Day: September 29, 2017

Using Blockchain to power loyalty programs can lead to a number of advantages over traditional systems. Check out some examples.

The top regulator for US credit unions said in a new report that cryptocurrencies pose both risk and reward for institutions in the industry.

When Kik Interactive announced its cryptocurrency ICO, a lot of people were taken by surprise. Having an established company embrace this new way of raising money is pretty significant as a whole. As one has come to expect, this ICO was highly successful overall, as the company raised nearly US$100 million. There was massive global interest in this ICO; that much is evident.

Kin ICO is a Major Success

We have documented the concept of the Kin ICO several times before on this platform. Its parent company, Kik Interactive, is best known for its popular chat platform. However, the goal is always to improve upon the existing business model and come up with some new features. Introducing a native token for this platform makes a lot of sense in this regard. The Kin token distribution event concluded not long ago, and it has been a major success.

More specifically, the token distribution event saw nearly US$100 million raised in short order. While cryptocurrency ICOs have a history of selling out quickly, that doesn’t mean every project will raise dozens of millions of dollars. The Kik team successfully secured close to US$100 million from over 10,000 investors spread out over 117 different countries. This goes to show the global appeal cryptocurrency ICOs have right now. Traditional crowdfunding methods have enjoyed similar success, but ICOs are still in a class of their own right now.

Indeed, the Kin token sale is one of the most successful ICOs to date. Although other companies have raised over US$200 million in a similar fashion, that was never the objective of the Kin token distribution event. Raising close to US$100 million is pretty spectacular in its own way, as there is no need to raise more money than is needed. Due to its success, the Kin token is also already one of the most widely distributed digital tokens in the world today.

Kik CEO and founder Ted Livingston commented as follows:

“We wanted as many people as possible to participate in the Kin token distribution event. Based on the outpouring of support leading up to and during the event, we clearly achieved that goal. We envision Kin as the foundation for a decentralized ecosystem of digital services, starting with Kik, and we couldn’t be more thrilled than to build this new future together with you.”

Issuing an ERC20 token on top of the Ethereum blockchain has been a smart decision by the Kik team. This token will be integrated into the Kik chat application and serve as its primary transaction currency moving forward. Kin is a token for all Kik users around the world. Considering that this chat application is used by millions of people worldwide, the token will certainly find new use cases in the future.

According to the team, Kin has the potential to become the most adopted and used cryptocurrency in the world. Moreover, the Kin Rewards Engine will foster the creation and development of a worldwide and decentralized ecosystem of digital services. Interesting things are on the horizon for Kin and Kik; that much is certain. With this crowdsale having completed successfully, we inch one step closer toward global mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Bitmoney.eu is an online payment platform aiming to make the process of buying bitcoins easier for customers across the EU. Bitmoney.eu believes that anyone and everyone should be able to acquire bitcoin. Bitcoin guarantees that your money will not disappear, ever. It is incredibly safe and secure to hold as private money, as well as making transactions.

One of the unique features about Bitmoney.eu is that we will automatically create an e-wallet for you. Unlike many other online payment platforms and exchanges, there is no need to create a wallet before you go to buy. Bitmoney.eu works with the notable and well-trusted Spectrocoin in order to create secure wallets for new customers. However, customers are free to use other, non-Spectrocoin wallets; you can also checkout with a wallet if you already have one.

Bitmoney.eu dares to distinguish themselves from other online purchasing platforms by offering a very diverse selection of payment methods, and is proud to have the SOFORT payment option integrated with their platform.

SOFORT is the direct payment market leader in Germany, working with several online e-commerce shops and providers in not only Germany, but also Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Spain, France, the UK, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Today, the majority of German merchants online are partnered with SOFORT services, which are used by approximately 45 million customers.

The benefits customers get to experience when they check out with SOFORT is that they are capable of using their own online banking details protected by high security, multi-level authentication processes, making the purchasing process safe and secure. Transaction are also direct and binding, which is much faster than the traditional payments made via bank transfers.

Overall, Bitmoney.eu is an easy online payment platform that focuses on simplifying the process for European customers to buy bitcoins. Bitmoney.eu launched earlier in 2017, and currently accepts popular European payment methods like SOFORT, as well as Giropay, iDEAL, and many others.

In the future, keep an eye out as Bitmoney.eu is aiming to incorporate more payment methods including credit and debit cards and other well-known payment methods like NETELLER, Skrill and EPS.

You can purchase bitcoin in less than a few minutes today by visiting Bitmoney.eu. If you do not have a wallet, a Spectrocoin wallet will be created for you, no extra hassle. However, you have the freedom to checkout with your own personal wallet, given you already have one.

Visit our site today at Bitmoney.eu to experience the fast and reliable service for yourself!

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

Multiple cryptocurrency projects are focusing on coming up with ways to provide decentralized storage. One of those projects goes by the name of Sia, which has made a rather big impact so far. Based on its latest development update, it appears the integration with Duplicati is complete. This means Duplicati users can now select Sia as a backup destination for all their computer files. It’s an intriguing development, to say the least.

Sia Keeps Making Big Moves

Making decentralized file storage solutions relevant is not as easy as one might think. That’s in part because there is a fair bit of competition in the cloud storage market already. Amazon, Google Drive, and Dropbox are just a few of the companies making a name for themselves in this regard. However, there is some fierce competition from cryptocurrency-related projects like Storj and Sia, to name a few. Even though those projects reward users for sharing their excess hard disk space with the network, it remains difficult for any one platform to gain major traction.

That is slowly coming to change in the case of Sia. Thanks to its bounty program, the company has successfully enabled integration with Duplicati. For those who are unaware of this service, Duplicati is an open-source backup software solution. One can use it to back up their entire computer to external solutions such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, and now Sia as well. Everything can be done through the browser to facilitate user-friendliness first and foremost. This makes the concept a lot more approachable for non-technical users as well.

Interestingly enough, this integration was first developed by a Sia community member. The proposal was submitted to the Duplicati team, which promptly integrated the concept into their code. It is good to see things move along so quickly when it comes to integrating new features. That has not always been the case to this point, especially for projects related to cryptocurrency. It will be interesting to see how many Duplicati users decide to explore the Sia backup option.

There is good reason as to why the Duplicati team values Sia integration. The open source solution specializes in compressing large numbers of files into a minute amount of zip folders. Moreover, the Sia daemon handles this process a lot smoother than either Amazon S3 or Dropbox. One could say Duplicati and Sia are a perfect match for one another in this regard, although it is still pretty early in the game. The integration itself is particularly significant for Sia, as it brings more use cases to the project as a whole.

Sia users who are interested in exploring this new option will need to run a project instance on their computer or server. They will also need a funded wallet with contracts set up. Then they must install Duplicati on the same computer or server to configure a new backup. There is no need to encrypt the backup through the GUI, as Sia does this automatically before uploading the data. It is not an overly complicated process by any means and should get people up and running within a few minutes.

It will be interesting to see how this new integration affects the Sia project as a whole. While no one will deny that this is a major step forward for the project, it remains to be seen if people will actually explore the new option moving forward. Having more backup options at one’s disposal is never a bad thing. This is especially true when the backup solution in question is fully decentralized. Things are looking pretty good for Sia right now; that much is certain.

The post Creating Intrinsic Value in Cryptocurrencies appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Mining is one of the most popular ways of making money on the Internet today. Having appeared not so long ago, it is rapidly gaining popularity, because it creates ample opportunities for obtaining additional incomes of impressive sizes.

Mining is the process of generating a crypto currency in the “World Wide Web”, for which it is necessary to install the appropriate video card and software on the computer or buy special equipment. Carrying out some mathematical calculations, you can earn crypto currency, the output of which is carried out through the electronic wallets or other convenient ways for the user.

In order to create the conditions for professional mining, minimize the risks and costs associated with the individual generation of crypto currency at home, ToTheMoon (Winthrop, Washington, USA) has developed and launched a project of the same name aimed at providing hosting services for mining on the mining farm ToTheMoon.

About the project

ToTheMoon is a project within the framework of which a service for organization of mining on a turnkey basis is provided for representatives all over the world.

To minimize customer’s costs, the company introduces a tokenization procedure. Based on the existing capacities of the mining farm, 51.75 million TMT tokens will be issued during the ICO, of which 45 million will be issued for potential customers.

What is a TMT token and what is its purpose?

Each bought TMT token provides the right to use the facilities of the ToTheMoon mining farm without paying a rent for the next 25 years and is an equivalent to 0.5 W of energy consumption of the miner (equipment for mining). It means that in order to get a place on the mining farm it is necessary to buy the number of tokens that will be obtained when multiplying 0.5 W by the figure representing the total amount of energy consumption by the customer’s equipment.

When can you buy a TMT token?

You can buy tokens within 56 days:

• September 5-19, 2017 – pre-sale;
• September 20 – October 31, 2017 – the initial offer (primary official sale).

Depending on the date of purchase, the cost of one token will be from 0.5 to 1.1 dollar USA.

What kind of crypto currency can be mined on a ToTheMoon mining farm?

ToTheMoon Company offers its clients the opportunity to generate the following crypto currencies:

• ETH;
• BTC;
• BCH;
• LTC;
• DASH.

Their list can be further revised and expanded.

What is Included in the Standard Package of Services?

The standard service package includes:

• purchase of equipment and its installation;
• hosting on the mining farm ToTheMoon;
• maintenance and repair of equipment;
• maintenance of personal blockchain.

ToTheMoon Company provides customers with the opportunity to place on the ToTheMoon mining farm miners, purchased from the company’s official website, as well as the customer’s own equipment. Installation of miners bought on the company’s website is free of charge.

The advantage of cooperation with ToTheMoon is the lack of expenditure of maintenance and electrical energy charges due to bought tokens. The minimum hosting pay is 3.5 cents per 1 kW/hour for the token holders.

ToTheMoon project official website tothemoonimus.com

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

The US State Department will host a forum on blockchain on October 10, according to a new announcement.

Very few people actively operate cryptocurrency faucets these days. That isn’t just because the rewards are pretty small, but also that such projects mainly rely on donations from the community. Things are different in the Monero camp, as someone has come up with a decent use case for the Coin Hive script. The Monero Mining Faucet allows anyone to mine XMR through a browser for their own purposes. It is an interesting way of promoting Monero for the right reasons.

The Monero Mining Faucet Embraces In-Browser Mining

Half a dozen stories involving nefarious Monero mining scripts have surfaced on the internet over these past few weeks. In virtually every case, a website embedded the Coin Hive mining script to generate XMR on behalf of site operators or criminals. While The Pirate Bay experimented with this tool for legitimate purposes, someone embedded it in two CBS websites not long ago. It is evident this “business model” receives overwhelmingly negative attention these days, but that is only to be expected given these attacks.

Thankfully, there may be a small light at the end of this unexpectedly dark tunnel. One Monero community member has found a legitimate use case for the Coin Hive script which will promote the benefits of Monero mining to more people. More specifically, the Monero Mining Faucet has been created to let anyone mine XMR using a wallet linked to their browser session. This effectively allows people to mine XMR without having to set up anything and without downloading additional software.

As one would expect, this venture allows people to mine Monero using their CPU. It does not appear GPU mining is enabled right now, although that may be done on purpose. This mining faucet allows everyone in the world to mine marginal amounts of XMR with the hardware at their disposal. Every computer has a CPU, but a lot of devices only have onboard graphics cards, which are not all that powerful.

Even though this Monero mining faucet makes mining XMR a lot easier, it should only be used when one has access to free electricity. No one who mines at home will receive any significant amount of XMR by using this website whatsoever. Then again, that was never the purpose of this particular project, which is only to be expected. It is not designed to replace traditional mining either, mind you. It is merely a solution to let people earn some XMR rather than rely on more traditional faucets which pay next to nothing.

What makes this project so appealing is its low payout threshold. Users can request smaller payouts – on the same level as traditional payouts – to receive their XMR pretty quickly. Getting small amounts of XMR into the hands of as many people as people is the number-one priority of this project. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that the developers are not making any profit whatsoever. Any money generated from the site goes back directly to the users. There was never a plan or intent to make money from this site, nor should there be.

However, if people do generate a small amount of XMR and leave their balance untouched for a month, the XMR will be reclaimed by the developers. This is not designed to make anybody rich, though, but it will make it slightly easier to create a small pool of spare funds to process payouts even faster. All things considered, this is a very interesting idea and one that may revitalize the concept of cryptocurrency faucets altogether.

Human capital is the hardest thing to define. For the talented, it’s not easy to know what one’s talents are worth, or who might need them. For those in need of human capital/talent, it’s not easy to find talent or know how much it should cost.

Sensay is a company which built a bot to put you in touch with people who might be able to solve your business problems. Sensay allows you to ask for three types of help: advice, inspiration, or conversation. Here is an example of how it works:

The Sensay Bot system has been running for two years, and now that the firm has seen the value of tokenized systems and ICO fundraising, they are implementing such a platform in order to incentivize participants. They’re calling it the SENSE token, and it’s going to make waves in a number of ways.

For starters, application developers will now have an affordable means to acquire a wealth of human data through Humans.ai, an API the project is offering developers. Conversations can be analyzed, bots can be improved, and human capital resources can be leveraged in real time. People who are taking part in the conversations will passively or actively earn income since the developers and firms who need the data will be paying for it. Imagine being able to operate your Linux Help Desk just by opening up your favorite chat client and making yourself available, and getting paid on top of it. StackOverflow.com and the rest of the self-help sites will quickly lose their best contributors when monetary incentives are capable of replacing social ones.

This is the kind of technology the blockchain is built for – it finds something that could not be done another way, and enables people to do things they could not previously do out for less-than-good reasons. Students struggling to pay bills will have a new way to apply the knowledge they already have. Stay-at-home parents and unemployed IT workers will be empowered to continue earning something – whether intended as such or not, Sense and things like Sense will unwittingly do a great deal to help people whose jobs are being rapidly replaced by automation.

SENSE tokens will have value because of small businesses looking for employees, big data farms looking to improve their algorithms, and a wealth of underemployed people who already contribute to various knowledge farms, including Sensay, which has over 3 million users and has had more than 20 million interactions.

The SENSE token sale will launch Monday, October 16th, at https://makesense.com. 275 million tokens will be made available for a total raise of $25 million, making the cost of each token roughly 9 cents. SENSE’s presale is available for developers first at [email protected].  SENSE is likely to sell out fast, so it is suggested that one join their mailing list if they are interested in buying tokens during the sale instead of paying premium at market.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

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