit2x will be bitcoin and the majority-supported chain, many experts like Blockstream executive Samson Mow explained that most miners and businesses within the SegWit2x consortium have dropped their support toward the hard fork.

Miners are starting to back out of #SegWIt2x. It has very little support now & no businesses are actually taking it seriously. #fizzle https://t.co/xdYY9TFLos

— Samson Mow (@Excellion) August 19, 2017

In November, around the time of the activation of SegWit2x hard fork–if it in fact occurs–the price of bitcoin will likely suffer a minor correction, as it did prior to the BCH hard fork. Currently, bitcoin is recovering from the initial announcement of the SegWit2x team and the market is rebuilding confidence.

The price of monero, the privacy-oriented cryptocurrency created in 2014, shot up sharply this morning, shattering its previous record by around $35.

Cryptocurrencies have been around for quite some time now, taking over the internet by storm. Regardless of the currency’s ups and downs, it has persevered the test of time and made its way into the lives of people all over the world. Who you may ask? Freelancers. Whether giving out a job or looking for one online, chances are you’re going to find someone from abroad. Hiring a freelancer or doing freelance work has always carried its risks, at least until bitcoin came along, pushing regular money aside and ushering in a new age for internet users everywhere.

Unregulated transactions

One of the major benefits of using cryptocurrency is the absence of middlemen like banks. With these leeches out of the way, transactions are left to be handled between the two parties involved, reducing payment delays, bank conversion rates and the usual stress that arises generally any time a bank is involved. There are even methods to use bitcoin anonymously, if staying incognito is more your forte. Authorizing these transactions is a simple as sending an email and requires even less effort to set up. It is worth noting that regularly sweeping money from your Bitcoin wallet is recommended to avoid future headaches.

Safer exchanges

Cryptocurrency brings a new form of safety when seeking payment and dispensing salaries. Using methods like Multi-Signature Escrow and Double Deposit Escrow, Cryptocurrencies guarantee a form of safety that greatly surpasses anything that came before. The first method uses an objective third party that has to authorize the exchange of services if the parties cannot agree, effectively providing an arbiter as a safety net should the parties disagree on something. The latter uses the users own money as incentive to conduct business in an orderly fashion, both parties make deposits that they can only get back by completing the contract, otherwise they both lose out.

Risk-free freelancers

With the security measures mentioned above, the main problems with employing freelancers is a thing of the past. Companies can now take on most foreigners, wherever they may come from, without the majority of risks associated with outsourcing like chargeback fraud. This has opened up many more job positions, but also greatly expanded the available talent pool that employers comb through. The absence of risk enables the hiring of many a talented individual that would’ve otherwise be turned down due to location, their preferred bank or negative experiences with other people in the field.  

New work environments

With the rise of bitcoin, new work environments popped up everywhere. Sites like Cryptogrind and XBTFreelancer have taken the freelancing world by storm, offering a safe platform for transactions to take place. The beauty of these sites is that they can implement a set of rules that both parties have to follow while making exchanges more beneficial to everyone involved. One such example is XBT’s milestone mechanic where freelancers are incentivized to complete milestones. Every milestone provides a part of the fee while employers are given an opportunity to provide real-time feedback as opposed to having to correct a finished product.

Complete transparency

One of the things that many companies tend to do is neglect their books and run into the problem of trying to guess what happened where etc. Using cryptocurrency provides a very safe and easy-to-use system that tracks every single transaction that has ever taken place. This provides both an in-depth look into the company’s day-to-day and an option to efficiently track sales numbers. This is especially useful for companies in areas like software development and web design, where the majority of transactions are conducted online.

The world is your oyster

Simply put – cryptocurrency has breathed new life into freelancing. It has provided a secure option for both parties involved in business online and helped the freelance market flourish. While its future is still anyone’s guess, cryptocurrency is currently offering benefits that can only be dreamed of in today’s economies. So, for the time being at least, the option to process payments directly and in a much faster fashion cannot be ignored. With their stability, reliability and flexibility, the various forms of cryptocoins are worth dabbling in and finding out just what possibilities they have to offer.

Payments multinational Visa may be looking to blockchain as a way to facilitate the transfer of digitized assets, according to a patent filing.

Japan is an interesting country when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Not too long ago, new regulation in the country legalized Bitcoin as a payment method. It now appears the number of merchants accepting BTC payments continues to increase. Ticket camp is a very popular ticket exchange marketplace in Japan. With around 5 million active users, … Continue reading Bitcoin Keeps Gaining Ground in Japan as Largest Ticket Exchange Marketplace Accepts BTC

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