Day: December 28, 2017

Think DAOs and tokens are just a joke? This lawyer believes they may be coming to bring an open-source ethos to your business model.

India’s Zebpay integrated innovative fee systems to reduce transaction fees and process small Bitcoin transaction.

This is how you can make your transactions secure. #EXPLAINED

The ICO pre-sale is now open for the platform that will create a new value economy to reimagine the digital experience

• Dubtoken is a new digital token designed to monetize video content using the Interactive Video and Experience Protocol (IVEP), together reimagining the digital experience ecosystem
• Content creators will be better rewarded, and audiences will experience more personalized and informative viewing experiences, resulting in higher engagement and ROI for publishers outside of platforms such as Facebook and Instagram
• Invalid bot traffic and ad fraud will be countered significantly by introducing a unique human proof score leveraging blockchain technologies
• Interactive smart objects and functions using digital layers will sit on top of streaming content, enabling personalization of digital experiences in real time, powered by artificial intelligence

Toronto, Ontario – IVEP Association, in collaboration with mobile video creation platform dubdub, announces its initial coin offering (ICO) for dubtokens. This new multipurpose value and utility token is the central piece in a new blockchain-based and decentralized protocol that will transform the monetization of billions of hours of video content as well as elevate the streaming experience. The Interactive Video and Experience Protocol (IVEP) creates better engagement, counters invalid bot traffic and ad fraud in order to properly reward content creators and raise ROI for publishers.

“The advertising industry is currently plagued with problems that undermine the experience for creators, publishers, advertisers and users. The current ecosystem is making real and fake audiences increasingly hard to separate, devaluing attention-based metrics. Engagement is now the only KPI that matters as this is what drives outcomes,” said Hillary Carter, director of faculty at the Blockchain Research Institute.

Interactivity as the new standard

IVEP seeks to shift video content away from a deficient “attention” based model to a two-way real-time marketing model. It represents a more effective KPI for brands and online retailers, measuring real intent, engagement and lead conversion. This rebalances the online advertising model in favor of the user. It also empowers publishers to tell better and more captivating stories to their target customers with a vast catalogue of programmable smart objects and functions, available from a decentralized application store.

“The opportunity is two-fold. First, it introduces a new industry flow, leveraging blockchain technology to capture real human engagement metrics in an immutable and indisputable format for publishers and advertisers. Furthermore, it allows for the transformation of previously “static” video experiences into dynamic ones. Adding programmable and customizable digital interactive layers on top of any streamable content will significantly improve user experiences and audience retention,” said Fred Dionne, founder and CEO of IVEP.

Dubtoken, dApp store and Trust Score

The IVEP layer and the dubtoken economy will run on top of the distributed computing platform Ethereum.  

The addition of smart objects and functions and the protocol’s digital assets will be registered on-chain. IVEP will incentivize the creation of interactive features and services in a decentralized app (dApp) store to be used with the protocol.

Each registered IVEP participant will be assigned a unique trust score, alongside a Human Proof Score for the audience of any IVEP enabled content. These scores will be calculated based on engagement, behavioral and quality metrics, including the amount of value a participant brings to the protocol and its members.

“IVEP leverages the best Blockchain has to offer because it’s built with all participants in mind, and brings value to all of them enabling new business models to emerge from the dubtoken economy,” Manie Eagar, chairman of the Blockchain Association of Canada added.

Shared.com partnership

The IVEP Association is joining forces with online publisher Shared in a partnership that will see the popular content hub pilot the use of the Interactive Video and Experience Protocol (IVEP) and dubtoken ecosystem to transform both its streaming video experience and content monetization.

Operating in the digital content industry, Shared has quickly become a leader in online audience building and engagement. Specializing in video and animation content specifically optimized for social media, Shared is ideally suited to trial the powerful real-time capabilities of IVEP.

“Continuously evolving and testing new trends and technologies is a big part of who we are as a company,” said Trevor Young, chief technology officer at Shared. “When it comes to creating original video content, both companies are driven by a desire to enrich the user experience, making this partnership a natural fit.”

dubtoken ICO pre-sale

The pre-sale is now open to qualified investors. The pre-sale is a forward investment contract granting qualified investors the right to receive dubtokens on the protocol launch in Q1 2018. Dubtokens empower a new multipurpose value and utility token economy running on top of the distributed computing platform Ethereum.

For more information, please visit www.dubtokens.com or read the whitepaper at www.dubtokens.com/whitepaper. Join our public Telegram channel using http://bit.ly/dubtokensofficial.

About IVEP Association

The IVEP Association is a non-profit organization that promotes video and interactive experience technologies for the decentralized web through a fair, trustworthy and transparent copyright framework for content creators and distributors. For more information, please visit www.dubtokens.com
Media Contact: Tom Fry at [email protected] or call +44 (0) 208 819 3170.

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.

As more and more money flows into the cryptocurrency markets, a belief has emerged that to have a worthwhile and profitable interaction with cryptocurrency, a sizable initial investment must be made. For potential supporters without the financial means to do so, it may appear as if their window of opportunity has already passed.

Years ago, the approach to cryptocurrency was completely different. A significant portion of individuals supporting Bitcoin and other currencies did not invest their own money. Of those who did make a financial investment to accumulate coins, many purchased less than US$100 of cryptocurrency. Rather than investing money, these individuals invested their time, enthusiasm, and skills to increase their holdings, through a number of opportunities. While this approach is no longer as popular as it was then, those opportunities still exist, and many new ones have emerged. Here are three approaches to getting involved in the absence of a monetary investment:

Participate on the Bitcointalk Forum

The Bitcointalk forum represents the largest and most popular platform to discuss everything cryptocurrency. By interacting with others on this site, you can be compensated in numerous ways. The simplest and most inclusive method of earning coins is simply to participate in giveaways. These giveaways come in a variety of forms, from new casinos offering credits to new users, to airdrops rewarding thousands of individuals just for showing interest in their coin. Occasionally, new and old members alike will pay their fortunes forward by tipping coins to any and all users of the forums.

Beyond this, forum users can earn huge sums from selling their signature space to operations called signature campaigns. With signature campaigns, a company or project will pay participants in Bitcoin or other currencies for every post they make on the forums with the corresponding advertisement displayed in that user’s signature. With activity and age, your account will mature to higher ranks at which these campaigns pay significantly more. Legendary Members, the highest rank below staff and donator, can earn tens of thousands of dollars a year just for placing an ad in their signature while they communicate on the forum.

Work for Cryptocurrency

From blockchain startups, to upcoming ICOs, to crypto news sites, everyone needs freelance work. If you can code, write, or translate, there are ample opportunities to be handsomely compensated in cryptocurrency for freelance work. Bitwage, which allows independent contractors to invoice employers in whatever currencies and percentages they choose, recently created a jobs page to connect workers with employers. Another popular place to find work and hire workers is /r/Jobs4Bitcoins.

Beyond freelance work, there is a huge demand for full-time workers in the industry. As the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed, so has the demand for blockchain experts. On LinkedIn, the amount of Bitcoin and blockchain-related job listings is growing faster than any other field. From customer service representatives to senior developers, all levels of skill are in demand, and most of these roles offer the option to be paid, at least partially, in cryptocurrency.

Claim Bounty Rewards

Working towards bounties falls somewhere between forum participation and freelance work. Bounty programs are typically administered by upcoming ICOs, and pay you a predetermined number of the ICO’s tokens or a percentage of all tokens sold in exchange for completing a variety of tasks. Bounty participants can be rewarded for translating threads, identifying bugs or errors, or interacting with social media accounts. Some ICOs will also host signature campaigns under bounty programs.

Beyond ICOs, there are a number of coins that offer bounties to developers. This approach is typically employed by older coins that were not launched via an ICO and do not have development funds, or even a formal team, to oversee progress. In this arrangement, supporters of the coin will often donate part of their holdings to a fund that will be paid out to the responsible developer once a particular feature is implemented.

Clearly, there are vast opportunities for passionate and skilled individuals to meaningfully involve themselves with cryptocurrency without having to make a financial investment. For savvy supporters, the use of their time is very rewarding indeed.

The top securities regulator in Massachusetts raised concerns on the bitcoin bubble and called the bitcoin market “entirely speculation.”

Billionaire Samsung Founder to be Fined For Storing Billions in 200 Offshore Accounts, What is Bitcoin’s Advantage? #SMART INVESTMENT

To invest or not to invest in cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs). That is the challenge of many millennials. The spend-it-now generation is having a hard time saving for retirement. Mobile apps and automated robo-investment advisors have made it easier than ever to set up and manage an investment portfolio, but beating inflation is hard to do in today’s low interest rate environment. Millennials concerned with ideally growing and preserving their portfolio value are challenged.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Over the past decade, the average US inflation rate was 3.2 percent while the average interest rate on savings accounts is currently less than one percent.  An inflation-proofed cryptocurrency portfolio could help lower volatility and reap higher returns. After removing the effects of inflation from 10-year S&P 500 returns, the value of every dollar invested would have grown to $3.20 versus $1.99 when adjusted for inflation.

With banks paying zero or negative interest on savings, the rush into cryptocurrencies for higher returns is not surprising. Cryptocurrencies and ICOs, however, are allocated to the high risk alternative asset class of an investment portfolio since they introduce higher than average volatility and illiquidity. Bitcoin volatility has fallen in 2017 and some predict it will be on par with that of fiat currencies by 2019, but events such as the pre-Christmas flash crash still send jitters through the market.

A Fail-Safe and Inflation-busting Currency

Safer cryptocurrencies are key to the growth of the crypto economy. To address volatility and illiquidity risks, several cryptocurrency exchanges have started to back their currencies with fiat currencies. Zug, Switzerland-based X8 Currency (X8C) has gone even further by backing its currency 100 percent with a reserve basket of fiat currencies and gold. The Crypto Valley company has implemented additional risk measures engineered to Swiss financial standards that would even make the global bank regulators down the road in Basel blush.

The broadly diversified reserve basket is comprised of the top eight global currencies (EUR, USD, JPY, GBP, CAD, AUD, CHF, NZD) deposited in Swiss banks and insured by SwissRE AG. The currency basket is further backed by physical gold reserves. The funds are audited daily by JP Fund Services. Driven by a scientifically based algorithm, an automated portfolio manager called ARM AI (Automatic Reserve Management Artificial Intelligence) finds the most attractive exchange rates across the currency basket to preserve the value of the portfolio.

Scaleable cryptocurrencies make the X8 currency risk management platform, initially designed for professional portfolio managers, available to all investors. Since the failure of Lehman Brothers and other banks during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, investors are understandably wary of putting all their funds in one bank, yet for individual investors diversifying across many banks can be expensive and impractical. The X8 currency also takes care of bank concentration risk for investors by spreading its portfolio across up to eight major banks and brokers. The X8 currency is issued in Switzerland, the world’s safest banking system. Accordingly, all investors are required to comply with know your customer rules.

In a young crypto world, the X8 risk management platform can boast proven performance. The X8 performance index has outpaced inflation-adjusted returns by between 2-4 percent in 2017. The ARM Al currency manager seeks to maintain an annual inflation rate of 1-3 percent. During Brexit in 2015, a particularly volatile market event, the underlying basket on the platform temporarily depreciated less than 2 percent versus up to 20 percent for the British pound (GBP). X8Currency is backed by ioNectar, which has spent 10 years on the development of its professional portfolio risk management platform used by professional investors and fund managers.

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)

Cryptocurrencies have also opened the door to investing in business startups to individual investors. The X8 currency can lower the risk and cost of investing in token generating events, especially in early stage companies that are still developing product prototypes. X8C provides a more stable cryptocurrency and a no fee bridge between the crypto and fiat worlds during and after a Token Generation Event (TGE). The initial fundraising may need to support a company’s development and operations for two to four years before it generates sufficient revenues to support operations.

The ability of the X8C currency to maintain its value over the long term provides operational stability to projects. Alternatively, at any time, investors can exchange crypto currency, or fiat, for an X8Currency token. This innovation means that they can buy the X8Currency, a more stable currency than any individual fiat currency owing to its unique risk diversification strategy. X8Currency can be exchanged for fiat currency for no fee with a commensurate number of X8X tokens.

The X8X Crowdsale

X8X tokens are the key to accessing X8 Capital, the platform that sells X8 currency, and can be obtained through the upcoming crowdsale. Participants can now register with the Whitelist in accordance with KYC/AML requirements. Early birds will have the opportunity to contribute first in the Whitelist Pre-Sale starting January 4, 2018. The crowdsale starts on January 12, 2018 and runs until January 22nd.

If you’ve interacted with Facebook, you may have had run-ins with spam bots that infest your profile (or your friends’ profiles) and post links or advertisements without your permission. Well, the same malware that tells your friends to “Check out this link for 90% off a BRAND NEW pair of Ray Bands. WOW!” is now being used to mine cryptocurrency. A downloaded client runs mining software that contributes hashing power to the malware’s source server. Unaware Facebook users may have downloaded this bot through links shared on Facebook Messenger.

Mining on Someone Else’s Dime

You could be mining cryptocurrency without even knowing it, all because of a mining bot spread through Facebook Messenger.

Lenart Bermejo and Hsia-Yu Shih originally covered the revelation in a Trend Micro report. The malware, called Digimine, originated in South Korea and propagates itself through Facebook’s messaging app, and is used to mine Monero. The bot is confined to Messenger’s desktop client and its Chrome browser extension. If you open the malware on another platform, such as Facebook Messenger’s mobile app, your device will not be infected. The report indicated that the bot’s only surrogate is Messenger right now, but it warned that “it wouldn’t be implausible for attackers to hijack the Facebook account itself down the line.”

Like other malware, Digimine can only be downloaded by activating its source link. Masquerading as a video file, Digimine is coded into AutoIT, a freeware scripting language designed for Windows. If you open the faux video file, your computer will begin running the AutoIT executable script, and if you have auto login enabled, the bot will automatically send the malware to your Facebook friends via Messenger.

Once it begins running the software, an infected computer connects to the malware’s command-and-control server. This server allocates all of the computing power of infected devices for the purpose of mining Monero, a popular privacy coin. The more computers that become infected, the higher the hashrate for the central mining operations, meaning that Digimine’s orchestrators can expect a fatter payday.

So far, Trend Micro has traced this malware to Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, the Philippines, Thailand, and Venezuela, adding the caveat: “It’s not far-off for Digimine to reach other countries given the way it propagates.”

In response to the development, Facebook issued the following statement:

“We maintain a number of automated systems to help stop harmful links and files from appearing on Facebook and in Messenger.”

If we suspect your computer is infected with malware, we will provide you with a free anti-virus scan from our trusted partners.”

In the report, Trend Micro revealed that the malicious links may include the following terms: vijus[.]bid, ozivu[.]bid, thisdayfunnyday[.]space, thisaworkstation[.]space, mybigthink[.]space, mokuz[.]bid, pabus[.]bid, yezav[.]bid, bigih[.]bid, taraz[.]bid, megu[.]info. The report also lists a number of indicators that may help determine whether or not a device has been infected. For example, if you were to download the malware while using Facebook’s Chrome extension, the malware would terminate and then relaunch Chrome to load Digimine.

If you think your computer has been infected, you can visit facebook.com/help for tips and information on how to move forward.

If you are a developer, develop! Add value to the Blockchain universe. If you are not, get involved in other ways, there is room for absolutely everybody to help grow this space. (Joshua Lavin) #BLOCKSHOW