Day: December 8, 2017

Has the post-2008 bank cleanup allowed the banks to mop up more client money? Despite tighter financial regulation, banks are behaving like teenagers with no house rules. Not only are financial services fees rising, but it is becoming harder to see what big banks are doing with their money.  In fact, about 10 percent of big money trades now take place in the ‘dark pool’—faceless financial exchanges where traders can hide their identity.

The operation of financial services on the Blockchain is proving that innovation can succeed where regulations are failing. Over the digital ledger, cryptographic proofs replace intermediaries and their high fees while a smart contract monitors compliance in real time. Conducting financial transactions over a peer network of transparent nodes is rebuilding trust in the financial system.

A self-regulating repository of the truth

Trade.io is one of the revolutionary financial exchange models providing a solution to the financial system flaws that keep regulators up at night. On a transparent  Blockchain platform, trading partners are accountable for their activity since transactions are transparent and traceable. The trading record is irreversible, making it difficult for a corrupt broker to manipulate the market to increase his commissions.

The nightmare of every regulator, systemic risk, is also reduced. Markets are protected from the contagion effect—a failure in one part of the system leading to failures in other parts of the system—by the distributed and decentralized network. Transactions reside on the computer of each party in a transaction node. The focus is on security and information protection at the individual node level. Since transactions in fiat and cryptocurrencies are done directly from the digital wallet of traders, the trade.io platform can match and process trades without gaining access to trade information.

Democratizing crypto exchanges

Trade.io aims to be a model of the sharing and trust economy. Since investors in the Trade Token, the trade.io trading currency, take an ownership interest in the exchange and profit from its success, the incentive of members to cooperate rather than cheat is high.

Trade Token holders become investors in the trade.io Liquidity Pool. Fifty percent of the revenues (or losses) of the liquidity pool are deposited (deducted) daily to the wallets of pool participants. The distribution is based on a pro-rata allocation of each member.  A member with 500-999 tokens locked on the pool will receive 10 percent profit participation, while a member with over 5,000 tokens locked-in will receive 100 percent of the profit plus a 10 percent bonus. Revenue is generated from a number of sources, including trade spreads, commissions, P2P margin lending fees and investment banking fees.  

Trading on the trade.io platform is conducted with the Trade Token. The token is more than a medium of exchange at a lower cost than traditional exchanges. It also provides membership in the liquidity pool through the trade.io wallet. The membership fee, which allows participation in the pool, is 2500 Trade Tokens. These Trade Tokens will be secured by the underlying assets pledged by the participants, which may include fiat or cryptocurrency.

For traders who lament losing their traditional trading tools in the crypto world, the trade.io Blockchain platform provides integration of MT4, the most popular trading platform.

Playing by the rules

Trade.io will be licensed as a bank and financial exchange. Different from the dystopian world of cryptocurrencies portrayed by some banks, the regulated crypto exchange is becoming the model in the US, Japan and elsewhere. The model leverages the innovation of the Blockchain while providing the security of a regulated exchange. Unique Blockchain services include P2P margin lending.

Participants can lend directly to each other through a peer-to-peer lending program. The investment banking arm of trade.io will help companies issue tokens and launch initial coin offerings (ICOs).  Investors may use the Trade Token to invest in initial public offerings (IPOs) and ICOs. Trade Token holders can also receive preferred access to ICOs, discounts and other market benefits. Trade.io has a Seed & Venture Fund to support the development of Blockchain technologies and potential ICOs.

The trade.io ICO

The initial coin offering started on Dec. 7th, 2017. Two-thirds of 500 mln Trade Tokens (Symbol: TIO)  will be available for crowd sale. The trade.io liquidity pool will be launched for trading in April 2018, followed by the investment bank in July 2018.

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The public’s appetite for forked coins seems to be diminishing. Data shows that around 6.6 million BCH has been claimed to date, compared to just 2.2 million BTG. There’s still time for more bitcoin gold to be claimed, but thus far most holders have been deterred from doing so. Reasons include BTG’s low value compared to BTC, and the perceived risk of splitting bitcoin via a third-party tool in order to claim forked coins.

Also read: More Bitcoin Fork Clones on the Way: Bitcoin God Will Be Born Xmas Day

Forked Coins: Free Cash or a Waste of Time?

Of the bitcoin forks to have occurred this year, bitcoin cash has been the most popular. In terms of uptake, value, and adoption, BCH is the market leader by far. This much can be gleaned simply by looking at the market prices and trading volume of bitcoin cash versus that of its successors, bitcoin gold and bitcoin diamond. Newly crunched data now shows the extent to which bitcoin cash has outmuscled its younger siblings.

Data researcher Antoine Le Calvez has been tracking the movements of BCH and BTG on forks.network since the coin splits came into existence. His figures show that three times as much bitcoin cash has been claimed as bitcoin gold, which was born three and a half months later. A series of charts track the amount of BTG and BCH that were moved following the respective forks. In other words, they indicate the amount of each coin that was claimed by bitcoin holders. That figure stands at 2.2 million for BTG but 6.6 million for BCH.

Has the Public Had its Fill of Forks?

The available data for coin splits doesn’t take into account coins that have yet to be claimed. Notable holders of large amounts of bitcoin such as Coinbase have yet to issue BCH to their account-holders, and it is uncertain whether the broker’s BCH holdings will show up as “moved” – i.e claimed – at this moment in time. When bitcoin cash was created, there were just under 16.5 million BTC in existence. With one study suggesting that 4 million BTC are lost or locked up forever, that leaves around 12.5 BCH and BTG up for grabs. From this, it can be extrapolated that around 53% of the world’s available bitcoin cash has been claimed versus just 18% for bitcoin gold.

But Wait, There’s More…

One other interesting tidbit to emerge from forks.network pertains to the number of unspent transactions (UTXO) for BCH and BTG. Bitcoins, or parts thereof, are stored in wallet addresses as UTXOs. Thus, it’s common to have multiple unspent transactions for a single address. When the user sends funds to a different address, these UTXOs can be bundled up and sent in one batch.

At the time of the BCH fork, there were 53 million unspent BTC outputs, which had risen to 56 million by the time of the BTG fork. Today, the number of UTXOs for bitcoin gold that have been moved stands at just under 1 million, versus 4.8 million for BCH. Given that bitcoin cash has been in existence for three and a half months longer than bitcoin gold, this isn’t surprising. When the unspent outputs for both coins is measured from November 16 (when BTG was created) till the present day, the figure stands at 1.6 million for BCH versus BTG’s 966,000. In other words, bitcoin cash is being moved more readily than its younger sibling.

Bitcoin gold didn’t get off to the best of starts thanks to tales of fake wallets stealing coins, an overly generous pre-mine and dodgy code uploaded to the BTG Github. Despite bitcoin gold failing to match the success of bitcoin cash, it doesn’t appear to have diminished developer enthusiasm for forking bitcoin. The likelihood of bitcoin holders sharing that enthusiasm, when presented with such offerings as “bitcoin god”,  seems slender. With bitcoin surging past the expected dollar value of new coins in a matter of minutes and eating alts for breakfast at the height of its bull run, everything else just seems like a distraction.

Will you be bothering to claim future bitcoin forks? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post Three Times as Much Bitcoin Cash Has Been Claimed as Bitcoin Gold appeared first on Bitcoin News.

A new startup is seeking to apply Blockchain technology to the travel industry and disrupts the general monopoly of for-profit companies in the US.

Circle has raised $20 million in a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) sale for its ethereum-based “CENTRE” payments network.

Fearing risks associated with cryptocurrency trading, several leading banks in Bulgaria have blocked the accounts of the country’s major crypto exchanges.

Ten Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges have signed an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department to collaborate to prevent cyber crime. Along with growing bitcoin adoption in Japan is the number of cybercrime cases including unauthorized access to online accounts and money laundering.

Also read: Japan Increases Lead – Approves Another Four New Cryptocurrency Exchanges

10 Exchanges Collaborate

Ten of Japan’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges signed an “agreement on countermeasures against cybercrime” with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday. This move is “in response to the increasing number of crimes targeting digital currencies online such as bitcoin,” Sankei Shimbun described.

The exchanges are SBI Virtual Currencies, Bitflyer, Bitpoint Japan, GMO Coin, Coincheck, Bit Trade, Quoine, Bitbank, Btc Box, and Money Partners. All of the companies have been licensed by the Japanese Financial Services Authority (FSA) to legally operate as digital currency exchanges, except one – Coincheck. Japan’s second-largest bitcoin exchange by volume is still under review by the agency.

In order to prevent cyber crime, the exchanges agree to cooperate with each other and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Specifically, they agree to “mutual cooperation, cybercrime reporting notification, criminal investigation cooperation, information sharing, [and] measures to prevent widespread damage,” App Times detailed.

Rising Cybercrime Cases

The Director of Security Bureau of the National Police Agency (NPA) commented, “Although the spread of virtual currency is remarkable, it is a sense of crisis when it turns into a crime; this agreement is encouraging.” Digital currency exchanges face many cybersecurity challenges such as unauthorized access, illegal transactions, and money laundering.

Last month, the National Police Agency revealed 170 money laundering cases in Japan involving cryptocurrency in the six months ending in October, Japan Times reported. “We want to take countermeasures by collaborating with relevant ministries and agencies as well as business operators,” an NPA official emphasized.

A November Cabinet Office survey of 3,000 people in Japan aged 18 and over shows “a growing number of people are worried about the effects of cyber-terrorism, unauthorized access to online accounts and other high-tech crimes,” the news outlet detailed.

Bitflyer CEO Yuzo Kano commented:

While the number of shops that can settle virtual currencies has increased, the number of crimes is increasing…we want to work hard to prevent damage.

What do you think of Japan’s top cryptocurrency exchanges and the Tokyo Police Department uniting to fight cyber crime? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and the Tokyo Police Department.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post 10 Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchanges and Tokyo Police Unite to Fight Cyber Crime appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Mining pool ViaBTC is launching a new cryptocurrency exchange based in the U.K., the company announced today.

We have seen multiple Bitcoin forks and clones over the past few months. Such a situation is not sustainable in the long run, nor does it help the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It seems the newest hard fork to watch out for will go by the name of Bitcoin Uranium, aptly abbreviated as BUM. It is another clone of Bitcoin very few people will give a crap about, but it’s still a free airdrop to Bitcoin owners.

Bitcoin Uranium Will be a Real Thing

Myriad forms of Bitcoin have been and will continue to be created. Not all of these will be successful, though, as most of the creations are money grabs and nothing else. The jury is still out on whether or not Bitcoin Gold will stick around long enough to become useful, and most other coins with Bitcoin in their names can be all but forgotten about. Bitcoin Cash is the lone exception so far, despite massive opposition from the Bitcoin community.

There isn’t too much that makes Bitcoin Uranium unique or exciting either. It has the new proof-of-work algorithm we have come to know as Equihash. Pretty much all hard forks of Bitcoin utilize this algorithm right now, as it is always easier to copy existing code than to create something new entirely. At the same time, Equihash is ASIC-resistant, which is a logical feature for a project claiming to be a better Bitcoin.

Moreover, the BUM block rewards will be halved every 450 days and the total supply will be 21 million. It is good to see Bitcoin’s supply of 21 million be maintained, as some other airdrops will gladly increase this number. Bitcoin Uranium will seemingly be around long enough to undergo at least one halving, though there are no guarantees.

Additionally, network blocks will be generated one minute apart. One of the drawbacks of Bitcoin is that it takes at least ten minutes to get a network confirmation. That is a very annoying aspect of the world’s leading cryptocurrency, and many altcoins have tried to improve upon it. One minute block times may be a bit too short, but they should help keep network fees down, which can only be considered a good thing.

Another of Bitcoin Uranium’s selling points is anonymous addresses, which is another thing Bitcoin itself lacks. Then again, there are altcoins which specialize in anonymity, and Bitcoin was never designed to be anonymous. Unlike Bitcoin Gold and a few other offspring, there will be no pre-mine when it comes to BUM. It will also feature native SegWit support and a unique address format. The latter aspect is important to prevent people from sending money to the wrong Bitcoin-related blockchain.

For now, it seems the Bitcoin Uranium launch will occur on December 31st. This is still a tentative date, mind you, as the exact block height has yet to be determined. No exchanges or wallets have committed to support this new fork yet, nor will they do so until the launch date approaches. What is certain is that more types of Bitcoin are not the answer, as they will only confuse novice users even further. It will be interesting to see if anyone cares about this particular fork, though.