Day: October 15, 2017

Tomorrow is an important day in the history of Ethereum. As most people know, tomorrow will be the day on which the first hard fork of the Metropolis upgrade takes place. Unlike the previous big hard fork, there will be no currency or blockchain split this time. It’s an interesting milestone for Ethereum, as the … Continue reading First of Two Ethereum Metropolis Hard Forks Takes Place Tomorrow

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The Lightning Network is one of those big developments a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts have been looking forward to. While this technology is still in development as we speak, some significant progress has been made in the past few weeks. A desktop application for LND has been released to the public, which marks an important milestone for both Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

LND Desktop App is now Available

A few weeks ago, we touched on the concept of LND, which is one of the many Lightning Network implementations in development right now. What makes this particular project so interesting is how it effectively provides an interface for both users and developers. In its current implementation, the Lightning Network is still in the early stages of development, and ensuring one can benefit from its new features will not be easy under any circumstances.

That being said, the LND developers have made some major progress so far with their client. More specifically, a test version of LND is now available to desktop users all over the world. The demo wallet is part of a two-week testing blitz designed to collect feedback and identify any lingering bugs that need to be addressed. It will be interesting to see if people come up with anything that needs to be improved upon.

It is important to note this LND test wallet has cross-platform functionality and will work on Windows and Linux for the time being. There is no Macintosh support, but considering this is an early alpha build, no one should have expected anything else. This doesn’t mean we won’t see MacOS support in the future, mind you, but for now, it is not necessarily on the agenda for the developers.

Additionally, it is worth noting the desktop demo app is fully SegWit-enabled. Even though Segregated Witness activated on the Bitcoin network quite some time ago, very few wallets and service providers have integrated it so far. Something needs to change in this regard, and it seems the LND desktop client will do exactly that. We can only hope to see more wallets do the exact same moving forward.

According to the team’s blog post, the Lightning protocol specifications are almost complete as well. For now, the goal is to ensure compatibility with this desktop app for the next two weeks, but it is possible we will see more support being added in the future. After two weeks’ time, the team will switch over to a regular release cycle. No specific deadlines have been provided in this regard, but things are expected to continue to move along nicely.

Last but not least, it is worth pointing out that the Lightning Desktop App is powered by Neutrino. For those who are unaware, Neutrino is open source and is packaged as a new client operation mode for Bitcoin. It will serve as the new backend for LND for quite some time to come. It also allows users to take full advantage of Lightning applications without needing to fully sync their nodes. This should effectively lower the barrier to entry, although it will be interesting to see how things play out in this regard.

The pre-ICO of Flipz, a smart e-commerce platform based on blockchain smart contracts, has just started on October 12, 2017. The first decentralized e-commerce platform is in the process of raising funds for development, cover marketing expenses and to pay the staff. As a part of the crowdsale, Flipz has issued hundred million tokens for sale during the … Continue reading Flipz Aims to be the First Decentralized E-commerce Platform

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Bitcoin Press Release: Cryptocurrency payments platform UTRUST has announced the launch of its ICO on November 2 2017 (2pm UTC), after making firm progress in gaining regulatory compliance in Switzerland, one of Western Europe’s fastest growing blockchain hubs.

October 15, 2017, Zug, Switzerland: Building on progress in solidifying its business structure, UTRUST is pleased to confirm that its public ICO will now commence on November 2, 2017 (2pm UTC). UTRUST tokens will be up for sale at a base rate of $0.065 each. The ICO will run for a maximum of seven days or until a hard cap of $49 million is reached, or until sold out, whichever occurs first. No further tokens will ever be issued and any unsold tokens will be burnt, permanently reducing the total supply, currently at 1 billion. This ICO represents the final round of fundraising for a blockchain payments system targeting some 2.5 billion unbanked.

UTRUST is being incorporated as a Swiss GmbH (essentially a limited liability company) and remains fully committed to achieving adherence to all relevant rules and regulations by financial entities within operational jurisdiction in Switzerland. This is in line with UTRUST’s mission to operate as a legally compliant and future-proof platform, in recognition of the impending need for implementation of KYC/AML procedures which will be the standard for regulated cryptocurrency exchanges.

As such, UTRUST tokens will not offer redemption rights and cannot be used as a means of payment, pending completion of regulatory qualification with Swiss authority FINMA. The UTRUST whitepaper and terms of use are currently being updated to reflect these developments, while initial steps towards the KYC/AML onboarding process will be announced soon.

About UTRUST

UTRUST has currently raised $3.5 Million through private early investors and the sold out pre-ICO, with the public ICO scheduled for November 2^nd 2017.

UTRUST is the world’s first cryptocurrency payments platform to implement consumer protections on a mass scale. The company is building a global PayPal–like payments platform with extensive cryptocurrency support.

UTRUST’s end goal is to provide all the benefits of fast, secure, convenient, and inexpensive cryptocurrency transactions, in tandem with the world’s first cryptocurrency payment protections, which consumers need to fully embrace blockchain technology en masse.

With 2.5 billion unbanked people in Emerging Markets yet to benefit from financial inclusion, UTRUST is also planning to build the bridge to enable the unbanked worldwide to access the mainstream global financial system.

UTRUST ICO and Tokens

UTRUST’s public ICO will be held on November 2nd. The company will use the collected funds to establish key industry partnerships and to develop the world’s first PayPal-like cryptocurrency payments platform. The ERC20 compatible tokens are created over the Ethereum protocol, and can be used as a means of payment on UTRUST’s payment gateway along with other cryptocurrencies.

UTRUST’s token can be used for making zero fee payments to the thousands of merchants accepting any cryptocurrency via UTRUST, and be traded against other currencies on supported exchange platforms.

UTRUST will allocate a certain portion of the revenues to buyback and destroy the tokens in circulation. Being a deflationary currency by design, the demand for UTRUST tokens will increase with time, which combined with buyback should lead to appreciation in its market value.

To learn more about UTRUST’s ICO please go to: https://utrust.io/ico

The Team

UTRUST is backed by a highly experienced team from various sectors including corporate management, startups, payments, cryptocurrency development, law, finance, and computer science. Some of the prominent members of the team include:

Nuno Correia, CEO

Nuno Correia is an early cryptocurrency investor who has been involved in the cryptomarkets since the beginning of 2011. Having founded multiple B2C businesses in the past, Correia has a background in Law and Marketing, and his passion lies in transforming the future of digital payments.

Filipe Castro, CIO

Filipe Castro holds a business degree from MSENG and is passionate about disruptive technologies. He has experience developing electronic payment systems and other software solutions during the early days of his career. Castro is engaged in business development and strategic development of new ventures.

Artur Goulão, CTO

Artur Goulão comes with previous experience in the payments industry. He has previously donned the role of a CTO in one of leading digital payment platform and is currently serving as the Head of Development at a Swiss-based Cybersecurity company. With a background in computer science from IST and MIT, Goulão is well-acquainted with both classical and blockchain smart contract based approach.

Roberto Machado, CPO

Founder and Product Manager at several startups prior to UTRUST, he has been leading different teams to build highly-reliable software products, with a focus on the end user experience. Previously, he has worked together with major international companies such as AT&T, Betfair, Airtel, and Uphold, being responsible for the vision outline, goals and product strategy of solutions used by millions of users.

Other significant team members include Luis Ferreira as Head of Engineering; Laura Esteves as Head of Operations; Joao Ferreira as Head of Design; Nick Olender as Head of Sales and Partnerships; and Francisco Baila as Product Designer. UTRUST has a team of software engineers like Miguel Palhas, Gabriel Poca, Ronaldo Sousa, Fernando Mendes, Bruno Azevedo, Pedro Costa, and Joao Justo.

UTRUST’s diverse advisory team includes Francisco Maia, Francisco Cruz, Joao Paulo, Sergio Viana, Marc Howland, David Dryan, Daniel Pierce and Sascha Benz.

Learn more about UTRUST: https://utrust.io
Read the UTRUST Whitepaper: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/utrust/UTRUST-whitepaper-v1.0.1.pdf
Visit UTRUST on bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2078433.0
Learn more about UTRUST’s ICO: https://utrust.io/ico
Follow UTRUST on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UTRUST_Official
Join UTRUST on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/utrust.io/
Join the UTRUST Slack conversation: https://utrust-official.slack.com/
Join UTRUST on Telegram at: https://t.me/utrustofficial
Read UTRUST’s posts on Medium: https://medium.com/@UTRUST

Media Contact
Contact Name: Nuno Correia, UTRUST CEO
Contact Email: [email protected]
Contact Phone: +41 22 518 70 77
Location: Zug, Switzerland

Watch UTRUST‘s new video here:

UTRUST is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article.

Will Russia create its own cryptocurrency? Read about CryptoRuble.

Atomic swaps are all the rage among cryptocurrencies right now, by the looks of things. After a successful swap between Litecoin and Decred, we have seen similar projects focus on Ethereum and Bitcoin. Amid all of this is Viacoin, an altcoin which also wants to get involved in cross-chain atomic swaps. A new feature has been introduced as part of its Clearinghouse tool to help make this become a reality.

Viacoin Introduces Atomic Swap Functionality

Contrary to what most people think, the purpose of Viacoin is not necessarily to be part of an atomic swap itself. It is certainly possible we will see Viacoin-to-other-altcoin swaps in the near future, but for now, that is not necessarily the team’s objective. Instead, the developers are expanding the Clearinghouse functionality in such a way that it can be used as a “spill” in the world of cross-chain swaps.

Viacoin’s Clearinghouse feature has always been designed to allow for peer-to-peer trading on the native blockchain. This currency is different from Bitcoin and virtually all other altcoins in the market right now. This new project also allows for a lot of innovation in the long run, including this new atomic swap-related effort. With the atomic swap implementation having been tested successfully, things are looking promising. Moreover, the developers successfully exchanged VIA for LTC in the process, which is a big first step.

Under the hood, it appears this atomic swap implementation works very similarly to the one used to swap Decred and Litecoin. That isn’t entirely surprising, considering all three of these coins share some similarities which serve to make the process quicker. It is also an on-chain swap implementation, rather than the faster off-chain method. Then again, it is certainly possible we will see off-chain atomic swaps in the future, though the latest developments will need some time to come to market first.

For now, it seems the focus is on exchanging Viacoin with “compatible” currencies, all of which also recently completed cross-chain exchanges of their own. Right now, those coins include Decred, Litecoin, and Vertcoin. This doesn’t necessarily mean we will see a Viacoin to Bitcoin swap or anything similar in the near future. However, we have learned that it is possible to exchange between blockchains with very different architectures as well, as the Zerocoin mixer is currently doing exactly that.

Moreover, due to Viacoin’s Clearinghouse implementation, it may effectively become the “bridge” between all the blockchains of the world needed to provide atomic swaps. It would be the same as converting an altcoin to Bitcoin in order to buy Ether, for example, but without having to go through a centralized platform or an intermediary. Some people may claim services such as Changelly and ShapeShift do exactly that already, yet they still require intermediaries to do so. Atomic swaps are very different in this regard.

Whether or not Viacoin can play an important role in this regard remains to be seen. The possibility is there for the taking, even though the end goal is still to complete atomic swaps between all different currencies directly. It may take months, or even years, until that becomes feasible. Until then, we will need some form of a temporary solution, and Clearinghouse may be the way to go in that regard. It is an interesting development to keep an eye on; that much is certain.

Imagine a group of exceptional individuals with vast experience in using cutting-edge technology to solve unique problems for leading companies. Now, picture this group using their experience and skills to develop Moonshots: high-risk, high-impact projects to shape the future.

Imagine all the intellectual property generated for those projects (hardware specs and patents, software and code, contracts and managerial structures, and just about everything else involved) progressively being auctioned, sold at extremely low prices, and then distributed for free within a digital platform.

Imagine this same group bringing together 20 platform users (as selected by the community) for a month long summit of mentorships, training sessions, guest lectures, workshops and more. Learning, integrating and generating powerful networks.

That’s ExHasta, and it’s just announced its token sale.

Tokens, what and why

Tokens are just like coins. They represent participation in ExHasta (EXH), but not in the form of ownership. Instead, EXH Tokens directly represent the content value of ExHasta: intellectual property can be bought for EXH Tokens, and applying for summit participation requires EXH Tokens. Individuals, collectives, companies, and firms can use them to make use of technological and managerial solutions crafted at ExHasta. Investors can use them to obtain returns based on the explosive potential value of such intellectual property.

The main and cheapest way to obtain tokens is through ExHasta’s initial coin offering.

Currently the only other way to obtain tokens is:

One sweet example

Picture a bakery that’s about open for business. Instead of offering a percentage of returns or property, like in all traditional investment schemes, it offers “Sweetcoin” in exchange for funding. Sweetcoin is just like money in that it’s safe to use, quite hard to counterfeit, and can be digitally traded . But one doesn’t use Sweetcoin to buy biscuits and pastry. Sweetcoin is used to purchase recipes, moulds, cooking instructions, contracts with purchasers, budgets, and everything else. This is how EXH Tokens work, by allowing bakers around the world to fetch the value of those intellectual goods, so they can focus on one thing: baking.

What’s the ICO?

An Initial Coin Offering is just the process by which ExHasta, like the bakery of the example, and many other companies, obtain their funding. They create digital tokens (which work like currency) that represent content value (not property) and offer them for funding. By using their tokens as investment tools, they make the most of network effects, because they obtain funding while also creating a network of users. It’s safe, it’s efficient, and transparent. But does it work?

In 2017 only, ICOs have raised more than $2.3 billion USD. They have successfully funded sectors that include commerce, network file storage, gaming, banking, computing, and just about everything. If this trend continues, experts have argued, ICOs will be the investment mechanism of the future.

Tokens are not just user-coins, they are tools for investment. Their level of return depends on the value they represent. EXH Tokens represent the power of the intellectual property generated and the quality of the training and network offered to users. Since ExHasta develops Moonshot technology, its products will be highly innovative and aimed at making the biggest impact possible, like an AI-powered real-time public transit system. Patents, source code and hardware specs for this system will all be valued in EXH Tokens, which can be used to acquire them or traded for other currencies.

How to deliver?

function(core) is the multi-linguistic, international, transdisciplinary collective behind ExHasta. It’s a team of scientists, engineers, writers, musicians, photographers, entrepreneurs and more, with decades of experience in innovation and cutting-edge technology. Their ability to develop and distribute Moonshot technology rests on their multiple backgrounds and flexibility. function(core) has implemented innovative solutions to clients such as Nike, Google, Kanye West, NASA, and many more.

Elburz Sorkhabi, founder of the function(core) team, and CEO at ExHasta, seeks to change Moonshot funding to bring world-changing innovation to at least a billion people by 2021. Elburz is also the man behind nVoid, a highly successful art-tech symbiont launched in 2011.

If you want to know more about the team behind ExHasta, and participate in its token sale, head to www.ExHasta.com. Pre-sale, offering a 30% discount on token price, begins on October 19, 19:00 UTC and will end on Oct 26. The crowdsale will being on October 27, 19:00 UTC and continue until November 24.

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The Ethereum hard fork Byzantium is about to take place on Oct. 16, and users are advised to upgrade their clients – upgrade links included!

The Monero developers and the community continue to make major strides. According to a new whitepaper issued by the Monero Research Lab, subaddresses will be coming to this ecosystem pretty soon. It is an interesting venture, to say the least, as it will allow for the extension of wallet addresses. There are some clear benefits to using subaddresses, and it doesn’t appear this functionality is present in any other cryptocurrency right now.

Monero Subaddresses are a big Deal

The way most people think of a cryptocurrency wallet address is rather straightforward. It is generated to send, store, and receive currency. Users can generate as many different wallet addresses as they like, assuming their client allows for it. Some altcoins even allow for stealth addresses, which are for one-time use only. All of those features work just fine, but there is room for future improvement as well. After all, there are plenty of innovative projects being worked on in the world of cryptocurrency.

The Monero Research Lab has drafted a new whitepaper which explores the concept of subaddresses. This type of address is an extension of a wallet address generated by the user. All subaddresses are to be derived from the same master wallet address. More importantly, to the outside world, there will be no link between the subaddresses and the master wallet address. Monero is one of the currencies focusing on privacy and anonymity, which explains why its team is taking this particular approach.

Any incoming transaction can be scanned to determine whether or not it belongs to one’s subaddresses. It is a major improvement in the privacy department, to say the very least. We have seen a similar development in the Bitcoin world, as BIP32 introduced a similar feature. It is this particular feature which leads some people to believe that Bitcoin has privacy-oriented aspects, even though that is not entirely correct. For Monero users, the introduction of subaddresses removes the need to generate new wallets with new seeds every single time. It is a big step forward that shouldn’t be overlooked.

While this whitepaper looks pretty promising, there is still some work to be done. Integrating subaddresses with Monero transactions will not be easy. In fact, the current implementation requires a change in how transactions are handled entirely. It is unclear how long this process will take, but it is good to see the details outlined in the whitepaper. The end goal is to ensure that no Monero wallets can be linked in any way, and subaddresses are a logical next step in this regard.

Moreover, the Monero team is still pondering how they can make subaddresses efficient enough to be used by the entire community. This is a bigger challenge than it seems, although the whitepaper hints that a trivial number of elliptic curve operations are needed. Scanning incoming transactions for ownership is no more difficult than scanning for ownership by a single standard wallet address. It’s a very efficient solution in theory, although more testing is needed prior to drawing any conclusions.

All of this goes to show the development of any cryptocurrency is a 24/7 job. One can’t just create an altcoin and expect it to be successful without ever introducing new features. The Monero team is working on a lot of different projects as we speak, with some of them being far more technical in nature compared to others. Subaddresses are a rather technical change, to say the very least, and they may not matter to everyone. However, it is a feature with tremendous potential for people who truly value transaction privacy.

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has posted a tweet thanking United States government officials and the financial institutions that refused services to Wikileaks for driving them to invest in bitcoin during 2010. Assange’s tweet indicates that Wikileaks’ bitcoin holdings have seen gains of over 50,000%.

Also Read: Your Bitcoins Open to CIA and Criminals, Heed Wikileaks’ Warning

Julian Assange Has Thanked the U.S. Government for Forcing Wikileaks to Invest in Bitcoin During 2010

On the 14th of October, Julian Assange expressed his “deepest thanks to the US government, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman for pushing Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, AmEx, Moneybookers, et al, into erecting an illegal banking blockade against @Wikileaks starting in 2010.” Assange stated that the financial embargo “caused [Wikileaks] to invest in Bitcoin,” which has generated the organization a more than “50000% return.”

Wikileaks became the subject of financial blockage in 2010 after the organization released classified U.S diplomatic cables pertaining to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in November of that year. As a consequence, Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union collectively refused to provide financial services to the organization. As a consequence, Wikileaks was forced to incorporate bitcoin into its financial operations, including accepting private donations in the form of bitcoin.

The Organization Has Been Donated Approximately 4,025 Bitcoins Since 2010

The prospect of Wikileaks adopting bitcoin during the infancy of cryptocurrency was met with mixed reactions by key figures within the bitcoin community. In response to a bitcointalk.org forum comment stating “…bring it on. Let’s encourage Wikileaks to use bitcoins”, the creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, requested that Wikileaks avoid adopting bitcoin, in what would come to be his second last post on the forum. On December 5, 2010, Satoshi wrote “no, don’t ‘bring it on’. The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to Wikileaks not to try to use bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.”

During August 2012, it was reported that Wikileaks’ had received more than 1,100 bitcoin donations – at that time equating to over $32,000 USD. With the price of bitcoin then sitting at approximately $10 USD, Wikileaks owned more than 3200 bitcoin within two years of accepting the cryptocurrency.

Last week, the price of a single bitcoin broke out above $5000 USD for the first time ever, before setting a new all-time high of $5920 USD on Bitfinex. The dramatic breakout follows several weeks of consolidation after a sudden retracement of almost 40%, which was triggered by the initiation of China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Do you think that Wikileaks’ adoption of bitcoin was ultimately beneficial to the bitcoin ecosystem in the long term? Or do you think that Wikileaks shouldn’t have risked drawing the attention of regulators during bitcoin’s infancy? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, WikiLeaks.org

Do you agree with us that Bitcoin is the best invention since sliced bread? Thought so. That’s why we are building this online universe revolving around anything and everything Bitcoin. We have a store. And a forum. And a casino, a pool and real-time price statistics.

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Cash Poker Pro, the Ethereum-based blockchain  poker platform, is attempting to solve some of the major underlying issues of existing casinos and online poker applications.

Over the past decade, through the rising popularity of mobile poker applications and online casinos, an increasing number of users have started to play professional poker online, relying on intermediaries and third party service providers.

According to the Cash Poker Pro development team, players in casinos and online poker platforms are often required to pay over 8 percent in transaction fees to have rewards and money that they have obtained through their games moved to personal accounts.

“Players may have problem withdrawing their funds from the system due to various reasons. For example, they might not have played enough rounds in order to be given their money back, or they cannot prove that their deposit is legitimate, or they become accused of cheating, or the casino closes. And this situation is not accidental,” explained Cash Poker Pro.

For online casino users, the opaque and inefficient systems that have been implemented to handle financial activities and transactions are highly unreliable, because they utilize traditional financial systems such as bank transfers and electronic wallets to process payments. With payment processing, currency conversion, and maintenance costs, fees for online users add up to large amounts. As the whitepaper of Cash Poker Pro read:

“Firstly, online casinos are subject to laws on money laundering. Such regulations are present in all jurisdictions and require that the operator (the traditional online casino) should make sure that money deposited by a user is not of illegal origin before transferring it to the user’s account. Secondly, all online casinos use traditional means of payment such as electronic wallets and bank transfers, which are subject to the legislation of the countries where the processing centers are located. As a result, casinos charge fees for payment processing, currency conversion etc., and the amount of fees is usually quite big.”

Through immutable, transparent, and decentralized systems, Cash Poker Pro is targeting the abovementioned issues of online poker rooms and providing a more efficient and trustworthy platform for poker players. The Cash Poker Pro platform utilizes the Ethereum blockchain network and smart contracts to autonomously process payments and host poker games within a distributed ecosystem. Since payments and transactions are settled autonomously, there exists no thresholds, boundaries, and inefficiencies in regards to most financial activities.

The beta cross-platforms system and application of Cash Poker Pro in-game.

“With the help of an anonymous cryptocurrency wallet, the user will be able to play poker online without making a deposit or waiting until a deposit or withdrawal operation is approved by the system. The mission of our project is to give any person a chance to anonymously compete against other players on equal terms and to create our own online poker room based on the CPC Poker Room platform using a decentralized platform for monitoring card dealings and a system for fast deposit and withdrawal of funds with blockchain-based authentication,” the Cash Poker Pro whitepaper further explained.

Ultimately, as the Cash Poker Pro platform grows and scales, it aims to evolve into a major platform in the gambling industry by introducing a fair and sustainable poker and casino ecosystem that can be adopted as an alternative to existing platforms, casinos, and applications. Cash Poker Pro developers added:

“Cash Poker Pro Poker Room democratizes online gambling with its Ethereum blockchain-based poker room platform. The platform makes use of smart contracts to support the development of a fair and sustainable gaming and gambling industry, where everyone gets rewarded for their contribution. Cash Poker Pro ensures that the autonomous economic structure incorporated in the platform does not affect its usability by striking a delicate balance between both aspects.”

The first phase of the Cash Poker Pro initial coin offering (ICO) for its native token CASH was successfully completed in August. The second stage of the CASH ICO will begin on October 26 and 60 million CASH tokens will be sold during the ICO.

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