Day: October 31, 2017

What does a Chinese AI Blockchain startup think about the recent ICO ban? Find out in a new Cointelegraph interview.

When it comes to keeping tabs on the cryptocurrency markets, most people rely on CoinMarketCap even though the service isn’t necessarily perfect by any means. More competition in this market can only be considered a good thing. Live Coin Watch is a new platform which offers a lot of similar functionality to CoinMarketCap. Moreover, all information is updated in real time through a convenient interface.

Live Coin Watch has a lot of Potential

Although everyone knows and loves CoinMarketCap, the information on the site isn’t updated in real time by any means. Although the platform does reflect changes every so often, a lot of people enjoy watching prices evolve in front of their eyes. Given the fact that so many cryptocurrencies are volatile in one way or another, keeping tabs on things in real time becomes all the more important. Plus, not everyone likes to look at dozens of different charts all day. Having everything in one convenient interface is a lot more convenient in this regard.

Looking at the Live Coin Watch website, it is evident the design looks very similar to that of CoinMarketCap. We see an overview of all tracked coins – currently around 320 in number – and how they all rank compared to one another. Every currency has its current market capitalization displayed, the circulating supply, trading volume, and price changes. The total supply isn’t mentioned on the main page, but that information is available when clicking on individual coins.

What’s more, users can change the currency in which all prices are denominated. This applies to both fiat and cryptocurrencies, which is pretty interesting. There is also an overview of the total market capitalization of all tracked currencies, as well as an overview of exchanges and markets. The clean layout certainly helps to provide these details effectively, and it is something a lot of novice and experienced cryptocurrency users will benefit from.

Don’t take this to mean that one should completely forget about CoinMarketCap, though. It is evident Live Coin Watch still has a ton of currencies and digital assets to add to its list. That process will take some time, and for now, it makes CoinMarketCap the most complete site for currencies and assets alike. It is good to have competing services in this regard, though, as it makes it easier for people to find the information they need. 

Interested parties also have the option to sign up for a Live Coin Watch account to keep tabs on their overall cryptocurrency portfolios. Although plenty of mobile apps provide a similar functionality, it never hurts to see more services like this one emerge. Make sure to generate a strong, secure, and unique password when signing up for this and other services. Cryptocurrency users are often targeted by phishing scams, and reusing a password can give criminals access to several of one’s accounts.

All things considered, Live Coin Watch is a welcome addition to the cryptocurrency space. The website looks pretty solid, and it’s slightly easier to navigate compared to CoinMarketCap. The real-time updates are greatly appreciated and will be a big selling point for a lot of people. However, it seems the platform operates on donations only, which may hinder its longevity. Only time will tell if people give this new platform a chance or stick with CoinMarketCap as the dominant service provider.

A new survey released today found that 31.6 percent of Americans have heard of ethereum, while only 22.1 percent have have heard of ripple.

NewsBTC: You have created a unique product, which at the moment has virtually no competitors on the market: a system for lending using blockchain technology. Tell us about it. Vladimir: Our credit token really is a revolutionary product. It stands alone against the background of what we’re doing with our main token. You could say … Continue reading NewsBTC In Conversation with Vladimir Gorbunov, CCO and Co-Founder, Crypterium Cryptobank

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Not too long ago, we had to clarify some misconceptions regarding the recent Monero node IP leaks. It was mentioned that this would become a non-issue in the future thanks to the development of the Kovri protocol. Now is a good time to explore what this project entails exactly and how it will affect the Monero ecosystem in the future. More anonymity technology can only be considered a good thing in this day and age of censorship and mass surveillance.

A Closer Look at Kovri

As one would expect from any project related to Monero, the main focus of Kovri is anonymity and privacy. Up to this point, no cryptocurrency has come even close to providing complete anonymity or privacy, even though Monero has made a strong case for itself in this regard. However, there is always room for improvement, which is part of the reason Kovri was created in the first place. This new free and decentralized anonymity technology will shake things up quite a bit, to say the least.

In its current state, Kovri is based on the I2P open specification. That makes a lot of sense, as open source tools are often great resources for building other solutions. It is also part of the reason why Kovri itself is open source, as it will not just be of great value to Monero users. In fact, anyone in the world will be able to use this protocol, regardless of their affinity with XMR or cryptocurrencies in general.

Under the hood, Kovri will make use of garlic encryption and garlic routing. Most readers will have heard of onion routing already, but garlic routing takes things one step further. Garlic routing is used to create a message-based anonymous overlay network of internet peers. This concept has been around since 2000, although it was only put into actual code recently. Garlic encryption is used to encrypt Messages in layers and route them through different proxies without exposing the content to any “stops” along the way.

What all this means for Monero – and for internet users in general – is that this overlay network allows people to properly hide their geographic locations and IP addresses. Some people may claim the same can be achieved with Tor or a VPN, which is correct. However, we have seen some VPN providers keep logs of users’ original IPs. Moreover, the recent discovery of some malicious Tor exit nodes has also caused some concern in this regard.

As its website explains, Kovri covers the internet traffic of any application to make it anonymous. This has major consequences for Monero as a cryptocurrency, as well as any other type of software or money being used with this protocol. More importantly, Kovri is fully compatible with the I2P network, and an alpha version of this protocol is expected to be released in the coming months. There are nightly releases for all major operating systems right now, although they may still see some bugs along the way.

At some point after Kovri reaches a stable stage, it will be integrated with Monero. For now, there is no timeline for this development, although the GitHub repo seems pretty active as of late. New solutions such as these can’t be half-assed either. Kovri is a very exciting project for anyone who takes privacy and anonymity seriously. The fact that it can be used with any application makes it even more impressive. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the future of Monero itself moving forward.

Another experiment in blockchain powered governance went underway nearly as soon as its token sale ended.

If you were to ask people on the street how money is created, most couldn’t give you a decent answer. For some reason, everyone uses money, but few people actually question how or why it was created. A recent survey conducted among British MPs showed that 85% of them have no clue regarding the origin of money either. That is a worrisome figure, considering these are the people who tell consumers and banks how to handle money properly.

British MPs are Clueless About Money

Most consumers don’t hold politicians and elected officials in high regard these days. Ever since the financial crisis which began in 2008, the level of trust between civilians and their leaders couldn’t be lower. Regaining that trust will be rather difficult, if not entirely impossible. That’s especially true when surveys such as the one conducted by Positive Money placed political leaders in an even more negative spotlight.

To be more specific, the Positive Money survey was conducted among British Members of Parliament. One of the questions pertained to how commercial banks create new money every time they extend loans. Surprisingly, 85% of MPs indicated they were not aware of this situation or how it affected the country’s economy. More ominously, 70% of MPs thought that governments were the only entities capable of creating new money.

It seems these British politicians are well behind the curve right now, as central banks have used helicopter money as a strategy for a few decades now. Central banks do not need the permission of a government to create new money either, as they do so almost every day. Mass ignorance on the part of British MPs on monetary matters has been a problem for several years now. A similar study conducted in 2014 yielded almost identical results.

The topic of how money is created has always been touchy material. It is not something people like to think about, mainly because they think it is complicated. That isn’t entirely true, as most money is created during times of financial emergency. Around 97% of “money” around the world is created when commercial banks extend a loan. This may not seem like a big problem to the uninformed, but it serves to put more wealth into the hands of the wealthy. Moreover, consumers consequently remain in debt longer than they need to as well. There is no such thing as a magic money tree by any means.

All of this further confirms that most money is created out of thin air. The last time anyone checked, thin air had no financial value whatsoever. None of the money we use today is backed by anything other than a promise by a bank or government to honor the value of a paper or coin. If everyone were to ask the powers that be to make good on that promise simultaneously, the entire economy would collapse in a heartbeat. Ever since the gold standard was dismissed to give money its actual value, things have unraveled pretty quickly.

When MPs are unaware of how money is created, one knows things have hit rock bottom. Banks seemingly have very few leaders they must report to whenever new money is created, and this has been a problem for quite some time now. It is doubtful this situation will ever change, though. The Positive Money survey is quite worrisome, but it highlights some of the many issues associated with money as we know it today.

The lesser-known cryptocurrency vertcoin is trading at a record high – and upcoming changes to its underlying economics may hint at why.

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