Day: November 29, 2017

The ICO community must self-regulate to lessen the blows likely to come from enforcement and regulatory actions, said speakers at Consensus: Invest.

The ASIC mining hardware manufacturing industry has so far largely been dominated by Chinese manufacturer Bitmain, which has sold equipment equivalent to about 60% of the current hashrate. However, several reputable companies have made promising announcements lately about entering the ASIC mining hardware industry with cutting-edge new equipment. 

With all eyes looking at the charts and wondering when Bitcoin will ever stop its upward march over ten thousand dollars, many overlook what is actually involved in creating one. According to reports, the popularity of Bitcoin has created a global surge in energy consumption. Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Consumption Index claims that the current estimated annual electricity consumption is over 30 TWh.

A TeraWatt hour is a pretty big number and equates to 10¹² (1 followed by 12 zeros) watts per hour – which is a lot of energy. That is the equivalent of around 0.14% of total global electricity consumption. It doesn’t sound a great deal but Bitcoin mining is currently using more electricity than 159 countries. Almost 10 US households can be powered for one day by the electricity consumed for a single Bitcoin transaction. With a continuous power drain of 3.4GW, the BTC network consumes five times more electricity than is produced by the largest wind farm in Europe.

This colossal amount of energy is used to power the computers and graphics processors which do the number crunching to mine Bitcoin. Mining is the process by which blockchain transactions are verified and added to the public ledger. As the block reward becomes harder to mine more energy is required to carry out the calculations in this computational arms race. If Bitcoin miners were their own country they would rank 61^st in the world for electricity consumption. This puts them above Ireland and Nigeria.

According to the report, Bitcoin mining energy consumption has increased by almost 30% in the last month alone. The monumental rise in price has created a flurry of interest as people want to jump on the gravy train. Many are unaware of the mathematical complexities that mining involves and the level of hardware and power required doing it. As much as 80% of the mining is currently done in mega-factories in China where banks of computer rigs and fans stretch away as far as the eye can see. Companies rent these rigs out to individuals who get a cut of the mining action.

In comparison one of Visa’s two US data centers reportedly runs on around 2% of the power required by Bitcoin. Between them, those two servers conduct around 200 million transactions a day while the Bitcoin network handles less than 350,000. With Bitcoin’s price increase over tenfold since the beginning of the year and this unsustainable energy draw in keeping up with it, many speculate that the bubble may soon burst.

The post Bitcoin Mining Energy Consumption Increases Drastically appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Tokenbox team is happy to announce that the tokensale has finally come to an end, and the results are undeniably satisfying and quite promising. During the pre-sale and TGE, which took precisely 2 weeks, the project managed to raise a substantial sum of $7,334,268.

The entire amount was collected for 1593 transactions. The geographical spread of TBX tokens buyers was really broad. The leading country in terms of volume of investment was South Korea.

TBX token is about to enter the cryptocurrency exchange market within a month.

The team is pleased to admit that there are several funds and numerous traders among the investors, which means that the project of a platform for creating cryptofunds and cryptotrading is trusted and in high demand.

Vladimir Smerkis, co-founder and managing partner: “The Tokenboх team is satisfied with the quality of investors, many of them are future customers of the platform. The tokensale was in fact a pre-sale of the Tokenbox service itself to our future customers”.

“First of all we invested in this project because we trust the team, because we see the success of The Token Fund. I will be very happy to use the Tokenbox platform for launching our tokenized fund in the nearest possible future”, – said one of the investors,  Emanuele Battista Ferreri, CEO EGONON SA.

The following implementation of the project will continue according to the plans.

Within the completion of TGE Tokenbox team is up to the following steps: conducting complex legal procedures and a large scale software development.  

Viktor Shapokvskiy, co-founder and managing partner of Tokenbox: “What we need to work on is the legal functionality, like creating entities that will enable issuing sub-licenses to traders and funds that want to use the platform. That is a voluminous amount of work, we have to register and obtain licenses in every market that we’re targeting, the US, Europe, Singapore, etc.”

According to the Road Map, an active development stage of the first modules of Tokenbox platform is set for the beginning of 2018.

Tokenbox team welcomes TBX holders from all over the world and looks forward to sharing a very interesting work together.

The post Tokenbox TGE successfully finished, raising more than $7 million in total appeared first on NEWSBTC.

After establishing an all-time high near 11,300-fiat mark, Bitcoin price ditched the uptrend and fell towards lower 9000s on Wednesday night.

It is not a normal price action, to be honest. But going by the history of Bitcoin market, the aforementioned relapse doesn’t surprise. Bitcoin has always expressed exaggerated upside-downside price actions in the past, but the trend overall has remained bullish.

Only this year, the price of one Bitcoin has jumped 858%. Many Wall Street professionals have refuted Bitcoin’s meteoric rise by calling it as a “bubble”. Other financial academics have also discouraged Bitcoin by comparing it to 1990s dot-com bubble, some even claiming that the BTC price will hit $0.

At the same time, there are also finance celebs like David Shrier (Distilled Analytics) and Iqbal Gandham (eToro) who favor Bitcoin for its underlying technology and think that the digital currency is here to stay.

“While the price volatility in Bitcoin leads some commentators to assume we’re in a Bitcoin bubble, the reality is that emerging technologies carrying radically new ideas will always see swings in their value before their potential is fully realized and the price stabilizes.” – Gandham told CNBC.

For now, the BTC/USD pair is eyeing 9500-fiat as an immediate support. Failing to sustain it will push the price action towards 9000-fiat. In the event of a bounce back, 10,000-fiat appears to be a natural upside target under more controlled circumstances.

Other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum and Litecoin, have also fallen hard after setting their all-time highs above $500 and $100, respectively.

The post Bitcoin Price Drops Below 9500 in Flash Crash appeared first on NEWSBTC.

The price of bitcoin experienced a dramatic decline today at a time when many major exchanges were showing signs of stress from new interest.

Coinsilium Group Limited (NEX: COIN), the blockchain venture builder and investor that finances and manages the development of early-stage blockchain technology companies, is pleased to announce it has acquired a 30% equity stake in StartupToken Limited (“StartupToken”), a provider of accelerator and advisory services to technology start-ups and companies looking to undertake Token Generation Events (“TGEs”), sometimes referred to as Initial Coin Offerings (“ICO’s”).

Agreement Highlights

Under the terms of the Agreement, Coinsilium will:

• Acquire 300 shares representing 30% of the equity in StartupToken Limited, for a total consideration of £360,905.28 at a valuation circa £1.2m to be satisfied by way of a combination of shares and cash payments;
• Pay £276,694.05 to be satisfied through the issue of 3,255,224 Coinsilium shares at 8.5p, representing a 3% premium to the 28 day VWAP, and a further cash payment of £84,211.23;
• The shares are subject to a 12-month lock-in agreement (six months hard and six months soft); and
• Coinsilium CEO Eddy Travia to be appointed to the board of StartupToken

Additionally, the Company has agreed to provide StartupToken with a six month convertible loan of US$100,000, with 5% annual interest. If converted, this will equate to a further 6.40% equity at a valuation of circa £1.2 million.

Rationale

The investment is aligned with Coinsilium’s strategy of leveraging its first-mover advantage in the blockchain technology sector to provide advisory services to companies targeting a Token Generating Event (TGE). As a result of the acquisition the two companies are able to provide an expanded range of services to advisory clients including:

• Consulting, Marketing & Event Services
• Token Modelling, White Paper Drafting
• Acceleration Services
• Roadshows, Media, Training

About StartupToken

StartupToken Limited is a Gibraltar registered company operating a Token Sale advisory service and developing a global network of Blockchain startup accelerators. It has been actively trading since May 2017 and has generated revenues from consultancy fees and the organisation of Token Sale roadshows of US$226,000 with projected success fees from current clients of between $809,510 and $3,393,005 equiv.

Malcolm Palle, Chairman of Coinsilium, commented:

“This important strategic investment strengthens Coinsilium’s foothold in the fast–growing digital token space. We have already established a good working relationship with StartupToken and have been greatly impressed by the speed at which they have been able to gain a strong presence in the industry. We look forward to working closely with Yacine and his team and using our combined experience to add value and fast-track the scale up of the business.”

Yacine Terai, CEO of StartupToken commented:

“As founder of StartupToken, I am extremely pleased to have received this vote of confidence from Coinsilium which I consider to be one of the most respected companies within the blockchain investment space. ‘Token Sales’ are a new form of funding which is taking the blockchain world by storm and with the support of Coinsilium’s experienced team and its influence, StartupToken is now ideally positioned to become one of the leading accelerators within the global Token Economy.”

The Directors of Coinsilium Group Limited take responsibility for this announcement.

About Coinsilium

Coinsilium is a blockchain venture builder and investor that finances and manages the development of early-stage blockchain technology companies. It does this through its consortium of top-tier investors, industry thought leaders and executive managers.  Based in London, Coinsilium’s focus is on driving innovation in fintech and blockchain technologies, enabling businesses to take advantage of growth opportunities.

Coinsilium shares are traded on NEX Exchange Growth Market, the primary market for unlisted securities operated by NEX Exchange, a Recognised Investment Exchange under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

For further information about Coinsilium please visit http://www.coinsilium.com

About StartupToken

StartupToken is a hyper accelerator preparing entrepreneurs to grow their blockchain projects into successful startups wishing to issue tokens to support their development. StartupToken helps its clients reach the necessary level of engagement with their communities worldwide thanks to a full-service package including legal and technical support, token economics and token modelling, compliance, events organisation and growth hacking.

StartupToken supports creative, disruptive, and feasible concepts using blockchain technology for the democratic economy and is fast becoming a key actor in the blockchain ecosystem bridging regulators, businesses and crypto enthusiasts.

For further information about StartupToken please visit https://startuptoken.com/

The post COINSILIUM ACQUIRES 30% INTEREST IN STARTUPTOKEN LIMITED appeared first on NEWSBTC.

The post A Greener Cryptocurrency From Bittorrent Inventor, Bram Cohen appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

BitClave’s token sale has finished, having met the hard cap of $25.5 million within 32 seconds after the official start of the sale on Nov 29. There were 13 168 transactions made during the crowdsale. It’s a tremendous result, that highlights the level of interest and confidence in the concept and suggests a bright future for the project.

BitClave aims to totally change the way people use search engines and deal with advertisements. Its decentralized network allows users to decide who gets access to their personal data, and receive tokens as payment for sharing it.

This way, the only advertisements users see are from companies they want to hear from, and the advertisers themselves benefit from an audience that is already interested in buying.

It’s a shift away from the traditional method of simply gathering huge pools of user data from social media sites and search engines and using this to influence more general ads – an arrangement that’s been annoying for users and inefficient for advertisers.

In the pre-sale BitClave had already raised an impressive $22 million of the $25.5 million hard cap, with over 64,000 registered users. In the sale itself, BitClave distributed 550,842,000 CAT tokens, out of a total supply of 2 billion. The remaining unsold tokens will be allocated to a special account and will be locked long term.

BitClave’s success is just the latest story in a long sequence of exciting ICO launches recently.

BitClave’s CEO Alex Bessonov was highly positive about the results. He said, “This is a spectacular result, and would not have been possible without the support we’ve had from our community and followers. We’re incredibly grateful for this network we have. The token sale is only the beginning of the journey. For the next step, we are going to hit the market with a first mass solution and clearly demonstrate the usefulness of the system. You can expect announcements such as open source SDK releases, commercial partnership, and community grants all aimed at bootstrapping and growing the network. Stay tuned!”.

About BitClave

BitClave uses blockchain to eliminate ad service middleman. The company’s objective is to create a direct connection between businesses and customers. BitClave is building a decentralized search engine that helps users search for items without losing control of their own personal information. Users also get compensated every time they click on search results for products and services from their favorite brands. The process makes third-party advertising networks unnecessary. For more information, please visit www.bitclave.com.

The post BitClave Token Sale Completed Within 32 Seconds appeared first on NEWSBTC.

AlphaEx.net will maintain XinFin’s XDC trading pair against ETHEREUM, BITCOIN and Ripple to provide liquidity for it’s tradefinex, remittance and IoT Pilot projects with global institutions.

AlphaEx.net today announced that it will start XDC/ETH, XDC/BTC and XDC/XRP trading pairs to assist XinFin.org on it’s various pilots for remittances, tradefinex and IoT pilot projects that various regulated global institutions are currently undertaking on XDC01 protocol. XDCs or XinFin Digital Contracts are native fuel that power the XinFins Hybrid Blockchain network. Alphaex.net is an emerging digital asset exchange that aims to follow regulatory standards and compliances for dealing with real world enterprises.

“With the recent regulatory announcements around compliance standards and licenses for digital asset exchanges, alphaex.net will be following Industry’s best AML/KYC standards and will work on protection of trade for it’s customers. At Alphaex.net, we aim to assist the various global institutions that are working on XinFin’s XDC protocol. The ongoing pilots include real time monitoring of infrastructure projects using IoT. Pilot projects also include the emerging tradefinex.org platform for various trade associations and regulated banking, fintech partners. Digital asset exchanges today face various challenges that include gaining regulatory clearances and an ability to work with banks and real world enterprises. We at AlphaEx.net aim to be one of the best digital asset exchanges platform that will be fully compliant with the existing laws and framework” said Peter Yeo, Compliance advisor at AlphaEx.net

“Among various pilots that will be conducted on AlphaEx.net will be fixed rate remittances, Token of Trust for Global Trade, digitization of real world assets and Finance and providing settlement layer for the IoT enabled projects.”

“Alphaex.net has extended invitations to regulated enterprises and financial institutions around the globe who can make use of the alphaex.net platform to offer fiat currency pairs against XinFin XDCs where participating institutions are authorised to operate.”

“XinFin or eXchange InFinite is currently evolving its hybrid XDC01 protocol that lets enterprises maintain a private state and a public state on the same Blockchain that provides secure, scalable, higher through-put network platform for global FinTech institutions. XinFin has signed agreements with over 10 global institutions that aim to make use of XinFin’s Hybrid Blockchain model to disrupt various industry verticals such as remittances, travel, supply chain, assets and Projects financing.”

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.