Day: January 8, 2018

If there is one trend that became evident in the year 2017, it is how some early adopters have dropped support for Bitcoin. More specifically, a lack of interest and high transaction costs have made dealing in Bitcoin unappealing for most retailers. Microsoft is perhaps the biggest company to have rethought its support for Bitcoin recently, even though it always offered it in very limited fashion. Surprisingly, the company no longer counts Bitcoin among its “active payment instruments”.

Microsoft Shows Little Love for Bitcoin

It is evident Bitcoin is not in the best of places right now. More specifically, the currency has become increasingly difficult to use. Confirmation delays and high network fees make it less of a currency and more of a store of value. That is not ideal for any cryptocurrency, even though it doesn’t seem to have affected the Bitcoin price whatsoever. At the same time, companies which accept Bitcoin payments are slowly rethinking their strategies due to these ongoing issues. 

Microsoft is one of the companies rethinking their support for Bitcoin altogether. Although the company has been an early supporter of Bitcoin, the company always did so in very limited fashion. More specifically, it only offered select digital products in exchange for Bitcoin, and mainly to US customers only. It was evident this was just a trial, but things turned out less positively than initially anticipated. Microsoft still accepts Bitcoin, but users now can only use it to pre-fund their account balances. 

According to a recent chat log with Microsoft support staff, the Bitcoin payment option has been revamped. Moreover, this has been planned for some time now, and the company has been monitoring the ongoing network issues plaguing Bitcoin, including the high fees and transaction delays. These problems have persisted for quite some time now, but things are not improving. In fact, the situation is growing worse every year.

For the time being, Bitcoin is no longer one of Microsoft’s “active payment instruments”. This is a very interesting development which doesn’t bode well for the future of Bitcoin. In fact, it seems Microsoft no longer considers Bitcoin to be a currency either. Although such a statement can be interpreted in many different ways, there’s no denying that Microsoft isn’t too happy with the way Bitcoin has evolved over the past two years.

One could certainly make the case that Bitcoin is no longer a useful payment method these days. It is too expensive, too slow, and just too cumbersome for most people to even consider using it. Although this is not a permanent situation, it is evident something will need to change for Bitcoin at some point. There are some developments which may come to market in the near future, but for now, the current situation will remain in place.

Microsoft is not the only company which has adjusted its support for Bitcoin in the past year. In fact, quite a few early adopters have reconsidered their stances in this regard. It also seems fewer merchants are being added to the list of Bitcoin-supporting companies than were before. When Bitcoin payment processors must implement a secondary fee just to remain operational, it is evident the problems are a lot more serious than most people assume.

Background: Bitcoins are created by solving highly complex computational tasks, and the computing power provided by them. This requires special computers with expensive, extremely fast processors, which have been specially installed for this purpose. To incentivize these acquisition costs, to mine bitcoins and thus to operate the network, the procedure Proof of Work (POW), better known as Mining, was established. With additional Bitcoins the network rewards the miners for their efforts. In this way not only the hardware costs, but also the costs for the enormous energy consumption are amortized. A method that pays off for the miners.

Due to the bitcoin’s huge value increase this year (2300%) and its prospects miners are springing up like mushrooms. Whole mining farms are being built. A new gold rush. According to a study by the University of Cambridge 59% of bitcoins are mined in China. Especially in northern China. Bitmain Technologies, the leading mining hardware manufacturer, is based there and operates its own mining farms. In the north of the country, as well as in neighboring Mongolia, an oversupply of coal-fired power plants, results in excess capacities and state subsidies for electricity in these regions. Thus, one kilowatt hour costs only four cents and thus forms the most economical variant of mining.

Despite the environmental consequences and the inefficiency of the bitcoin transaction system, its value increases strongly. Due to the frightening eco-balance it reaps a lot of criticism.

The crypto-analytics platform Digiconomist states that the energy cost for a single Bitcoin transaction betrays 215 kilowatt-hours. Enough electricity to supply an average US-household for a whole week, or to run a refrigerator for a full year.

By the progressing Bitcoin production and its associated scarcity of Bitcoins increases, so does the complexity of the computing processes and thus the energy consumption. Currently, 0.12 percent of the world’s energy consumption are used to generate bitcoins. According to forecasts, bitcoin’s power consumption in July 2019 will already be equivalent to the amount of the entire US’s at the present time. Already in 2020, the bitcoin’s power consumption will be equal to that of the entire world at the present time. Considering the inefficiency of the system an unacceptable development.

Currently around 400,000 transactions are placed worldwide per day. This figure illustrates the inefficiency of bitcoin’s system, which is far below the capabilities of similar services, such as VISA (approximately 150 million transactions / day) and PayPal (approximately 5 million transactions / day).

Inefficient and damaging to the environment, but adding value. Whether this bill will work out in the long run?

There are greener, efficient and not less lucrative alternatives. Some coins offer proof of stake system (POS). In this process, not the rendered, energy-intensive computing power of the user plays the key role, but only the amount of coins in his possession. It allows you to process significantly more transactions per second and offers the owner an annual not inconsiderable interest on his coins in addition to the potential price gains. Interest rates vary from coin to coin. A very good example is Cloakcoin (CLOAK).

Cloakcoin offers an annual interest rate of 6% and offers further rewards. The Enigma fee for anonymous transactions of currently 1.8% is divided among all supporters of the Enigma transaction. Thus, you can easily and risk-free receive 6% +Share of 1,8% on your deposit. Plus, the potential price gain.

A short calculation:

Initial situation: Purchase of 1000 CLOAK in July 2017 + 6% Staking; Calculation of the development until the present day (02.01.2018).

02.07.2017 = 1000 x $7,85 = $7850

02.01.2018 = 1000 x $30,96 = $30960 + 30 x 30,96 (= $928) = $ 31888

The example shows that you can earn 60 CLOAK per year if you stake 1000 CLOAK (Regardless of compound interest). An investment 6 months ago ($ 7850) would have turned into a present value of $ 31888 (excluding compound interest). The mere staking would have yielded $ 928. A pricely sum.

Clearly a very good reason to stake coins like CLOAK. The functionality corresponds to the interest on a bank balance and is at the same time environmentally friendly.

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Team CLOAK

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The cryptocurrency CLOAK protects the privacy of the user and guarantees secure transactions with a maximum processing speed of 60 seconds. Its heart is the payment system ENIGMA, which prevents transactional tracking and thus preserves the anonymity of the users and their transactions.

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 the technology behind the blockchain develops and evolves, its popularity will increase and more government and private organizations will look towards it for digital solutions. The latest country to embrace the blockchain is Brazil where legislators are pushing to move popular petitions to the Ethereum network.

Popular petitions (projeto de lei de iniciativa popular) are an important part of the political process in Brazil. The process enables government officials to collect and verify signatures of 145 million registered voters. They also allow the public to have their opinions heard on pressing social and political issues. However, the sheer geographical and population size makes this a logistical nightmare for legislators.

The primary problem with archaic paper-based systems is that voters are physically required to sign the documents making it a challenge to verify authenticity. Additionally, the system is often viewed as detrimental to the country’s democratic process as popular petitions are rarely actually heard or followed through in Congress.

A blockchain solution renders this data immutable and invulnerable from manipulation. Petition signatures on the blockchain would allow officials to check if the vote has been accurately recorded in a specific petition. Processing them on Ethereum using a smart contract would operate as the other decentralized applications currently do on the network. Effectively, Brazil would have its own independent digital token for its electoral system.

Universidade de Brasilia law professor Henrique Costa said that the lack of such a system has been a problem in the past;

“In part this is due to the absence of a platform that can securely collect the signatures of one percent of voters. We’ve been through a sort of crisis regarding the legitimacy…of our laws. Although the popular initiative does exist, there is no secure way to collect people’s signatures so people can propose bills themselves.”

The Brazilian government is currently developing a mobile app powered by Ethereum to give citizens the ability to register their details online and submit a petition or sign one. The app will keep track of the number of votes for each petition via the smart contract. The encrypted signatures are then hashed and added to the Ethereum blockchain so that Brazilians can check that their vote and signature is actually there.

The move has already been touted as a celebration of democracy.

The post Brazilian Electoral System to Use Ethereum Blockchain Network appeared first on NewsBTC.

So often behind the eightball when it comes to being at the cutting edge, African Millennials are now cashing in on the Bitcoin hype in order to spark a financial revolution #ADOPTION

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has halted trading of a Hong Kong-based firm UBI Blockchain.

Renaissance man and real life Tony Stark, Elon Musk, has repeatedly mentioned how he believes that robots and computers will just become too good at doing the vast majority of jobs to be sustainable for modern economies. I happen to agree with him on this to an extent. Because of this, Musk believes that we will need to turn to a system of universal basic income sooner rather than later. Of course, there are many considerations when contemplating universal income.

Musk is trying to help solve a problem he, in part, is creating

One of the reasons why Musk may be so interested in the subject of universal basic income (he has spoken about it many times now), is that his company, Tesla, is beginning to directly threaten the livelihood of up to 1 in 5 Americans as a result of its autonomous semi-trucks. We can applaud Musk for not only his business acumen (anyone who says otherwise should reconsider their position), but also his sense of responsibility for uprooting millions of people’s jobs with his new technology.

Is Universal Basic Income Necessary?

I would argue, yes, probably. Even though not all jobs can be performed by computers or robots, there is a clear need to address millions of people losing their jobs quickly. After all, the entire nation freaks out when unemployment goes up by 2%, so something on the level of all truckers being replaced without receiving new work would be nothing short of a disaster.

And this disaster scenario is exactly why Universal Basic Income may be necessary to save the economy. While I have no doubt that some of these workers will find new jobs or be retrained for different ones, there will be a large portion of the population which does not. Both humanity and the economy can’t let those people suffer.

When will Universal Basic Income Happen?

Even though many are beginning to agree on the necessity of Universal Basic Income, absolutely no one can agree on when it will happen. My prediction is that if it happens, it will come after the aforementioned disaster scenario of unemployed workers and a tanking economy. Sadly, most governments are reactionary.

I also think it will happen at different times across the world, and we may not see a global universal income until long after more modern countries adopt the idea. This is because of how cheap labor is in many parts of the world and how expensive the startup costs of using AI, computers, etc. to perform these tasks are. In a completely bizarre world, we may see Universal Basic Income in the US long before we see it in, say, Taiwan.

What problems could Universal Basic Income Bring?

Musk and other influencers may feel that i) Universal Basic Income should happen, and ii) that it will happen, but we do have to remember that there are always two sides to a coin. Universal income will likely mean a tax overhaul, where robots are taxed (since workers won’t be) as well as higher taxes on wealthier individuals. We may also see higher taxes on income earned outside of universal income. After all, the latter would have to be paid for somehow.

Universal income also may help to widen the gap between rich and poor worldwide. As I mentioned above, there is a chance that some countries would adopt this quicker than others, which could lead to even more appalling work conditions in poorer nations, and would likely hurt the national image of more modern nations in the eyes of poorer ones.

It will be interesting to see how the world continues to respond to issues brought up by automation. Again, I commend Musk’s sense of responsibility here, but I wonder if he’ll feel the same way when he has to foot the bill through his taxes.

Ripple’s XRP token is down more than 30 percent today, amid losses across the wider cryptocurrency market.

Ancora introduces Bitcoin fountain pen as investor interest in luxury pens soars #SPONSORED

The development team behind Thrive, a decentralized Blockchain-based ad marketplace, is planning to compete against dominant service providers within the global advertising industry like Google AdSense/AdWords by automating the complex process of advertising revenue distribution.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Often, revenue shares, advertisement margins, and rates (CPM, CTC, etc.) are not transparently provided to content creators as accessible data. Consequently, it has become significantly difficult for content creators, whose livelihood depend on advertisement revenue, to plan ahead potential revenues and profits to finance their operations and daily activities.

Through the usage of blockchain technology, the Thrive platform is able to ensure full transparency, data security, safety and consumers remuneration.

Transparency and data security are two advantages of a blockchain-based network which centralized platforms like Google AdSense and Amazon Advertising cannot provide. It is the immutability of blockchain technology and its cryptographically encrypted network that enables every piece of data to be accessed as public information.

Innovative ways in managing the consensus,  transactions grouping to better manage temporary storage and avoid platform flooding,  anti-bot proprietary algorithms which use comparative behavioral models, blockchain segmentation to facilitate the storage in device with limited memory are the main technological breakthrough Thrive Platform  is putting on the table to establish the first “Marketing oriented” blockchain in the industry.

“High speed transaction, data security and low gas cost is what the marketing industry needs. For the first time, both Publishers and Consumers that are willing to voluntarily share anonymous data, will get monetary rewards. Something that everyone today is unconsciously already doing for free.” the Thrive team explained.

More importantly, with Thrive, content creators will not experience similar issues they have had on platforms like YouTube, wherein content is unfairly demonetized. Recently, demonetization of content on major platforms has become a serious issue for both content creators and advertisers, as more than 50 percent of their revenues were eliminated overnight.

As a venture, Thrive is targeting a rapidly growing market in digital advertising. The total addressable market of Thrive is nearly $310 billion, and if it can establish itself as a key service provider within the market, it will be able to evolve into a leading advertising marketplace.

“Digital advertising spending worldwide – which includes both desktop and laptop computers as well as mobile devices was estimated to be 198.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. This figure is forecast to constantly increase during the coming years, reaching a total of 310 billion U.S. dollars by 2020,” added the Thrive team.

Thrive is attempting penetrate into the global advertising market by creating a network on which advertisers and content creators can seamlessly integrate digital ads on a peer-to-peer manner, without the interference of intermediaries and third party service providers.

Ultimately, within a peer-to-peer ecosystem, both parties in the advertiser and content creator benefit from deduction in costs, as a large chunk of digital ad revenues that were previously sent to the platform operator or third party service provider is eliminated.

The token sale or initial coin offering (ICO) of the Thrive token (THRT) begins in less of 40 days, on February 15, 2018.
53% percent of the total supply of THRT (106 Million THRT) will be sold during the token sale. Unsold token will be burned.
Once the platform is live the overall token supply is going to decrease at every transaction, since Thrive will destroy a part of its earned fees. This will ensure the utility coin value is appreciated over time the more the platform is used.
The initial pricing per THRT will be $0.3, and the dynamic hard cap of the token sale will be set at $30 million.
Private seed with 100 ETH min contribution is already available until end of January for private investors, business angels and VCs.
In the meanwhile, all contributors can already reserve public pre-sales tokens ensuring a 30% bonus. Stay tuned joining the Thrive Telegram Live Chat.