Day: October 17, 2017

Huobi the cryptocurrency exchange based in China announced its Segwit2x contingency plans for the firm’s trading platform Huobi Pro. The exchange details that it plans to support all the tokens that derive from the planned Segwit2x hard fork.

Also read: JP Morgan Boss Can’t Stop Talking About Bitcoin — Calls Investors “Stupid”

Huobi Pro Will Support All Coins Deriving from the Segwit2x Hard Fork

On October 17 the trading platform Huobi Pro revealed its decision-making process concerning the upcoming fork scheduled for mid-November. The company says it remains dedicated to providing first-class digital asset trading services, and dealing with forks is no different.

“Huobi Pro does not have the right to pick and choose any coins deriving from bitcoin Segwit2x hark fork on behalf of our users,” explains the trading platform.

Therefore, Huobi Pro will support all coins deriving from bitcoin Segwit2x hard fork and our users have the options to choose which coins to trade.       

Segwit2x Futures, and the Platform’s Deposit and Withdrawal Suspensions

However, Huobi does have plans for how it will handle the fork before, during and after the proposed consensus change. The exchange is offering futures as Huobi Pro plans to list BT1/BTC and BT2/BTC trading pairs at 12:00 PM, (GMT+8) on October 19. With the hard fork taking place in mid-November at block height 494784, Huobi details it will be suspending deposits and withdrawals for a period of up to three days. The exchange says this is to ensure risks such as replay attacks and network instability do not effect its user base.    

“Huobi Pro will enable BT1 and BT2 deposit and withdrawal services soon after the hard fork,” explains the exchange.

Renaming the Split Tokens Will Take Place After the Fork

Further, if the hard fork is successful Huobi plans to rename the new chain split coin and reward customers with that token at a ratio of 1:1. The platform will then resume trading pairs against BTC, and the chain split token will also be paired with BTC. If the fork fails, Huobi will cease actively trading BT1 and BT2 futures tokens.   

“If your bitcoins are stored on trading platforms that do not support the Segwit2x chain split coins, or you are using wallet without anti-replay attack function, we strongly suggest you deposit bitcoins to Huobi Pro and we will handle all resulting technical issues related to the bitcoin Segwit2x hard fork and reward you with the corresponding digital asset,” Houbi Pro tells its customers.

The company also emphasizes that digital assets are risky and come with price volatility. Split tokens being new are subject to extreme price swings and could become worthless, Huobi states. “Before investing, please have a full understanding of all the risks of investing in digital assets and be prudent of your own investment decisions,” the digital asset exchange notes.

What do you think about Huobi Pro’s Segwit2x plan for this November? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Images via Shutterstock, and Huobi Pro. 

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The post The Digital Asset Exchange Huobi Pro Provides Users With Fork Plans appeared first on Bitcoin News.

CoinTelegraph

Smart Regulation Could Make Russia Next Major Bitcoin Market CoinTelegraph Several analysts have speculated that the launch of CryptoRuble would likely lead to a nationwide ban on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. However, according to Putin, that is not the case and the Russian central bank has plans to regulate Bitcoin ... and more »

Russia’s recent regulatory moves could actually prime the country to become a mining and exchange mecca.

Financial Times

Bitcoin gets official blessing in Japan Financial Times Rules announced this year by the Financial Services Agency allow people to pay for goods and services with bitcoin and require cryptocurrency exchanges or remittance operators to be licensed and subject to annual audits. These have given bitcoin ...

Anyone who has spent the last few years following the cryptocurrency space has likely run across the name of Dan Larimer. His involvement in Bitcoin dates back to some of the earliest forum posts by Satoshi Nakamoto. Now, Dan Larimer is looking to push the boundaries of the blockchain itself. While cryptocurrencies have obviously gained a lot of traction in 2017, we have already seen the potential for transaction times to outpace the capacity of the individual blockchains in which the transactions exist. Essentially, independent blockchains result in creating this scarcity, as they are all significantly limited by their bandwidth, hardware and overall designs.

As we have seen over the past year, both Bitcoin and Ethereum have hit their transaction limits at times of peak network activity, putting significant strain on the ability of users to access their tokens. This resulted in delays, higher fees and a significant backlog of transactions. Larimer has long advocated using his self-developed DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) as a solution to this problem. This technology has come under some criticism in the past, however, as many have argued that by relying on only 20-100 validators, the system can be unduly centralized. This point has been argued by Larimer on many occasions, who has responded that in fact, DPoS is “the most decentralized”, by choosing not to focus on wealth as a selection criteria, something often used in other blockchains.

At present, Dan is dedicating his efforts to the as-yet-unlaunched EOS platform, which aims to serve as a platform for truly next-generation decentralized applications. Many of the features being developed for EOS can already be seen in their infancy in his previous two projects. With Bitshares (2014) and Steem (2016), Dan has long since focused on dramatically increasing the capacity of blockchains, so that they can scale-up to reach their true potential. In comparison to Ethereum, which can process only about 20 transactions per second, Bitshares was developed in the shadow of the Mt. Gox collapse to be able to process 100,000 transactions per second.

This transaction speed and flexibility was then integrated into Steem, Dan’s next project. Additionally, Steem took yet another step into the future by completely eliminating all transaction fees by adopting the “bandwidth model.” Unlike traditional Proof of Work, which secures the network via fees, the bandwidth model allows Steem to prevent spamming of the network by splitting the network’s capacity among users who hold the currency. This lead to Steem being able to enable actions such as voting, and also reduce the time sufficiently to hide the blockchain in the background, allowing new users to join without feeling overwhelmed by technical details.

Dan’s newest project, EOS, aims to capitalize on all these technologies as well as allowing parallel execution via asynchronous communication, which is a major breakthrough of the previous rate-limiting function. Just this week, Dan announced in the official Telegram channel that EOS will be the first blockchain with sub-second block times that could be as low as 500 milliseconds. Essentially, this means that the time betweeen a user submitting a transaction and confirming a transaction could be consistently under a second, as opposed to bitcoin’s 10 minutes.

Assuming that these much-lauded advances reach fruition, this could represent a major change in the way that blockchains function, and could lead to significant rises in the price of EOS, as new applications launch on the platform. While there are always significant risks in embracing new technologies, the potential of Dan Larimer’s new designs could cause a major upending in the industry.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

17th October 2017, London, UK – Globitex, a Bitcoin exchange with advanced API functionality, is scaling to accelerate Bitcoin development into a truly global currency and will accept Bitcoin (XBT), Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for its forthcoming token sale. Free trade for BCH and XBT Following the hardfork of the Bitcoin Blockchain at … Continue reading Globitex: Commission-Free Bitcoin Cash Trading and Token Sale

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Alastria, formerly known as Red Lyra, is a Spanish blockchain consortium that has grown to more than 70 members since its launch in May.

Bittrex finally speaks out on thousands of banned accounts, claiming only 0.1% of users faced problems. No word on when users can access funds again.

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Bonpay is aiming to bring credit card-style convenience to cryptocurrencies.

17th October, 2017, Connecticut, U.S., SimplyVital Health (SVH) and Toro Risk Consulting Group, LLC (Toro) have announced an affiliation that brings the transformational healthcare technology of SVH together with the marketing, legal, and risk expertise of Toro. Toro recognized early on the potential that SVH’s pioneering platform has to help providers transition from fee-for-service to … Continue reading SimplyVital Health Partners With Toro Risk Consulting Group On Transformational Blockchain Healthcare Technology

The post SimplyVital Health Partners With Toro Risk Consulting Group On Transformational Blockchain Healthcare Technology appeared first on NEWSBTC.

The investor services firm worked with Natixis and Societe Generale on the pilot, which was based on the Hyperledger Fabric codebase.

Hey, Blockchain, how’s it going?

If your business isn’t already looking to blockchain technology to help streamline your company, it’s already falling behind the competition. On October 6, Vancouver based technology company Etherparty launched its beta program for a smart contract creation tool. It allows users to create their own smart contracts on the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains. The platform … Continue reading Vancouver Company Introduces Smart Contract Technology

The post Vancouver Company Introduces Smart Contract Technology appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Recently, I was encouraged to write an article going over some of the ways to stay safe while buying, selling, and owning cryptocurrencies. This seems especially relevant in the current climate in which numerous ICOs are out there vying for new investor money. While we have written on topics like this before, it is important to both educate newcomers and remind veterans.

Stay Vigilant — Only You Can Protect Your Coins

Ultimately, the onus of staying safe in any market — crypto or traditional — rests solely on the investor. That being said, here are some of the things I look for when determining the validity of an investment opportunity.

Check Out Its Whitepaper

This should be a pretty obvious one for anyone who has even heard of ICOs. While most projects have them — and if they don’t, be very suspicious — not all whitepapers are the same. Just because a project has one does not mean that it was 1) well thought out or 2) even aligned with the goals of the project.

I realize these can be a little long sometimes, but it is imperative that investors understand what they are putting their money into. Take the time, do your homework, read the whitepaper, and be able to explain it well to someone else before ever considering throwing any amount of money at it.

Check out its Website and Social Accounts

Another obvious aspect to explore is the quality and security of the ICO’s website. It doesn’t need to have the most amazing design or user experience, but make sure the team has put in the work and that they have SSL certification or some other form of security certificate on their site. While design and security do not guarantee the project’s validity, they can be a good way to gauge its overall seriousness.

Most projects should have some sort of a social media or community manager keeping their various web presences healthy. Check those out, pose some questions, or just interact with them. This could be another way of determining how serious the project is.

Check out who (if anyone) Supports it

I say this with an important caveat: not all endorsements mean much and not all projects without endorsements are worthless — with Bitcoin being an obvious example of the latter. However, if you see big names in the blockchain space supporting something, it may give it more clout than support from Paris Hilton or someone else not affiliated with the space.

For The Love of Whatever You Hold Dear, Check Out if its Code has Been Audited

Remember the DAO? Of course you do; we all do. Auditing helps avoid future DAO-like fiascos, but cannot guarantee success. ICO projects should be audited multiple times by well-respected security researchers. If you don’t know the names of the researchers, look them up, and check them out. Who a project chooses for its audits speaks volumes about how much they respect their own project.

These are just a few of the things that I do before making a decision on how legitimate a given project is; it is not an exhaustive list. Remember: This is not investment or trading advice; you should always conduct your own independent research.