Day: September 10, 2017

Top 9 Altcoins Analyzed

The creators of the Smartlands platform for the tokenization of agricultural assets, based on the blockchain solution and the Agriculture 3.0 concept, announce the ICO of the project. Smartlands platform founders came out with innovative technology for the agricultural market. The goal of the platform is to create a new class of low-risk tokens, secured … Continue reading Smartlands Platform Opens the Agricultural Sector for Crypto-Investors

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China has been on a warpath to ban many different things lately. Recently the price of Bitcoin was affected drastically because of the country’s latest “we are banning Bitcoin” stunt, but also from its recent condemnation of ICOs and potential ban of cryptocurrency exchanges themselves. However, China’s love of banning things is not limited just to the financial sector. The country will likely ban the sale of fossil fuel cars soon as well.

A Noble Ban

While I think China’s recent banning binge is getting a bit out of hand – they even want to ban some soft cheeses – banning fossil fuel cars will have huge implications for global health and the environment. Many of us are familiar with the horrifying photos of the smog problems in major Chinese cities. It appears that the government is now very concerned with cleaning up the air and keeping it clean.

The proposal to ban polluting automobiles will be implemented in stages over the course of some years to allow automakers the opportunity to retool their factories and adjust their marketing strategies. This could very well set a new trend in the global automotive market considering how many cars are made in China. If one of the largest vehicle production countries in the world were to begin making only electric cars, many others may follow suit. A Japanese car company, Honda, is already working on building an all-electric vehicle for the Chinese market. This is just one example of how this ban will force the world to reconsider producing and using vehicles powered by combustion engines.

In an effort to provide even more of an incentive to go green, the Chinese government will provide generous subsidies to electric automotive makers. There also will likely be a cap and trade system put in place for companies to buy or sell emission quantities in order to help them along the way.

This comes at a time when many other nations are showcasing their plans to meet mandated emissions cuts by 2030. China has already taken on some of the more drastic cuts in its production and manufacturing sector. Frankly, it is impressive to see China do this so readily when certain western nations continue to drag their feet the entire way.

Will It Be Enough?

While it is great in my mind that China is looking to ban fossil fuel-powered cars, I also know that the electricity required to charge those batteries has to come from somewhere. China’s electricity production is still very heavily reliant on fossil fuels. The country is working on rolling these back as well, but it is still something to consider. If everyone driving a car in China were suddenly to charge his or her vehicle, that would add a previously unknown strain on the power grid. Power plants would likely have to increase their production and output just to meet the demand from all those vehicles. This may just serve to offset the carbon cost from one industry to another. Regardless, it is an interesting development and one of the more sane bans that China has announced recently.

Everywhere, PlusCoin is being called “the People’s Cryptocurrency.” A grassroots movement is rapidly taking form and cryptocurrency experts are taking note – PlusCoin is the first cryptocurrency average people actually want to own and to use. Why is this? Well, PlusCoin is fully integrated into the mobile marketplace of an already successful iOS and Android … Continue reading PlusCoin Is Going Global, DS Plus Announces ICO Starting September 10th.

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Bitcoin (BTC) is the poster child of digital currency. It dominates the trading arena, with a market cap of some $70 billion, in a digital currency market worth an estimated $145 billion. While these precise values can whipsaw wildly from day-to-day, Bitcoin remains a dominant force in cryptocurrency. However, while all the focus tends to … Continue reading Altcoins Increasingly Popular among Traders

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R3 Holdco LLC – the operating company behind leading US-based blockchain consortium R3CEV – is suing Ripple. Ripple is the development company of the fourth-largest blockchain network in the world with a US$8 billion market cap. The lawsuit has been filed over R3’s previous agreement to purchase Ripple’s native token XRP at a fixed rate over a specified period of time.

Ripple Is Being Sued

According to the lawsuit filed by R3, they and Ripple entered into an agreement in September of 2016 to permit R3 to purchase up to 5 billion XRPs at a fixed price of US$0.0085 over a three-year period. Solely based on the contract, R3 has the right to purchase 5 billion XRPs at a rate that is significantly lower than the current price of US$0.21 until September 2019.

However, Brad Garlinghouse – the CEO of Ripple – attempted to terminate the options contract in an email to R3 CEO David Rutter. This was not permitted per the previous agreement which both companies had signed. Reuters revealed that R3 has demanded a simple request from both Ripple and the court that would allow the firm to retain its rights to purchase XRPs over the next two years.

On the same day – September 8th – Ripple responded with a counterclaim that R3 had violated its previous contracts. The Ripple blockchain network’s operating entity claimed that R3 had not fulfilled its previous agreements, which included a parallel technology partnership agreement that promised Ripple access to R3’s infrastructure and member bank network. In the lawsuit against Ripple obtained by Reuters, R3 also agreed to promote Ripple technology.

The intricacies of Ripple’s lawsuit remain undisclosed and limited to the public. However, Reuters noted in its report that the company is demanding that R3 pay damages determined at trial before attempting to regain rights to its purchasing power over billions of XRPs.

“Our filing is straightforward – R3 misrepresented their ability and intent to deliver on their commitments. Given XRP’s ~4000 percent increase over the course of the year, R3 suddenly wants to tap into the value of XRP, though the facts are clear that they did not earn any option based on our agreement,” a Ripple spokesperson told Reuters in a statement.

In essence, Ripple has accused R3 of violating its parallel technology partnership agreements and failing to provide its network of banks to the company. The company further emphasized that R3 only requested a bulk purchase of XRPs given that the value of XRP has risen by over 4,000 percent in just over a year.

Depending on how the court decides, the two lawsuits could result in Ripple being ordered to grant R3 the power to purchase XRPs, given that R3 agrees to meet its previous parallel technology partnership agreement and pay the damages requested by Ripple.

Corporate espionage is nothing new in the business world. Every company would like to know what its competitors are doing behind closed doors and to gain an edge on the market. While tempting, these practices are illegal and usually are not espionage in the way we think of clandestine operations. However, Uber is currently being investigated for actually spying on Lyft drivers.

Your Driver is… Bond?

While it may not have been as action-packed as a Bond movie, Uber has gotten in some hot water for its spying activity. The company realized there was a flaw in the system of its main competitor, Lyft, and thoroughly exploited that flaw. The spying program ran for two years, 2014 to 2016. The program was called “Hell” and it may be raising all sorts of itself for the company.

The objective of this program was to identify Uber drivers who also drove for Lyft. These “double-appers” are not technically violating any agreement with either company by driving for the other, but for obvious reasons both companies would like to have their drivers be loyal to them alone. So if Uber were to identify one of its drivers in the Lyft system, Uber would attempt to convince that driver to give up his or her gig with Lyft, rather than penalizing them.

Because of this, the FBI’s New York office is now investigating whether this amounts to corporate espionage, as well as whether it illegally interfered with Lyft. This latest revelation just adds to the mountain of legal cases brought against Uber. Clearly, the company has seen better days.

Is This Illegal?

My gut reaction to all this is that Uber has committed a crime here, but I am no corporate lawyer. It strikes me that at the very least the company was encroaching on the privacy of not only its drivers, but the drivers of its main competitor. When hackers and other cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities in systems, we call that a crime. Just because a large corporation is doing something similar does not mean it is “just business.” Happily, Uber did not release troves of personal information on drivers or double-appers, nor did it extort people for money like the majority of cybercriminals out there. However, this is hardly any consolation.

That being said, Lyft should have been more careful in vetting its code to ensure this sort of thing did not happen in the first place. While the crux of the blame falls on Uber for violating the privacy rights of Lyft drivers, Lyft also needs to do a better job at protecting its own drivers from such attacks.

This will be an interesting legal situation that may set some precedent for who is at fault when code vulnerabilities are exploited. Can the exploitation of code be considered ethical if companies do not properly vet their systems? My guess is no, but this investigation will let us know one way or the other.

Whether China actually bans ICOs and exchanges or not, this news may actually be doing everyone a favour as it is likely to be the last time you can buy Bitcoin as cheap.

The smartest minds and smartest companies in the world are not only dealing with cryptocurrencies, but they are also bringing synergetic forces to finance a wide range of amazing solutions. One of these solutions: reducing travel time and solving traffic jams. For example, companies such as Tencent and Freigeist are funding Lilium, a German start-up company, to develop the first all-electrical vertical take-off five-seat flying taxi.

Also read: Japanese Airline Accepts Bitcoin As Cryptocurrency Fever Spreads Across the Region

Heralding the End of Traffic Jams

Lilium, a Munich-based company, promises to enable passengers to travel five times faster than by car. Lilium’s mission is to introduce “the world’s first all-electric vertical take-off and landing jet: an air taxi for up to five people. You won’t have to own one; you will simply pay per ride and call it with a push of a button. It’s our mission to make air taxis available to everyone and as affordable as riding a car.”

Lilium promises to end traffic jams. “By traveling through the air you’ll be able to avoid time-consuming traffic jams while enjoying a magnificent view,” says the company website.

Lilium reports that it has already secured US$90 million Series B funding round. Members of the funding group include Tencent, LGT Banking Group, Atomico, and Obvious Ventures.

Flying Taxis, Blockchain, and Bitcoin

Entities funding Lilium’s flying taxi enterprise have direct or indirect connections with Bitcoin, blockchain, and other digital currencies.

“Tencent believes that the third big change is brewing with Bitcoin and its underlying technology – the blockchain entering the scene,” Investopedia reports.

Thus, using blockchain-based technology, Tencent, the giant Internet enterprise, is developing the TrustSQL platform to provide “enterprise-class block chain infrastructure, industry solutions, and secure, reliable and flexible blockchain cloud services,” according to Investopedia.

Tencent has long been involved in initiatives involving cryptocurrencies, such as Q Coin and Kin. Moreover, Tencent’s Wechat Pay which is incorporated into the Wechat app, is one of the major Chinese mobile payment services. Wechat lets users perform transactions in Bitcoin. For example, OKCoin, a major Bitcoin exchange, allows users to use Wechat to trade Bitcoin.

Moreover, according to Lilium’s press release, Freigeist were Lilium’s seed investors. Freigeist (formerly e42) also invests in Outbank, a multi bank app that integrates Bitcoin. “Outbank allows users to manage and overlook their bitcoins in the same app as their regular bank accounts,” states the company website.

Bitcoin Rides the Skies

So, will Bitcoin be soon one of the payment options of the flying taxis?

Bitcoin is already riding the skies. For example, the Daedalus Drones offer its services for Bitcoin. Daedalus is one of the first drone services companies to accept the cryptocurrency.

AirBaltic and Polish Airlines LOT already accept Bitcoin payments. Airbaltic claims to be the first airline to accept Bitcoin as payment. Cheapair.com also declares itself to be the first online travel agency to accept Bitcoin.

Recently, additional air traveler companies are moving forward to accept Bitcoin, such as BITPoint Japan, a company linked to Peach Aviation Ltd. According to Peach CEO Shinichi Inoue, through this initiative, “We want to encourage visitors from overseas and the revitalization of Japan’s regions,” Bloomberg Technology reported.

Smartest Minds, Smartest Companies, and Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology

MIT Technology Review has named Lilium CEO, Daniel Siegand, as one of the Innovators Under 35 of the year 2017.

Tencent is considered one of the world’s smartest companies in 2017. According to an MIT Technology Review report, Tencent is 8^th, while Alibaba is 41th. The first spot goes to Nvidia, a chipmaker that also produces cryptocurrency mining products.

Flying taxi services represent innovation. So, the question is, will these smart minds and companies develop innovative, expeditious, and secure payment applications for their new business model? If so, we can look forward to seeing Bitcoin play a predominant role as a payment option in the flying taxi business.

What are your thoughts about flying taxi companies accepting payments in Bitcoin? Let us know in the comments below!

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Images courtesy of Lilium, Shutterstock

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It has been a while since we last saw a major issue affecting cryptocurrency mining pools. It is not uncommon for one or two pools to experience issues at some point. In this case, however, a few different pools were impacted due to an issue with the mining software. Several altcoins are affected by this problem, including Verge and VertCoin.

Pool Software Hack Proves to be a big Problem

As of right now, it is still unclear what exactly happened to the affected mining pools. YiiMP’s website displays a message indicating that the open source mining pool software has been hacked. It appears a lot of altcoin mining pools rely on this code for their backends, although it is unclear how many pools are directly affected by this hack. Several pools are reporting sudden issues with mining pool software, so it is possible a lot of platforms will be affected.

Among the pools having reported issues are Zpool and HashRefinery. Both companies are currently undergoing maintenance with no ETA as to when these platforms will come back online. It is never good to see multiple mining pools suffer from this type of issue, although we have no specific details regarding the exact cause of the hack itself. It does appear the software was compromised in such a way that mining pool payouts were redirected to a different address.

Luckily, it appears HashRefinery will not be suffering too much from this issue. The company has disabled stratum servers for now and has funds in cold wallets to cover any missing payouts. The money will not be sent to its hot wallet anytime soon, though, as the team is still investigating what is going on exactly. They want to be certain no one can access the money once it is transferred to the hot wallet. It is a smart decision, although one that may cause some payout delays.

According to the YiiMP site, the hacking method involved here is quite disconcerting. A lot of money has been stolen from various mining pools and addresses, and affected altcoins include Auroracoin, Vertcoin, and Verge. The only currency still safe – for the time being, at least – is Decred. This is still a preliminary report and not a complete list of what went down exactly. It is possible dozens of other currencies may be affected by this hack as well.

This is yet another demonstration of how cybercriminals will continue to target the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Given the value increases in both Bitcoin and virtually all altcoins, it is not entirely shocking that criminals would want to obtain cryptocurrency for their own nefarious purposes. There is a lot of money going around in crypto currently and mining pools can prove to be a weak link in the chain.

Until we know the exact details, there is no real point in speculating as to how these issues were facilitated in the first place. All we know for sure is that someone took advantage of a loophole and used it to his or her advantage somehow. It is impossible to tell how much value has effectively been stolen through this hack, as the full ramifications of this breach have yet to be understood. This is a very troublesome development, to say the least.

Is Russia going to legitimize cryptocurrencies?