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A Korean financial regulator has reportedly indicated it is investigating possible insider trading of cryptocurrencies by its own staff.
A Korean financial regulator has reportedly indicated it is investigating possible insider trading of cryptocurrencies by its own staff.
With the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies gradually trending towards $1 trillion, increasing from just under $20 billion at the start of 2017 to over $700 billion at the beginning of the current year, it’s simply a good time to invest in the revolutionary technology called blockchain. Last year alone, bitcoin, the pioneer cryptocurrency, which … Continue reading MoonLite Is Giving Investors A Chance To Get Started In Cryptocurrency Mining
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With the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies gradually trending towards $1 trillion, increasing from just under $20 billion at the start of 2017 to over $700 billion at the beginning of the current year, it’s simply a good time to invest in the revolutionary technology called blockchain. Last year alone, bitcoin, the pioneer cryptocurrency, which introduced the blockchain technology too, rose from the $1000 region at the beginning of the year to over $19,000 at a point during the year.
Over the past month, or so, cryptocurrencies including ethereum, litecoin and ripple have enjoyed impressive rallies too. With governments and financial institutions around the world exploring the possibilities of issuing some form of cryptocurrency to benefit from the improved efficiency that blockchain powered money brings to the digital world, it’s safe to say that cryptocurrencies are here for the long haul and they’re likely to change the way we use money. The case for investing in blockchain and cryptocurrencies has never been stronger. The problem, however, is that the cryptocurrency market is plagued with instability and many useless coins, making it difficult for long-term investors to find a good entry points. Moreover, at present, partly because it’s still early days, it’s currently difficult to determine what a fair value is for cryptocurrencies. So this leaves the question of how to, genuinely, benefit from the blockchain and cryptocurrency revolution over the long term.
One effective way is to invest in cryptocurrency mining, the process that generates new cryptocurrencies. Many of the major cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin depend on mining to function.
Mining cryptocurrencies simply has to do with the process of verifying cryptocurrency transactions and adding them to the public ledger. Recall that crypto transactions are peer-to-peer, which means there are no intermediaries. In order to maintain the integrity of the system and avoid double spending, which had been one of the things that the traditional banks do, miners serve as witnesses to transactions. To verify transactions, miners use a computer or group of computers to solve a mathematical puzzle, called cryptographic function and they are rewarded with freshly generated cryptocurrency – the part that’s actually the mining. Miners can either sell the cryptocurrency rewards for fiat money on exchanges or keep them as an investment to bet on an increase in the value of the cryptocurrency. Just to point it out, it’s the process of mining described here that leads to an increase in the number of cryptocurrencies in circulation.
In a similar fashion to the saying that “not all cryptocurrencies are created equal,” all cryptocurrencies aren’t equally profitable. Cryptocurrency mining is designed to increase in difficulty as the number of miners of a particular cryptocurrency increases and the number that cryptocurrency in circulation increases. Consequentially, the cost of mining a cryptocurrency tends to increase as the usage of that cryptocurrency increases. So there’s simply no one formula to determine if cryptocurrency mining is profitable on an overall basis. Like all businesses, it would depend on the set up — like how much computational power is allocated to the mining of the cryptocurrencies of interest and the energy tariffs at the mining site. On a general basis, setting up a mining operation that is profitable depends on the ability of the owners to identify areas where energy costs are relatively lower and the cryptocurrencies that offer lower costs on a relative basis so they can assign them more computing power just to optimize operations.
Specific cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum have been said to be profitable for miners. For instance, bitcoin miners in China reportedly break even at $6,925 per bitcoin when energy cost in China is at its highest, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. With bitcoin hovering around the $14,000 mark, this means that bitcoin miners in China potentially making about 100 percent profit.
In addition, a calculation on the website Ethereumin suggests that, with a Geass ASIC setup, which cost about $2,289 with the capability to provide 200 MH/s (mega hashes per second) in hash rate, your profit could be 18.215 ETH in a year. With this sort of profit margin, it’s safe to say that a properly set up mining business should be profitable over the long haul.
There are mainly two ways to invest in the cryptocurrency mining business. You can setup either your own mining operation or investing in a mining business. If you have the technical expertise and time to start your own mining rig, as it’s commonly called, it could be profitable. However, for most people, the best option would be to invest in a mining business and one of the easiest options is to buy tokens during the ICO of a cryptocurrency mining company.
MoonLite is one of such companies. The MoonLite project is an industrial scale cryptocurrency mining operation focusing on the mining of all forms of bitcoin, litecoin and dash.
Cryptocurrency mining operations have been under pressure in recent times for the amount of energy they consume. In fact, Power Compare, a U.K. energy tariffs comparison platform cited Digiconomist, a cryptocurrency power usage tracking website, to suggest that bitcoin mining operations now account for approximately 0.13 percent of the total global electricity consumption. Going by that number, if bitcoin miners were a country, they would be the 61st largest consumer of electricity in the world. While some researchers have argued that Digiconomist’s data has a few layers of error in it, there’s no denying that bitcoin mining consumes a considerable amount of energy — just like any set up of computers doing high-level computation.
These consumption issues have started making governments around the world look into crypto mining operations. In the end, only cryptocurrency mining projects built to be efficient in terms of energy would win. That’s one thing to like about the Moonlite project.
Moonlite is building its first datacenter in Iceland, which is the unofficial capital of the world datacenter due to its inherent need for more heat energy that datacenters could offer. Moonlite datacenter will be running at roughly 14.6MW with 100 percent of the power coming from green sources. The mining company has been able to lock down a 12-year fixed and guaranteed energy cost with the Icelandic Power Producer at a huge discount to the local energy cost. It’s worthy to note that Iceland already has one of the cheapest energy tariffs in the world.
MoonLite plans to start its ICO on February 28 although it’s currently offering a presale, which will end before the start of the main ICO. Another unique thing about the MoonLite ICO, unlike many ICOs, is that the MoonLite tokens confer voting rights on all of the company’s financial, HR and branding affairs through Secure.Vote. That offers an extra layer of security and transparency that’s often missing in the ICO market.
To bring it all together, in world that’s filled with over a thousand cryptocurrencies from which one is to decide which ones are worth an investment, it might help to look in the direction of companies like MoonLite who help bring cryptocurrencies to the market.
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Transaction accelerators have become a lot more popular as of late. This is mainly due to Bitcoin’s network issues as of late. People don’t like to pay high fees or wait for network confirmations. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many free acceleration services out there for Bitcoin users. ConfirmTX is one of those services, but they … Continue reading ConfirmTX Transaction Accelerator Isn’t Processing Requests Despite Receiving Payments
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Transaction accelerators have become a lot more popular as of late. This is mainly due to Bitcoin’s network issues as of late. People don’t like to pay high fees or wait for network confirmations. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many free acceleration services out there for Bitcoin users. ConfirmTX is one of those services, but they charge a hefty fee to get transactions through. It seems that paying for this service will not necessarily result in any success whatsoever.
It is always troublesome when a Bitcoin transaction accelerator charges a fee for their service. While it is commendable to see the service help Bitcoin users out, they are not exactly the most reliable either. Their fee is $5 for a major transaction, which is still acceptable. However, if people don’t see their transaction sped up whatsoever, there is no reason to pay for it. After all, a $5 fee is not all that much compared to what a regular transaction could cost.
With ConfirmTX, it seems some people have run into issues lately. More specifically, there are complaints about no transactions being accelerated for days on end. Nor are people getting any response to their customer support tickets either, which is always bothersome. It is unclear how this situation will evolve in the coming days and weeks. For now, your mileage will vary when using this service, by the look of things.
It is evident the Bitcoin world needs more services like these. More specifically, users need a reliable way to accelerate transactions. It seems the mempool has finally cleared out a bit, but this may only be temporary. Bitcoin has had issues for quite some time now. Until that situation improves, high fees will remain a normal occurrence. It also means people will continue to rely on services such as ConfirmTX. We can only hope the team provides a more reliable service at that point, though.
It is unclear what the future will hold for Bitcoin and its transaction accelerators. More specifically, the Bitcoin network issues are far from over, despite this temporary reprieve. No one knows what next week will bring, though. ConfirmTX will have some explaining to do when it comes to their lack of customer service. There are other services out there which charge even higher fees, though. Rest assured there will be some more issues regarding Bitcoin transactions in the near future.
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Ledger, the maker of hardware cryptocurrency wallets, has raised $75 million in Series B funding.
Ledger, the maker of hardware cryptocurrency wallets, has raised $75 million in Series B funding.
A lot of things have happened in the world of cryptocurrency over the past 48 hours. Most markets have seen a significant decline, but it also seems things are slowly turning around once again. If the TRON price is any indication, things will certainly get very interesting from here on out. Although the current 71.82% TRON price increase is rather significant, one has to wonder whether or not there is any real value to this project. Moreover, this type of price action may effectively cause an even bigger cryptocurrency market crash. TRON Price Rebounds Strongly In a way, it is
A lot of things have happened in the world of cryptocurrency over the past 48 hours. Most markets have seen a significant decline, but it also seems things are slowly turning around once again. If the TRON price is any indication, things will certainly get very interesting from here on out. Although the current 71.82% TRON price increase is rather significant, one has to wonder whether or not there is any real value to this project. Moreover, this type of price action may effectively cause an even bigger cryptocurrency market crash.
In a way, it is good to see all cryptocurrencies market rebound to strongly after two very difficult days. More specifically, the entire ecosystem lost close to 60% in value for some unknown reason. Corrections in the cryptocurrency world occur at least once a year, and it mostly happens during the month of January. This year has proven to be no different, and even the TRON price start taking some big hits in the process.
More specifically, the TRON price rose to $0.24 without a real reason and crashed to $0.047 about a day ago. This was considered to be another casualty during the cryptocurrency market onslaught. Others considered this to be a clear indication of how TRON is vastly overhyped and overvalued. There is no right and wrong in this regard, as people are entitled to their own opinions in this regard. Contrary to what people would expect, however, the TRON price has rebounded so strongly, a lot of the losses have been erased in quick succession.
With a strong 71.82% gain in USD value, the TRON price has returned to a value of $0.088. This also represents a 59.7% increase over Bitcoin and a 60.15% increase over Ethereum. All of these signals are very bullish as far as the TRON price is concerned, although cryptocurrency markets will remain unpredictable for quite some time to come. Whether or not this a TRON price pump-and-dump cycle, remains to be seen. The current gains certainly hint at exactly that, but the TRON community will feel very differently.
Additionally, TRON notes a very strong trading volume of over $1.59bn in the past 24 hours. That in itself is rather interesting, considering the cryptocurrency market onslaught also seemed to diminish the trading volumes of most currencies in the process. With the TRON trading volume returning to big-boy numbers, things may finally turn around once again. If this volume keeps up, we will eventually see the TRON price jump to over $0.15 again.
Most of the TRON trading volume still originates from the Binance exchange, as is to be expected. More specifically, the balance seems to be the go-to place to buy – or pump – TRON, as no other major exchange lists this altcoin at this stage. Coinnext completes the top three ranked by trading volume, even though their price remains excluded from the global average. How all of this will affect the price moving forward, remains to be seen.
As of right now, it is evident TRON has the highest momentum of all cryptocurrencies on the market. At the same time, the way things have evolved for the TRON price over the past 24 hours does indicate there is still plenty of “dumb money” in the cryptocurrency world. Whether or not that will trigger another major cryptocurrency market collapse, remains to be determined. It is certainly possible we are not out of the woods just yet, but things look far less bleak than they did 36 hours ago.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will consider any blockchain use cases that can help solve its problems, its CTO said Tuesday.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will consider any blockchain use cases that can help solve its problems, its CTO said Tuesday.
A recent study (PDF) from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance and blockchain analytics company Elliptic explored the “bitcoin laundering” ecosystem. In the study, Elliptic’s forensic analysis of the Bit…
A recent study (PDF) from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance and blockchain analytics company Elliptic explored the “bitcoin laundering” ecosystem. In the study, Elliptic’s forensic analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain and other publicly available data were used to track the flows of illicit funds from 2013 to 2016.
“This study aimed to identify where individuals turn in order to cash out or transmit bitcoins (BTC) acquired from illicit entities and to discover typologies for criminals ‘laundering’ bitcoins,” the report says.
The study describes bitcoin laundering as a special type of money laundering that exists within the Bitcoin network where a user moves some bitcoins to a new address in a manner that obscures the original source of funds. The conversion of bitcoins into fiat currency on exchanges that lack adequate anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) policies can also fall under the category of bitcoin laundering.
In addition to describing the common mechanisms for bitcoin laundering and explaining that this sort of activity is a small percentage of all transactions sent to exchanges and other conversion services, the study also offers some recommendations for law enforcement in terms of preventing the masking of illicit funds on the Bitcoin network.
It should go without saying that any study related to the dark web or illicit use of the Bitcoin network needs to be taken with a grain of salt because avoiding detection is the whole reason for a criminal to use these sorts of platforms in the first place.
Much of the study, which is titled “Bitcoin Laundering: An Analysis of Illicit Flows Into Digital Currency Services,” revolves around the use of “conversion services.” Conversion services are basically platforms where users convert bitcoins to fiat currency (a Bitcoin exchange) or another cryptocurrency (a cryptoexchange), or move the bitcoins to another Bitcoin address accessible to the user. This results in a flow of funds that cannot be viewed or traced directly on the public blockchain.
According to the study, darknet markets are the main source of funds that are sent to conversion services in bitcoin laundering attempts.
Additionally, the number of illicit services that could be the source of “dirty bitcoins” sent to a conversion service increased fivefold from 2013 to 2016. Having said that, the study finds that the sources of illicit funds entering conversion services are quite centralized.
“Only a small number of entities account for the majority of illicit activity in our sample,” the study says. “Nine of the 102 illicit entities were the source of more than 95 percent of all laundered bitcoins in our study. All nine were darknet marketplaces.”
While exchanges are the most commonly used type of conversion service, bitcoin mixers and gambling sites have much more illicit funds coming into their platforms as a percentage of their overall transactions. As potential conduits for bitcoin laundering, these two types of conversion services benefit from concealing their country of operations and avoiding enforcement of AML regulations.
“Fewer than 10 percent of all transactions overall passed through unknown jurisdictions … while 52 percent of illicit laundering went through them,” the study says.
Much like the sources of illicit funds, the conversion services where these funds are sent are also highly centralized, the study finds. The data indicates that 97 percent of illicit transaction volume at mixers and gambling sites goes through three different entities. Additionally, two platforms in Europe account for half of all illicit transfers that go into exchanges.
Another notable aspect of the study is that the data indicates a low level of bitcoin laundering as a percentage of all payments sent to conversion services.
“The amount of observed Bitcoin laundering was small (less than one percent of all transactions entering conversion services),” notes the study.
The report clarifies that the actual volume of illicit Bitcoin transactions sent to conversion services is “almost surely to be significantly larger” than what the data in the study shows because intermediate transactions are not counted. In other words, the report only covers transactions made directly from an illicit source, such as a darknet market, to a conversion service.
The study also indicates a decrease in illicit Bitcoin transaction volume going to conversion services over time.
“It is likely that illicit bitcoins fell as a percentage of total volume entering conversion services due to the cryptocurrency’s increasing popularity as a speculative investment as well as new laundering techniques,” the study says. “The drop may also reflect better AML/CFT compliance by conversion services, including the use of blockchain analysis services to determine customers’ source of funds.”
The study later adds, “Our study, the first of its kind, indicates that while most types of conversion services have received some bitcoins from illicit activity, the vast majority of the funds they receive do not appear to be illicit.”
The report offers recommendations for law enforcement in terms of what they can do to combat the effectiveness of bitcoin laundering.
First, the study says proper KYC and AML policies need to be enforced on the bitcoin mixers and gambling sites that allow for anonymous usage. It notes that the three conversion services that account for 97 percent of bitcoin laundering on these types of platforms should be targeted by financial authorities.
“The fact that most mixers and gambling sites hide their location of operations indicates they probably seek to evade the basic regulations in place to uphold transparency and financial integrity standards in most jurisdictions,” adds the study.
Of course, it should be noted that targeting these sorts of services will become nearly impossible as they become more decentralized over time. Decentralized platforms like JoinMarket, TumbleBit and ZeroLink remove the ability for authorities to clamp down on bitcoin mixing in an effective manner, as these solutions act more as software than services.
Second, the report also calls for increased AML and KYC compliance at European exchanges.
“Many large European Bitcoin exchanges do implement robust AML policies,” says the study. “However, this is out of choice rather than obligation, and there are some who choose not to, possibly to attract business from criminals.”
The study adds that the European Union is already moving in the right direction via an update of their 2015 Anti-Money Laundering Directive to include fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchanges, but in the view of the authors of the paper, crypto-to-crypto exchanges must also be regulated in this manner.
Again, it needs to be pointed out that more problematic technology — at least from law enforcement’s point of view — is on the horizon in the form of decentralized cryptoexchanges. Through the use of cross-chain atomic swaps via the lightning network, users will be able to instantly trade between different cryptoassets without the need for a trusted third party.
Third, the study calls for a sort of propaganda campaign against the use of darknet markets by criminals and the general public at large.
“Law enforcement should increase customer skepticism about [darknet market] sites’ integrity and reduce the perceived security of such platforms by exposing their vulnerabilities publicly,” says the study.
The report adds that law enforcement should make it well known that they’re lurking on these darknet markets to further shake confidence in them.
Darknet markets are another area of the Bitcoin ecosystem that are becoming more decentralized through platforms such as OpenBazaar. While illicit activity on the OpenBazaar network appears to be limited at this time, it could potentially explode in popularity as a reaction to law enforcement’s hypothetical campaigns against the centralized darknet markets.
Fourth, the report praises the decision by financial authorities in the United States to regulate exchanges as Money Service Businesses. The authors of the paper would like to see this sort of policy rolled out worldwide.
Last, the study notes the need to prevent the illicit use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to get around economic sanctions imposed by the United States or other nations.
“In addition to mitigating illicit finance risks like criminal money laundering, there will likely be a need to develop strategies to counter state actors aiming to use cryptocurrencies to circumvent U.S., EU, and UN sanctions.”
Recently, there have been reports of North Korea, Russia and Venezuela all looking into separate mechanisms for avoiding economic sanctions through the use of cryptocurrencies.
This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.
BloombergBitcoin Slips After Frantic Rally as Traders Await Fresh SignalsBloombergThe roller coaster January for cryptocurrency investors showed no signs of ending on Thursday as Bitcoin swung back to a loss in London trading just hours after staging a…
Bloomberg | Bitcoin Slips After Frantic Rally as Traders Await Fresh Signals Bloomberg The roller coaster January for cryptocurrency investors showed no signs of ending on Thursday as Bitcoin swung back to a loss in London trading just hours after staging a recovery above the $10,000 mark. The largest digital currency was down 2.4 ... |
Forbes |
Bitcoin– Dead Cat Bounce or Bottom In Place?
Forbes The bitcoin price is enormously oversold when you look at it from a technical perspective. Is it still burning, or is there no more blood left to bleed? Bitcoin’s recent fall is a film we’ve seen before, with previous crashes in 2013 and 2014. Bitcoin … |
Forbes | Bitcoin- Dead Cat Bounce or Bottom In Place? Forbes The bitcoin price is enormously oversold when you look at it from a technical perspective. Is it still burning, or is there no more blood left to bleed? Bitcoin's recent fall is a film we've seen before, with previous crashes in 2013 and 2014. Bitcoin ... |
2018 will be the year enterprise blockchain goes live and businesses can move from experimenting to production, says Oracle’s Mark Rakhmilevich.
2018 will be the year enterprise blockchain goes live and businesses can move from experimenting to production, says Oracle’s Mark Rakhmilevich.
How a Blockchain startup plans to monetize the global gaming industry. #SPONSORED
How a Blockchain startup plans to monetize the global gaming industry. #SPONSORED
Key Highlights Ethereum classic price declined sharply before forming a short-term low at $22.05 against the US dollar. There is a crucial bearish trend line forming with resistance at $34.00 on the hourly chart of the ETC/USD pair (Data feed via Kraken). The pair is currently recovering, but it is facing a major resistance near … Continue reading Ethereum Classic Price Technical Analysis – ETC/USD Facing Key Resistance
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Ethereum classic price recovered recently after a major decline against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETC/USD is correcting higher, but it is finding offers around $32.00.
There were continuous declines in ETC price as it moved below the $30.00 support against the US dollar. The price even broke the $25.00 support and traded toward the $22.00 level. A low was formed at $22.05 from where an upside correction was initiated. It has moved above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $47.29 high to $22.05 low.
However, there are many resistances on the upside starting with $31.60. The 38.2% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $47.29 high to $22.05 low is at $31.60 to prevent upsides. Moreover, there is a crucial bearish trend line forming with resistance at $34.00 on the hourly chart of the ETC/USD pair. Above the trend line resistance, the 100 hourly simple moving average is around $36.00. An intermediate resistance is the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $47.29 high to $22.05 low.
Therefore, there are clear hurdles near $32.00 and $34.00. It won’t be easy for buyers to break both levels and move above $35.00 in the near term. On the downside, an initial support is at $25.00, followed by the last swing low of $22.00.
Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETC/USD is slowly moving back in the bearish zone.
Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETC/USD is moving down towards the 50 level.
Major Support Level – $25.00
Major Resistance Level – $34.00
Charts courtesy – Trading View, Kraken
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