Day: November 5, 2017

Icelandic musician and composer, Bjork, has sought to embrace cryptocurrencies with the release of her new album. Bjork’s ninth studio album, Utopia, will be made available for purchase using bitcoin, litecoin, dash, or audiocoin. Purchasers of the album will also receive 100 free Audiocoins – a little-known altcoin valued at less than $0.004 USD.

Also Read: New To Bitcoin? Welcome! Here’s How To Take Those First Steps

Bjork’s Record Label Has Teamed Up With U.K.-based Blockchain Startup Blockpool

One Little Indian Records will team-up with B2B blockchain solutions company Blockpool to accept and distribute cryptocurrency as part of the release of Bjork’s new album, Utopia.

Fans will be able to purchase Bjork’s ninth studio album using one of four cryptocurrencies: bitcoin, litecoin, dash, or audiocoin. Purchasers of the album will also receive 100 Audiocoins as a bonus ‘reward’. CEO of Blockpool, Kevin Bacon, has stated “this isn’t about jumping on a bandwagon or trying to get rich quick. It’s about doing things where you use blockchain and the crypto benefits in ways that people haven’t thought of yet.”

Blockpool’s website states that the collaboration employs “its proprietary blockchain integration technology to build a smart rewards system,” alongside their “cryptocurrency checkout plugin.” When a customer proceeds through the checkout after purchasing Bjork’s album, they will be invited to claim their Audiocoins using the Blockpool’s ‘myblockpool’ portal.

Bjork’s New Album Is Available for Purchase Using Four Cryptocurrencies

Audiocoin (ADC) was launched in 2015, seeking to incentivize both consumption and production of music through distributing Audiocoins to music consumers in exchange for streaming and downloading music. According to Gizmodo, individuals are able to mine audiocoins by streaming music using the Aurovine platform.

Since the start of November, the value of audiocoins has approximately doubled, likely owing to the news of Bjork’s album launch in conjunction with the altcoin’s diminutive market capitalization. As of this writing, the price of a single audiocoin is less than 0.4 of a cent, and ADC has a total market capitalization of approximately $3.2 million USD (it had a total market capitalization of less than $1 million USD until midway through this year).

In July, Grammy award winning DJ, RAC, made his fifth album available for purchase using Ethereum tokens. RAC launched his album via Ujo Music, a subsidiary of Consensys.

What do you think of Bjork’s curious attempt at embracing cryptocurrency? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Wikipedia, Audiocoin

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The post Bjork to Embrace Cryptocurrency With Upcoming Album Launch appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Ethereum (ETH) now has a US$28.2 billion market capitalization, second only to Bitcoin’s US$123.2 billion. Volume worldwide has accounted for ~US$290,000 over the past 24 hours, behind that of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum Classic.Transactions per day have declined sharply recently. Bitcoin’s strong bull run and prominent media mentions have likely sucked the air out of the room for ETH usage over the past month.

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price was almost non-stop in its climb last week, reaching new highs past the $7500 mark.
• Price appears ready for a pullback from here and the 61.8% Fib lines up with the trend line support.
• Oscillators are hinting at uptrend exhaustion so a correction might be needed before bitcoin price heads further north.

Bitcoin price had a stellar rally in the past few days but could be due for a quick pullback to draw more buyers in.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is above the longer-term 200 SMA so the path of least resistance is to the upside. In other words, the rally is more likely to carry on than to reverse. In addition, the 100 SMA lines up with the rising trend line support near $6300, which might keep losses in check.

However, stochastic is heading down from the overbought region to signal the return in bearish pressure. RSI is also turning lower and ready to move south so bitcoin price might follow suit until both indicators hit oversold levels.

Market Factors

The US NFP reading turned out weaker than expected on Friday, contributing to dollar weakness. The economy added only 261K job versus the estimated 312K increase but the unemployment rate still fell from 4.2% to 4.1%. Average hourly earnings were flat to indicate lack of wage growth and potentially weaker inflationary pressures down the line.

As for bitcoin price itself, investors still seem optimistic about the outcome of the network upgrade since this would allow the cryptocurrency to handle more transactions.

Apart from that, volume from South Korea and Japan has been advancing as several conventional traders are also starting to put funds in bitcoin. In Japan, largest retailer in Bic Camera, budget hotel chain Capsule, major airline Peach, and the country’s largest grid operator Remixpoint accept bitcoin as a currency.

In the US, investors are also looking forward to the launch of bitcoin futures by CME before the end of the year, pending regulation.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 11/06/2017 – New Record Highs… Again! appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Deutsche Bank lead strategist Jim Reid believes the reign of fiat money could soon end and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could take over the global financial market.

In a recently released research paper, Reid delve extensively into the unstable fiat currency system and firmly stated that the fiat currency system will highly likely come to an end in the upcoming years.

Reid stated:

“Central banks and governments which have ‘dined out’ on the 35 year secular, structural decline in inflation are not able to prevent it rising as raising interest rates to suitable levels would risk serious economic contraction given the huge debt burden economies face. As such they are forced to prioritise low interest rates and nominal growth over inflation control which could herald in the beginning of the end of the global fiat currency system that begun with the abandonment of Bretton Woods back in 1971.”

Will Bitcoin Evolve Into a Competitor Against Fiat Currency

In his paper, Reid essentially criticized the centralized nature of fiat currencies and the ability of governments, authorities, and central banks to manipulate virtually aspect of paper money, including inflation rates. Due to the existence of centralized authorities within the fiat currency system, Reid emphasized that it is vulnerable once it loses its leverage over the global economy, likely triggered by the emergence of decentralized currencies like bitcoin.

“It’s possible that inflation becomes more and more uncontrollable and the era of fiat currencies looks vulnerable as people lose faith in paper money,” added Reid.

He further noted that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, despite the growing interest from the traditional financial industry in blockchain technology, have the potential to take over fiat currencies and operate as the global monetary system, given their open structure and decentralized systems.

As security and bitcoin expert Andreas Antonopoulos previously explained, bitcoin has an advantage over fiat currencies because it is voluntary. It does not enforce any regulations and policies through violence, and it does not require a certain group of individuals and businesses to use the digital currency for leverage. Anyone can choose to use bitcoin as a currency, a store of value, and a safe haven asset at their will and demand.

For this reason, Reid stated that there exists a possibility of cryptocurrencies eventually competing against national currencies and the fiat currency system.

“Although the current speculative interest in cryptocurrencies is more to do with blockchain technology than a loss of faith in paper money, at some point there will likely be some median of exchange that becomes more universal and a competitor of paper money,” Reid noted.

Long-Term Growth of Bitcon as a Global Currency

The long-term price targets of prominent financial analysts like Max Keiser at $100,000 assume that bitcoin will evolve into a major global currency and penetrate the market of gold. If bitcoin can compete with fiat currencies in the upcoming years, the market valuation of bitcoin would likely be able to reach a few trillion dollars, which is an optimistic long-term indicator for bitcoin investors.

The post Deutsche Bank Strategist: Reign of Fiat Money Will Soon End, Will Bitcoin Take Over? appeared first on NEWSBTC.

There are plenty of reasons to keep a close eye on altcoins these days. That isn’t only because these new coins may actually be a decent store of value, but it’s also due to their underlying developments. Binary-Chain, for example, is a pretty unique blockchain protocol. It will be interesting to see how this new protocol plays out in the long run. The technology is currently utilized by VeriCoin and Verium, although it is possible we may see other altcoins embrace something similar in the future.

Binary-Chain can be a Game Changer

There are many different types of blockchain technologies in the world already. Up to this point, they have all more or less revolved around the same ideas. It is evident right off the bat that Binary-Chain is something different, although it remains to be seen if this venture can be a success. More specifically, a dual blockchain protocol pairing a digital currency with a digital reserve is something the world hasn’t seen before.

Users of this hybrid solution will benefit from faster transactions, additional security, and fewer scaling issues. This latter point is of significant interest, as scalability remains a major problem in the world of cryptocurrency these days. In a way, it makes sense to pair digital currencies with digital reserves, even though it is far easier said than done. Not every digital reserve can be trusted by default either, no matter what it is linked to.

One limitation of most cryptocurrencies today is that they can’t be a fast currency and a decent store of value at the same time. Cryptocurrencies are inherently volatile, and those that aren’t suffer from incredibly long transaction delays. While most currencies are working on solutions to address these issues once and for all, it is anything but easy. Until solutions such as Bitcoin’s Lightning Network become the new norm, the potential for long delays will always be present, unfortunately.

Whether or not Binary-Chain is the answer to these problems remains to be determined. A dual blockchain system makes a lot of sense in this regard. Leveraging complementary technologies to accelerate transactions is a worthwhile venture to explore. Interestingly enough, this protocol uses Proof-of-Stake-Time and Proof-of-Work-Time to create a more secure and convenient blockchain protocol. With transaction times reduced to 30 seconds for VeriCoin and one to three minutes for Verium, the benefits are clearly visible to everyone.

At the same time, using two different blockchains linked together would seem to improve overall decentralization as well. Although it remains to be seen how it will play out when it’s put through the paces, this idea certainly opens up a lot of new opportunities. Plus, having two blockchains powering the new protocol will improve immutability beyond anything the world has seen to date. That aspect is becoming all the more important in the world of digital money, to say the very least.

Finally, Binary-Chain is also beneficial to miners. Everyone who mines VeriCoin will earn Verium and subsequently benefit from higher fees. Verium itself can also be mined directly using one’s CPU, which makes it highly appealing to novice cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Plus, it seems atomic swaps between both blockchains will be introduced later on. It is a concept worth keeping an eye on, even though neither of these currencies is among the “big guns” right now.  

MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito is joining the ranks of outspoken critics who believe the market for blockchain-based tokens is overheated.

Blockchain startup Caviar has announced the launch of its real estate-backed digital asset platform. Caviar’s token reduces the risk for backers through diversification of cryptocurrencies and real estate debt, while facilitating crowdfunding of real estate projects. Pre-sale begins November 28, 2017.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

5th November 2017, The Cayman Islands – Caviar is pioneering a dual-purpose token and crowdfunding platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. Caviar’s token offers access to stable real estate and cryptocurrencies, with built-in downside protection and automatic diversification. The team behind Caviar has successfully managed a multi-million-dollar real estate debt fund since 2013, and brings years of experience and research to this project. Caviar is powered by Intelligent Predictive Model (IPM), an artificial intelligence algorithm, allowing for stronger predictive power and more effective asset allocation. In addition, Caviar Platform will allow real estate developers to raise funds for their upcoming projects, and for Caviar token holders to earn additional rewards by staking their tokens. Caviar is launching a pre-sale on November 28th, 2017, with the goal of raising $25 million.

Caviar Leverages Rising Value of Cryptocurrency with Increasing Demand for Real Estate

Global real estate equate to over 60% of all mainstream assets, and are worth over $217 trillion dollars. In comparison, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization recently hit a new all-time high when it surpassed $175 billion. “Considering these factors, the potential financial benefits of a real estate backed cryptocurrency are massive,” comments Caviar partner Guy Neumann.

In the past several years, cryptocurrencies have been outperforming most other asset classes. However, diversification within this asset class is problematic. There is high correlation to Bitcoin and to other cryptocurrencies. This new asset class is also highly volatile, illiquid and often not backed by anything tangible.

Caviar partner Alex Shvayetsky explains how Caviar aims to mitigate risk for backers and address the issue of diversification, stating:

“Diversification of cryptocurrency investments is difficult because most assets are highly correlated. Caviar aims to solve this by providing exposure to fast-growing crypto assets and income producing US-based real estate in a single token – minimizing risk and maximizing returns in both asset classes.”

Caviar Capital: Successful Real Estate Track Record Outperforms S&P by 300%

Caviar combines large cap and most stable cryptocurrencies, select new token projects, and real estate, utilizing its’ proprietary Intelligent Predictive Model in order to perfectly time investment decisions. Caviar is the successor to Caviar Capital, which, in the past five years, successfully financed dozens of redevelopment projects and has a 0% default rate, 0 late payments and an average IRR (internal rate of return) of 16% per year. Since its inception, Caviar Capital has consistently outperformed S&P 500 Real Estate and S&P 500 Bond indices by over 300%

Higher Returns for Real Estate Investment & Diversified Portfolios for Traditional Investors with Digital Currency

By combining crypto assets and real estate, Caviar aims to offer a higher rate of return than traditional real estate investments, while maximizing downside protection. In addition, Caviar will provide traditional investors with the financial benefits of a more diversified portfolio that includes digital currencies.

Although cryptocurrency traders can profit from the volatility of the market, they are offered little in the way of real assets. Caviar provides a unique opportunity for crypto-investors to diversify their portfolio through exposure to real estate. Caviar’s tokenization approach to investments in real estate, cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets lowers the cost of management, reduces entry costs for investors, and removes the problem of illiquidity associated with traditional real estate investments. With the rising value of the cryptocurrency market and the increasing demand for real estate in a growing world, Caviar could turn out to be the perfect diversified portfolio.

The Tech Behind the Token

Caviar has developed their Intelligent Predictive Model (IPM), an artificial intelligence predictive algorithm based on a machine learning approach for price forecasting in both short and long-term projection timescales, allowing for stronger predictive power and more effective asset allocation. IPM uses historical data and a mixture of qualitative/quantitative metrics, in combination with analysis of the underlying cryptocurrency ecosystem, social signals, and trends. Data is automatically collected from various sources to make judgments in real time.

Caviar Token Generating Event

Caviar is launching a pre-sale on November 28th with the goal of raising $25 million. Here is some information about the upcoming token sale.

• Goal Raise Amount: $25 million
  Token Type ERC20
  Maximum token supply: 375,000,000
  Price per token $0.10
  Pre-sale Minimum $500
  Pre-sale Discount: Up to 30%
  Pre-sale Period: November 28, 2017
  Crowd Sale Period: December 12th, 2017 to January 31st, 2018

Use of Funds
The funds raised by the Caviar crowdfunding campaign will be distributed as follows:

• 80% will be invested directly into the Caviar portfolio
  10% will be used to cover administrative costs
  5% will be invested into development of platform technology
  5% will be allocated into a reserve fund

Token Distribution

• 85% of all Caviar tokens created will be sold at the Token Generating Event
  12% will be allocated to partners and advisors
  3% is reserved for bounties

Official Website – https://www.caviar.io/
Caviar Investment Presentation – https://s3.amazonaws.com/caviar-presentations/CaviarInvestorPresentation_Final.pdf
Read the Caviar Whitepaper – https://s3.amazonaws.com/caviar-presentations/CaviarWhitepaper.pdf
Find Caviar on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Caviario-399312880484276/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/caviar0x
Telegram – https://t.me/caviar0x
Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/Caviar0x/

Media Contact
Contact Name: Kathy Berardi
Contact Email: [email protected]
Location: The Cayman Islands

Caviar 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.

It is never good to see cryptocurrency exchanges shut down or temporarily suspend their services. Although most cryptocurrency traders may have never heard of NovaExchange, the company has proven quite useful to newer altcoins looking to gain traction. Due to a change in management, the platform will begin the process of shutting down at the end of this month. The platform will reopen in April of 2018, though.

NovaExchange gets new Management

One thing most smaller altcoin trading platforms have in common is how no one really knows who is operating the platform. In the case of NovaExchange, virtually no one has any idea who is taking care of day-to-day operations right now. That isn’t necessarily a problem, mind you, but it is something to take into account. This may soon come to change in the case of NovaExchange, depending on how its new owners decide to approach matters come April 2018.

In an email sent out to all customers a few days ago, the NovaExchange team explained that the platform will be under new management come April 2018. There are a lot of questions which remain unanswered in this regard. No one knows whether the owner sold the platform, or if it was acquired by another exchange or cryptocurrency company. Nor do we know if there will be any restructuring or major changes coming to the platform in terms of supported currencies. All of this will become clear eventually, but some more transparency would certainly be appreciated.

As a result of the change in management, the company will halt all trading and deposits by the end of this month. There is no user registration page anymore either, and Ethereum and Ethereum Classic deposits have already been halted as of a few days ago. All other altcoins can still be deposited for now, but that won’t be the case for long. The trading engine will remain active on the platform until the end of February 2018. That in itself is another strange decision, to say the least.

Any remaining user balances that have not been withdrawn on or before April 1st, 2018 will be considered to be donations to the team. This means users still have a good five months to get everything in order. Then again, there is no reason to keep one’s money on a platform that will undergo major changes in a few months from now. Moreover, users won’t be able to log in after March 31st either, and all user data will be wiped completely in early April. It appears the new management plans to go ahead under a completely new name, which is an interesting decision.

All of this information is pretty intriguing, to say the least. With so many critical details kept under wraps on purpose, there will be some initial excitement as to what will happen to NovaExchange and its team. Its involvement with BitConnect may not have been the smartest decision, although that doesn’t appear to have been a contributing factor in this change. Over the past few months, the platform’s service has degraded quite a bit. Front-end outages and slow API responses have lessened NovaExchange’s appeal to altcoin traders.

New competition is always welcome in the world of cryptocurrency exchanges. That being said, the time has come to move away from centralized platforms as a whole. Decentralized solutions and even atomic swaps are in development as we speak. When those solutions finally come to market, it may become very difficult for any centralized exchange to survive for much longer. An interesting future lies ahead for cryptocurrency; that much is rather evident.

Crypterium just gained the support of a very important ally: Keith Teare, a seasoned digital veteran of international renown, just announced his decision to lend the project his expertise.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article.

Hailing from the UK, Keith has earned his reputation as a co-founder of TechCrunch and a founder and leading figure in over a dozen successful Silicon Valley and international projects, including Accelerated Digital Ventures, Archimedes Labs, Minds and Machines Inc., MedCo, EasyNet, and RealNames, to name just a few. Two of his companies – EasyNet and RealNames – became “Unicorns” – companies valued at over $1 billion.

“We are thrilled and grateful that Keith agreed to take us under his wing,” says Steven Polyak, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Crypterium. “He knows the industry like the back of his hand, and is recognized as both a visionary and a wise strategist. Having previously met our Co-Founder Vladimir Gorbunov, he’s also familiar with the quality of the work we do. We are certain that with his guidance we will be able to perfect our product and offer it to the vast community of our supporters.”

According to the company’s White Paper, Crypterium is building a cryptobank offering solutions in three main areas: use of cryptocurrencies by individuals for everyday payments, provision of a revolutionary infrastructure for cryptocurrency acquiring for business (including the option of payments to vendors in fiat funds), and simplifying the procedures for obtaining cryptoloans. The project’s team includes experts in financial, banking, investments, financial technologies, strategic development, and cryptocurrency fields.

Here’s what Keith Teare had to say about his decision and the project: “I am quite passionate about supporting ambitious new projects in their drive to bring innovation to the market. I love to mentor the founders and their teams in developing their ideas, creating products, and turning their dreams into reality. I see Crypterium’s business concept as very timely and relevant: It meets the existing market demand for simple and user-friendly cryptocurrency banking solutions.”

Crypterium, an Estonia-based company creating contactless payment solutions, is currently conducting its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which aims collect $47 million to develop its revolutionary mobile cryptobank project. More details can be found at https://crypterium.io/.

It seems things are going from bad to worse for the SegWit2x developers and their supporters. More specifically, we have seen more and more service providers pull their support as of late. Even though Jeff Garzik is confident this hard fork will be successful, the odds are stacking against SegWit2x right now. With OpenBazaar and Vinny Lingham’s Civic having pulled out, things suddenly look a lot less certain for supporters of this fork. It may effectively come down to which miners support the chain permanently and which don’t.

SegWit2x Takes Another big hit

Over the past two months, there have been multiple debates regarding the validity of the SegWit2x scaling proposal. Initially, the New York Agreement was signed by a lot of industry players, even though this list has shrunk quite a bit in recent weeks. Various companies are removing support for this proposal, which shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone these days. More specifically, the validity of this chain has been in question for quite some time now.

Late last night, it became evident the list of SegWit2x supporters lost three more major names. OpenBazaar, the popular peer-to-peer marketplace software provider, isn’t keen on SegWit2x. In fact, CEO Brian Hoffman eloquently stated why he doesn’t believe in this solution anymore. Initial support for this hard fork was given to ensure Segregated Witness would activate on the Bitcoin network. Rather than bringing the community closer together, it only caused a bigger fracture.

As a result, it seems the future of OpenBazaar leaves no room for politically-driven forks such as SegWit2x. It’s a remarkable decision, albeit one that is shared by quite a few prominent people in the Bitcoin world. Vinny Lingham, for example, was also one of the original supporters of the New York Agreement, though he too has reversed his position. That’s a remarkable turn of events, although his reasoning appears entirely different from Hoffman’s.

In light of the recent death threats that I have received, I realize that Segwit2x is a bad idea and I publicly revoke my support for it.

— Vinny Lingham (@VinnyLingham) November 2, 2017

By officially distancing himself from this project, things have taken a surprising turn. According to Lingham, he received death threats due to his support for this scaling solution. Whether or not that is true will never be known. It is certainly possible that public figures in the Bitcoin world receive some threats now and then. Then again, there is a big difference between idle threats made by a kid on Twitter and an actual threat to one’s safety. Nevertheless, in this day and age, any and all threats should be taken seriously.

To make things even worse for SegWit2x, the Bitso team isn’t too certain about its support either. More specifically, the company has noted that SegWit2x support is on the decline. Daniel Vogel, co-founder and president of Bitso, thinks it’s wise not to mine the hard fork once support drops below 50%. Whether or not someone will pay attention to these (wise?) words remains to be determined. It is evident that the main objective of this agreement has not been reached. Indeed, the Bitcoin community is further apart from one another than it has ever been.

In the end, the success of SegWit2x will largely hinge on miners. If the chain isn’t profitable enough to mine, the support will quickly taper off in this regard. With so many parties pulling out prior to the fork itself, things aren’t looking great whatsoever. Then again, the fork is still more than a week away. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for this scaling solution, even though things look far less impressive than they did some time ago.