Day: November 23, 2017

Experty announces its plans to use Proof of Care concept to help with pre-contribution phase

Zug, Switzerland, November 23, 2017 Experty announced they are implementing Proof-of-Care during their pre contribution phase. Experty decided to use the concept developed by their advisor Richard Ma of Quantstamp. Richard Ma, CEO of Quantstamp, noticed there was a glaring problem with ICO’s token distribution. He developed the concept of proof of care to help alleviate some of these issues. Proof of Care ensures that those who truly care about the project get higher priority in the token allocation, along with a bonus for those that qualify. Proof of caring solves the distribution issue that many ICOs experience. Often times, whales scoop up tokens the moment the ICO begins, leaving nothing for smaller participants. This causes a disparity in the token distribution, and defeats decentralization.

Experty believes that tokens should be distributed fairly, evenly, and to those that will actually use them. This prevents large market dumps of tokens post ICO, and gives tokens to people who are loyal to the product. And want it for its real utility. Experty has made it their mission to bring their platform to the mainstream.

Kamil Przeorski, CEO of Experty said “Experty is a practical application designed for widespread use. Transactions on the network are done in EXY tokens, which means users must own EXY tokens. Even and fair distribution, especially to those that will be using the application is essential to our success.”

The proof of care concept allows the community to be involved in the project and receive valuable feedback from the supporters. It allows allows ICO’s to reward its loyal supporters.

About Experty

Experty, is based in Zug, Switzerland. Experty is a platform that allows for paid consultation in cryptocurrencies. For additional information on Experty, visit us at Experty.io, follow us on Twitter @Experty_io, join our telegram, or read our blog at Experty_io.

LOGO-EXPERTY

Media Contact

Experty

Sarah

Email [email protected]

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.

Bitfinex’s Giancarlo Devasini and Philip Potter has been named in the Paradise Papers – an enormous data leak identifying over 120,000 companies and individuals who have employed the services of offshore service providers operating in ‘tax havens’. The leaked documents contain evidence that Giancarlo Devasini and Philip Potter established Tether in the British Virgin Islands already back in 2014.

Also Read: Questions Mount as Bitfinex Stay Silent in the Wake of the Tether Hack

The Paradise Papers Reveal That Appleby Assisted Philip Potter and Giancarlo Devasini Set up Tether in the British Virgin Islands in 2014

Bitfinex’s Giancarlo Devasini and Philip Potter have been identified in the recent Paradise Papers leak. Italian media outlet, Nuova Societa, describes the leak as revealing “specialized companies to carry capital in tax jurisdictions other than their country of origin.”

The leak saw the release of approximately 13.4 million files which were leaked to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, before being forwarded to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICJC). The Paradise Papers comprises the second largest data leak in history, second only to the Panama Papers leak of 2016.

The leak details the documents of offshore service providers, Appleby and Asiaciti Trust, and the company registers of 19 tax havens. Among the companies named in the Paradise Papers are Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Disney, Uber, Nike, Walmart, and McDonald’s. The individuals identified in the leak include high ranking officials from Kenya, Liberia, Ukraine, Jordan, Nigeria, Lithuania, Greece, Brazil, Indonesia, Uganda, and Kazakhstan, Queen Elizabeth II, and Bono.

The operations of Tether, Bitfinex, and Mr. Devasini have come under increased scrutiny recently – owing to a significant proliferation in the number of Tether in supply since Bitfinex lost its associated banking earlier this year. In response to accusations that Bitfinex has inflated the supply of Tether in order to remain solvent, the company recently posted a tweet stating “Bitfinex is solvent and both fiat and crypto withdrawals are functioning as normal,” and that “a formal announcement is forthcoming.” The following day, Tether announced that approximately $31 million USDT had been “removed from the Tether Treasury wallet on November 19. 2017,” resulting in a hard fork to isolate the hacked funds.

Mr. Potter and Mr. Devasini Have Long Sought to Distance Tether and Bitfinex, Stating That Such Are Separate Entities

The Paradise Papers evidence that Mr. Potter is Tether’s director, and states that Mr. Devasini is a shareholder in the company, in addition to illustrating that the pair established Tether in the British Virgin Islands in 2014. A recently leaked document, however, indicates that Mr. Davasini and Tether chief executive officer, Ludovicus Jan Van Der Velde, are the current directors of the Tether. Mr. Van Der Velde is also the chief executive officer of Bitfinex.

Philip Potter, Bitfinex’s chief strategy officer, worked for Morgan Stanley in the 1990s, but was fired from the company after Mr. Potter was featured in a 1997 New York Times article that portrayed him as shallow and materialistic. Little is known of Mr. Devasini’s background, other than that he founded a computer hardware company during the 1990’s. Mr. Devasini was fined 100 million Italian lira in 1996 for selling pirated copies of Microsoft software.

What is your reactions to the Paradise Papers proving that Philip Potter and Giancarlo Devasini established Tether? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

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The post Paradise Papers Reveal Bitfinex’s Devasini and Potter Established Tether Already Back in 2014 appeared first on Bitcoin News.

It has been a while since we last heard anything about hackers demanding a Bitcoin ransom. In Sacramento, hackers have successfully attacked the public transit system and are now demanding a US$8,000 ransom to be paid in Bitcoin. Whether or not SacRT will honor their demand remains highly unlikely at this point. It is never in anyone’s best interest to meet hackers’ demands, especially when it comes to Bitcoin.

Another Hacking Attempt to Obtain Bitcoin

If there is one trend we have seen emerge over the past few months, it is how criminals tend to disrupt public services in an effort to obtain payment. Usually, the ransom must be paid in Bitcoin, which gives the world’s leading cryptocurrency a bad name. The big question is whether or not SacRT will comply with this demand, though. It would certainly not be in the agency’s best interest to simply cough up the money.

This debacle unfolded earlier this week. Unknown assailants targeted the Sacramento Regional Transit system infrastructure. Not only did they erase critical data, but they also threatened to do even more harm unless their demand was met. Forcing SacRT to pay US$8,000 in Bitcoin – which isn’t even one full BTC at current prices – is not necessarily something that will go over all that well.

This attack erased parts of computer programs which affect the internal operations of Sacramento Regional Transit. It is unclear how the hackers gained access to these systems or obtained the necessary privileges to cause so much harm. One logical explanation is that this may have been an inside job, although it seems highly unlikely that such people would be satisfied with US$8,000 worth of Bitcoin. Anyone holding a grudge would surely ask for at least a quarter million dollars.

As a result of the hack, staffers are currently unable to dispatch employees and assign buses to routes. This creates a major problem for the day-to-day operations of SacRT. Resolving this problem is the top priority, but for now, it seems the agency is looking for ways to do so without paying the ransom. So far, it seems no data has been stolen, which makes this hacking attempt seem a lot less professional than what people expected at first.

So far, no major bus and rail operations have been impacted by the hack either. It seems someone successfully infiltrated the systems of SacRT but failed to do any major damage. This means there is no reason to pay the Bitcoin ransom, although it remains to be seen how everything will play out. The agency has shut down its credit card payment processing system until the matter is resolved.

The bigger question is why anyone would attack SacRT and not do any damage in the process. While it is good to see that no real damage has been done, it also makes one wonder how the criminals were able to access these critical systems in the first place. It seems that is a far more trivial matter than actually disrupting public services throughout Sacramento. This will be an interesting story to keep an eye on over the coming weeks and months.

A move by the Chinese Government to try and calm its onshore investors may inadvertently boost the now Bitcoin black market.

From the very beginning, Crypto-Mining is essential for keeping the blockchain’s cogs turning and secure. And as most people are exposed to Cryptocurrencies and how it works, the first thing they usually find out about Cryptocurrencies is Crypto-Mining.

People will venture forth and will realize how Crypto-Mining is like setting up your own mining rig or even going as far as to purchase ASICs (for the richer individuals), to start mining. Basically, what drew me as an individual to Cryptocurrencies was the simplicity of being able to mine for digital assets.

That was back in 2013, times were great and with a simple mining rig you could get quite a good ROI. Nowadays, due to higher number of people mining and China coming in with huge mining farms and just pushing the difficulty way higher, Crypto-Mining is now only highly profitable when done on a large scale basis.

We are a group of individuals who have been mining on our own individually but supporting each other as a group and never really thought about the ICO or token sale platform. Not until I was introduced by a friend to a friend of his, whose company had a significant amount of surplus energy that couldn’t be stored into the energy grids nor could be sold to anyone else due to the fact that no one else had need for so much energy.

So, i thought, if Crypto-Mining’s profitability is based on how cheap the total costs of your equipment, operations such as broadband, infrastructure and MAINLY ELECTRICITY, then I have got a gem in my hands!

For the equipment, the difference isn’t a whole lot. However, operating costs it makes the difference. We all know that the cheaper your electrical cost, the more profitable you would be mining. As the difficulty for mining increases so does the need for even more hashing power, thus higher consumption of electricity.

1 simple equation, CHEAPER ELECTRICITY = HIGHER PROFITABILITY

Where we stand out is our cost of electricity. US$ 0.028 to US$ 0.035 per kWh. In this case, we have it at cost price due to it being surplus and its a win-win situation for both us and the energy company.

How much cheaper is our electricity compared to others?

Unites States of America’s cost is about US$0.08 to US$0.17 per kWh.

Canada’s cost is about US$0.0652 per kWh to US$0.146 per kWh.

United Kingdom’s cost is about US$0.22 per kWh.

Europe has a range from US$0.0554 per kWh in Iceland to US$0.35 per kWh in Germany.

China’s cost is about US$0.04 to US$0.045 per kWh.

India’s cost is on average US$0.07 per kWh.

We get ours at cost price at US$0.035 per kWh the most.

We can say that we have one of the cheapest sources of electricity and on top of that, our energy comes from Eco-friendly and Renewable sources. (:

Our operating cost are also lower in terms of costs of infrastructure and manpower.

Also, our source of energy is renewable, eco-friendly and sustainable. This allows Crypto-Mining to leave a smaller carbon footprint and venture into clean energy Crypto-Mining. We all know that mining is essential to Proof of work (PoW) algorithms. With sustainable Crypto-Mining, we are able to future proof PoW algorithms and Crypto-Mining.

Crypto-Mining is our core source of income. However, we want to make sure that we are as profitable as possible to give our token holders quarterly dividends in Ethereum for as long as they hold their tokens, forever. We have planned an ecosystem of different sources of revenues and also a future integration into our more traditional fiat financial markets.

We have Ponos-Mining, a GUI or application that will allow anyone with a PC to be able to mine during the PC’s idle time/down time or whenever they so please. Mining is difficult for the average working person to pursue in terms of time and setting up and both hardware and software. Our Ponos-Mining App aims to make its quick, easy and educational in terms of Crypto-Mining. Just install it on your PC, the program will then do a benchmark on your PC and looking at the Cryptocurrencies which most profitable for mining on the market at any moment and begin doing so.

This Ponos-Mining will also allow us to form our own mining pool and we will charge 5% of all Cryptocurrencies mined. If marketed right, our mining pool’s potential is tremendous.

We have our wallet with exchange API integrated, Vidulum. With this wallet we want to be able to bring forth the accessibility of seamless exchange and being able to keep multicurrencies within your wallet. With the exchange and withdrawal fees, comes our source of revenue from this platform.

We have a future plan for our next application, OneMarketStreet. It will be an open ended online marketplace for anyone who wishes to advertise or sell/buy anything. It will be like a marketplace for financial products or even retail. We will be charging referral fees and advertising fees from this platform.

Finally, our ultimate goal, Fungibility. We intend to create demand and value for and in our token. Allowing our token holders to essentially be able to use it as pledge or collateral if needed. not to mention, trade worthy in terms with fiat or cryptocurrency markets.

We believe that the next step for cryptocurrencies are tokens like ours. A token with dividends and benefits, forever. Yes, our tokens pays out dividends every quarter in Ethereum for as long as you hold them,forever.

Minimum Purchase is 0.25 Ethereum.

So, come join us today and be part of the future move of cryptocurrencies & tokens!

Our website: https://www.veritasmining.co

Our Bitcoin Talk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2309077.0

Our YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Eof6D08lM&t=3s

Our Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/CvhCSRGJrlvYHnVN6LJDhQ

Or drop us an email with your inquiries: [email protected]

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 potential number of use cases for drones and other flying aircraft is pretty much limitless. One would not necessarily associate the use of drones with fighting diseases, yet that is exactly what is happening in certain parts of the world. More specifically, these flying devices distribute mosquitoes to regions where malaria is a big problem. It’s an interesting venture to keep an eye on; that much is evident.

Fighting Malaria with Drones and Mosquitoes

It has become pretty apparent that fighting malaria is a steep uphill battle. That should not surprise anyone at this stage, as this particular disease has been around for as long as people can remember. Solving the problem will require a very different approach compared to the methods being used right now. More specifically, it will revolve around drones and sterile male mosquitoes.

To put this into perspective, there is an experiment planned for 2018 which uses drones to distribute sterile male mosquitoes in regions where malaria is a big problem. As the sterile males cannot reproduce, the malaria-laden population will stop growing and even show signs of decline in the years to come.

It is unfortunate for the mosquitoes in question, but these insects carry a wide variety of diseases which make it difficult for humans in affected regions to survive. Moreover, they don’t just attack humans, but also other animals, making them one of the more lethal species on the planet today. Furthermore, fighting malaria after the fact has been a less-than-successful venture so far, despite some promising initial results.

While the use of drones will be considered somewhat controversial, it also validates the technology. Inserting sterile male mosquitoes into their natural environment is not something humans can or should do in person. There are other ways to control the mosquito population as well, mind you, but all of them have downsides. In particular, the use of insecticide or fumigation is considered very controversial.

This new trial will be conducted using drones manufactured by WeRobotics. The company has been approached by international aid organizations, although it is unclear which parties are involved right now. Using drones makes a lot of sense, as a lot of disease-ridden regions don’t even have proper roads. Traveling through the sky is the only viable method, which makes drones a logical solution. It all comes down to keeping this “payload” intact, which will be rather difficult. Mosquitoes are very fragile creatures, but it seems they will be put into an artificial sleep state during transport.

Ventures like this one can only succeed if there is sufficient community engagement. Spreading mosquitoes is one thing, but the local population will need to be informed about these experiments as well. Failure to do so may result in the sterile mosquitoes being killed on sight, rendering the entire experiment futile. For now, the focus will be on the Zika virus first and foremost. This project is well worth keeping an eye on, as it may pave the way for a completely new era of disease control.

Last week it emerged that a fake BTG wallet which had been promoted on the bitcoin gold website was fraudulent. The team’s developers removed “mybtgwallet” once the scam came to light, but not before scores of innocent users had been duped. The total amount of cryptocurrency lost to the fraud has now been totted up – and it comes to a whopping $3.3 million.

See also: Bitcoin Gold Addresses ‘Scam’ Wallet and Premine Endowment Process

Fool’s Gold

The website containing the fake wallet, which encouraged users to upload their private keys and claim their free bitcoin gold, has since been purged, but an archived version can still be viewed:

The average user, visiting the bitcoin gold website which contained a link to mybtgwallet, would have had no way of knowing that the wallet was a trap. The BTG team also tweeted links to the wallet and reassured users that it was safe to use, leading to some out-of-pocket individuals to call the whole affair a conspiracy. The successful heist of over $3 million of cryptocurrency raises serious questions, not only about the diligence of the BTG team, but the obligations of developers as a whole.

This week, it also emerged that $7 million worth of the Verge altcoin had been stolen from Coinpouch, an iOS wallet which had also been promoted on the Verge website. Should developers be compelled to inspect the code for third party wallets before promoting them? The average user lacks the technical nous to check for malicious code, but the same cannot be said of cryptocurrency devs. The bitcoin gold team also stand accused of being slow to act once the scam came to light, with a team member stating last week:

Preliminary investigations indicated that at least some of the claims of theft by the mybtgwallet site are reliable

Those claims would appear to have been wholly accurate. In total, $3 million of bitcoin, $107,000 of bitcoin gold, $72,000 of litecoin and $30,000 of ethereum was swiped by the entity behind mybtgwallet. The pseudonymous developer behind the fraudulent wallet went to great lengths to orchestrate the scam. The wallet was supposedly open source, but the code was later updated on Github, enabling the private keys from users to be sent directly to the mybtgwallet scammer.

A statement released by the bitcoin gold team said:

The team is working with security experts to get to the bottom of this issue…[we] will continue to cooperate in every way possible and work tirelessly in hopes of getting to the root of what happened.

The BTG team are expected to provide a further update in the coming days.

All That Glitters

After the extent of the mybtgwallet hack came to light, one previous beneficiary of forked coins – Bitmain’s Jihan Wu – had this to say:

With every passing fork, the birth of bitcoin cash is starting to look like a textbook case in how to fork a coin. With bitcoin diamond (BTD) the next fork to be born, which is estimated to occur on November 24, bitcoin holders who possess their own keys have a dilemma to face: claim BTD, or play it safe and ignore the forked coin altogether. The third option, of course is to send bitcoin to an exchange that will support BTD and disburse the coins, but relying on centralized exchanges is not without its risks either. Despite the negative publicity surrounding bitcoin gold, the price of the virtual currency has climbed sharply this week along with its fellow fork bitcoin cash.

Do you think that cryptocurrency developers have a duty to verify third party wallets? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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The post Bitcoin Gold Wallet That Stole Private Keys Scooped $3.3 Million appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Black Friday gives hobby miners a chance to grab top-end GPUs.

Speed Mining Co., Ltd. (Hereinafter, Speed Mining) built a Cryptocurrency Mining Center in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan. Their Coin, SMS Coin (http://www.smscoin.jp/) is going to be listed on exchanges by pairing BTC, ETH, and others in exchanges located in UK and Argentina on November 27. Hong Kong, Australian, and Ukraine’s exchanges are following in December and January 2018. Token sale will end on November 26th and the SMS Coin will be available on over 10 oversea exchanges within 2017. Those exchanges include HitBTC, southXchange, BTC-Alpha, CoinExchange.io, Blockbid, stocks.exchange, cryptonit, MERCATOR, AXN, and so on…

Japan’s First Mining Center Operation

Speed Mining group’s Blockchain Specialists build the most profitable portfolio of mining machines in an optimum mining environment, Asahikawa, Hokkaido, which is the coldest area of Japan. We plan to build another center in Myanmar in future for the cheaper electricity.

About Speed Mining

Established as a company that performs cryptocurrency mining business.

We have succeeded in constructing an optimal mining environment composing of a mining machine portfolio by blockchain specialists and others. In the future, we plan to research and develop our own mining chips.

Speed Mining

Location: 10-342-2 Ichijoutoori, Asahikawa, Hokkaido

Capital: 100 million JPY

SMSCoin Site: https://www.smscoin.jp/en

Contact: [email protected]

TEL：81+3-5457-1587（Tokyo Branch）

Available Time Zone：Weekdays 10:00～19:00 (JST)

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.

Can Land Value Tax be a solution for Bitcoin?

Blockchain technology has been around for a while now, and numerous companies have started exploring potential uses. At the same time, many startups have begun releasing blockchain-based services meant to simplify numerous aspects of our lives. Regardless, we’re still far from mass adoption of blockchain technology. Why is this so?

It is believed that there are several factors responsible for holding blockchain technology back. In this article, we will outline the three main reasons.

1. Lack of Education

At this time, there is a huge knowledge gap between people involved with this technology and the general public. This is mainly so due to a lack of education, combined with a lack of coverage by the media. Most of the time, it is fairly difficult to explain how the blockchain works to a person who isn’t tech-savvy. While all consumers are not required to understand how a system functions in order to benefit from it, it’d be much better if the general public were at least aware of the technology’s existence. From this point onward, education should be focused on CEOs in industries where blockchain technology has significant potential.

2. Regulatory Issues

Changing a standard and implementing an entirely new system requires legislative frameworks to be put in place for its use. For instance, in a utopian version of the world where blockchain technology was the main democratic instrument for casting votes, clear laws would have to be put in place in order to facilitate the introduction of the technology. The same principle applies to numerous other industries where blockchain technology can prove beneficial.

3. Gaining acceptance of decentralized data systems

Blockchain technology shouldn’t provide a newer form of data storage, but rather a way to keep it decentralized. Many blockchain-based systems that we have seen do not solve centralization and are only meant to be databases with added security thanks to the immutability protocol. Scalability also comes into play, as mass adoption of the technology requires that it be accessible to people throughout the world.

Based on these points, what are your thoughts on the barriers to blockchain adoption by the masses? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.