Day: November 28, 2017

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TechCrunch founder and Silicon Valley staple Michael Arrington has announced his newest venture – an XRP-denominated crypto hedge fund.

Bitcoin has had a major impact on the global financial system over the past eleven months

Representatives from several trading-oriented cryptocurrency firms took the stage at CoinDesk’s Consensus: Invest event.

Imagine a public record which acts as the world’s knowledge-base for all of life’s most pressing questions, where the answers are vetted by thousands – if not millions of people. All using the blockchain.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

This is essentially what Knowledge.io is trying to do with their recently announced project. Basically, a decentralized Quora or r/explainlikeimfive that incentivizes actual experts, instead of amateurs, to answer people’s questions by rewarding them with cryptocurrency.

“Prove it”, Says Knowledge.io

Knowledgeable employees are a valued commodity because they’re more likely to do a good job than an uneducated employee. Hence, there has been a focus on the idea of utilizing “human capital” in modern economies, to boost productivity and job completion quality.

Figuring out who is or isn’t knowledgeable, however, is a task in itself that isn’t all that straightforward. From pre-school certificates to high school diplomas, moving on to higher or tertiary education represented by college and university degrees, the practical quantification of what people know has always been through a piece of paper. And the quality dependent solely by the reputation and prestige of the certificate’s issuing body.  There are difficulties as a result of the current means of proving knowledge and skills that leave much to be desired.

Firstly, different institutions hold differing academic standards that ultimately determine whether or not a certificate is issued. Furthermore, it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to verify a person’s practical knowledge just by the existence of a degree alone; indeed it is often difficult to extrapolate any useful information about that person’s actual understanding of their selected field of study.

If a group of people graduating from the same year all have the same qualification, the only way to go deeper is to request for grades, which can be a lengthy and cumbersome process.

Secondly, as the quality of education is attached to reputation and prestige of the issuing institution, the cost of pursuing education there is significantly higher. In fact, the cost of higher education is increasing worldwide, anyway, and students are forced into higher debts each year. British students ran up study debts of $55,000 in 2016, up from only $20,000 five years ago. American students recorded an average of $35,000 last year, up 6% from 2015.

How Do You Quantify Knowledge?

Within the Knowledge platform, users validate each other’s knowledge and expertise, earning Knowledge tokens as a monetary reward for the information they provide. All this is validated through “gamified learning” – or learning centered around designed-incentives that motivate users to continuously engage the platform – and verification of expertise through objective measures.

The measures are determined by the Knowledge Score technology, which will be used to assign values to each participant, objectively evaluating their levels of knowledge across a range of topics. Complemented by vast, proprietary data sets available through its partnerships and a base of over 10 million questions across a topic spectrum, the possibilities are virtually limitless to generate a continuous supply of Questions and Answers.

Thanks to blockchain innovation, a user’s learning is validated, tracked and record permanently in a public, immutable ledger over the course of their life. Thus, Knowledge.io provides students the ability to both pay their own way through school and demonstrate their knowledge through their accumulated contributions to the platform as they are recorded on the blockchain.

Advancing the “Celebration of Knowledge”

Knowledge.io has its conceptual origins in the recognition, rewarding and celebration of knowledge. It assumes that all knowledge is valuable not only to the individual that possesses it but to the society that benefits from interacting with that knowledge.

The Knowledge.io platform plans to launch its’ crowdsale campaign with a pre-sale on 15 January, 2018. 10% of the total Knowledge Token supply (25 million) will be made available during the pre-sale, while a further 20% (50 million) will be put up for sale during the main public ICO to be announced at a later date.

For More Information, Visit Knowledge.io’s Official Website – http://knowledge.io/

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The Government of Cyprus describes it as a country with a positive attitude to blockchain and cryptocurrencies: one has never prohibited bitcoin turnover, ICO campaigns and cryptocurrency exchanges. However, young companies aimed at integrating cryptocurrencies and blockchain still have a number of issues related to the legislation and blockchain development aspects. Therefore, Smile-Expo is organizing the event of the Bitcoin & Blockchain Conference series in Cyprus. Experts will share their opinions and examine case studies of the integration of blockchain and cryptocurrency payments into business.

Conference participants will focus on the following issues:

• ICO as a new way of raising funds, comparison with a conventional venture financing. Token and tokenization economically.
• Blockchain and payments. Blockchain’s role in global financial system modernization. The latest trends in fintech and digital banking services.
• Cryptocurrencies in 2018. Future of bitcoins and altcoins as well as their investors.
• Speculative bitcoin. How market players manipulate cryptocurrency price.

The conference will involve 15 speakers from 10 countries, including Marina Guryeva (well-known blockchain analyst, co-founder at CyberFund), Theodosis Mourouzis (blockchain consultant) and Ismail Malik (Editor In Chief of ICO CROWD). Attendees will also be able to listen to presentations by founders and heads of successful blockchain startups: Jan Sammut (RefToken), Marc Kenigsberg (BitcoinChaser), Ilia Korguzalov (PILIGRIM XXI and ARCONA AUGMENTED REALITY ECOSYSTEM) and others.

Other BBC Cyprus activities

Exhibition of blockchain projects. There will be stands where manufacturers of blockchain-based applications and software will show their products. 10 developers will take part in the exhibition.

Pitch session. Exhibitors will briefly present their own projects on the conference platform.

Panel discussion. Startup founders from various countries will discuss blockchain development trends to be relevant in 2018-2019.

Discounts and bonuses for visitors

Smile-Expo, the conference organizer, offers special opportunities for students: they can attend Bitcoin & Blockchain Conference Cyprus just for EUR100.

We have a gift for the rest visitors as well: the BBC-PARTNER promo code provides a 20% discount for a full ticket. You should enter it in the Promo code section when registering on the website and buy a ticket for EUR280 instead of EUR350.

Do you have any questions? More information about the conference can be found on the website of Bitcoin & Blockchain Conference Cyprus. 

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Internet connectivity in China has always been a somewhat controversial topic. Most people know that China doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure in place to accommodate a high amount of bandwidth. Moreover, the country’s government isn’t too keen on letting people access the information they desire. While that last part may not change soon, the country is boosting IPv6 adoption. A plan has been announced to ensure this evolution will take place by 2025.

China Wants to Embrace IPv6

It is no secret that the number of available IPv4 addresses is dwindling at an alarming rate. More devices are being brought online now than ever before, and they all need to have a unique IP address. Under the current IPv4 framework, there won’t be sufficient room to accommodate the next generation of Internet-based devices as there aren’t enough spare IP addresses. Evolving to a new standard in the form of IPv6 is the only viable solution. Unfortunately, that will not be as easy as most people would assume.

It seemed this logical evolution would face a lot of resistance in China. The country has a very unusual internet infrastructure, and accommodating groundbreaking changes such as IPv6 is not easy under any circumstances. However, it seems China’s Communist Party is making some positive moves in this regard. The party recently unveiled its plan to increase IPv6 adoption between now and 2025. Its first goal is reaching 200 million IPv6-capable devices by the end of 2018.

If things go according to plan, this initiative should result in 500 million devices by 2020, and the rest of China will get on board by 2025. Until now, IPv4 has been the dominant Internet Protocol with over 4.3 billion addresses in existence. However, everyone knew the number of available addresses would be exhausted sooner rather than later. Despite the introduction of IPv6 several years ago, not much has happened in terms of adoption these past few years.

Plenty of countries around the world – including China – managed to delay the switch to IPv6 by recycling old IPv4 addresses. This was always a temporary solution first and foremost, and it seems things will finally start heading in the right direction over the next eight years. Rest assured there will be other countries taking a similar approach. One also has to acknowledge that if China switches to the new standard, the IPv4 option will remain viable in most parts of the world for a few extra years.

It is evident the best course of action would be to see all countries switch over to IPv6 before this issue has to be revisited again. With China leading the charge in a positive manner for a change, it is evident we may see more countries focusing on this impending change. Most computers around the world can easily upgrade to IPv6, assuming one’s internet service provider supports the change. In the Western world, this is far less of an issue right now. At the same time, it remains to be seen how things will evolve in this regard.

Topics like this show there are some big changes on the horizon in the world of technology. While not everyone sees the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 as important, the matter shouldn’t be ignored by any means. There is plenty of reason to upgrade to the new standard, and zero reason to keep delaying this upgrade for much longer. That being said, it will still take several years for us to see any meaningful improvement in this regard.

Blockchain software maker AlphaPoint has announced that it will create a new public network aimed at the digitization of real-world assets.

Abra is adding new features to its bitcoin wallet app, including support for ethereum.

November 28, Santa Monica, CA. – DMarket, the world’s first blockchain-based cross-game marketplace to turn virtual items into real assets, has established three new highly important partnerships recently – with Xsolla, DreamTeam and Playkey.

“Each partnership will have a tremendous impact on the whole gaming industry and will bring additional value to the DMarket platform and its users and contributors,” said Volodymyr Panchenko, CEO and Founder of DMarket.

First, DMarket has joined forces with Xsolla, a leading global distributor and publisher of videogames that provides game developers and publishers with advanced tools to optimize user acquisition and monetization. Xsolla is already working successfully with such big gaming brands as Valve, Twitch.tv, Aeria Games and other top players.

According to the agreement, Xsolla will promote DMarket as a priority marketplace for game developers’ in-game items. This collaboration means that DMarket Token will be accepted as one of the core gaming crypto payment currencies on Xsolla and will become one of Xsolla’s more than 700 payment options offered to gamers. To maximize the benefits of the partnership, Xsolla CEO Aleksandr Agapitov is joining the Advisory Board of DMarket.

Second, DMarket partnered up with DreamTeam, the first decentralized Esports and gaming recruitment and management platform.

The companies will cooperate on big data analytics and machine learning tools. As part of the agreement, DreamTeam will sponsor 72 additional hours of DMarket’s Token crowdsale. The crowdsale will now run through December 1 and will be supported by a special offer: all DMarket presale contributors will receive a 15% extra bonus on the DreamTeam Token sale Phase #1, and all DMarket crowdsale contributors will get a 7% bonus during the DreamTeam Token sale Phase #1.

Additionally, DMarket will get 30% of ad space on DreamTeam for 12 months after the launch and will be promoted within the DreamTeam community.

Third, DMarket teamed up with Playkey, the first decentralized сloud P2P and blockchain gaming platform that enables gamers to launch and play AAA video games on low-end PCs and MacOS devices. Today, 80% of Playkey users play MMO games and this entire audience could start using DMarket for convenient, one-click in-game items trading. In turn, DMarket users will be introduced to Playkey as a great new way to play hardcore video games on low-end PCs, which is an obvious win-win.

Currently, DMarket is holding its final Token crowdsale, continuing through December 1, 2017. To date, the marketplace has raised over $18 million.

About DMarket:

DMarket is the world’s first cross-game platform based on blockchain and smart contracts that enables one-click sale, exchange, or evaluation of any virtual item from any game on any platform. DMarket Token will be the only virtual currency used within the platform, providing different options for trading items, exchanges, and smart contracts.  DMarket presented the Alpha/DEMO version of its future marketplace and blockchain testnet in October 2017.

For more information visit DMarket at dmarket.io.

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