Day: October 1, 2017

Although the cryptocurrency ecosystem is pretty innovative, there are few groundbreaking innovations. Ripple has come up with a rather bold plan in a bid to keep wooing investors. The company itself focuses on being a bridge between fiat currency and digital currency. Their Ripple Transaction Protocol is bringing some much-needed competition to Bitcoin and Ethereum. … Continue reading Ripple Eyes SWIFT as its Primary Target to Overtake

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Everyone involved in the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency will readily agree there are plenty of challenges ahead. While most of the opposition comes from external forces, the currencies themselves are not exactly perfect either. While most people won’t like to admit it, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and most other currencies are not exempt from criminal activity. The FBI certainly has its hands full in this regard; that much is certain.

Digital Currencies and the FBI

Criminal activity is often associated with Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies these days. While not all of these claims are entirely true, it is evident there are a lot of incidents which do require a second glance. This is a bit of a problem for the FBI right now, as the law enforcement agency is currently attributing nearly 75% of its time to money laundering cases involving digital currencies.

That in itself is a pretty problematic development, although it is not entirely surprising. Moreover, this begs the question as to how many money laundering cases the FBI is actually investigating right now. Digital currency is still a very niche market at best and doesn’t even come close to regular money laundering cases involving traditional payment methods.

As one has come to expect, most of these cases involve ransomware or other types of malware demanding Bitcoin payments. It is certainly true we are seeing more ransomware attacks compared to five years ago, but that doesn’t necessarily mean more people are paying ransoms in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. In fact, the FBI has warned Americans multiple times to never meet demands made by malicious software developers.

What is rather problematic, however, is the mounting number of exchanges suffering hacks or other thefts. Since 2011, nearly 1 million BTC has been stolen in the process, according to the New York Times. That is a pretty spectacular number, considering it represents around 6% of all bitcoins currently in circulation. Then again, the majority of these coins have since been sold on the market and bought up by others; thus they are not “lost” by any means.

Additionally, the FBI is also somewhat concerned over how so few cryptocurrency exchanges successfully perform basic security precautions these days. Basic security checks and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures need to be improved, even though most major exchanges have been doing so for quite some time now. Importantly, none of this has caused interest in Bitcoin to dwindle by any means.  With more interest in cryptocurrency come more problems until people smarten up; that much is certain.

While all of these factors paint a rather negative picture, it remains to be seen how things will play out. Cryptocurrency is definitely here to stay and no one should expect otherwise. That doesn’t mean we don’t need improvements on the part of service providers and currency developers, though. Luckily, we see constant improvements being worked on, even though they may sometimes take a bit longer to come to market than originally expected.

Smart contracts are a major technological breakthrough that will affect our society substantially. So far, interfacing with said smart contracts is still a bit challenging for the average user. Even developers sometimes struggle to do so. This is where ChainLink comes into the picture, as it provides a fully decentralized oracle network called LINK.

ChainLink is an Interesting Venture

It is certainly true that smart contracts can make a big impact on our society as a whole, although a lot of use cases have yet to be identified. Interfacing with a smart contract on any platform is a major challenge right now. This is especially true for financial institutions and other organizations looking to explore this technology. Rather than using public blockchains, they will often develop a private and a permissioned version to use similar technologies. In the long run, these private and individual efforts still must communicate with one another, as well as with public blockchains in the future.

Connecting a smart contract to external sources is currently not possible in a convenient manner. Off-chain data and even APIs need to be introduced to smart contracts and vice versa. Currently, this is a major hindrance which can’t be resolved all that easily whatsoever. ChainLink may be the solution for all these problems in the future. That is what its developers are hoping, at least.

In fact, some new solutions are required to make this concept work in the first place. ChainLink is capable of connecting any smart contract to an external system and an API. This secure blockchain “middleware”, as the team calls it, provides the bridge for the gap between smart contracts, APIs, and any other form of external data one might need. While it may not be the perfect solution, it should be useful for at least 90% of current and future use cases.

The project revolves around a fully decentralized network of oracles which are compatible with Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is possible other blockchains will be supported in the future, but those are the two main points of focus for the time being. In a perfect future world, this new platform would allow anyone in the world to use the LINK network. All service providers would be able to securely provide smart contracts with access to key external data and potentially even off-chain payments. This latter point will be of particular interest to a lot of companies and service providers, for obvious reasons. Do keep in mind you will need LINK tokens to do so, though.

While it is commendable to see such a decentralized network, the use of proprietary tokens will not necessarily make it more appealing. This is the first solution of its kind, though, and we may see more competing services in the near future. ChainLink will certainly find its place in the market, as users can become node operators to monetize their API experience. It’s a very intriguing concept, although it remains to be seen how many companies will actually use it.

At the same event where Steve Wozniak will be discussing AI, Blockchain Technology will be given a seat at the head table. Industry leaders on its potential at Money20/20

Singapore – September 18, 2017 – MicroMoney, the lending services provider using blockchain technology to bank the world’s unbanked, announces today their token distribution campaign set to launch on 18 October, 2017. The visionary company has extensive plans to transform the economy in emerging markets. According to World Bank, 2 billion people around the world … Continue reading Lending Services Provider MicroMoney to Raise $30Mln through a Token Distribution Campaign in October, Helping Bring 2 Bln Unbanked into the New Crypto-Economy

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Even though most cryptocurrency markets were doing well a few hours ago, things are slowly taking a turn for the worse. Especially Bitcoin Cash is taking a small beating right now, resulting in a 4.52% loss over the past 24 hours. It is evident he Bitcoin price will struggle to get back to $450 over the coming hours, as reaching $400 seems more likely right now.

Bitcoin Cash Price Heads South

The past few weeks have been pretty interesting for the Bitcoin Cash price as a whole. Although the overall community is still divided on whether or not this altcoin has any specific purpose or not, the BCH community seems to grow every single week. With more service providers enabling support for this forked currency as of late, things aren’t looking all that bad either. However. there is still a very long way to go for Bitcoin Cash, that much no one can deny.

Over the past seven days, we have seen the Bitcoin Cash price come full circle. That is rather unusual, but it also shows the market movements of this altcoin are mainly dominated by speculators first and foremost. On September 25th, the Bitcoin Cash price was $420, which it is again today as well. It is pretty intriguing to see things evolve in such a direction, although we have seen pump and dump cycles affecting all altcoins this year.

The high point for Bitcoin Cash this week was when the price reached $465, which was considered to be a sign of moving to $500 soon. Unfortunately for BCH supporters, that trend never materialized whatsoever. More importantly, Bitcoin Cash has been losing ground compared to Bitcoin every single day, dropping from 0.114 BTC to 0.0983 BTC in a span of seven days. Considering how the Bitcoin price increased over this period, that is not entirely surprising, but still worth taking into account.

As a result, the Bitcoin Cash market cap is also taking a beating as we speak. In fact, the market cap for BCH is lower than it was exactly one week ago, despite some uptrends along the way. With a current cap of just below $7bn, things aren’t looking all that great for Bitcoin Cash. Then again, stranger things have happened in the cryptocurrency world, and we may see another BCH bounce in the next few days or weeks.

With $166m worth of 24-hour trading volume, the demand for Bitcoin Cash seemingly isn’t there whatsoever. HitBTC is the biggest market by volume, which is a very unusual scenario for any cryptocurrency. Bithumb and Bitfinex complete the top three, although far less trading volume respectively. All platforms do valuate BCH at the same price of $420, which is a somewhat positive sign. However, with this current momentum, dipping to $400 is more likely than reaching $450 again.

It will be interesting to see how the Bitcoin Cash price evolves in the next few hours and days. The current momentum is anything but positive, but we may still see some positive changes sooner rather than later. As the SegWit2x fork deadline draws near, it is possible we will see BCH losing market cap in favor of this currency once it is issued to the public. An intriguing future lies ahead, that much is certain.

Everyone in the cryptocurrency world is well aware that the SEC has been investigating initial coin offerings. While no regulatory measures have been announced, the institution recently found two such projects to have been committing fraud. It is possible this number will increase over time, as not every ICO is entirely honest by any means.

SEC Charges Two ICO Projects With Fraud

It is always a possibility that the initial coin offering in which one is interested turns out to be a complete scam. While there are plenty of people with good and honest intentions, the allure of raising millions of dollars can bring out the worst in people as well. With an ICO, there is hardly any way to vet the project itself other than by looking at the whitepaper and the team members. Even that information can be completely bogus, though, which makes the job even harder.

When push comes to shove and the initial coin offering turns out to be fraudulent, there is little action you can undertake. Especially in the US, there is no “safety net” for defrauded investors in the ICO world – at least not yet. That doesn’t mean the SEC isn’t going after those individuals who attempt to defraud investors, though.

Indeed, two such projects have been charged with fraud by the SEC earlier this week. These two projects revolved around diamonds and real estate. While we have seen several cryptocurrency-related real estate ICOs so far, those are seemingly perfectly legitimate. People who invested in either REcoin or DRC World, however, may want to get in touch with officials and see if there is a way for them to get their money back. Both companies are seemingly owned by the same individual, who goes by the name of Maksim Zaslavskiy.

It turns out both of Zaslavskiy’s ICOs are now classified as unregistered securities. Moreover, they don’t even exist in the first place, which makes it a clear effort to defraud investors. All those contributing to these initial coin offerings were promised “significant returns”, although they never received anything in exchange for their investment. Moreover, there was no clear communication about how the invested money would be used. As a result, the US government successfully froze Zaslavskiy’s assets, as well as those belonging to both companies.

It is evident this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to initial coin offerings of a fraudulent nature. So many different projects and teams have been trying to raise money and have done so successfully. It is a new bubble that will pop and have catastrophic effects when it does. Legitimate projects will survive, but the rest will simply disappear.

The bigger question is whether or not money will be returned to defrauded investors moving forward. Additionally, Zaslavskiy will have a lot of explaining to do and may face significant jail time for fraudulence. All of this goes to show people need to do their due diligence when looking at ICOs and not blindly invest money they can’t afford to lose. An ICO is not a get-rich-quick scheme in most cases, as legitimate projects take a lot of time to be properly developed.

Two startups, using ICO fundraising model, charged by SEC with alleged violation of the antifraud and registration provisions of the federal securities law

The legal treatment for the usage of ICOs will depend on the natural structure of the cryptographic tokens, according to a document on ASIC’s website.

Criminals have always been attracted to cryptocurrency for obvious reasons. This new form of money is rather valuable and can be considered to be pseudonymous as well. In India, some criminals tried to scam users by posing as Bitcoin traders. Thankfully, they were apprehended by the local police. It is not the first nor the … Continue reading Six Bitcoin Thieves get Arrested in India

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Dubai continues its love for Blockchain technology as it announces the creation of its own cryptocurrency, emCash.

Over 12 governments and currency systems in the Caribbean region connected by a new Blockchain payments startup.

Deloitte and DNV GL, one of the world’s largest classification societies, are taking non-financial uses of blockchain tech into uncharted waters.