Day: August 28, 2017

London, August 22nd, 2017 — Oraclize LIMITED closed on €500’000 in their seed round led by Digital Identity SA, a growing firm delivering services for the fintech industry. After two years of self-funded development, this round of funding supports Oraclize’s plan to expand its service and the impact of the technology in different fields. Thomas Bertani, CEO of Oraclize, comments: “Since launching in … Continue reading Oraclize closes an investment from Digital Identity

The post Oraclize closes an investment from Digital Identity appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Ethereum’s developers have provided the world with a little bit more information regarding the upcoming Metropolis hard fork. As noted earlier, this hard fork will go into effect at the end of September of this year and introduce a lot of changes to the ecosystem. As it turns out, there will be two separate hard forks making up the Metropolis changes. The two forks will be known as Byzantium and Constantinople respectively. Both hard forks will gradually introduce big changes to the greater Ethereum ecosystem.

The Tale of Two Hard Forks

Although the Ethereum ecosystem is no stranger to hard forks, it seems the developers are leaning toward introducing fewer changes per fork in the future. Considering how the Metropolis development update will shake things up quite a bit, a gradual roll-out of changes and opportunities is indeed a better approach. After all, the developers want to ensure all of their changes work properly before they are introduced to the public. If that means pushing some elements back a few months for optimization purposes, so be it. Constantinople and Byzantium are the two upcoming development changes to look forward to, as both hard forks are part of the major Metropolis update.

The first part of Metropolis will be the Byzantium hard fork which will go into effect as planned by the end of September. The team is still benchmarking the new gas costs, and results should be in within the next two weeks. Once these benchmarks are complete and the network clients integrate the Byzantium EIPs accordingly, the hard fork will be launched onto the Ropsten testnet for two to four weeks. This will give the Ethereum developers some time to collect additional feedback and fix any lingering bugs or issues that may have slipped through.

Accessing this testnet release could be a bit difficult. The Ropsten testnet is invaluable to Ethereum, but it is also difficult to synchronize. The goal is to find “more creative ways” for people to sync Ropsten, and a few different approaches are already being discussed. There are many different network clients which will benefit from different implementations of improved syncing procedures. There is still some work to be done, but representatives of all clients are on board to develop these solutions as quickly as possible.

The block number for the mainnet hard fork has yet to be determined by the developers. Right now, the best-case scenario involves introducing Byzantium on September 22nd, although it may be pushed back to October 27th if needed. Anywhere between these two dates seems to be the “ballpark” figure for the hard fork deployment, but more official details will be revealed in the next few days and weeks. Late September is still the original goal and the developers will try to stick to that date as closely as possible.

The core developers recently had a meeting regarding the mining difficulty bomb. As most Ethereum users are well aware, the mining difficulty will keep increasing to such a high level that it becomes virtually impossible to successfully mine Ether. A new EIP has been brought forward to address this situation and it turns out the mining reward will be reduced from 5 ETH to 3 ETH during the Metropolis stage. Some users feel the reward should be reduced even further later on, but those discussions are still taking place. The reduced block reward will go into effect when Byzantium launches on the mainnet.

All of this goes to show some interesting changes are coming to Ethereum, although they will not be rolled out all at once. For now, there does not appear to be a dedicated timeline for the Constantinople hard fork just yet, but we will find out more once Byzantium is deployed successfully. There is clearly plenty to look forward to in the Metropolis hard fork.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQjeAZyL2_w&feature=youtu.be

The U.K.’s central bank has warned that a shift to DLT could bring about both positive and unwelcome changes in the securities settlement industry.

sponsored

Disrupting the status quo and providing new opportunities to musicians is made possible with Viberate’s upcoming Vibe tokens.

Cryptocurrency users often rely on different exchange platforms to buy and sell various currencies. The Poloniex exchange is one of the more popular platforms in this regard, as it has built up somewhat of a reputation over the years. One of its users has created a new tool called PoloNuke. No, this tool is not designed to flood the exchange with bogus website traffic. Rather, it allows users to sell all their altcoin balances in exchange for Bitcoin. It’s quite an intriguing endeavor, although one always needs to be wary of third-party tools.

PoloNuke can be a Powerful Tool

There are plenty of reasons to get one’s money off the Poloniex exchange. The company has suffered from deposit and withdrawal delays and major outages over the past few months. Some of its recent policy changes still do not sit well with a lot of users. Withdrawing funds in Bitcoin is not that big of an issue these days, but when it comes to altcoins, the situation can be very different. Some users have had to wait days, if not weeks, to see their money moved off the platform.

Finding a solution for this problem is not all that easy, though. One option is to manually convert all of one’s altcoin balances to Bitcoin, assuming the exchange does not have to deal with issues at that time. One cryptocurrency user, whose GitHub username is Crypto-AI, has come up with a new tool to make this process a lot easier. If too many people were to use PoloNuke at the same time, however, it could cripple the exchange.

PoloNuke can be an effective tool for those who are looking to liquidate all their altcoin holdings at once. The script connects to the Poloniex exchange and trades all of the current account balances for Bitcoin in one go. The default setting ensures both Ethereum and GameCredits balances remain untouched, although users can manually modify these settings as they see fit. For people left with many small bags of altcoins to cash out, PoloNuke can be a godsend.

This script requires users to generate an API key and its secret associated with Poloniex in order to be used. That makes it no different from most dedicated trading applications, but it is always worth understanding how the application in question works. Trusting third-party software with an API key and its secret – especially when it has permission to access and modify balances – is always a bit of a security risk. Make sure to check out the PoloNuke source code first and foremost before entrusting it with this sensitive information.

PoloNuke has a few limitations at this time. First of all, it cannot cancel stop loss orders, which must be removed by the user manually. There are only so many features supported by the Poloniex API, and this is not one of them, unfortunately. Additionally, PoloNuke may not get rid of all your balances in one go if the orders you trigger cause the market price to fall by 5% or more. That is a nice built-in feature, as everyone still wants the most bang for their buck when it comes to altcoins. Getting rid of illiquid coins can prove to be a difficult venture, though.

All things considered, scripts such as PoloNuke can easily be modified to accommodate other exchanges as well. People who are actively speculating on the altcoin market through exchanges with a proper API can use this source code and build their own versions of the tool. Given how altcoins are often very small markets, getting rid of large amounts of coins can be quite cumbersome. PoloNuke makes the process a lot easier, although it remains an untrusted third-party tool for the time being. Always conduct your due diligence before running such scripts.

Five top cryptocurrencies share their favourite long term picks

The highest-ranking official at Banco de Mexico has stated that the central bank is unlikely to classify bitcoin as a currency.

While Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are fundamentally changing the way that finance works, it is always great to see projects challenge the finance sector even further. Continuing to push the norms of the market are the only ways to make disruptive and meaningful changes to it. We at the Merkle are happy to work with our sponsor PayperEx to explore how their project can change the way we think about the global share markets.

PayperEx’s Network has Some Unique Selling Points

Both PayperEx’s network and its token have some unique selling points that are worth exploring. Firstly, its founders have more than 15 years of experience in the finance industry. This kind of experience is necessary for projects looking to disrupt any system. If a team does not understand the market they are entering and shaking up, then they will have a much harder time accomplishing their goals.

The team has decided to focus on the share market, and the project aims to decentralize this part of the finance industry. By using blockchain technology, they want to create an alternative trading network to augment current global share markets. The main goal of the project is to provide economical, secure, and fast access to the benefits of share markets to anyone in the world.

Their technology will be scalable and the team believes their continued work advancing the blockchain for their project will uniquely situate them for success. They also hope to integrate an excellent user experience through a well designed user interface.

They project will use a system of tokens as Paypers. Paypers are share based units. To trade on the PayperEx platform, users will need to use these Paypers, which act as representative shares of an underlying such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The barrier to entry is rather low, set at 100 PAX (or about 0.002 XBT). Paypers can also be bought for bearish trends, allowing investors to try and capitalize on downtrends in the market.

PAX Token’s Unique Selling Points

To purchase the Paypers necessary to make trades and earn fee shares from holding those Paypers, users need to use the PAX token. Paypers can be unlimited, but the PAX tokens needed to purchase those will be fixed. The set limit will be determined during the crowdsale.

PAX utilizes a private wallet, so PAX can act as a store of value or transaction medium. Users can send and receive PAX while maintaining full control over their funds.

Immediately following the ICO, PAX can be traded or used to purchase Paypers against cryptocurrency underlyings. The project wants to maximize PAX’s liquidity so that the market continues flowing. Eventually, they want to make PAX an off platform currency as well, though it will remain a native token for now.

There is also the potential that this token will grow in value. As the platform becomes more popular and lucrative, so too would the token driving its activity. No other token or coin is responsible for keeping the platform’s ecosystem running, so the popularity of the platform and the value of its token can be a good gauge for the overall health of the project.

Check out our Sponsor’s project here: https://payperex.com

Their whitepaper can be found here: https://payperex.com/whitepaper.pdf

Their Pre-Sale is ongoing currently here: https://payperex.com/presale

This is not trading or investment advice, always conduct your own independent research.

sponsored

Blockchain ICOs are no longer just for new business, as Worldcore prepares a token sale to boost its market presence.

The growth of cryptocurrencies this year has been astronomical, but to put a figure on it, they are up nearly 800 percent.