Day: December 3, 2017

The past few weeks have brought major changes for Bitcoin in the financial sphere. More specifically, we are seeing more and more entities attempting to expose customers to Bitcoin. Both CME Group and CBOE Global Markets have now officially received regulatory approval to offer their Bitcoin futures. This is a big milestone for the world’s leading cryptocurrency, to say the very least.

US Regulator Approves Bitcoin Futures Trading

It was only a matter of time until the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rendered its verdict on Bitcoin futures trading. With both CBOE Global Markets and CME Group hoping to offer these products before the end of 2017, such a decision had to be rendered pretty quickly. With regulatory approval now having been granted, we may see a lot more bullish Bitcoin price action in the very near future.

Indeed, once the news broke, the Bitcoin price immediately started moving up again. After a few rough days, we saw the Bitcoin price surpass US$11,000 on its way to a new all-time high. This confirms the bullish trend established earlier this year is still in effect. It is evident this news portends a very bright future for the world’s leading cryptocurrency. Exposing institutional investors to Bitcoin will have some interesting ramifications moving forward.

It is a positive sign that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has no problem with financial institutions providing exposure to the Bitcoin price through a traditional investment vehicle. Futures contracts, which can be found across most financial exchanges, have also been making their way into the cryptocurrency sector as of late. This is a major development for the world’s leading cryptocurrency, although it remains to be seen what its effect will be on the Bitcoin price over the long term.

According to CME Group, its Globex electronic trading platform will provide access to these Bitcoin futures contracts come December 18th. It is unclear when CBOE Global Markets will make its product accessible, although we know it will be within the next three months. This means things will get pretty interesting for the Bitcoin price in the very near future. It may even lead to more people actually buying Bitcoin instead of relying on futures contracts.

As one would expect, a vehicle linked to the Bitcoin price is always subject to volatility. Both CME Group and CBOE Global Markets will guard against such volatility as best they can. This means both companies will have to introduce some very strict risk management safeguards. How both entities plan to go about this remains to be seen. Additionally, both companies will share data in the settlement process with the CFTC. This degree of transparency is direly needed when it comes to new investment vehicles such as Bitcoin futures.  

Considering that the Bitcoin price has increased in value rather spectacularly, it remains to be seen if this new investment vehicle will be of great appeal. There are still a lot of concerns over whether or not Bitcoin is in a bubble, as this accelerated growth has stoked fears among financial experts. At the same time, Bitcoin has a track record of proving financial experts wrong time and time again. Whether history will repeat itself here remains to be determined.

The Abyss digital distribution platform is gearing up for its Token Sale. The team behind the project aims to allow gamers and game developers to have a mutually beneficial cooperation, in which both sides get to earn from their efforts. Players will be rewarded for playing games and being active with their friends and the community. While developers will get to enjoy marketing benefits, payments for in-game items, and referral benefits.

The gaming industry is growing at an alarming pace. Massive marketing expenses are necessary in order for developers to draw attention to their games. Developers have to spend more time on market shilling than game development. With The Abyss platform, that’s about to change.

The platform will provide developers with promotional and analytical tools, so that they can cough up less cash for ads, earning more at the same time.

Platform Referral System

Players and users will be able to refer other people to the platform and have new users play games, generate content, unlock achievements, and help the community grow. In exchange for rewards, which span over 5 levels.

Developers will be able to monetize their target audience through their games being played, as well as in-game payments. The Abyss is going to allocate about a third of funds to help to build the rewards pool for developers and the user base.

The referral program is split up into different levels. Players and Developers receive most benefits from referrals whom they invited to the platform directly, let’s call this the first level. First level rewards for platform use are 40%, second level and third levels (friends of friends) get 20%, fourth and fifth referral levels provide for 10% rewards.

Helpful Platform Tools

The platform also provides all of the needed analytical and metric tools needed for the video game industry. Tools and info like MAU, ROI, ARPU, LTV, and others.

All stages of user behavior (from traffic sources to in-game actions) will be fixated and calculated, so that developers can easily optimize their sales funnels, reduce expenses, and increase profits by redistributing advertising channels and increasing user value.

Developers won’t have to worry about monitoring and recording traffic, user behavior, as everything will be calculated on the platform. This will allow game developers to boost sales, decrease expenses, and increase the value of their games.

Internal CPA Network

Game developers will be able to sell excess traffic to others, buy it, or even utilize a lead network. Players can also sell traffic to developers through the internal CPA Network and its functionality. Developers can also utilize basic marketing tools like website banner ads, e-mail announcements, etc.

What Developers Can Draw From The Platform

For their efforts, developers will be compensated in fiat currencies or ABYSS tokens. They can also select what currency they receive and in which proportion for each transaction. Funds can be withdrawn instantly at the first request.

The platform will allow game developers to launch their games in alfa & beta versions, utilize crowdfunding for development purpose, and take advantage of the platform’s effective promo tools.

Developers will be able to use the The Abyss reward bank to retain players using achievements and take advantage of support services, and platform analytics tools around the clock.

Why Players Will Love The Abyss

Players will get to enjoy big pool of games and reap benefits and rewards for taking part in building The Abyss community. Earn by completing assignments for developers, generating content, in-game activities, and helping friends.

The platform also offers a lot of functionality such as good privacy settings, app hibernation, screen caps, video recording, customizable client settings, and LAN support.

Players can also get linked up with syndicates (Masternodes). Imagine playing and profiting together. The Abyss supports joint activity and community building, the reward bank ensures great rewards.

ABYSS Tokens Use Within The Platform

Players can use both, fiats and ABYSS tokens to make in-game purchases. ABYSS tokens are needed to power the syndicate system, rewards for user content, fund transfers, internal CPA Network, referral rewards program and in-game auction. The need for token use on the platform will drive up demand and price.

ABYSS Token Sale

1 ETH = 2500 ABYSS (ETH and BTC are acceptable)

SOFT CAP = 10 000 ETH

PRE-SALE:

Nov 29, 2017 – Dec 1, 2017.

Minimum contribution – 5 ETH

Pre-Sale Bonus: +25%

TOKEN SALE:

Dec 12, 2017 – Jan 24, 2018.

Minimum contribution – 0,1 ETH

Bonuses during Token Sale (Dec 12 – Jan 24):

Day 1: +15%

Days 2-4: +10%

Days 5-20: +5%

Players who buy tokens during the Pre-sale and main Token Sale will be provided with a platform bonus that spans over 5 years, bonus rewards for new players will be increased.

PRE-SALE

Every payment from:

5 ETH will provide +50% for the 1st level of referral program (my friends)

25 ETH will provide +50% for all other referral levels (friends of my friends, and so on)

TOKEN SALE

Every payment from:

20 ETH will provide +50% for the 1st referral level

100 ETH will provide +50% for all other referral levels

In order for the bonus to kick into effect, a special code must be used when registering on The Abyss platform. The special code can only be used once.

To find out more, visit The Abyss website: https://www.theabyss.com

Check out the Whitepaper: https://www.theabyss.com/static/docs/theabyss-whitepaper-en.pdf

Or contact the team: [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.

03 December 2017, Zug Switzerland highly anticipated upcoming ICO trade.io has made three major announcements this week, which have strengthened its positioning as one of the leading ICOs to invest in, for 2017.

The company has launched an historic partnership with The University Of Nicosia.    Two post-doctoral seats, funded by trade.io will focus on advanced research in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).  The research will have a specific focus on side-chains and cross-chain interoperability, as well as smart token corporate governance best practices and implementation.

trade.io has partnered with HitBTC, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, exceeding upwards of half a billion in daily volume, and operating since 2014. Once listed on the HitBTC exchange, the Trade Token (listed as TIO) will trade against the counters Bitcoin (BCT) and Ethereum (ETH).

The company has introduced a four-part tiered pricing structure, further to overwhelming demand from the community.

On this, CEO Jim Preissler commented: “Our community has spoken. You have been asking us to extend the low Trade Token price for the ICO.  The strength of trade.io lies in our community, your voice acts as a directing force for strategic decisions.  With this in mind, our board has agreed to extend the low pricing by adding a tiered structure, giving early movers a bigger incentive to contribute and also to allow more time for such contributions”

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.

THAILAND, December 2, 2017 – Real Land, the company behind the Real Land (RLD) Token, which is a “unique Blockchain-secured digital asset with inherent value as a secure cryptocurrency, which any user can use to participate in Real Estate Units on (the company’s) platform, as well as in other crypto exchanges”, is pleased to announce its recent agreements with some of the best Real Estate investment groups in Asia. The aforementioned agreements pertain to Token Investments in Real Estate Units.

What makes the Real Land ICO or IPO stand out is that Real Land is giving an offer-price guarantee to all RLD investors, meaning that even if the value of the RLD Token dips to zero, Real Land will provide compensation, giving investors the amount of RLD’s original, $1 Value back to each and every one of them.

The RLD IPO or ICO Units can be contributed through Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC) and through many other options.

Real Land Co-Founder, Ms. Ana, clarifies that “The motivation behind the RLD IPO was to create a secure way to take advantage of the crypto-revolution, as well as Real Estate tangibility and growth, which was really missing from the crypto market. What’s more, the RLD IPO aims to give the opportunity to small, global investors to participate in the Global Real Estate Market, and benefit from a better yield on their investments. In other words, we have created and opened a gate of global Real Estate Units, accessible by all potential investors, that is free by the constraints imposed by geographical borders and government regulations. Furthermore, Real Land’s objective is to offer a solid IPO platform, where every Real Estate Unit can be tradeable. With the RLD Token, every Token holder can convert her RLD Tokens into any of the Real Estate Units we have contracted, at any given time. Thus, if any investor wishes to live in a beach house in Pattaya, all she needs to do is send us the amount of RLD Tokens that is equivalent to the value of her Unit of choice, and gain the unit’s ownership. Nevertheless, even if investors don’t wish to convert RLD Tokens into Real Estate Units, they can still benefit from a 15% yield, annually, in the form of an ETH bonus.”

Real Land IPO Specifications

80% of Real Land IPO or ICO assets will be utilized for the purchase of Real Estate Units in different locations throughout Asia, such as Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, and India, among others. 10% of the aforementioned assets will be utilized for the creation of an IPO platform, which will host future IPO’s. An additional 5% will be used for marketing expenses, and 5% will be managed by the Real Land team, for other expenses that might be incurred in the process.

Ms. Alexandra, Real Land Co-Founder, stated that “RLD is different from any other similar ICOs, which are known to offer resource-sponsored Tokens, without any sort of value protection. The RLD plan will protect investors’ funds, and provide them with a 100% guarantee of offer value, as well as a 15% return on their investments – and that’s without taking into account the profit, and growth, of the Token market, which are added benefits that every RLD holder will get to enjoy.”

RLD IPO or ICO Schedule (December 5, 2017 to   January 5, 2018)

Token Name: RLD
Total Tokens: 70,000,000
Real Estate Investments – 80%
IPO platform – 10%
Team – 5%
Marketing – 5%
Accepted Cryptocurrencies: BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC, DASH, NEO, etc.
Accepted Nationalities: Every Nationality.
Exchanges: We plan to be listed amongst the largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
Price: 1 RLD = 0.1 ETH

Bonus and Capping: 

ABOUT The RLD Token

Real Land is a cumulative effort of a group of many Real Estate companies to connect every citizen of the world with all kind of profitable Real Estate Units across the globe. Real Land has just Tokenized all its Real Estate Units, to create smaller Units, that make part of all its sub-projects, helping anyone interested take advantage of secured Real Estate investments, with sustained growth. At Real Land, we carry out thorough research, prior to choosing the Units that we include in the Tokenization process, ensuring that the value of each particular investment will grow faster than any other potential investment of the same kind. Furthermore, through providing an offer-value guarantee, we safeguard investors’ hard-earned money against Token-price fluctuations. RLD also provides its Unit holders a great chance to buy or convert any Units from RLD in to a real home, villa, shop, and any other one of the available Real Estate Units.

Growth Potential

The RLD is the base currency of Real Land’s IPO platforms. After launching the RLD Token in our proprietary platform, we expect that its trading volume will amount to billions of EUR, on a monthly basis. It is expected that the token’s demand will grow with each new user wishing to buy one of the available Real Estate Units. As a growing number of users will join, and purchase, Real Estate Units using the RLD Token, Real Land will continue buying RLD Tokens, at the current exchanges given at any single point in time, to sell Real Estate Units to its new clients. Alternatively, users will be able to buy RLD Tokens directly from Real Land, at current exchanges given at any single point in time, in order to buy, or Convert RLD to a house or villa – a move which will result in the RLD Token’s price growth. The RLD Token supply is limited, while its demand is yet to be established, since there are billions of potential RLD Token users, and hence billions of potential RLD buyers, from all around the world.

To learn more about Real Land, please visit: www.realland.io

Media Contact: [email protected]

The post Real Land Authoritatively Reports Its December ICO, IPO For A Tokenized, Real Estate Unit-Based IPO “RLD” appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Central banks all over the world are legitimately worried about cryptocurrencies. This new form of money can’t be regulated nor controlled. Countering this new hype will be difficult unless banks get on board with the program. Bank of Canada thinks now is a good time to research their own digital currency. Although the name remains unknown, they are not the first financial institution to contemplate such an approach.

Central bank digital currencies are a very unusual development in the financial sector. More specifically, these currencies will not replace cash. Instead, they are complementary coins for the digital age and a cashless society. So far, no major bank has made any significant progress in developing such a currency. Bank of Canada may be the first to achieve some breakthrough in this regard. A paper has been circulating which focuses on creating a native digital currency.

Bank of Canada Keeps all Options Open

Most people don’t associate Canada with cryptocurrency. Ever since some of the big exchanges shut down, things have become pretty quiet on that front. However, there is still an active Bitcoin community. Bank of Canada has taken notice of this growing interest in cryptocurrency and devised its own countermeasures. It remains unclear if and when the central bank will issue a digital currency, though. For now, this option is merely being explored. Nothing has been it in stone just yet, and it may never even happen in the end

It goes without saying this concept has received some criticism as well. Any government intervention is often scrutinized, which is only to be expected. When it comes to new forms of money, anything issued by a government or central bank is greeted with skepticism. This situation will be no different for the bank of Canada, which is only to be expected. After all, it remains to be seen how this digital currency is backed by real value. Cash isn’t, and it is doubtful a digital currency will fare any better.

It remains to be seen if the Bank of Canada decides to explore this option further Putting together a thorough document is rather commendable, to say the least. Just because it exists as a piece of paper doesn’t mean any piece of code will ever be written. Rest assured we will see more banks explore this option in the future, though. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay, and financial institutions need to come up with a solution. Whether or not they can, remains to be determined.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock

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Scaling Bitcoin is still a very talked-about topic in the developer community. On-chain scaling isn’t the approach most people are willing to explore right now. Instead, we see initiatives such as Drivechain focus on bringing sidechain technology to Bitcoin in the future. Two new proposals have been submitted to make this change occur sooner rather than later.

Will Bitcoin Ever get Sidechains?

The big question is, as it has always been, how Bitcoin will scale in the future. The integration of Segregated Witness hasn’t introduced many positive changes so far. This is mainly due to so few service providers having integrated this scaling solution so far. It is doubtful any major improvements will happen in this regard, although one never knows for sure what the future holds.

Regardless, there are still a few other options waiting to be explored. The Drivechain project has been of great interest to a lot of Bitcoin community members. This project aims to introduce sidechains, which can solve the majority of Bitcoin’s scaling problems and even introduce some innovative features to the ecosystem as a whole. 

Two new BIPs proposed by the Drivechain team relate to sidechain technology and mainly focus on gathering feedback for the code in its current form. After all, the project has been in development for nearly two full years, yet very few people had actually seen any of its code until a few weeks ago. With things finally heading in the right direction, we may finally see Bitcoin integrate sidechains.

One of these proposals focuses on a concept known as hashrate escrow. This is somewhat similar to 2-of-3 multisignature escrow, where the third party is a set of Bitcoin miners. However, miners can only sign transactions by directing hashpower to them for a specific amount of time. It’s an interesting approach which may be of great use to the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole.

The second proposal involves something known as blind merged mining, which allows for the mining of extension blocks or sidechains. Miners would not have to perform any validations on the blocks themselves, which is rather interesting. As its name suggests, this process spans two or more blockchains, which is an interesting way to reuse hashpower to secure other chains. This proposal is well worth checking out, as it solves some of the more common problems associated with merged mining as we know it today.

Whether or not Bitcoin’s developers will approve the concept of sidechains remains to be seen, though. So far, this concept has received a lot of pushback, as it may eventually introduce new vulnerabilities to the Bitcoin network. This is why we need reviews of all the code written to date, which is exactly why the Drivechain team has shared these BIPs with the rest of the community.

Qchain, an American-based blockchain company, is here to streamline the fastest-growing sector of the digital advertising agency: native advertising. With a finger to the pulse of digital advertising, Qchain has observed the decline of programmatic and traditional display ad revenue, and closely followed the rise of native ads. (Market forecasts predict that by 2020, rise of native in-feed ads will comprise 74% of display ad revenue.) Qchain applies blockchain to a growth market, building innovation upon innovation.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Qchain’s long-term vision is to build a suite of open and transparent applications that provide decentralized and secure solutions for digital advertisers, in-house marketers, content publishers and everyday Internet users alike. The company’s flagship application is a direct buy marketplace that will make it easy and simple for advertisers and publishers to transact in native ad units, with a particular focus on sponsored content.

Qchain is building with convenience and usability in mind first. The company is prioritizing speaking with advertising and content publishers to design an interface from the ground up that fits their needs. The goal is more than a marketplace, but rather, a collaborative sales platform that can allow advertisers and content publishers to go back and forth to arrive at the customized and tailored sponsored content solutions that satisfy both parties.

The blockchain back-end is only one component of the product. With advertising domain-specific experience in mind, the company is focusing on front-end usability on top of decentralized and transparent back-end tech. The aim is to make an easy-to-learn, intuitive front-end interface informed by advertising and content publishing advisors and partners.

The company is also mindful of the challenges that loom on the horizon for digital advertisers. In the near future, for instance, marketers will need to face changes technology and policy, such as Safari’s new tracking restrictions, and the European Union’s impending GDPR implementation, which will make it difficult for advertisers to reach consumers without their consent.

Moreover, as revenue models shift from measuring by cost-per-impression and cost-per-click, Qchain is devoting time to figuring out how to make a cost-per-conversion model effective and impervious to manipulation.

“Going towards a cost-per-conversion revenue model is something that could help fight ad fraud, as CPC and CPI metrics can be easily gamed and don’t necessarily correlate to conversions,” said CEO Wally Xie. “However, successful conversions could be harder to track in the post-GDPR and post-cookie world. We at Qchain are figuring out a means of tracking conversions that balances user consent with convenience.”

After making good on a promise to release a demo prior to announcing an ICO, Qchain launched a crowdsale on October 24th, open until December 5th. Contributors have the option of contributing with Ether or XEM to buy the company’s tokens on each respective blockchain. As of this writing, the company has raised over $500,000 USD, an amount that will go straight to further development of the product. A beta is slated to roll out in Q2 2018.

Make life easier for journalistic outlets is an overarching intention for the company. “Journalism is important as the fourth estate of society,” said CEO Wally Xie. “A new model is necessary if native is to continue to thrive and publishers are to survive. Qchain is here to provide it. Building from the direct buy sponsored content marketplace and sales platform, our long term vision is to innovate journalism.”

Global payments are a remarkable industry prone to disruption. More specifically, there is a growing need for more competitive solutions in this regard. Cryptocurrencies have not succeeded in making a major impact just yet, but the blockchain just might. That is what Remitware hopes, at least. Their new program has quite a lot of potential, assuming the team can deliver on its promise.

Making global payments better and cheaper is not an easy feat by any means. Various companies have tried and failed to do so. Moreover, there is no impact by cryptocurrencies to speak of these days either. Remitware has some very bold plans to shake up this industry by embracing blockchain technology. It is part of their MoneyOS project to provide safe and compliant international payments. It is evident there is something that needs to change in this industry sooner or later.

Blockchain Technology and Global Payments

Right now, global payments are dominated by payment cards and wire transfers. Neither solution is convenient, efficient, or cheap. MoneyOS aims to change all of that by relying on blockchain technology. Financial institutions can build their own cross-border payment tools. It is a very real threat to any and all existing payment solutions in this market. Whether or not anyone will give this solution a try, remains to be seen.

Blockchain technology is not the only tool wielded by this company. They also provide intelligent algorithms to make sure transactions are processed quickly at low costs. Partnerships with financial services play an integral role in this process as well. With the best route to send money, global payments become a lot more convenient for all parties. It is a good idea on paper, but whether or not it can work, remains unknown.

All of this shows global payments will be disrupted sooner or later. Whether that will be through cryptocurrencies, seems highly unlikely. The blockchain makes a lot more sense to the financial sector right now. It is an interesting play on things, to say the least. More native solutions to move money around the world can be beneficial to the right parties. We can only hope the consumer reaps the benefits of this technology as well.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock

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