Day: September 13, 2017

The Department of Homeland Security has an interesting relationship with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. On the one hand, they want to deanonymize users whenever they suspect illegal activity. On the other hand, there is an obvious respect for what this new type of money can bring to the table. The Homeland Security Assessment for Terrorists Use of Virtual Currencies Act will prove to be a rather interesting story.

A new DHS Bill With Potentially Severe Consequences

Although the Homeland Security Assessment of Terrorists Use of Virtual Currencies Act was originally drafted in May of this year, it has only become public knowledge last night. This particular bill has seemingly been approved by the House of Representatives without too many knowing about it in the first place. That is not entirely surprising, though, as a lot of legislative decisions are only made public knowledge once they are approved and go into effect. This particular bill is no different whatsoever.

What makes this particular bill so interesting is how it touches upon the concept of virtual currencies. The goal is to make a proper threat assessment on the terrorist use of virtual currencies. The US government is still very concerned about terrorist activity around the world, but especially in the domestic market. These organizations collect millions in funding every quarter yet no one knows for sure how they succeed in doing so.

120 days from the enactment of the Homeland Security Assessment of Terrorists use of Virtual Currency Act, a threat assessment regarding virtual currency will be conducted. This task falls on the shoulders of the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis. He will coordinate with the appropriate Federal partners in this regard. Once the threat assessment has been completed, the task force will look into coming up with adequate countermeasures.

One thing about this bill that will irk a lot of people is how this new Act defines virtual currencies. It refers to any digital representation of value functioning as a medium of exchange, store of value, or a unit of account. While this also includes Bitcoin and virtual currencies, this language seemingly should be looked at in a much broader spectrum. An online representation of value, such as a PayPal balance, a virtual debit card, or a prepaid debit card would fall under this moniker as well.

For the time being, it remains a bit unclear how this new Act will affect all of these existing payment methods. It is not the first time cryptocurrencies are referred to as a potential tool for terrorist financing. However, there has never been any official documentation confirming Bitcoin and altcoins are used for this specific purpose in large quantities. Virtual currency exists in many different forms, shapes, and sizes. Some of these payment methods – especially the anonymous ones sold in regular stores – may turn out to be the bigger threat in the end.

The Homeland Security Assessment of Terrorists Use of Virtual Currencies Act is a powerful tool to address terrorist financing once and for all. However, it is still too early to tell what the outcome of this venture will mean for the industry as a whole. The wording is purposefully vague to leave room for plenty of speculation, by the look of things. We should know more about these efforts by early 2018. Rest assured the cryptocurrency industry will keep a close eye on this new task force.

According to a new report from security research firm FireEye, North Korean hackers are targeting Bitcoin and Ethereum users in South Korea.

Dentacoin is the leading cryptocurrency and review platform for the dental industry in Europe. The implications of their innovation will be monumental and global in scale. Even now before their ICO, their token is listed on five different exchanges already. Let’s take a closer look at what this means for Dentacoin, traders, and the dentistry industry as a whole.

Trading Even Before the ICO

It is no small feat that Dentacoin was able to have its token from its presale listed on even one exchange, but they were able to secure trading on five separate platforms. This demonstrates the overwhelming support that Dentacoin has from its community and early supporters already.

Currently, the five exchanges that support the DCN token are Cryptopia, CoinExchange, Mercatox, and Novaexchange. Collectively across these exchanges, Dentacoin has just over $15,000 worth of trading volume in the past 24 hours at the time of writing. This is rather impressive, considering that they have not never held their ICO yet. The most popular trading pair is with Bitcoin on Cryptopia, making up just under 90% of its trading volume. The second most popular is with Ethereum, with smaller amounts of Litcoin and Doge making the rest of its trades.

Immediate Use Cases Mean User Confidence

While it is incredible that Dentacoin is already seeing trading across various exchange platforms, its true value is inherent use cases. Dental clinics across Europe are beginning to accept Dentacoin as payment in their practices. This is a massively important aspect to Dentacoin’s continued success. Even more are looking forward to implementing in their practices in the future.

The use of a transparent and blockchain based asset is attractive to dental clinics, as it should be. This means that there can be no charge-backs like that can typically happen with credit cards or bounced checks. It also means there is no need for a third party clearinghouse to approve moving of funds. It is peer-to-peer, meaning that once the transaction is signed the funds belong to the practice. It is also attractive because it helps expose these clinics to the strong and active Dentacoin community.

The Trusted Review Platform Helps Both Patients and Dentists

Another excellent gauge of the Dentacoin project’s overall health in addition to the previously mentioned aspects is the release and use of their product, the Trust Review Platform. This platform is the heart of the entire project and community. Here, community members are rewarded for their participation with Dentacoin for reviewing dental clinics. Users can be sure that the reviews they are reading are real, since all reviews are backed on the blockchain. Reviews that are backed by the blockchain are tamper proof since any changes to them would be visible on the immutable blockchain. This also ensures that reviews are not deleted. This builds trust between dentists and patients, while also bolstering an already thriving community.

Check out the project here: https://dentacoin.com/

This is a sponsored post and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any The Merkle employees. This is not trading or investment advice, always conduct your own independent research. 

A finance regulator in Dubai has become the latest agency to warn investors about initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Sci-fi books, movies, and television shows envision a future where everything was controlled by our brains and humans could interface directly with computers and robotics. While it made for an interesting story, few of us believed that we would legitimately see this happen. However, in our world today brain controlled computers help paralyzed people interact with their world and that may be the base for a future where we control almost everything with our brains.

How Brain Controlled Computers May Be Our Future

While they still sound like the stuff of sci-fi, brain powered computers are a very real thing. Neuroscientists today are working tirelessly on building better human brain to computer interfaces, and their results are impressive. They have helped many people regain control over parts of their lives with these interfaces and robotics, they have even helped one paralyzed individual set a world record for typing.

Much of this research is currently devoted to helping paralyzed individuals regain mobility and control in their lives. However, since these are digital interfaces it is not outlandish to imagine we can connect people to the Internet and the Internet of things around them. If scientists and researchers can actually hook a human brain up to the Internet of Things, there is no telling what we would be able to accomplish. Is your house too warm? Turn on the air conditioning with a thought. Did you forget to turn off lights when you left? If you are connected to WiFi, you might be able to turn those off remotely.

Potential Issues of Mind Controlled Computers

Some of the potential issues of connecting human brains directly to the Internet and Internet of Things are more apparent than others. Whenever anything is connected to the Internet of Things, its security seems to plummet. Think about all the botnets running on the small computers in appliances, or how haphazard the security coding of these devices are. These devices are under constant attack by malicious actors because of their insecurities. Usually they end up as part of some botnet. Would this mean that human minds could end up as botnets too?

Another potential issue that could arise is phantom or unintentional use of connected devices. What if an individual was contemplating turning on a light rather than definitely wanting to? Would the interface be able to distinguish intentional from contemplative thought? Dreaming might be another issue. We have all had truly insane dreams, but even the most mild could end up moving something or interacting with an interface unintentionally. While it could be something as harmless as turning on a light, it could also be dangerous if a device the mind interfaced with had any sort of destructive capabilities.

Regardless, this seems like an interesting possibility and I – for one – would love to learn more about how researchers and scientists plan on making this a safe and ubiquitous technology.

The price of Bitcoin has been a little difficult to predict recently. Fluctuations have been all too common, caused partly by the activation of the Segwit2x by Segregated Witness which has promised to upgrade Bitcoin by using code optimisation affecting the way data is stored on the network and doubling the block size from 1MB to 2MB in the following months. While on paper this seems a good thing, allowing more transactions with shorter approval times, miners have been less than convinced by its proposals. The activation of which saw bitcoin prices fall below $4,000, its lowest value since April 15th.

But despite these considerable reservations, Bitcoin price changes are nothing new. The cryptocurrency is often at the whim of global events. At the start of the year its value had barely peaked above $1,000 but with mass media coverage it has surged to the current heights it sits at. At the time of writing, the value was a whopping $4,415.14. Quite a change from the value at the turn of the year when Donald Trump’s presidential win and subsequent inauguration resulted in a significant blip. This unexpected event had a global effect on all the world’s major currencies, cryptocurrency included it seems, with the Bitcoin value of $726.36 followed by a huge drop before investors rushed to grab commodities such as gold and silver. Bitcoin later rallied with an overall 2.5% increase, although the recovery took several days.

Some analysts believe that this latest dip in value is nothing more than bulls becoming tired. After all, the rise in value has been nothing short of meteoric over the past year. Japan declared Bitcoin as legal tender which legitimised the currency and this led to increased investments in the area which was followed by Bitcoin splitting into two block groups, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash adding hundreds of dollars to the currency’s value. It’s natural then that an air of caution follows as Bitcoin owners sit patiently as the currency finds more stable ground. Others have been less optimistic, stating that the official rollout of Segwit2x in November and the bullish market of recent times has caused a market peak with price falls sure to follow.

Either way, this doesn’t detract from the rising popularity of Bitcoin. Its usage is becoming more common as large-scale retailers such as Amazon and Microsoft have embraced the currency to pay for goods and services. Even small businesses such as pubs and florists have taken Bitcoin on because of its ease of use and added security thanks to its cashless nature. No industry has taken a shine to Bitcoin quite like online gambling though. Bitcoin has become the currency of choice for those in countries where gambling is still seen as taboo due to its anonymous nature which requires no personal details to utilise. If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at an online casino but are not sure where to start, we have collaborated with onlineroulette.org. So please click here to see their list of the best deals, many of which do accept Bitcoin on their site.

Most Ethereum and cryptocurrency enthusiasts have become familiar with ERC20 tokens. This token standard is used to create new forms of currency on the Ethereum blockchain. Now that Ethereum Improvement Proposal 20 has been formally adopted, the ERC20 token standard is officially instituted. This is a major development for the ecosystem as a whole, as the proposal also formally establishes API standards for Ethereum-based tokens.

ERC20 is now an Instituted Standard

Although many people have gotten used to the concept of ERC20 tokens, the “standard” itself was never an actual standard to begin with. Rather, it was a way for enthusiasts to create new tokens on top of the Ethereum blockchain. However, the recent surge in the popularity of such tokens put pressure on Ethereum’s developers to officially institute ERC20. This is exactly what occurred thanks to the EIP20 adoption, which took place on Monday.

Ethereum Improvement Proposal 20 was originally created back in November of 2015. Ever since that time, ERC20-based tokens have gone from a niche market to a new way of fundraising for startups, projects, and coders alike. It is unfortunate that the concept of cryptocurrency ICOs faces a lot of criticism in different parts of the world, but this nascent industry was bound to attract some attention sooner or later.

The goal of EIP20 has always been twofold. On the one hand, it is designed in such a way that the ERC20 token standard is officially instituted as part of the Ethereum blockchain technology. That may sound trivial, but it is good to see the community using this token creation “tool” to build creative ways of raising money. One could almost no longer envision a world in which ERC20 tokens are not common, as they have become intertwined with Ethereum.

Additionally, EIP20 introduces a standard API for tokens within smart contracts. This means that tokens can be transferred accordingly and they may even be used in other projects as their own currency. Creating API capabilities for these ERC20 tokens is significant, as it allows any Ethereum-based token to be reused by other applications. We are not talking here about wallets and traditional exchanges, but rather decentralized exchange solutions of the present and future.

Over the past two years, there have been minor changes made to EIP20, which explains why it took so long for it to be “approved” in the first place. Considering how there are now dozens of different tokens adhering to ERC20 token specifications right now, it is only normal that the concept would be officially instituted moving forward. This move lends a bit more credibility to the concept of ERC20 tokens as a whole, which is pretty significant as well. It opens the door for further integration of ERC20 tokens in more applications and services moving forward.

There are now a total of five EIPs which have been formalized by the Ethereum developers to date. ERC20 joins a pretty selective club, which is a milestone on its own. ERC20 becoming an official token standard means there is no more uncertainty over how it will be implemented. This may lead to more ERC20 tokens being created in the future, although it remains to be seen how things will evolve in this regard.

AXA has unveiled a new flight delay insurance product that uses the public ethereum blockchain to store and process payouts.

That’s another session done out of Europe in our bitcoin price trading efforts and what else can we say other than what a day! Things are moving incredibly fast right now and it’s getting tough to stay on top of the market from a fundamental perspective. Price is being pushed all over the place by … Continue reading Bitcoin Price Watch; Here’s Our Take On The Day’s Action

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Rumor has it Bitmain will introduce new cryptocurrency mining equipment soon. The company is best known for their Bitcoin mining hardware these days. However, they also sell miners for Litecoin and Dash as we speak. The new rigs are mainly focused on proving GPU-based hardware for Ethereum mining. An interesting venture, although it remains to … Continue reading Bitmain Unveils two new GPU-based Mining Hardware Units

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Privacy-oriented Zcash is getting a speed boost with researchers investing a faster elliptic curve for generating zk-SNARKs transactions.