Day: November 11, 2017

Cryptocurrency use could give U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions an excuse to crack down on state-legal pot firms, an industry lawyer warns.

China has always been an interesting country when it comes to technological developments. Its latest venture revolves around robotics and ways to improve parcel delivery. Two new courier robots were recently unveiled at Renmin University of China, and the initial response seems pretty positive.

Parcel Delivery Robots Have a Bright Future

China has many problems in need of solving soon. One of those problems involves keeping up with the demand for parcel delivery services. Human workers cannot keep up with the growing demand to have parcels delivered throughout the day. This trend may not necessarily be common in the Western world, although the United States may be a different case. One thing’s for sure: typical Chinese deliverymen need all the help they can get.

Right now, these workers are being helped by a new fleet of robots which can deliver parcels with ease. At Beijing’s Renmin University of China, two new robots are currently zipping around campus. They are incredibly brightly colored, which makes them pretty easy to spot. While they may not necessarily become the robot postmen of the future, the concept certainly has a lot of merit in the long run. After all, the initial response seems to be rather positive.

These new delivery robots are controlled by a centralized command center sitting 25 miles away. Their range is pretty large and unlike anything we have seen so far. More importantly, they are controlled by JD.com, which is one of China’s largest e-commerce players these days. Whether or not other companies will enter this space in the future remains to be determined. There are a lot of opportunities to explore in this regard, to say the least.

No one can deny things are changing at an accelerated pace in China. The country’s vast delivery industry is in an interesting state right now, considering demand has vastly outweighed the available infrastructure in place today. With the help of courier robots, things are certainly picking up steam. After all, parcel volumes are growing by around 50% every year, yet the number of available staffers continues to decline. Something has to change, and it seems using robotics is the only possible way to go.

It is also worth mentioning various top delivery firms in China are experimenting with robots as well as automated sorting lines. Considering that China’s Singles Day is almost upon us, the number of packages waiting to be processed will increase beyond belief. It is expected there will be 1.5 billion parcels to be shipped in the country over the next few weeks.

Another key point is that wages in China are going up, whereas the cost of technology is going down. There is a tipping point at which it makes a lot more sense for companies to use this sort of technology over human workers. It is not necessarily something most people will be happy with, what with robots taking our jobs and all. At the same time, robots will not displace all human workers anytime soon. There will be a few interesting years ahead in this regard; that much no one can deny.

Bitcoin may have rejected SegWit2x, but Dash likes big blocks. Here’s a look at lightning network, custom masternode hardware, forks and sporks

While the world has watched the death of SegWit2X, the Ethereum platform has continued making marked improvements and increasing transaction volume well above Bitcoin.

CoinDesk takes a look at problems facing decentralized identity schemes – as told by those seeking to take the blockchain use case live.

Tokenbox and Tradingview teams are set to work together on developing a special crypto-trading terminal for Tokenbox users. According to developers, the terminal would perfectly follow the needs of various market participants – fund managers and cryptotraders.

As Tokenbox co-founder Vladimir Smerkis noted, terminals that are widely used in traditional trading wouldn’t fit the cryptotrading market. Tokenbox aims to create a unique ecosystem, which will unite traders, funds, managers and investors within one platform. Thus, a special tool is required.

The new terminal, the development of which is already underway, will give a gateway into the global digital currency economy, hundreds of currencies on leading exchanges and more than 75 technical indicators from a single account.

Well-balanced portfolio is a key to sucessful trading, so the terminal features will help portfolio managers to set the parameters by making transactions with a few assets.

The software will allow to generate automatic reports for portfolios via messengers.

Further development will include price trigger alerts via SMS, E-Mail and In-Browser, as well as third-party services connection.

Tradingview is a wide social network for professional traders, providing essential tools for trading, as well as real-time data on both traditional stock and exchange markets and cryptomarkets.

Tokenbox is a new project by creators of The Token Fund and its TGE is planned for November 14th.

The post Tokenbox partnered with Tradingview to create a brand new trading terminal appeared first on NEWSBTC.

An ICO for the environment that provides an alternative energy source to power-hungry Blockchain mining.

“Elements,” is a blockchain based digital currency that seeks to revolutionize the loyalty rewards industry. Elements offer a universal platform for multiple merchants, enabling them to leverage cryptocurrency’s underlying technology to increase sales and visibility as well as customer satisfaction.

A blockchain is as good as the algorithm it uses. Elements operate on the proof-work (POW) mining model with X11-changed hashing algorithm as its POW. X11 conceived by Evan Duffield, the core developer of Dash, is similar in design to Bitcoin’s distribution procedure. X11 is possibly the most secure algorithm out there, offering 30 percent less wattage in GPUs and is 30-50 percent cooler than Scrypt.

Uses

Loyalty programs aim to improve customer experience and consequently merchant revenues. However, there is major fragmentation in the industry with no room for interoperability. Consumers are overwhelmed with memberships from different loyalty programs with no substantial benefits. As a result, customers end up not taking advantage of these programs. Merchants on the hand have to deal with the burden of liability that comes with running a loyalty program. As a result, the loyalty program industry has become inefficient.

Elements, keen on experimentation is disrupting the future of loyalty programs. Elements provide a universal loyalty currency accepted by various merchants. Consumers can use the currency wherever they please. A single currency accepted by multiple merchants is beneficial to both consumers and merchants alike. A universally accepted loyalty currency motivates consumers to spend more to spend more.

Advantages

• One of the biggest challenges merchants face with loyalty programs is liability. If all consumers were to cash in their loyalty points simultaneously, businesses would collapse. With, Elements, however, Merchants can acquire coins free by mining, thus massively reducing the cost of liability.
• Elements offer a single currency accepted by multiple merchants, an advantage to consumers and merchants alike.
• The blockchain records all transaction on the immutable ledger, which means customers cannot counterfeit their loyalty points.
• With Elements loyalty currency, the customer’s privacy remains intact, as Elements does not store the customer’s data.
• Elements’ blockchain processes transactions instantly.
• Customers can use a wallet of their choice for transactions
• Customers can use the “Elements” loyalty coins to purchase products from merchants or exchange the coins for either fiat or crypto-currencies.

More information on Elements is available at https://theelements.io/

The post Elements, Leveraging Blockchain Technology to Disrupt the Future of Loyalty Programs appeared first on NEWSBTC.

The US Treasury Department Secretary claimed that the alleged illicit use of Bitcoin should be reviewed “very carefully” to make sure that the dark web is not financed in Bitcoin.

In a cruel twist of fate the former CEO of Mt. Gox, the man in charge during the loss of 1 bln Bitcoins, may wind up profiting $859 mln from the bankruptcy settlement.

By whatever metric you care to measure it, 2017 has been a record-breaking year for bitcoin. From transactions to trading volume, and from wallet installations to market cap, every possible metric has been surpassed, shattered, and then shattered again.

See also: 10+ Monitoring Websites That Help Track the Bitcoin Network

It’s All In The Numbers

The cryptocurrency world evolves at such a dizzying pace that it can be hard to take in the magnitude of everything that’s happening in bitcoin. In the words of Ferris Bueller, “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

As an intangible digital currency, it can be hard sometimes to appreciate where bitcoin is at and how far it’s come from such humble beginnings less than nine years ago. The following stats help bring bitcoin to life, making it easier to visualize the state of the network today.

(Note: all figures are averages and were accurate at the time of publication.)

Breaking Down Bitcoin

16.67 million: current bitcoin supply.

58%: crypto market dominance.

$4.9 billion: 24-hour trade volume.

96: countries where bitcoin usage is unrestricted.

Transactions

12,000: transactions per hour.

99,000: BTC sent per hour.

0.103 BTC: average transaction value.

Mining

11 million: network hashrate in TH/s.

166 GB: blockchain size.

$12.8 million: mining rewards in the last 24 hours.

129: blocks mined in the last 24 hours.

326,000: bitcoin transactions confirmed in the past 24 hours.

Ownership

96%: amount of bitcoin owned by just 4% of addresses (containing 2.9 million BTC).

457,000: number of addresses richer than $10,000.

715,000: number of active addresses in the last 24 hours.

$19 billion: value of the 100 richest bitcoin addresses.

500,000: number of Bitcoin.com wallets downloaded.

Popularity

400,000: number of subscribers on r/Bitcoin.

12 million: number of Coinbase users (1 million of whom were added in the past three weeks).

18.5 million: number of Blockchain.info wallets.

80,000: number of bitcoin tweets sent per day.

For anyone who wants to geek out on more bitcoin stats, Cryptocompare, Onchainfx, Bitinfocharts and of course Blockchain.info are a good place to start. Take a deep dive and prepare to be mesmerized by the myriad numbers that make up bitcoin.

What’s your favorite site for bitcoin statistics? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Cryptocompare, and Brave New Coin.

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The post Bitcoin by Numbers: 21 Statistics That Reveal Growing Demand for the Cryptocurrency appeared first on Bitcoin News.