Day: October 24, 2017

UAE Central Bank Governor Mubarak Rashed Al Mansouri issued critical remarks about bitcoin during an event this week.

China will always remain a crucial area when it comes to the future of technology. Baidu, best known for its search engine, is also experimenting with autonomous vehicles of all kinds. In a recent announcement, Baidu announced that it plans to put a driverless bus on China’s roads by 2018. The company’s venture into the autonomous car industry is already underway, and is expected to bear fruit by 2021.

Baidu has Bold Plans for the Next few Years

It is always interesting to keep an eye on the autonomous vehicle industry. Although the Western world is mainly focused on cars, Baidu has big plans for an autonomous bus. More specifically, it hopes to get such a contraption onto China’s roads as early as twelve months from now. It’s a very ambitious goal, to say the very least, but the company is confident it can pull it off within the allotted time.

More generally, Baidu has big plans for the self-driving industry in the next few years. Its autonomous bus is just the first of many ventures associated with this sector. Driverless cars developed by the company will come to Chinese roads in 2021, which seems to be on par with the rest of the world. If all goes according to plan, that’s the year during which autonomous cars will make a global impact.

An autonomous bus, on the other hand, is something else entirely. Baidu has been spending a lot of money on self-driving research and development on a yearly basis, approximately 15% of the company’s annual revenue. It will take money to make money in the future; that much is evident. We don’t know too much about this driverless bus just yet, other than that it will be made by an undisclosed Chinese manufacturer.

This autonomous bus will drive a predetermined route when it is ready for service. Which route that may be, or in which city it will appear, all remain a mystery for now. There is a partnership in place between Baidu and BAIC Motor to ensure vehicles can effectively complete their journeys without any issues. Baidu itself isn’t a car or bus manufacturer by any stretch of the imagination, as it provides autonomous solutions and platforms for others to work with.

This is a rather aggressive strategy by the Chinese search engine giant, to say the very least. While it is commendable to see Baidu focusing on autonomous vehicles at this point in time, its plans for a self-driving bus is something most people shouldn’t overlook. However, there are some caveats associated with this approach, depending on how the Apollo autonomous program evolves. This platform was developed by Baidu and made open-source some time ago.

In the end, it is only a matter of time until we see self-driving buses and cars on the roads all over the world. China will be a critical testing ground for ventures like this one, although similar efforts are underway in other parts of the world as well. It will be interesting to see how things play out in this regard, as there is a bright future ahead for autonomous vehicles and public transportation.

Munchee has launched the world’s first decentralized blockchain-based food application to offer consumers value for their money. The application is designed to give food lovers a platform where they can read recommendations and reviews of different restaurant dishes via videos and photos. What does Munchee Blockchain offer? Some of the amazing benefits of the blockchain … Continue reading Munchee Launches the World’s First Decentralized Food Application

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There are a lot of tokens predicated on the decentralization of the video gaming space and esports. None of them, however, answer the problem of high end computing in the gaming space for low end computer users. This in, itself, is a type of centralized dilemma that requires gamers to invest thousands in their own equipment for a quality gaming experience.

Playkey is a cloud gaming service that allows players to “rent” gaming rigs for a set fee. As of now, they are a centralized service that accepts currency for gaming time. With the introduction of a decentralized business model, Playkey is offering an ICO of their own with an ERC-20 token for a decentralized gaming ecosystem based partly on the ethereum platform in its early stages.

The token is called PKT (Playkey tokens). And it is the gateway to high end computing for the 81% of 2.2 billion gamers that do not have access or funds for high end gaming rigs. Playkey will introduce 100 million PKT in total. However they plan on making 60 million available to purchasers in the ICO. That leaves 40 million locked for the development team and their marketing purposes. Each available PKT will sell for 0.004 ETH. The project is capped at 240,000 ETH total with an offering of bonus PKT based on how early investors stake.

After the sale and in the company’s early stages, PKT is earned or “mined” by servers and private providers of gaming computers that must first fit Playkey’s minimum requirements for gaming. Miners then set fees that they think are competitive based on region and demand. Games will pick mining rigs that provide the best ping, user experience, and price per their location. Here is already a prototype video showing how the Playkey p2p client works.  In its early stages, Playkey Foundation looks to foster a mining community with advice on prices for different localities.

PKT will be the only accepted currency of Playkey to ensure that the company decentralizes in its early stages. Later, PKT use will include purchasing servers, providing incentives to affiliates, fostering esports, and further decentralizing its marketing efforts.

In its later stages, PKT will also focus on VR, decentralized gaming, and the non gaming space. However, for now, in the early stages, they are all in on gaming and are offering support to over 250 different titles from an international gaming community including Ubisoft, Bethesda, Wargaming, Riot Games, and Oculus in СIS and Russia, and a little bit shorter roster –  to the UK.

The ethereum platform is not scaled to allow the amount of transactions that Playkey expects to maintain. So, for now, Playkey offers a hybridized on and off chain solution for decentralization of the gaming space in its early phases. Users may either purchase their PKT from the Playkey site or scour exchanges like Sia, Lykke, Cryptopia, or CoinExchange for a good deal.  Playkey will maintain a few servers dedicated to mining as well. These are the same servers that will auction for PKT.

Playkey offers real solutions to a congested mining space that offers less and less BTC and ETH for more computation. Playkey miners will have a chance to earn more on computations that their gaming rig will likely be designed for. This may come as a relief to a plethora of investors and developers of the semiconductor space of NVDIA and AMD. Playkey maintains that their miners could earn up to two to three times more with Playkey mining.

This ICO features a team with a corporation that has had a track record of five years since their founding in 2012. One of its lead advisors, Evgeny Lvov, stated that: “Playkey’s business model is scalable. The company has already proven positive unit economics.” The team seems confident in its service to 3 million so far. And they are looking to service 10 million in three years in their simultaneous global expansion.

Their team is crossing the Rubicon and burning their ships, figuratively, this November 1st. And they plan to torch any tokens they do not sell, as well.

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Malta’s government has proposed new rules for investment funds that plan to invest in cryptocurrencies.

Peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchanges will slowly take over from their centralized counterparts. It is evident a lot of Bitcoin users prefer to trade in a P2P fashion. Remitano is a new platform which provides this service in a few countries around the world already. It is evident there is a lot of competition for LocalBitcoins right now, which can only be considered a good thing.

Remitano Embraces P2P Cryptocurrency Trading

One gripe most people have with centralized exchanges is how they are custodians of people’s money. It is virtually the same as keeping money in a bank account, as you need the institution’s permission to access and spend your balance. The same applies to centralized exchanges, in that they control users’ funds in the case of both fiat currency and Bitcoin. It is a far-from-ideal situation that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Finding solutions is not all that easy in this regard, though there are quite a few possible courses of action. Decentralized exchanges are preferable, but those will take time to come to fruition and gain market traction. Atomic swaps are another option, although this technology is still in the very early stages of alpha testing right now. Until then, we can all benefit from peer-to-peer trading solutions such as LocalBitcoins.

However, if everyone used LocalBitcoins, there would still be a lot of centralization in effect. This is why we have seen multiple peer-to-peer trading platforms related to Bitcoin pop up as of late. Remitano is one of the newer platforms which focuses on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. The company is active in several regions around the world, including North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Not every country in the world is supported right now, but it seems the list of supported regions will continue to expand over the coming weeks and months.

The look and feel of Remitano is very similar to that of LocalBitcoins. There is a section containing listings for buyers and sellers as well as customer feedback. Moreover, there is a reputation system in place, which is an absolute must when dealing with strangers on the internet. Moreover, Remitano ensures all trades are protected by escrow, which makes the whole ordeal a lot safer for both buyers and sellers alike. Do keep in mind the escrow service is controlled by Remitano, which means people still must trust the company with their funds until transactions are completed.

This focus on both Bitcoin and Ethereum is pretty significant as well. We have seen some new peer-to-peer trading projects focusing on Ethereum trading as of late. In fact, there is a LocalEthereum platform in existence as well. Peer-to-peer trading is quickly becoming the new normal in the world of cryptocurrency, which is a positive trend. As one would expect, there is also an affiliate program to let people earn some money while bringing new people to the platform.

All things considered, it is great to see more peer-to-peer trading platforms in the world of cryptocurrency. We need to start weeding out centralized exchanges, as they are the weak point in the ecosystem right now. Regulators can’t influence Bitcoin directly, but they can make life difficult for centralized exchanges. Transitioning to P2P – and eventually decentralized – trading is the only viable course of action.

Blockchain technology has become more and more popular during the last couple of years, with numerous companies, financial institutions and banks considering its adoption in the future. While some are still researching, Fiinu, which aims to be a UK-based, blockchain-friendly bank has recently launched its token pre-sale, ahead of its full Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in November.

Once it launches, Fiinu will represent the UK’s very first blockchain-based bank, which will offer numerous retail banking services, yet conduct most of them via the blockchain network.

Lower costs, higher quality services, cryptocurrency withdrawals

Once it launches, Fiinu will use blockchain technology to the benefit of the users. Therefore, customers will be able to hold both sterling and digital currencies into a single account, and exchange between both at a fraction of the market’s current cost. Additionally, following the move to blockchain technology, clients will be able to take advantage of more lenient credit policies, but also services that have been designed to reduce commissions, and provide a better experience for all of its clients.

At this time, Fiinu is carrying out positive discussions with regulators in the UK, and is in the process of applying for a full banking license. Once it is granted, the company will try and fix all service failures currently present in the banking sector, thus becoming one of the most innovative and competitive firms in the space.

After receiving its banking license, somewhere towards the end of 2018 and managing to become profitable, investors who have purchased tokens in either the pre-sale or the public sale, will be given competitive yields on their initial investments. Some of the other benefits for investors include having 33% of yearly profit distributed to FNU holders, borrowing services for FNU holders, great smart credit services and budgeting tools.

In a recent press statement, the founder and CEO of Fiinu, Marko Sjoblom mentioned that: “This is an exciting opportunity, not just for Fiinu and its investors, but for the wider banking industry. Upon receiving our banking licence, Fiinu will become the first UK blockchain-friendly bank approved by the Bank of England. Upon launch, Fiinu has a number of exciting products and services which will help those who have been ignored by their banks for too long. This includes lending against an individual’s crypto-based assets, as well as the world’s first Bank Independent Overdraft. We have one simple aim, making your money work for you. Investors in our ICO will become part of Fiinu’s story that sees the power of technology used to tackle failures in the market and provide better banking services to all customers.”

By being an officially registered and licensed UK-based company, Fiinu will strive to place transparency and corporate governance in the centre of their operations, and achieve their final purpose: becoming a leader in the blockchain banking sector. Those who wish to learn more about Fiinu and/or participate in the ICO can do so right here.

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Blockchain technology will be used for many different purposes over the coming years. While there is a strong focus on the financial sector right now, content creation is another industry which stands to benefit from immutable solutions. Goatse aims to facilitate meme creation with blockchain technology. Although a lot of people will shrug that off as a joke, it remains to be seen if this venture takes off.

Goatse Combines Memes and Blockchain

One has to acknowledge there is a fair amount of creativity in the world of blockchain technology right now. Indeed, we come across some rather unique use cases for this technology on a regular basis. Not every such venture will be a big success, mind you, though that doesn’t mean they’re not worth exploring. Goatse is one of those out-of-the-box projects that may not be big successes, although its business plan sounds pretty interesting.

As is always the case with a new project hosting an ICO, one has to keep in mind that this venture may not necessarily be legitimate. There have been a few “useless” tokens created through ICOs in the past, and Goatse may very well end up on that list. Meme creation on the blockchain sounds like one big joke, but one has to keep an open mind to concepts such as this one.

The Goatse team claims they will create a blockchain-based incentivized meme creation platform. No one can deny memes have become a big part of the internet in the past few years, hence the idea for a market where people could get paid to create and share memes. All of this will be powered by the Goatse Coin, which will be sold during an upcoming ICO. Whether or not there is a need for such a platform remains to be seen, though.

The project’s website contains more information as to why this venture was created in the first place. Goatse is a term most memelords will be all too familiar with. Attaching an actual “business” to this term will be pretty interesting, to say the least. Meme creation is a booming business, as these images are capable of brightening most people’s days. The Goatse team mentions how “truly dank memes are becoming increasingly rare”. There is a certain truth to this statement, although this platform may not necessarily alleviate those concerns.

A lot of people will shrug off Dogecoin as a joke coin, even though it has some real-world value. Dogecoin has been at the center of attention in multiple instances. Whether or not Goatse Coin can reach similar heights – or perhaps even surpass it – remains to be determined. There will certainly be people interested in a project like this one, even though there is a very real chance this particular creation is a joke more than anything else.

The associated whitepaper certainly doesn’t confirm the validity of this project, even though it makes for an entertaining read. Someone clearly put a lot of work into this project, and it is possible some money will be raised during the upcoming ICO. If this project is indeed real, it may become one of the biggest blockchain-based content creation solutions in existence. And if it isn’t? Most people will get a good chuckle out of it regardless.

Blockchain startup Civic is to provide identity verifying services for wallets used to store the U.K. Royal Mint’s gold-backed cryptocurrency.

Ronnie Moas, founder and director of Standpoint Research, believes the market cap of bitcoin could surpass that of Apple by 2022, at $810 billion. That is, a bitcoin price of at least $45,000. On CNBC’s Capital Connection, Moas stated: “People need to start taking this seriously because today bitcoin caught up with Goldman Sachs. He … Continue reading Bitcoin to Surpass Apple’s Market Cap at $810 Billion by 2022: Prominent Stock Analyst

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