Day: December 27, 2017

New developments in the ‘Cryptobanking’ sector threaten to disrupt the status quo. #SPONSORED

The banking industry, with all of the potential that blockchain technology offers for change, iteration, and development has been slow in its uptake of the new tech. That said, there’s no questioning whether blockchain technology will disrupt and revolutionize the banking industry. Leaders feel it coming. Some are ready. Most aren’t. But why and how is blockchain going to change banking over the next decade?

December 23, 2017 – Propy is delighted to announce that the alpha open version of its real estate transaction tool is now up and running. Propy, which believes that it is the first international real-estate marketplace in the world, leverages groundbreaking blockchain technology to solve many of the problems relating to purchasing property across borders. It allows users to purchase property online, and is an excellent outlet for quickly transferring bitcoin wealth into hard assets.

The advent of Propy is great news for the crypto millionaires, crypto traders, and blockchain application enthusiasts looking for a platform that will provides real benefits to them by making it easier to diversify investment through real estate purchase. In addition to increasing real estate turnover by reducing the execution time, it will also minimize the risk of dishonest recordkeeping in mortgage processing significantly. No wonder Propy has already been touted by various advocates as the Amazon of real estate.

Propy initially includes blockchain hashes of the deals into title deeds for recording in official land registries and then offers land registries to replace their databases with the decentralized Propy blockchain registry. The Propy team envisions that, ultimately, the Propy Registry will be adopted by many jurisdictions as an official ledger of record. The execution of each purchase on Propy will involve the use of PRO tokens to unlock smart contracts.

Some key attributes of Propy include:

• Facilitates cross-border payments for users and assists with their documentation
• Allows users to search for properties and brokers in global cities in their native language. Also, provides broad information about neighborhoods, such as walkability, air- and noise-pollution and green building certifications.
• Integrates a blockchain ledger for governments to enable title deed issuance for properties instantly online, in a secure and cost-effective manner.

Propy recently entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Ukraine and completed a transaction in which a property in Ukraine’s capital Kiev was remotely transferred on-chain and across borders, which Propy believes is historic for the entire Ethereum community. With the launch of its new transaction tool, Propy will now make it possible to buy and sell properties in California for BTC by following a simple nine-step process. Payment in dollars will be available next year.

Within its brief lifespan, Propy has already garnered the attention of top real estate experts. Expressing high expectations about the future of Propy, Andrew Baum, Chairman of the investment committee for CBRE stated, “It would be an enormous step forward if global real estate transactions were to be facilitated by a reliable, automated land registration and transfer system. Propy’s proposed use of blockchain might just offer the key that opens this door.”

The trendsetting media BuzzFeed also mentioned Propy recently, describing it as one of emerging businesses capable of “bringing transparency and security” to real estate markets.

Following the launch of its transaction tool, Propy is planning to start within the next week an education program for local brokers in California via demos and meet-ups.  The company is also looking to start a comprehensive marketing campaign aimed at attracting actual home buyers. The team is currently working on a marketing plan that will be made public in January 2018. A substantial scaling of transactions is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2018.

Propy is inviting all buyers or sellers of homes (in cryptocurrencies) to contact them via Telegram & Reddit. To find out more about the world’s first international real-estate marketplace, please visit http://propy.com/

About Propy

Propy is the world’s first international real-estate marketplace. The team at Propy.com facilitates connections between international entities to enable the seamless purchase of international real estate online for the first time. It aims to solve the problems facing international real estate transactions by creating a novel unified property store and asset transfer platform for the global real estate industry.

The post Propy’s New Launch: It Is Now Possible to Buy Properties in the US for Bitcoin appeared first on NEWSBTC.

According to Business Insider, Ari Paul, the chief information officer and co-founder of cryptocurrency hedge fund Blocktower, has purchased $1 million worth of options that offers a 30-fold payout if the bitcoin price hits $50,000 by the end of 2018, on behalf of Blocktower.

“On Wednesday, an unidentified entity made a $1 million bet on bitcoin trading above $50,000 by next December. The cryptocurrency hedge fund BlockTower Capital was behind the bet, people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.”

Blocktower’s $1 Million Bet

Immediately after the initial report on the $1 million bet placed on LedgerX by the Wall Street Journal, Paul tweeted:

I wonder who bought these? 😉 https://t.co/gIXFW0d0hm

— Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) December 21, 2017

At the time, prior to the disclosure of the investors behind the call, LedgerX CEO Paul Chou hinted that an institution has made the call, not an individual.

“Without a doubt, there are institutions out there that are looking at these types of trades or have done these types of trades. It’s not an individual, let’s put it that way.”

In an interview with CNBC’s Fast Money, Paul explained that the option contracts Blocktower has purchased expire if the price of bitcoin fails to reach $50,000 by the end of 2018. But, if it does, it pays out the firm on a 30 to 1 odds. Hence, a $1 million bet on the LedgerX options platform on the price of bitcoin achieving $50,000 would generate Blocktower a $29 million in profit.

The option contracts Blocktower purchased expire by the end of 2018, but are available for cash in anytime throughout the year. If the price of bitcoin surpasses $50,000 earlier than December, the contracts can be cashed in.

The man who bet $1M that #bitcoin could hit $50K by the end of the next year breaks down his call @AriDavidPaul pic.twitter.com/Xj3R0Eqfuz

— CNBC’s Fast Money (@CNBCFastMoney) December 26, 2017

“This call costs $3,600. If bitcoin settles anywhere below $50,000 next year, it will expire worthless. But if bitcoin goes to $100,000, it pays 30 to 1 [30-fold]. Bitcoin is volatile. This is a hyper volatile asset. Bitcoin is up more than 1,400 percent this year. It also falls 30 percent almost every other month. These calls are a bet that if its volatile to the upside we can easily see over $50,000 next year,” Paul explained.

Why are Investors so Optimistic?

If the price of bitcoin reaches $50,000, it would place its market valuation at over $1 trillion. Given that the market cap of gold is at around $8 billion, it would elevate bitcoin to an optimal position to challenge gold to evolve into the world’s premier store of value and currency.

Investors are highly optimistic in the price trend of bitcoin because of the exponential increase in its adoption. In 2017 alone, some of the global market’s largest financial institutions including the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe), Nasdaq, Cantor Fitzgerald, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan have publicly expressed their support for bitcoin.

Governments of leading bitcoin markets such as Japan, the US, and South Korea have implemented practical regulations to facilitate the growth of bitcoin businesses, instead of restricting it.

Until the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin has been able to reach $15,000 without the entrance of institutional investors. With tens of billions of dollars in institutional money expected to flow into the bitcoin market, investors have become extremely confident in the growth trend of bitcoin in the long-term.

The post Investor Ari Paul Bets $1 Million That Bitcoin Price Hits $50,000 by 2018 appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Privacy may be an issue with major blockchains today, but 2017 saw innovations by leaps and bounds, argues VC Arianna Simpson.

CLOAK is one of the few strongly privacy driven cryptocurrencies out there. And privacy is the last human right we have forgotten to fight for.

CLOAK is also incredible, because it rewards every single coin holder that wishes to participate in maintaining the CLOAK transaction system called ENIGMA – something none of the top cryptocurrencies do for their users.

Before the following description of CLOAK, in advance big news has to be announced. The source of ENIGMA will be open-source on 31st of December 2017. So everybody will be able to review the source code based on over three years hard work.

Hard work pays off and hence CLOAK ticks all the boxes, when evaluating the long term sustainability of a cryptocurrency:

1. Tight and active community
2. Strong developer team
3. Purpose of the project
4. How well designed the project is

At the time of writing, CLOAK is performing very well in coinmarketcap. When looking at the momentum it has gained since the start of December – the price has tripled this month.

It’s especially impressive how well CLOAK is trading against Bitcoin, something that few altcoins can say after Bitcoin’s dramatic December surge of over 7000$.

And there are good reasons for that.

Let’s compare CLOAK to other big cryptos on the scene right now.

1. CLOAK has a low circulating supply compared to others

Let’s imagine that CLOAK is as popular as Bitcoin and attracts the same investment. CLOAK’s hard cap of 5+ million means every single CLOAK would be worth 3 times more than Bitcoin, which has a circulating supply of 16.5 million.

2018 is predicted to be the year of Altcoins. In 2017, Bitcoin has already given a large chunk of its hegemony in the total cryptocurrency market cap away. CLOAK should do well to seize a sizeable portion of this, once it’s noticed.

2. CLOAK uses PoS instead of PoW

The cryptocurrencies dominating the top of coinmarketcap all use the Proof of Work algorithm. But investment that goes into sustaining PoW coins devalues over time, because PoW coins require expensive hardware and a lot of computational power. As such, control of PoW networks also tends to centralise into the hands of a few.

CLOAK uses Proof of Stake, where consensus in CLOAK can be reached based solely on the amount of coins in staked wallets.

3. CLOAK is environmentally sustainable compared to others

PoS integrates the security and running of the blockchain into the coins instead of separate mining equipment. It therefore saves not just on hardware, but also electricity, making it much more environmentally friendly.

4. CLOAK rewards all its coin holders

To motivate coin holders to stake their coins into the service of the blockchain, CLOAK uses PoS without Master Nodes. As a result, CLOAK is able to reward all of its coin holders with 6% on their holdings per year.

Which investment yields a 6% return annually? None!

There are even more gains, if your wallet secures Enigma transactions. The 1.8% charge taken from using Enigma’s extra layer of anonymity is divided among all participating nodes (wallets).

5. CLOAK offers true decentralization and anonymity to its users

Increased regulation is inevitable as cryptocurrency adoption becomes more widespread. Many are concerned regulation could stifle the libertarian aspects of cryptocurrency.

Anonymity for its users has never been a priority for Bitcoin in its quest for ubiquity. But CLOAK is a cryptocurrency designed to facilitate private, secure and untraceable transfers by using Enigma, a secure and decentralized, off-blockchain mixing service.

By using PoS without Master Nodes, CLOAK also achieves a wide spread of power across the blockchain, bringing true decentralization to its users.

To conclude, ask yourself this: are the cryptos popular now the Googles of cryptocurrencies? Or are they the Netscapes? If they’re the Netscapes, where is the Google of cryptos sitting right now?

CLOAK has been around since 2014, having 3 unrushed years to build up a solid and well-designed project. And in this time, the project has evolved, taking in lessons and keeping up with developments trending in cryptocurrencies. No wonder CLOAK is coming off so well and everybody is awaiting eagerly the open-source of ENIGMA on 31^st of December 2017.

The post Which privacy cryptocurrency is the most undervalued right now? appeared first on NEWSBTC.

INK is a new startup dedicated to helping artists distribute and monetize their works through the advantages of the Qtum Blockchain. #NEWS

Early motions may force the court to rule on whether or not this coin should be considered a security under U.S. law.

This week the cryptocurrency payment processor Bitpay implemented the BIP70 Payment Protocol into their debit card bitcoin-to-dollar-load invoices. According to the company, the feature will prevent common payment errors and offer better security against man-in-the-middle attacks.

Also Read: Hit BTC Introduces Deposit Charges to Deal With High Bitcoin Fees

Using the Payment Protocol to Prevent Error and Man-In-the-Middle Attacks

Bitpay, the digital asset service provider based in Atlanta, Georgia, is the largest bitcoin payment processor worldwide. The company founded in 2011 has come a long way since then, and just recently started making significant changes to its business model. For instance, in 2018, due to the increased demand of the Bitcoin core network, Bitpay will begin supporting multiple blockchains starting with bitcoin cash. In addition to this change, the company is rolling out the BIP70 Payment Protocol to their merchant services.    

The Payment Protocol is a bitcoin software implementation created in 2013 that claims to establish a more secure communication between merchants and customers. By using the protocol for invoices, payments and fees can be perfected, avoiding underpayments, overpayments, and fee rates that are too low. In addition to these benefits, it can help prevent man-in-the-middle attacks like the latest copy-n-paste bitcoin address changing malware.

“Many modern bitcoin wallets now support the Bitcoin Payment Protocol, a standard developed in 2013 to make bitcoin payments faster, safer, and less prone to error,” explains Bitpay this week.

Payment Protocol does for Bitcoin what secured web-browsing (HTTPS) did for the internet — By using a payment protocol-enabled wallet, you can avoid mistakenly sending funds to an attacker, prevent underpayments and overpayments, and help your transactions to be received faster by Bitpay.

Slim Infrastructure Support for the Payment Protocol Leaves Only Five Wallet Choices

One issue with Bitpay’s new addition to their infrastructure is the fact that a vast majority of bitcoin-based wallets do not use the BIP70 Payment Protocol. Bitpay also details that it will soon require the Payment Protocol for payments, which leaves users only five wallets to choose from when using Bitpay’s services. The wallet clients that support BIP70 are the Bitpay Wallet, Copay, Mycelium, Electrum, and the Bitcoin core wallet.

“If your wallet is not on this list, it may fail to work with Bitpay,” emphasizes the Atlanta-based firm this week.

This means Bitpay invoices tied to a Payment Protocol URL will use the fastest median transaction fee rate. At the moment, according to Earn’s fee statistics, the quickest and cheapest transaction fee is 660 satoshis per byte. So today a typical median transaction size of 226 bytes will result in 149,160 satoshis or $23 at the time of writing. When paying a Bitpay invoice with the Payment Protocol feature, there will be a scannable QR code for wallets with BIP70 functionality and a little green lock icon for copying and pasting the URL. The payment will contain the approximate amount of network fees and transfer rate for how much BTC must be sent.

Bitpay has already started the Payment Protocol feature with its Visa debit card bitcoin-to-dollar load invoices and will likely require it for other merchant invoices going forward in 2018.

What do you think about Bitpay requiring users to utilize Payment Protocol URLs? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, and Bitpay’s blog. 

Do you like to research and read about Bitcoin technology? Check out Bitcoin.com’s Wiki page for an in-depth look at Bitcoin’s innovative technology and interesting history.

The post Bitpay Starts Implementing Bitcoin Payment Protocol Invoices Decreasing Wallet Support appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Liberalcoins.com is the first multi-currency P2P exchange encompassing Bitcoin (BTC), Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH) and Litecoin (LTC). The P2P exchange was born out of the necessity to establish a trading exchange supporting multiple cryptocurrencies on one platform. Liberalcoins.com developed a robust platform that allows seller and buyer to instantly trade crypto for crypto or for local fiat currencies and payment methods. What sets the service apart is its versatility, giving traders the option to exchange between cryptocurrencies of for fiat cash all under one roof.

With the exponentially rising demand cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is now being traded in around 248 countries and over 15000 cities. The rapidly increasing number of individuals joining cryptocurrency exchanges, sends a strong signal that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not just a passing economic trend. It is estimated that currently less than 0.5 percent of the global population have already invested in the crypto space.

In the rapidly evolving and expanding cryptocurrency market, Liberalcoins.com core value and vision is to make the cryptocurrency market work better for all traders. In today’s Bitcoin economy, the exchanges are the lifeblood of the network and the market. Liberalcoins.com believes that the underlying driver for the peer to peer market is to facilitate traders with a multi cryptocurrency platform and build a strong trader community network in the peer to peer space.

“With the assurance that users can trade across multiple cryptocurrencies or exchange using local currency on one platform, we see Liberalcoins.com playing a significant role in the adoption of Bitcoin and Altcoins for day to day local trading.” says CEO and founder Simon Lange.

As the cryptocurrency market continues to add to its momentum, the social aspect plays an integral role for the company. In the coming months, Liberalcoins.com will focus on promoting community-centric values and put more efforts bringing the local communities together.  Even though providing the next generation of peer 2 peer services to traders is the main business goal, the company believes in the power of connecting people which will be a strong focus in 2018.

Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.

Ultimately, Liberalcoins.com just made another step in the direction of making it easier for sellers to switch to Liberalcoins.com. In order to ease the transition of traders with established reputations on other platforms, Liberalcoins.com has integrated a feedback import from other leading P2P exchanges. The transfer reputation feature in settings allows users to easily import their reputation from another exchange.

The peer to peer ecosystem is designed around methods of trust. Hence, the reputation system will allow established traders to further push their hard earned trading profile on Liberalcoins.com, improve their reputation within the community and benefit from the advantages the platform provides. Traders can also benefit from inviting people on Liberalcoins.com and earn up to 40% commission on the trading fees with Liberalcoins.com affiliate program.

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.

Bitcoin trading companies in Israel may soon face a tighter rule imposed by the country’s financial watchdog.

London, Russia – December 27, 2017 – Humaniq announces the launch of its Android app which will enable users to gain access to next-gen financial services. The application has a secure built-in messenger with end-to-end encryption and a mobile wallet with its own HMQ cryptocurrency.

The Humaniq app is purpose-built for people who are currently excluded from the world of 21st Century financial services and technologies. It is designed to foster networking and collaboration and to provide more equitable access to financial services, cash transfers, and social programs.

User accounts are protected by a biometric-based, secure infrastructure accessed by authentication using face recognition. Also, a proof-of-human approach includes behavior analysis, including of user profile completion, and the frequency and number of sessions and other actions, offers additional security. Upon registration, the user is required to take a few photographs of themselves so they can enter the account without a password, using the face recognition system.

In addition, users earn HMQ coin cryptocurrency by securing bonuses for regularly confirming their accounts by updating their biometric data.

Before the application launch, the Humaniq team embarked on a regional expedition to test the pilot version of the app in real user scenarios. The expedition revealed further information on the demand for uses the app can provide, and potential users’ preferences, which led to refinements of the application which is now available in Uganda, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

“Humaniq is a project with a strong social message. The ecosystem we have created and will continue to develop goes much further than simply providing access to next-gen financial services; our infrastructure will also include services in such spheres as humanitarian programs, freelance employment, and healthcare. At present we are also putting significant emphasis on integration with partnering projects. It is important to note that we have a great technical team and we are making progress with challenging tasks such as facilitating the provision of user data for those who have no any data yet,” – says Kirill Goryunov, CPO, Humaniq.

Humaniq’s tokens are currently traded on the world’s largest crypto-exchanges like Bittrex, YoBit, Liqui, Decentrex and EtherData, and are available both for exchange into fiat and other cryptocurrencies. The idea of the Humaniq project is founded on the goal to create a next-generation financial model that includes the Banking 4.0. concept as well as socially-oriented services designed to solve people’s daily problems in  developing countries. Humaniq’s plans are to continue developing the ecosystem, which will start with making the API available to partners.

About Humaniq

Humaniq is a London-based Fintech firm that provides next generation financial services using its Blockchain-based mobile application to the unbanked and underprivileged in emerging economies globally. Humaniq is focused on worldwide financial inclusion by providing access to global markets, greater opportunities, and novel financial solutions using repurposed technologies for those gaining exposure to financial services for the first time.

Media contact:

TATIANA KOLOSUNINA

[email protected]

See more at: http://humaniq.com

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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.

In an unregulated market such as cryptocurrency, bad actors and spontaneous events continually prey upon unknowing individuals. While the victims of these acts typically consist of naive and inexperienced individuals, even savvy traders sometimes find themselves duped by these ploys.

Since last Thursday, McAfee Antivirus creator and eccentric cryptocurrency magnate has been tweeting a “coin-of-the-day” to his almost 500,000 followers on Twitter. The results of these daily tweets are exactly what one would expect: the coin spotlighted in each tweet is almost instantly pumped as all of the tech pioneer’s followers rush to buy, guided by a fear of missing out (FOMO). Of course, the pump goes just as quickly as it comes, and while these coins may double or triple in value, the price follows in the opposite direction with a volume just as steep, with the coin soon resetting to its value prior to the tweet.

After the first or second of these tweets, well-versed traders created methods to automatically buy and sell the coins McAfee picks almost instantaneously. Such trading bots scan his tweets for these coins and immediately place market buys, followed by market sells a few minutes later. As all of McAfee’s recommendations have involved coins traded on Bittrex, traders used this exchange as their base of operations.

Today, however, these bots misread McAfee’s TRON (TRX) pick, instead purchasing e-Gulden, which is listed as ElectronicGulden (EFT) on Bittrex. TRON is not listed on Bittrex, so when bots searched for the coin, they instead were directed to EFT. Unlike the previous days’ pumps, the biggest losers here were the same botters previously profiting off the misguidance of McAfee’s followers.

While these traders had been profiting heavily off the naive trading of others, they were simply operating in response to a much larger issue. McAfee has proven how much influence a prominent entity has over less regulated markets, and it’s been speculated that his recent tweets were intended to upset the market and personally profit.

McAfee has previously tweeted that he is paid obscene amounts of money by projects seeking his endorsement and support. Other popular social media personalities have also attested that cryptocurrency projects request endorsements in exchange for pay, as these markets are affected incredibly by social media activity.

Of course, these kinds of malicious dealings are absolutely illegal in stocks and other regulated markets. While many fear a future of heavy government intervention, others suggest that such regulations may prevent these sorts of dealings in the future, making the crypto market more fair for the average participant.