Day: November 10, 2017

UTRUST’s vision of a decentralized payment system for the unbanked is off to a blistering start, raising all of its $10 million soft cap on the first day of its public ICO. The ICO experienced an equally high demand, selling out its earlier pre-ICO in just an hour and a half, and is well on its way to reach its hard cap milestone of $49 million in fundraising.

Disclaimer: This is a Sponsored Article

One of the few ICOs with a US-friendly crowdsale structure, UTRUST has welcomed US citizens with investor accreditation, who are permitted participate in token purchases on a first come, first served basis. While subject to a 12-month vesting period on tokens sold, the unique opportunity in an otherwise limited avenue will have been of particular appeal to an important demographic of the cryptocurrency community.

UTRUST’s commitment to assure customer interests in the ICO continues to be proven by recent developments in regulatory optimizations to its structure. Its corporate membership in the Swiss government-backed blockchain incubator Crypto Valley, as well as its incorporation as a limited liability company in Switzerland are further evidence of this. Being legally compliant to all financial rules and regulations have helped ensure growing demand for tokens used to power its future-proof platform.

Meanwhile, the UTRUST team is carrying the project’s momentum, raising its profile and awareness in at nine major blockchain events this year across Europe, North America and Asia. It hopes to further advocate for its crypto platform that will bring the global financial economy to some 2.5 billion unbanked people and merchants through blockchain innovation.

UTRUST offers a simple solution focused on consumer protection. Acting as a mediator for transactions, both parties to transactions are relieved of liability. Users can purchase goods and services while merchants get paid, using their choice of cryptocurrency or traditional fiat. UTRUST’s customer-first solution will prioritize consumer protection, speed and low fees, enabling users and merchants to trade with their favorite currency, crypto or otherwise.

About UTRUST

UTRUST has currently raised $10 Million and reached its soft cap in its ongoing public ICO. This in in addition to $3.5 million already raised in early fundraising and a pre-ICO that sold out in 90 minutes. UTRUST is the world’s first cryptocurrency payments platform with plans for mass-scale consumer protection. The startup’s global PayPal–like payments platform will feature extensive cryptocurrency support complemented by high-speed, low-fee transactions.

With a third of the world’s population forming Emerging Markets outside financial inclusion, UTRUST’s end goal is to bridge the unbanked with access to the mainstream global financial system. UTRUST’s public ICO launched on November 2nd, aiming to raise the funds necessary to establish key industry partnerships and to develop the world’s first PayPal-like cryptocurrency payments platform. The platform will utilize UTRUST’s ERC20 compatible tokens over the Ethereum protocol as its native currency, powering payments on the gateway together with other digital tokens and cryptocurrencies.

No new tokens will ever be issued. As UTRUST has plans to destroy circulating tokens as well as buy back portions of them over time, gradual scarcity and increasing demand is expected to lead to an appreciation in market value.

With only 700 million UTRUST tokens up for sale during the ICO and more than 427 million already sold in the first five days to almost 8,000 backers, tokens appear to be quickly running out at a base price of $0.065. UTRUST has revealed that its tokens (UTK) will be tradeable against several cryptocurrency pairs on several exchanges within a week or two after the end of the ICO on November 9th. Some of the exchanges already named are KuCoin and HitBTC.

Learn more about UTRUST: https://utrust.io

Join UTRUST on Telegram at: https://t.me/utrustofficial

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/

Read UTRUST’s posts on Medium: https://medium.com/@UTRUST

The controversy surrounding the correlation between the release of new Tethers (USDT) and dramatic price spikes led by Bitfinex trading continues. 20 million new USDT were released shortly before a single market buy of approximately $13.5 million USD worth of bitcoin was executed on the 8th of November. The sudden spike in buying pressure quickly drove the price of bitcoin from $7075 to $7350 in less than 60 minutes. Since then, an additional 20 million USDT have been released into circulation on the 9th, and another 30 million USDT on the 10th of November.

Also Read: The Controversy Surrounding Tether’s USD “Backing” Continues

Approximately 110 Million USDT Have Been Released Since November 3rd

Many traders are noting an increasing correlation between the release of significant quantities of Tether and sudden movements in the price of bitcoin, with some expressing concerns at the speed with which a large volume of margin trades are executed following the release of new USDT.

Notorious Bitfinex critic Bitcrypto’ed has documented the market action that took place immediately following the release of 20 million USDT on the 8th of November. According to data shared by Bitcrypto’ed, $25 million USD worth of margin longs were executed in less than 30 minutes including a single market order estimated to be valued at $13.5 million USD. As a consequence, the price of bitcoin shot from approximately $7075 USD to roughly $7350 in less than one hour.

During 2017, the Number of Tethers in Supply Has Increased by More Than 3400%

The total supply of Tether has risen from less than 15 million in January to over 550 million as of this writing – comprising a more than 3400% increase since the start of the year. To some, this dramatic rise in the number of Tether has appeared significant as Bitfinex, a majority shareholder in Tether, appears to have failed to attain banking services since Taiwanese banks associated with Wells Fargo terminated the processing of wire transfers to the exchange, shortly after which Tether posted the following statement on their website:

“Tether is currently expecting continued delays in processing international wires to and from tether. to users… Since April 18, 2017, all incoming international wires to Tether have been blocked and refused by our Taiwanese banks. As such, we do not expect the supply of tethers to increase substantially until these constraints have been lifted.”

Although Phil Potter of Bitfinex has sought to distance the relationship between the two companies, stating that “Tether is a completely separate entity [from Bitfinex],” he has conceded that Tether “operates through the same money service money operator license that Bitfinex operates under in Hong Kong.” In response to questions regarding Tether’s banking relationships, Mr. Potter of Bitfinex has previously stated that Tether “ha[s] several banks in multiple jurisdictions, our principal banking relationships are in Taiwan.” Notably, however, he has failed to reveal what banking institutions provide services to the company since April, further arousing suspicions.

What do you make of the vast quantities of USDT that have recently been released? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bitcrypto’ed, and Coinmarketcap.

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The post Total Supply of Tethers Increases By 20% in One Week appeared first on Bitcoin News.

The price of bitcoin is down more than 9 percent after falling below the $6,500 level.

We have seen many different cryptocurrencies created over the years. Not all of these coins have any major value associated with them whatsoever. One starts to wonder why people continue to create new currencies with several thousand of them in existence already. Nevertheless, BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen currently aims to create Chia, a network designed to compete with Bitcoin.

Chia Network has its own Cryptocurrency

It is not the first time we’ve heard rumors about Bram Cohen issuing his own cryptocurrency. The infamous inventor of BitTorrent has hinted at doing something like this for several years now. However, it has taken a while for more details to become public about his new project. It will reportedly be known as the Chia Network, and there will be a native cryptocurrency associated with it. It seems the currency itself will simply be known as Chia, which makes a lot of sense.

Cohen’s stated objective for his new cryptocurrency and ecosystem is to compete with Bitcoin. That being said, there are some big differences between both projects. For one, Bitcoin has garnered somewhat of a bad reputation due to the amount of electricity having been “wasted” to mine and process transactions. To that end, Chia uses proof of time and proof of storage rather than proof of work as we know it today. This differentiation will be rather interesting to keep an eye on, to say the least.

No one should be surprised to see this particular type of cryptocurrency being developed by the same person who invented the BitTorrent protocol. Similar to Chia, BitTorrent also relies on decentralization, unused hard drive space, and having users all over the world contribute to the protocol. Cohen is not going into this alone, as he is joined by Tradehill COO Ryan Singer. Moreover, the project already has some funding in place to get things started. There will be some form of an early sale – AKA an ICO – in Q2 of 2018, but no official date has been provided at this point in time.

It is not the first digital currency we have seen created focusing on unused hard drive storage space. Sia and Storj are two entrenched coins taking similar approaches to Chia. There is plenty of unused space on hard drives all over the world, and harnessing this potential will yield some interesting results, to say the least.

Whether or not Chia can become a “better Bitcoin”, as Cohen puts it, is something else entirely. It is true Bitcoin has a certain degree of centralization associated with it. Chia aims to fully remove this stigma by making itself completely decentralized instead.  Verifying this project’s native blockchain will be done through the utilization of unused hard drive space as well. It also appears there will be full network nodes for Chia moving forward.

All things considered, there may be a bright future ahead for the Chia Network. Whether or not this currency can become any sort of threat to Bitcoin remains a big question. The approaches of both currencies are vastly different from one another, and it would be better to see Cohen contribute to Bitcoin if he really intended to improve upon it.  People will not necessarily switch over to Chia just for its file storage solution whatsoever. We can only hope there is a lot more to Cohen’s project than is known today.

Seg..what?

Nvidia said that it will remain “nimble” in its approach to the cryptocurrency market, even as it reports a decline in revenue for related products.

A lot of interesting things are happening in the SegWit2x futures market right now. Although it seemed this hard fork had been called off on Tuesday, it’s still very much on the table. For the time being, the futures market has pretty much collapsed. After surpassing US$2,000 on multiple platforms, B2X futures are now down to US$290. It will be interesting to see if the price recovers in the next few days.

SegWit2x Futures Lose 75% of Value

There is a fair amount of confusion associated with the SegWit2x hard fork right now. Given the conflicting reports on how things will move ahead, that is only to be expected. More specifically, the first report broke on Wednesday explaining that the hard fork had effectively been canceled. This decision didn’t sit well with diehard SegWit2x supporters, even though the viability of the new chain has always been questionable at best.

With the hard fork called off, things did not look all that great for the B2X futures market either. The initial response was pretty harsh, as the value dropped from US$2,065 on November 3rd all the way to US$179 a few hours ago. This large discrepancy is only to be expected, as it almost appeared as if the hard fork had no chance of surviving. It may still fail miserably, mind you, but that will become clearer in the weeks to come.

A few hours ago, the SegWit2x team issued a note warning that the hard fork would still be taking place on the aforementioned date. This is pretty interesting, to say the very least, as a lot of people had already given up hope for this fork to begin with. Then again, the developers think there will be enough support to create a viable blockchain, although it remains to be seen if that will be the case. None of the supporting mining pools have switched back over as of yet, which is a positive sign for supporters of SegWit2x. 

The futures market is also rebounding slowly, although there are still gigantic losses to be overcome. Once the airdrop happens, a lot of people will look to cash out their B2X accordingly. As this token becomes more valuable in the futures market, there will be more people buying Bitcoin who hope to get a free US$1,000 token or better for every Bitcoin they hold. This speculation is also what drove the recent Bitcoin price surge in the first place. When the fork was called off, the Bitcoin price tanked shortly after reaching its new all-time high.

At the time of writing, SegWit2x futures were valued at US$295 on HitBTC and US$289 on Exrates. Neither of these values are particularly high, although they seem to represent the fair value of B2X in its current state. With the developers still going ahead with this fork, they will effectively create an altcoin first and foremost. This new currency will not compete with Bitcoin in any significant manner, unless there is overwhelming support by miners. Whether or not that will be the case if the B2X value is lower than that of Bitcoin remains to be determined.

There is an interesting future ahead for SegWit2x, especially considering that the fork has not been officially called off just yet. Whether or not this means we will see a B2X value of US$2,000 again remains to be seen. Right now, there seems to be very little faith in this hard fork among the overall community. Then again, there is a golden opportunity to buy up very cheap futures for B2X right now, as its value may surprise everyone when the currency finally becomes available.

An advisory committee to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is gearing up to research the application of blockchain to the agency’s trade functions.

Dentacare Mobile App (Android Beta release) is the brand new mobile app that rewards people for establishing healthy dental care habits! Yes, you read it right. By maintaining proper dental care and adhering to all recommendations within the app, users receive incentives in the form of Dentacoin tokens.

Dentacare is the second developed tool, serving the mission of Dentacoin, after the successfully launched Trusted Review Platform (https://reviews.dentacoin.com/).

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
– Jim Ryun

The Dentacare Mobile app aims to form long-lasting dental care habits through an intensive 3-month program in an engaging gamified environment. Through reminders, notifications, voice navigation, music accompaniment and tutorials, users are supported on the road to improving their dental hygiene and thus, form healthy habits. According to the Australian Dental Association, it is known that more than 90% of all dental problems nowadays can be prevented through regular check-ups, proper oral care and adequate nutrition.

The basic initial program of DentaCare mobile app lasts for 3 months, as it is considered that this is the time slot needed for a certain activity to be permanently integrated into the daily routine of an individual and become a habit. Only after maintaining a proper routine for a 3-month period, users will be rewarded with Dentacoin tokens, which they can later use for paying for dental services, dental care products, Dentacoin Assurance, or they can store them or trade on exchange platforms and thus, benefit from the expected value multiplication.

“Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.”
– Nikita Khrushchev

The reward system, inherent in each tool, is an important characteristic of the Dentacoin network. It serves as an initial trigger or motivation for participation in the network. The Dentacoin utility token plays a leading role here as it powers the whole Dentacoin network. It is used for rewarding network participants for their contribution to the foundation’s mission; it is utilized as a united means of payment and ensures access to services provided within and across the network. To only have one currency within the network is also important because it creates value circulation through many ways of earning and spending Dentacoin and in the long term, gains value through a strong network effect, meaning that the value of the whole network increases with every new participant added to it.

Through Dentacare app, both adults and children will be motivated to improve not only their dental health, but also their overall health. A fact often ignored is that dental health is directly related to the overall health condition of a person. “Dental health is not something “good to have”, yet not as important as another part of the body. Coming from the field of dentistry, we have seen first-hand how poor dental health could lead to an overall low quality of life. Problems with the gastrointestinal tract, the cardiovascular system, the nerve system form only a fraction of all problems linked to poor dental health. Thus, it is of the utmost importance for each individual to maintain high dental hygiene standards. People should be educated about the importance of proper dental care as a preventive measure and then they should be motivated to adhere to the recommendations and form healthy habits. Here gamification and reward systems are the “keywords” to achieving the needed level of dental health awareness,” comments Dr. Dimo Daskalov, leading dentist and educator in Prosthetic Dentistry.

Dentacare mobile app is already available on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dentacoin.dentacare&hl=en

The iOS version of Dentacare is on its way.

N.B: 
At the moment the app accumulates relative values of Dentacoin tokens. This option will be fully functional upon the update of the app. 

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

The Ethereum community received a nasty surprise about 24 hours ago. More specifically, the Parity wallet was successfully exploited once again, causing half a million ETH to be frozen and rendered unusable. The company has since issued an official statement to clarify the situation and explain how it will move on from here. A special website will be launched to collect a list of people whose wallets have been affected by this exploit so far.

Parity is Still Sorting Things Out

Almost a full day after the Parity bug was reported initially, the total damage is slowly coming to light. As was to be expected, this bug affects quite a few different Ethereum wallets all over the world. That is not a good sign, as there should be no way to prevent individuals from using their own money to begin with. That is a privilege reserved for banks, but it has no place in the world of cryptocurrency whatsoever.

This makes the whole Parity situation pretty abysmal, to say the very least. It is not the first time this wallet software has suffered from major issues either, but the team is working to rectify the situation. So far, not much has been done to ensure people can access their funds again. It is unclear how many ether are effectively locked in useless smart contracts right now, but the early estimates put the number at close to half a million. At today’s value, that is around US$155 million worth of ETH having been locked and rendered unusable.

Moreover, the Parity team has launched a dedicated website where users can check to see if their wallets were affected by this freeze. So far, a total of 584 affected wallets have been identified, which seemingly belong to 573 different owners. Anyone who is not using an Ethereum multisig address has made the smart choice for once, as those users are safe from harm as far as this issue is concerned. That means the average Ethereum user who doesn’t care all that much about security is now in a position to spend money, whereas others may not be.

Indeed, it is rather strange to see people essentially getting punished for using a multisignature solution. Then again, the total damage could have been much worse. For now, we hope the money can be unfrozen sooner rather than later without having to resort to a blockchain rollback for the second time in Ethereum’s history. For now, that option is still on the table, although nothing has been officially communicated by the developers. We do know Vitalik Buterin is contemplating making ether more scarce than it is right now, although it is unclear if that will have an impact on the Parity situation.

All this goes to show that there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the freeze bug and the situation in which a lot of users presently find themselves. Finding a solution is still the top priority right now, but doing so is much easier said than done, to say the very least. Parity is still analyzing the situation in hopes of finding a solution over the next few days. It is evident such a solution needs to be found soon, before people start to lose all faith in Ethereum altogether. One would have expected better from the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on the new Parity website. While we can only hope the total number of victims will remain limited to those already identified, it is equally possible the amount will double or even triple. Multisignature technology needs to be developed carefully, and the Monero team has showed how it is taking its sweet time in doing so to ensure there is no possibility of locking up funds or anything similar. An interesting future lies ahead for Ethereum, yet its multisignature approach may need a lot of work moving forward.